We Won! Vancouver/Whistler
will host the 2010 Olympic Games!
I've been living in sea to sky
for a decade now,
and over that time I've come to visualize
So when we were awarded the Olympics an hour ago I got excited enough
to want to share a few of my ideas.
Perhaps
a little centric to Squamish the village between vancouver and whistler,
Here's a quick web page.
Now granted, I don't have a degree in architecture, and I'm interested in making a place that people live in forever, not just a place people visit for 2 weeks...
so, if we dream of a utopia, any
parts that we build now, will make sense as parts of the whole...
Sprawl North young van.
Environmentalists should want Vancouver
to sprawl north and stop development
in Richmond and up the fraser valley. The rich soil
Building on arable land, in a province that
has just 3% arable land, is just wrong. Of course I'm writing you from
a piece of prime valley bottom in Sea to sky, part of an old farm, so I
don't exactly walk my talk...
Anyways, the highway improvements that go along with the 2010 games are
good news for the B.C. environment. Take the pressure off fraser valley and
make a straight road to the north. Bring real estate prices down by supplying
a new good commuter road to the north.
Speaking of valley bottoms, I think we should leave valley bottoms
in sea to sky to flood. Build on the hillsides.
Any new development in the Whistler and Squamish
areas should consider natural floods a good thing and welcome them...
Native Land Claims should be settled. Why don't we
have this out of the way as a starting point...
More Land Should Be Privatized.
There is a lot of Land in Sea To Sky, much
of it comparitavely inactive ecologically. A home bolted onto a rocky mountainside
w
People and bears can co-exist if the people are smart...Numbers can actually increase.
Brittania Beach should be detoxed now!
Woodfibre Pulp Mill should be closed during the Olympics and for
a month before and after..or a
About 20 miles from the nearest house, is the way to go for that industry...
The woodwaste energy creation
scheme could go up there too...
Danger: The barrier is a worry.A large geological
dam that holds a lake over lower sea to sky.
Can you imagine having an earthquake and having the barrier
slide during the olympics?
Regulate pressure in Garabaldi lake with gravity pipe ?
Design seismic early warning system that searches for newly defined
Pattern...(french seismologist on Nova, ) that seems to predict earthquake
quite successfully.
________________________
-visualization is possible:
http://www.vrhotwires.com/private/smallvideo_sor3SpriteOrama.mov
shows a 360 panning drive across the burrard street bridge.(you need
quicktime installed) Why not do one of these of sea to sky and composite
in
the planned highway?
Cut less rock, build more structure.
When dealing with steep mountain sides it seems we
have gotten very into blasting them, which seems to lead to unstable rockslide
walls that cost a fortune in upkeep over the years.
My suggestion is
To mess with these walls less, and leave stable slopes stable.
Keep the train, make it faster, straighter, better for commuters...
More tunneling.?This new highway marks the opening of a
gateway into the north. If we are to inhabit and thrive in this mountainous
land I suggest we
become expert tunnel builders. Highways that go under mountains must
be
explored and costed out.
What about a coquiahalla-ish toll road to sechelt?
Leaving from the upper squamish/Ashlew and coming into Cloham
lake, such a road is almost already there in the logging roads.
Funded with private money as a toll, tourist route, the long highway along
the coast from california would be complete until eggmont...
Also a toll road behind the mountains from the chief to
coquitlam? This proposal by a businessman looks good...imagine 8 lanes coming
into squamish and a route to the sunshine coast from there. Image a poor
dude who lives an hour away from his job by commuter train and makes 40,000
a year and
lives in a one acre place he owns that he bought for 120, 000, in a new
government /native subdivision...
-The importance of single lane, paved roads to tourism. Banff has great
paved road accesses into its corners...If we are to build a place for tourists,
we should make a place that's fun to poke around in by car on paved roads.
Tourists like
paved roads, even if they mean nothing to the people who live in sea
to sky right now...
Summer stuff: Lake access with paved roads:
-Murrin Lake is too busy.
-A Cat Lake Paved access/park
-A Lucille lake Paved
access/ park.
-A secondary road along the cheakamus starting from a Starvation Lake
Paved Access/Park, up to the highway at Berubi's old place with the
billboards...
Evans Lake Ridge road, to butterfly and out at garabaldi town
site.
tourist lake exploration road.
Elaho hiking trail. Paved accesses to parking lots. Youth hostel
at either end.
Housing:
-visualization is possible:
check homes like these in whistler:
http://www.applevrtours.com/vr_pages/gallery.html
-not in the valley bottoms please.
-Land can be cheap too,
B.C. has a high land/person ratio, probably several acres per person,
but
the government owns 85% of it!
This a Main Chance to make the Olympics Beneficial to B.C.s Poor and
lower middle class.
Natives, in solidarity with the poor, should back this!
There should be homesteading incentives along new remote routes like up by Bralorne, or a road to the sunshine coast.. or behind the chief...
Minimizing ecological impact has to be a main goal of adding mankind
to this landscape. Garbage has to be dealt with extremely strictly,
to keep animal casualties down. Tightly regulated hunting and fishing if
any at all...
