April 26, 2016

David Baxter’s Notes from the Road

This just arrived from Urban Futures:

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Notes from the Road

Even in his post-Urban Futures retirement travels, David Baxter continues to keep up with Lower Mainland housing market news and data. From all the way over in Japan he’s just sent us links to several papers he’s recently penned, and we wanted to share them with you. They are (with some excerpts from me):

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Living Close: Concept & Consequence

Let’s pause here for a moment to consider what would happen if even a small portion of the net 197,000 people (100,000 workers and their families) who currently live in other municipalities and work in the City of Vancouver decided to move into the City to be closer to work. Density and prices would go up in the City as more households competed for homes located on the fixed supply of land in the City.

At the same time, in the other municipalities, prices would fall and vacancies would increase as people moved to the City of Vancouver. At some point, someone would look around and say, gee, the prices for nice, low density housing in other municipalities are so much lower than for any housing in the City of Vancouver, lets just live in a house outside of the City: the higher cost of the commute to the City is worth it given the cheaper housing outside of it. People would trade off higher transportation costs for cheaper housing – which is, of course, what has always happened, is happening now, and will happen in the future.

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Prices Crises: Costs & Benefits of Reducing Housing Prices

So what should governments do to improve affordability? Simply put, they should focus on the problem. This means focusing on those who have affordability problems, and working with them, rather than implementing market wide programmes that are indifferent to circumstance, resources, and consequence.

If they do so, governments are going to have to manage both their expectations and those of potential beneficiaries. Housing is a big-ticket item, for both households and governments. Governments, therefore, will need a set of rules and priorities to determine how to allocate their scarce resources: one standard rule that might be considered in this regard is the old international development rule – help those who need help most first. This, alas, may mean that the discussion may not about being able to own a home, but rather to be able to have a home.

And finally, given the burden that a arbitrary reduction in housing prices would bring to the two-thirds of households that already own, it would seem obvious that governments, if they are going to do anything general with respect to housing markets, should be working to ensure price stability in the market, not talking about bringing prices down. History shows that the only thing worse than a rising housing market is a falling one.

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Land Supply: Scarce means Dense & Expensive

… since 1974 policy has steadfastly confirmed that agricultural land is off limits for urban development: we have, collectively, made a choice to have higher densities and higher prices than we would otherwise have by restricting urban land supply to the 113,400 hectares already in urban use. In comparison with other regions, the natural constraints in this region combined with the preservation and conservation constraints we have chosen, means that we have about 22 percent of the land supply that Calgary and Edmonton have, and we already have twice their population5. It is no surprise that, all other things equal (such as incomes), our housing prices are much higher than theirs and our residential density is much greater.

GVRD '86

Livable Region 1976 1986: Proposals to Manage the Growth of Greater Vancouver p.7

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We have to face the facts:

– the population of this region will continue to grow;

– this region has a naturally limited supply of development land compared to other regions in Canada;

– we have made choices to limit this supply further through agricultural land preservation; and

– land prices and density in this region will be greater than they will in other regions in Canada, all other things equal.

We must figure out how to work with what we have within constraints both natural and chosen, rather than wasting our time demeaning ourselves looking for someone to blame.

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  1. I could have written this myself. Transportation across the ALR to housing at a reasonable cost. Massey Bridge, duh! No, no, no, they holler. We must stay in town and live in boxes in the sky, they say. Well boys and girls, it ain’t going to happen unless you’re very rich and want to live in the centre of the resort.

    Common sense tells us that there are two vital things that need to be done to reduce the cost of housing in Metro Vancouver. As said before. Wholesale rezoning of vast tracts of Vancouver, including Norquay, Strathcona, Collingwood, Marpole, all of Oakridge and Dunbar, to allow townhouses and mid-rises – lots of them.

    The other is allowing development on the berry fields of Richmond and Delta. Once that is in play then rail rapid transit at a reasonable distance will become viable. There’ll be fighting and screaming but, just as is happening in England (Google Green Belt building, if you are interested. Even the saintly progressive Guardian is running articles on it), it will eventually happen. Everyone knows it and that is why the ALR land is now skyrocketing in value. It’s rapidly becoming too expensive to grow blueberries and cranberries on.

    The ‘food security’ horde will yell but only for a couple of years before reality sinks in.

    1. So if we do those “two vital things” the cost of housing will come down? Not if there’s no limit to demand.

      1. Peter, is it more important for you to know those twice a year cranberries you ate are grown locally, or to know your children can afford a home here?

        1. Not much point affording a home without food to eat. See: climate change and the fact that so many fertile places are becoming too hot and dry to produce food. But nah, lets put up a condo instead, let people drive, and make everything even warmer.

    2. And we will eat what exactly? You want to relinquish all control over something as important as food? We have soooo much land if we used it wisely.

