Brent Toderian
@brenttoderian
Global advisor on better cities, city planning, transportation & urban change. City planner + urbanist leading @ToderianUW.bsky.social. Past Chief Planner for Vancouver BC. Past/founding President of @CanUrbanism.bsky.social. International speaker & media.
It’s really important that the #Vancouver Downtown Business Association, who were originally against bike-lanes, are now among their most vigourous supporters, because of ACTUAL EVIDENCE that they’re better for downtown business than any street parking they replaced. Safe bike-lanes mean business.
You know who really doesn’t like the idea of an international criminal court? International criminals.
Does replacing parking with bike-lanes hurt restaurant business? Of course not, as this new peer-reviewed STUDY of 15 years of Montreal data showed. ACTUALLY, downtown experienced significant restaurant growth after bike lanes were installed. @momentummag.bsky.social momentummag.com/do-bike-lane...
Can Vancouver’s pedestrianized Granville Street have a vibrant day-life and night-life AFTER our hosting of local #WorldCup games has ended? On a game-day, absolutely! Our last local match was a week ago, but today’s/tonight’s crowds were New Orleans levels! Our new “centre ice” for EVERY sport?
My best read during the #WorldCup has been “The Barcelona Complex” by @simonkuper.bsky.social, who I got to know a bit while in Paris last year. An engrossing read about the Barça organization, the key figures (Cruyff, Messi, more), the city and its culture. Also read his “Impossible City” on Paris.
One thing I can’t help doing in pedestrian streets & people-places is judging each element & object on whether it’s a success or failure (individually & “sum of the parts”). Especially relative to how much it probably costs. What works, what doesn’t. What elements do you like on Granville Street?
“The success of Granville Street shouldn't be measured by trying to replicate the crowds and atmosphere of World Cup game days that were ‘hyper-fueled’ by the energy of the games and influx of tourists. That kind of vibe doesn't transfer to normal life, Toderian said.” www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
How will a pedestrianized Granville Street during the #WorldCup quickly evolve into a successful people-place EVERY day? This week I’ve started advising the very impressive @downtownvan.bsky.social leadership team planning the 7 week extension directed by City Council last Thursday. Challenging!
Attention global city-lovers! Vancouver needs to up our game on magnetic, interactive, family-friendly ideas that will attract more people and keep them longer on transformed, pedestrianized streets! What’s some of the best creative ideas you’ve seen? Bonus points for simple, inexpensive, fun ideas!
The 2026 Most Livable Cities Ranking has dropped. As always, take the fine details of these rankings with a grain of salt. Copenhagen & Vienna topped list again, European/Australian/Japanese cities did well, Vancouver is the only North American city in the top 10. Discuss. archive.is/2026.07.07-0...
Why expensive road and highway widening ALWAYS fails to reduce traffic congestion. Traffic never gets better for very long, & it commonly ends up worse. And yet “fixing congestion” is ALWAYS the stated reason for spending all that public money on widenings. #InducedDemand ggwash.org/view/97803/w...
Is there any team at the #WorldCup more fun than Norway? #VikingRow #Norway
One of my contextual observations about Vancouver’s hosting of the #WorldCup, and the huge success of the Granville Street transformation during the games, is that Water Street and the Gastown business community missed out massively on the World Cup opportunity by fighting a similar transformation.
Just stop and think about this for a minute — what if YOUR city had transformed a key main street this summer (like Montreal does with #MontRoyal, actually one of 13 such street transformations this summer) into a 2.5km long pedestrian promenade & living room with thousands of seats and activities?
Actually, too many cars are a big problem in Reykjavik, arguably the biggest city-building problem there.
Glad to see the #WorldCup street transformation extension confirmed. The possibility of a Christmas Street Market is a great idea. The biggest move is this amendment: THAT Council direct staff to report back by the end of Q4 2026 with recommendations & cost estimates for a 3-year seasonal extension!
Pedestrianizing a main street spine in central Reykjavík was controversial with businesses when it was first done, so they made it a summer pilot. They kept it that way, a pilot, for over a decade, and then went ahead and made it year-round and permanent. No big deal. No controversy. People like it.
If you’re talking about following me on Mastodon, here is my account information there. If you’re there, I hope you’ll following me there too. Also on Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads.
This iconic Fabian Todorovic cartoon is still one of the best I’ve seen at illustrating the remarkable amount of space we surrender to cars, leaving little space left for everyone and everything else. The text added later makes the bonus point that many drivers still manage to complain about it.
As with many successful pedestrian people-streets in many other cities around the world, the idea of removing cars & trams from OSLO’s Karl Johans Gate was initially very controversial before the eventual transformation in the 1980s. But the prestigious shopping street & main city stroll flourished.
Public spaces are full of personal stories. This square in Malmö Sweden had just been transformed back into a people-place from a parking lot when I was sitting in it at the moment I thought of the name for our soon-to-be-born son, and texted my wife. Pic v/ @syrran.bsky.social Do you have a story?
One of the most successful pedestrian streets in the world, the Strøget in Copenhagen, was filled with cars until a 2 year pedestrianization pilot project in 1962. The opposition argued “no cars means no business,” but the street has been a massive retail success, the city’s busiest shopping street.
Remember this picture, & others like it, every time you hear someone in your city say "we're not Amsterdam." This was #Amsterdam in the 1970s. Many of the cities we admire made tough choices regarding cars in the past, and are still making better choices today. Better choices instead of excuses.
READ: This article covers the challenges of permanently pedestrianizing Vancouver’s Granville Street post-World Cup. For me, we know enough to do a full Summer street opening next year, and to trial spring and fall extensions the year after. The KEY is to DO IT WELL. vancouversun.com/news/granvil...
Vancouver, do you really want this to end when the #WorldCup does? It should just be the beginning. And not just for Granville Street.
As lively and successful as the pedestrianized Granville Street has been every day since the beginning of the #WorldCup, today reached a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of energy on #TeamCanada Game Day! Only the 2010 Olympics Hockey Gold Medal spontaneous celebration was more electric! And the party kept growing…
Here’s something to watch for — last week I wrote an op-ed for the Vancouver Sun @vancouversun.bsky.social on why/how the pedestrianized Granville Street for the World Cup should be extended to the end of August, and opened every summer from now on. It will be in the print edition Thursday.
As already warm cities become more and more vulnerable to extreme heat events, or just the “new normal” of hotter and hotter cities every day, here’s just one more reason why more street trees and other greenery are good for streets & cities. It’s just common sense, really. Cooler, cleaner, smarter.