Life in Chinatown Lanes:

Exploring Hidden Opportunities for Activation

This project was part of SCARP’s Planning Studio 2019. It is an intensive 7-month professionally oriented course in which students partner with community, municipal and private sector organizations to identify problems and propose possible solutions.

During this project, I worked closely with 3 other graduate students as a collaborative team to advise and assist the City of Vancouver’s Chinatown Transformation Team (CTT) in exploring the potential of activating public lanes. As a team, we synthesized research work, conducted site analysis, and compiled community feedback and recommendations into a public-facing toolkit. We also delivered a detailed internal report for the CTT by the end of the project.

In total, we conducted comprehensive site analysis and observed public space activity on 8 candidate lanes in Chinatown and evaluated them based on their physical characteristic and viability. We consulted various Chinatown stakeholders including community organizations, legacy businesses and local residents through over 12 in-person interviews and participated in many local events throughout the year. As a young Chinese-Canada, this project is very close to heart. My heritage and cultural roots helped me build better connections and empathize with the local communities. I was also able to maintain great communications and provide better support to our local partners with my language skills.

Although I cannot disclose our final internal report, you may find the online pdf copy of our public-facing community toolkit here.

Below is a poster summarizing our whole project: