The City of Vancouver has released three proposed design concepts for the redesign of Chinatown Memorial Square — and all of them fail.
Instead of respecting the Square’s purpose as a solemn site of remembrance for Chinese railway workers and WWII Chinese veterans who fought without citizenship, the proposed designs turn it into a decorative front yard for Beedie’s gentrifier condos at 105 Keefer.
Rather than honouring the legacy of sacrifice and resistance, the designs focus on themed plants, superficial metaphors, and cartoonish elements like a yellow “dragon path.” This is not revitalization — it’s Orientalism wrapped in landscaping.
Let’s be clear:
All three options are deeply flawed. The City and their consultants, PFS Studio, need to go back to the drawing board.
All three designs are deeply Orientalizing — from the cartoonish yellow “Fire Dragon” path to the stylized “Healing Plants” and superficial “Three Friends in Winter” themes. These motifs flatten Chinatown’s living traditions into shallow symbols for outside consumption.
Permanent seating and furniture throughout the Square undermine its flexibility, making it harder to host community events, rituals, and gatherings that require space for tents, tables, equipment, and movement.
A proposed new Chinatown plaque blocks the historic sightline between the Memorial Monument and the entrance to Sun Yat-Sen Park — disrupting a carefully designed spatial relationship meant to honour generations of ancestors.
The proposed Wong Foon Sien plaque continues a tired pattern of patriarchal commemoration in the neighbourhood, when what’s needed is collective recognition of community struggle.
And lastly, the City’s survey itself raises doubts about their sincerity in this process. The questions are mismatched with the design images. If the City can’t even get the basics right in their survey, how seriously are they really considering our input?
None of the concepts reflect the solemnity and dignity this memorial deserves. This is not a park, a playground for metaphors, or a condo branding opportunity — it's a site for quiet reflection, memory, and mourning. The designs fail to honour that. This is not place-keeping or revitalization — it’s erasure disguised as design.
What we need is simple and grounded:
Maintain and support the growth of the trees in the Square.
Improve paving to make the space safe and accessible.
Preserve and build on the Square’s open, sacred atmosphere for remembrance and respect.
This is a memorial, not a photo op.
Not an entertainment venue.
Not a front yard for luxury condos.
We need a public space rooted in dignity, memory, and resistance — not aesthetics for condo dwellers and tourists.
This is about more than design.
It’s about who gets to define the past, present, and future of Chinatown.
Take action now in two quick steps:
Review the designs and take the survey here by Wednesday, April 30
Email your concerns directly to: memorialsquareredesign@vancouver.ca