Urban Curation creates Saint George Rainway

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Category: Sustainability and Resilience
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The Saint George Rainway is a great local project that

  • centers urban microwatersheds and green rainwater infrastructure
  • connects a design professional with community members as visualizer and facilitator (urban curation, based on Raoul Bunschoten's Urban Flotsam)
  • forms a "crew" around idea of making the greenway real through engaging the community, then city planners, then city engineering

This article summarizes what Bryn Davidson shared with me about how activism and community brought about the Saint George Rainway.

  1. Finding a landscape treat in the city
  2. How might we deliver a project that the community desires or needs?
  3. Rainways, Urban Curators, and Updating Community Space
  4. Follow-up Items
  5. Resources

Finding a landscape treat in the city

Earlier this year, my wife and I turned onto the Saint George Rainway when crossing Vancouver on our bikes. We only realized how important community was for it when I read Bryn Davidson's post on LinkedIn (November 2025, When it rains a lot I go to the rainway). So, I met with Bryn to explore the process.

First discovery - nearly finished construction site still has road closure sign

The process involved posting an idea on the internet and working with a community. The community eventually convinced the City to fund and tackle the project.

How might we deliver a project that the community desires or needs?

A long time ago, I learned about what some seemed to call "the Hollywood method." The author was describing the practice where people who want to create something form a crew that develops the concept, gains funding, and creates or delivers the product. (I can't find it anymore or recall where I learned it.)

That execution method seems to potentially embody delivering engineering in a good way for a community.

A designer, a community, and a city come together to address a need. Since engineering projects are how people bring in engineers to address a need, the extension is that a designer, a community, and a city come together to develop the concept, gain funding, and deliver an engineering project. Seems like a novel idea.

Rainways, Urban Curators, and Updating Community Space

The kernel for Saint George Rainway started when Bryn Davidson pondered micro watersheds in urban design along with the idea of urban curation in his Masters of Architecture thesis project in 2004 and 2005. By 2025, the City of Vancouver opened up the first stage of the Saint George Rainway.

The Vancouver City Planning Commission chose to include Bryn's idea in the 21 Ideas for the 21st Century competition, which gave people living in the neighbourhood a chance to learn about it in 2007.

Over time, he found people who built on the idea, including a city councillor, an urban designer, the False Creek Watershed Society, and Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House. Bryn formed a crew, in the language of the Be More Pirate movement.

One key for success: the crew that formed included people who convened activities well. Through web articles, art, and community events, the community developed an overall concept that responded to the specific needs along four city blocks.

City councillor Andrea Reimer convened a meeting in 2010 with the community which catalyzed the process around two elementary schools. The group formed around "Saint George Creek" after this initial meeting.

Urban designer Scot Hein organized a design charrette to bring together various city staff members from different departments with the community group.

Celia Brauer, from the False Creek Watershed Society, helped create the "lost streams" map that shows a small historical creek in the area.

The core crew is 14 people (details below). Nine community organizers in the crew were instrumental in raising awareness and engagement through:

  • creating the website (rainway.ca)
  • hosting block parties
  • painting street murals
  • organizing parades
  • organizing student art projects
  • and much more

Bryn noted that Bunschoten's concept of Urban Curation entered into his mind as he was working on the Saint George Rainway. An urban curator is a person who can convert community ideas into visible representations to communicate and share so that the neighbourhood approaches what the community needs.

Scot coined the term rainway while working with Melina Scholefield's green infrastructure unit to differentiate the new urban form from "greenways" and "creek daylighting." Greenways incorporate bike routes and greenery. Creek daylighting brings buried creeks back to the surface.

The Rainway, by contrast, aimed to keep the rain on the surface and in the landscaping instead of bringing up dirty sewer water.

