A contest sponsored by the Vancouver Public Space Network asks the public to find Vancouver's heart, a civic square that best defines the city. Sean Ruthen ponders the city's relationships to the each its primary squares now.
"As I was mentally surveying the existing civic squares in our city while at the Library for the presentation, it occurred to me that Vancouver has a long history of creating publicly recognized civic realms, and subsequently abandoning them. How else to explain the cases of the plaza in front of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, or Centennial Square just up the street, as well as the aforementioned Library Square. Cornelia Oberlander, while understandably adamant about her refurbished Robson Square - that it will return the civic heart to the CBD - likewise voiced some concern about how those responsible at City Hall have become over the years increasingly negligent of their civic responsibility to support some form of civic pride in the city's great outdoors."
Read the full story: The search for Vancouver’s real heart
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