The good, the bad, and the indifferent””that's how sculptor Mowry Baden once described Vancouver's public art. The same, he added, could be said of its architecture. Our mixed successes are a reflection of a young, fast-growing city still trying to define itself. Public art here ranges from monumental sculpture to small community mosaics, and from greenways to fountains to street lights. The question remains whether, in the midst of skyrocketing development and real-estate prices, a humane and unifying vision will prevail in our built environment””and in the art that complements and responds to it. A summer walk past some of the city's more successful public-art projects reveals what's been accomplished so far. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the best.

Suan Phan (Abacus) by Gwen Boyle (550 Taylor Street on Keefer Street) This work combines the form of a Chinese gate with that of a huge abacus. Suspended on steel posts within its elegant frame are 63 large, movable jade “beads”, juxtaposing interactive elements with monumentality. This beautiful and thoughtful sculpture speaks to Boyle's memories of her Chinatown childhood, her grandfather's jewellery shop, and the nightly clicking of his abacus as he did his accounts. It also considers the immigrant history of the area in which it sits, as well as the occupants of a nearby Chinese Canadian seniors' residence.

Cooper's Mews by Alan Storey (Coopers Mews and Marinaside Crescent) Located in a small park between a daycare centre and a luxury condominium tower, this interactive sound sculpture includes a winding wooden boardwalk, which gradually transforms into a pair of rusty metal rails, which then trail off into the grass. Five large wooden barrels with open mouths sit on raised aluminum rails overhead. As the visitor treads upon certain boards, the barrels emit sounds and puffs of steam. Part groan, part sigh, part hum, part haw, the audio element of this work awakens us to the sounds of the city all around us, while the visual aspect alerts us to the site's industrial history.

Untitled (light work) by Diana Thater (1068 West Cordova Street) A gorgeous nighttime installation, most striking when viewed from the North Shore or the Lions Gate Bridge, this LED–generated shaft of coloured light soars upward along the entire height of the Shaw Tower, following the line of one of its exterior glass walls. Shifting from green to blue””from earth to sky””it seems to speak to human aspiration, to the need to communicate, and to the impulse to transcend our earthly bonds.

LightShed by Liz Magor (the foot of Broughton Street, on the seawall at Coal Harbour) This cast-aluminum sculpture simulates the shape, materials, and fixtures of the wooden freight sheds that once sat on wharves at Coal Harbour””yet the historical references are just a starting point. The whole structure is oddly skewed and tilted, suggesting a condition of flux and uncertainty. On clear days, sunlight reflects off the aluminum surface and dances across the rippling water of the harbour. At night and on overcast days, a ghostly, artificial light plays inside the shed and seeps out through the gaps. LightShed deals with precarious and shifting relationships between outside and inside, familiarity and strangeness, rationality and intuition.

Eagle and Frog by Bill Reid (between 930 and 980 Seymour Street) This short cedar totem pole, dated 1986, occupies a semiprivate site at the centre of a circular driveway. Set well back from the sidewalk and wrapped in protective glass, it's easy to overlook. It's also easy to walk past without connecting it to the new condominium towers and retail outlets that surround it. Without connecting it to Vancouver's Coast Salish heritage, either. Clearly, this dislocated piece of Haida culture has nothing to do with its site, either contemporary or historic, and that's a cardinal sin in today's public art. Still, beautifully carved and painted, the pole is a surprising treat to encounter in downtown Vancouver. Its elegance and unexpectedness are what vault it onto this best-of list.

A Tale of Two Children by Ken Lum (at the corner of Malkin Avenue and Thornton Street) This pair of photo-textual diptychs, mounted on the back wall of a building at the city's National Works Yard, looks initially like a lesson in parenting techniques. In one diptych, a child seems to be the object of verbal abuse; in the other, of praise. And yet there's a troubling subtext here””about immigrant communities, their values and expectations, and about integration and acculturation, too””that defies easy interpretation. Lum grew up in Strathcona, whose southern edge overlooks the works-yard site. As with Boyle, he entwines personal and community identity, although his work is more provocation than affirmation. It lodges in our memory.

Red Horizontal by Gisele Amantea (on the Seawall, north shore of False Creek at David Lam Park) Created with the cooperation of area residents, this work addresses ideas of personal space within an impersonal context. An extended horizontal band of red porcelain tiles is set into the back of a long, curving concrete bench. Most of the tiles are imprinted with half-tone photographs of interiors of the surrounding residences, and reveal what high-rise living usually seals away from street-level: the ways in which unknown others live. Furniture, books, art, pets, carpets, sports equipment, electronics””all reveal aspects of their occupants' sense of home, while riffing on the shifting interface between the public and private realms.

Green by Mowry Baden (in the plaza at 858 Beatty Street) These brightly painted and polished biomorphic sculptures, and the furniture installed for viewing them, assert a funny and ambiguous presence within an overwhelming architectural environment. The latter includes adjacency to that monster stadium, BC Place Stadium, and also to the massive and inelegant Terry Fox Memorial. Baden finds a way to block out the sports arena and to honour Fox without compromising his art or its site.

GRANtable by Bill Pechet and Stephanie Robb (Beach Avenue, between Hornby and Howe streets) This impressive work, set in an often-overlooked little park, comprises an enormous granite-and-concrete “dining” table with chairs that are both geometric and anthropomorphic. Created in 1998 by the design team that is representing Canada at the next Venice Biennale of Architecture, this usable sculpture could be the scene of an Alice in Wonderland tea party. The disjunction of scale is wonderfully hallucinogenic. It also stimulates us to think about the overwhelming scale of the office and condominium towers all around the site””and the city.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Ed Pien (in the galleria at Library Square until November 30) Pien's three scroll-like paintings hang in the big, unglazed windows””the apertures””of the covered promenade at Library Square, high above the loungers, language tutors, and pizza eaters. The best view of the work is afforded from the east-facing windows of the library's fifth floor, and reveals teeming scenes of human/animal/ monster hybrid figures and fantastical outcroppings of rock. Drawing his inspiration from a volume of 16th-century Chinese woodcuts, and focusing on the enduring power of storytelling, Pien blends the beautiful and the innocent with the frightening and the grotesque. The paintings are the third work in the Aperture Project, an ongoing public-art undertaking by the VPL and the city's public-art program. Previously, Allyson Clay and Kyla Mallett each participated. So far, so groovy.