The right to car free living should be allowed. Hike in housing
should be a feature that sea to sky offers and promotes. Right now the government
won't sell land that cars can't drive to.
There should be hike-in Summer luxury tent hotels in garibaldi park.
At the end of season such a hotel should disappear and leave no trace...
-moving the main power lines up and out of the way might be an idea.
The ones in the cheakamus valley would be a nice place to hang planters
once
the cables are gone... /: )
In summer there should be wind power, and water should be heated and
___________________________________________________
So I close my eyes and imagine the drive between Vancouver
and whistler, in a utopian future. Vancouver would be a renaissance city,
thriving in a new enertainment/hydrogen/biotech/software economy...and
the olympics would just be feather in its cap.
Outside Horeshoe bay there is some new development. The highway is wider, and there are some new houses...The road to lions bay has been improved dramatically, and the mountains are less blasted than built upon to make it 4 lanes...I like having a median between myself and the oncoming traffic. The old highway had a lot of head-on crashes...
Furry Creek is a small town now, with a school and a store... with the
new road, it is
a doable drive into van for work...The logging road just past it has
houses on it too...
Since woodfibre moved up the squamish valley it's a nice view from the oceanfront places...
and there's a marina and a beach.
Brittania beach is turning into a second furry creek but retains its
historic mine site
and even though you can drink the water and swim in the ocean in front,
after a huge cleanup, its still a place a guy can get a trailer with a view
for not too much money...
(and a few luxury homes are around it too...at the new artificial beach.
)
Coming into squamish there is a large welcoming centre built on the 6.5
acres that have been for sale between shannon falls and the chief for a couple
of years..
Squamish has really changed... all the industry has gone up to a new industrial
park up the squamish valley and a new contraversial ocean access has been
created into princess lousia inlet from the end of the squamish valley
road...
there are a ton of new waterfront homes, parks and businesses... a game
park up the squamish valley, water slides, an amusement park... and the network
of trails is world famous. Squamish has become a major tourist base for
exploring sea to sky country, and the region offers a great network of single
lane paved roads to poke around in... these are old
logging roads paved in anticipation of the 2010 olympics, part of the new
tourism infastructure built in those years...
A new ski mountain at garabaldi is doing great, and the university is
thriving. As well
there are plenty of working man's jobs in construction and at the new
woodwork factory
that makes things out of second growth trees...High tech is big. Theres
a film studio.
Old growth logging is banned.
Squamish is a hotel centre between Vancouver and Whistler, right in the
middle of the 2010 olympics.
In fact, an event for the olympics is actually
held in squamish and a venue is built there....
Then going up the road, there is all the new work thats already happening
around the culliton creek bridge, and at Creekside. Of course whistler
has tried to cap it's development, spreading out into pemberton, up the
su valley and of course the callaghan. In my utopia
the valley bottoms are left untouched, and flooding is a welcome event
that brings topsoil...
while in 2003 there were about 35,000 permanent residents between west
van and pemberton there are now over 55,000 and almost all live in spacious
luxuirious homes built
mostly from local wood and stone, and glass, by local people.
The road to sechelt is open, but still has a hefty toll, it's on a plan
that makes it cheaper each year...
The road to coquitlam behind the chief is open, and has a toll. You can
drive from Sqamish to coquitlam in 40 minutes.
An economic story of the prosperity that is Sea To Sky is an innovative
trading network started with a sea to sky currency, where
local people with no money, but with firewood, or knitting, or lasagna,
or mechanics skills, or carpentry skills, or ski lessons,can trade
their goods with others over the web...C2Skybucks... unemployment is
almost zero,
and it works.
You register your skills and people trade you for them... granted at the
bottom
end some people have so many bad reports on their employer report cards,
that the only people who will hire them are social workers the government
pays to do so...
Project fallow for 3rd world people: Because sea to sky has lots of room,
in my utopia
a village site is built that provides a year of fallow time to 3rd world
villages in need.
The people come here and work on projects in sea to sky. Things like stone
work. But they have t.v.'s and a swimming pool and good food. They are paid
minimum wage in canadian. For people in India or China this is a ton of money.
While they are away their fields are put in fallow crops and allowed to
regenerate
as much as possible. A few farmers stay back to watch them. At the end
of the year, they
return home and plough in the fallow crops giving the soil much needed
nutrients. After a year a man on depleted soil with no money has some cash
and some soil to grow in...
project sanctuary for endangered animals. In the squamish or pemberton
valley on 2 or 400 acres I propose a game park you can drive around in. There
would be a walking part too... All endangered wildlife therein would be
protected and nurtured.
Project Amusement park/waterslide park. This is
a huge kids playground that you have to pay to get into.
Squamish, Britania would have ocean beaches. ....boating, swimming fishing,
there would be a nice paved access out onto the spit with a turnaround and the same kind of windsurfing would go on, but with a campsite nearby..
The ski resorts would give free passes to people who live in sea2sky. A
tradition of hosting would begin where a mountain would have a lot of hosts
ski-ing for free from the local area.
That's my ideas for now, but I will probably update this in the future...