Over the early phases of the Saint George Rainway, Bryn and the community and city developed a library of engineering solutions that other communities could apply when assembling a design for converting a paved street to a rainway. The library of concepts has two parts: rainway configurations; rainway toolbox

Ideas for depaving parts of urban areas have other advocates in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, including:

  • Dr. Kurt Grimm - UBC Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, 1992 to 2015 (deceased 2016)
  • Derek Lee - PWL Partnership
  • Edward Porter - MODUS Planning, Design and Engagement
  • Melina Scholefield - City of Vancouver Rain City Strategy (green infrastructure), 2016 to 2021

It just may work

Urban curation may be the bridge between applying the Hollywood Method for production to community engineering projects. An urban curator with support or patronage from the community or city may serve as the agent that connects to engineering and development companies.

The two largest obstacles I perceive:

  1. How do you get a land-owner or public land steward to approve the project?
  2. How do you fund the work of developing a constructible design and building the project?

Follow-up Items

Going Deeper about the Rainway

  1. Bryn Davidson - LaneFab Design-Build

  2. The design addresses storm water, vehicle access needs, and insect habitat through active transportation features and green infrastructure:

  3. City Project Information - While the first part of Phase 1 is open, the project schedule extends into 2026.

  4. Rainway Events during design - The full history of art, events, parades, and more.

  5. Block-by-block Overviews - Bryn served as Urban Curator for the Saint George Rainway, crystallizing community ideas in visual designs and concept details. His efforts provided the guiding Source for the project.

  6. Core Crew List:

    • Bryn Davidson, technical originator
    • Andrea Reimer, city councillor and convenor
    • Scot Hein, city planning department designer and convenor
    • Cecilia Brauer, False Creek Watershed Society
    • Shahira Sakyama, community organizer
    • Lori Snyder, community organizer
    • Max Adrien, community organizer
    • Loree Campbell, community organizer
    • Sarah Primeau, community organizer
    • Sara Pour, community organizer
    • Rita Wong, community organizer
    • amy kiara ruth, community organizer
    • Naomi Eliana Pommier Steinberg, community organizer
    • Julie McManus, city project manager (currently in 2026)
  7. Timeline of events highlighted in article:
    • 2004 - Initial Idea from Masters degree thesis research
    • 2007 - Public Attention in 21 Ideas for the 21st Century competition
    • 2010 - Group founded after community meeting
    • 2010 - Design Charette with City and community
    • 2025 - Phase 1 of Rainway opened to public
    • Full events history at Rainway.ca

Resources

Raoul Bunschoten. Urban Flotsam. Chora. 2001

  1. About the book:

  2. 2-hour lecture

    • Raoul Bunschoten - Urban Flotsam: Stirring The City
    • at AA School of Architecture
    • 1998-01-26

  3. Author's Researchgate Profile with Papers List

  4. Author interview in June 2025 - 1 hour

Urban Curators - 2025

  1. Jennifer Aksu and Gilly Karjevsky (https://urbancurating.org/questions/as-urban-curators-can-we-live-the-imagined-worlds-of-our-projects)

  2. Meike Schalk, 2007 paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334960720_Urban_Curating_A_Critical_Practice_Towards_Greater_Connectedness)

Books:

  1. Elke Krasny - https://cup.columbia.edu/book/urban-curating/9783837638486/
  2. Chora - https://chora.org/urbancuration/

Conference Talks:

  1. City Changers - https://citychangers.org/city-curator-why/
  2. Brent Toderian - https://urban-future.org/speaker/brent-toderian/

Wider-Boundary View

  1. Dr. Kurt Grimm While I was at Hatch Mott Macdonald, I encountered Dr. Grimm and shared a conversation on the way downtown. We talked about what could happen if we could convert streets that don't need pavement into parks, food gardens, or rain gardens. An interesting talk. More on Dr. Grimm:

  2. Rain City Strategy - Melina Scholefield Prince Edward Street Bikeway and Green Infrastructure at East 53 Avenue - half-block that City green infrastructure converted along this north-south cycle street route

  3. Depaving and Pollinator Pathways - Derek Lee, Edward Porter

  4. Be More Pirate - forming a crew around a vision

  5. Micro Watersheds

  6. Other Initiatives