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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037·

What about Vancouver? It is pretty famous for having lots of high rise apartment towers surrounded by parks.

"towers in the park" is a pretty specific type of topology, where the only access to the tower is through the park without any type of through or cross traffic.

Dunno, pictures on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park don't match that. I expect any plan that moves from a fancy architect's desk to real world to have convenient car access.

Emphasis on through or cross traffic. Generally there is a parking garage but it leads directly to a road around the perimeter of a very large block. If you think of the roads as basically long driveways to main roads, it’s not particularly inconvenient to drive around, or at least no more so than your average suburb with cul de sacs and loops.

Parking garages in these developments also tended to be centers of crime since they were big, desolate, and no one lingered in them to witness anything.

The Vancouver I saw (BC) didn't have any. I'm not saying they don't exist, but what I saw was towers surrounded by one and two story buildings. There were parks and a lot of dead area, but nothing that was tower surrounded by parks.

Beg to differ. I live in Yaletown in one of the Concord Pacific towers. David Lam Park and George Wainborn Park are vibrant as is the whole seawall. My kid goes to the daycare along one of the parks.

I'm sitting at my desk in an office in Gastown in a low-rise. The streets are covered in feces and broken crack pipes.

"towers in the park" refers to a pretty specific layout where the towers are surrounded and separated by parks. Yaletown has parks that are surrounded by towers, which generally seems to work better

Can you point to a specific tower you're thinking of?

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