Mayor Jonathan Cote is becoming a bit of a poster child for urban living in the Lower Mainland.
Cote was one of the presenters at the recent TEDxStanleyPark speaking series at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which aims to inspire attendees with high-impact talks and empower them with practical calls to action. The topic? The future of cities and the impact transportation has on them.
“It was really trying to take a futuristic look into the cities of the future and saying how our decisions about transportation, how driverless cars get integrated into our communities, how we advance public transit – if it’s a priority, if it’s not a priority – and how all those different transportation choices will actually be the driving forces that ultimately decide what our cities look and feel like in the future,” he said. “It was really essentially trying to say that we have a unique opportunity with new technologies, with how vehicles are being used with the shared technologies, with advancements and even an interest in walking to actually look at cities a lot differently than we have in the last 50 to 100 years and actually start look at designing our cities more around people than simply around transportation infrastructure like cars and public transit, but really focus on how we build our cities around people.”
Cote said it was an “incredible opportunity” to be invited to speak at TEDxStanleyPark about a topic he’s passionate about in front of 2,000 people.
Modacity, a Vancouver-based blog promoting the public-health, environmental and social benefits of walking, cycling, and public transit, featured Cote on a recent podcast.
The segment touched on the City of Vancouver’s decision not to allow the highway to go through its downtown many years ago, and segued into efforts being undertaken in New Westminster to create a walkable sustainable community.
“They were particularly interested in my own personal decisions,” said Cote, who has made a home in downtown New West with his wife and three daughters. “I think they probably came up with some Record articles about my condo living with the family. They were quite fascinated with my experiences of raising a family in a more urban environment, as opposed to your more suburban environment.”
After living in a three-bedroom condo on Columbia Street for the past few years, Cote and his family will soon be on the move.
“We have actually bought a new place – we probably bought it five years ago, pre-construction,” he said. “We bought two two-bedroom units and put them together.”
The new four-bedroom condo, also located in the downtown, was scheduled to be complete last fall. Because they’d already sold their three-bedroom condo, the Cotes have been renting a house in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood until they can move into their new home in May.
“We are renting a house that’s a block away from where we used to live in Queen’s Park. It’s been kind of nice to get back in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood, which is obviously a very lovely neighbourhood,” Cote said. “But there is aspects that we do miss about downtown – how close all the shops were, how close the SkyTrain was to jump on there. We do find that we are driving our car a lot more than we were when we were living downtown. Even though we are really only living 10 blocks up the hill, it’s just a little bit different in terms of where we are located. We are enjoying our temporary visit back to Queen’s Park, but we are eager to get back downtown New West.”
Cote said his family loves the urban experience of living downtown, but worried that the 1,400-square-foot three-bedroom condo would become a bit cramped as his daughters got a bit older.
“Looking at where the housing market has gone with single-family housing, the reality is even if that’s something we wanted to do, it’s not within our financial means,” he said. “We started to say, what other options do we have? We were initially thinking townhouses, but there’s not a significant supply of townhouses that were meeting our needs. Somehow the idea came up. Since it was pre-construction, they were able to move a couple of walls and change the unit a little bit. It will be a four bedroom. We are excited about that. Everyone will have their own room. They are getting to that age where it’s probably a good thing.”
Where to see the mayor in action:
* Cote’s TEDxStanleyPark presentation will be posted on Youtube on April 7.
* Cote’s appearance on Modacity’s The strait and narrows podcast – Episode 3: From A to B, can be found at www.modacitylife.com/the-strait-and-narrows/.