      1. Here you go Ron. Crops grown in the Richmond Agricultural Land Reserve.

        Which are essential for you? What do you eat, exactly?

        Richmond’s Top Crops by Land Used in Their Production, 2011

        Land Used in Crop Production – Top 10

        Cranberries – 858 hectares, 38.9% of total crops, 21.5% of the ALR.

        Blueberries – 25.2% of total crops

        Other Hay – 14.5% of total crops

        Potatoes – 4.0% of total crops, 2% of ALR.

        Cabbage – 2.9% of total crops, 1.6% of ALR.

        Strawberries – 2.6% of total crops

        Sweet Corn – 2.4% of total crops, 1.3% of ALR.

        Chinese Cabbage – 2.3% of total crops, 1.3% of ALR.

        Pumpkins – 1.1% of total crops, 0.6% of ALR.

        It’s romantic. Develop it and create some big parks and we’d all be better off.

        1. Any of those crops can be quickly changed in a crisis. We’re not going to recover farmland once it’s covered in your picket fenced houses.

        2. Giving up any food security at all in this day and age seems like a big bet to take on someone else’s as-yet-unborn belly. But sadly, this is an approach all-too-common with certain schools of thought that can’t look to the long-term. I suspect more than 1.1% of the population likes a couple of meals a day at a price they can afford. Increasingly, that will mean grown close to home. There are no indicators to suggest otherwise. Unless you have a palatable recipe for vinyl siding, I think there’s a great argument for keeping the ALR as is, rather than flogging it for short-term gain and only exacerbating the eventual problems unrestricted growth will bring.

    3. Eric, the ALR is not even close to its full agricultural potential. You eliminated greenhouses which grow year round and are increasing in number, and can be built on even marginal land. Transportation costs are variable and will always play a role in price along with drought-related climate extremes that affect production in California, Mexico and Florida.

      Is there something wring with strengthening two industries (agriculture + development) instead of replacing one with the other?

  2. I strongly suspect that you are right Peter. If prices were to come down then more people that want to come here but find it too expensive now, would. By arriving and buying they naturally raise the prices. This could go on for a long time.

    Yet; were Metro Vancouver to develop lands now in the ALR, the viability would be enhanced of a more extensive rapid-rail transit infrastructure, lessening the need for the expansion of highway infrastructure, which you and many others dislike.

    1. Let’s dwell on Eric’s Mind Palace exercise for a moment and roll out the subdivisions. Before you know it, the entire ALR will be smothered in rickety beige plaster and grey vinyl wedding cake houses, ticky tacky and mallitecture to the horizon, and absolutely choked 10-lane freeways filled with SOVs.

      Rapid rail? Not as long as the BC Libs are in power and funded by the road lobbyists.

      You will run out of land very quickly because the land use perpetrated upon it is nothing short of criminally inefficient. Then, guess what? A new generation of planners and urban designers will be calling for just what the current planners are calling for: the densification of criminally un-dense last-century subdivisions in Vancouver and elsewhere in the Metro, but this time primarily on a flood plain.

      That is not a viable vision.

      1. Planning of the building of homes in the ALR areas of Richmond could easily be combined with expansion of the Canada Line and include those that run it. (Remember too that the BC Liberals had to coerce Metro Vancouver to vote and vote again, in order to get approval of the Canada Line, which seems reliable and very well patronized.)

        Those homes should not all be townhouses, they could also be a variety of mid-rises (~six floors).

        The Richmond ALR land area is more than four times the size of the Vancouver downtown peninsula.

        Altogether an urban and transit planners’ dream.

      2. That is not good planning in the sound best practices sense.

        Underrating and undervaluing the ALR and the agricultural industry ignores the productivity of the rare soil resource classifications, some of the most productive on the planet. But it’s only dirt to you, it seems, in your illogical narrative that food should be from imported sources only, the farming ain’t worth a hill of snap peas.

        1. Look, I’m not unhappy. I like cruising through bucolic fragrant pastures. I am simply pointing out the exclusiveness of this resort, surrounded by fields growing berries for our yogurt toppings.

          If the overall desire is rapid transit and compact communities close to the city centre then boutique farms close to the city, raising fruits, become somewhat Norman Rockwellian and highways and bridges to residential lands beyond are a certainty.

        2. Most cities of similar size to Vancouver in Europe have done a much better job of containing sprawl and maintaining farmland nearby. It’s the only smart thing to do.

        3. The obvious way is to quit pandering to the NIMBYs and rezone massive swaths of single family detached homes for townhouses and denser uses.
          Go to a small English village and they have terraced townhouses – why would they have those when there’s so much land around?

        4. Who is Roy, Eric?

          Most likely their senior governments never gave townships and cities access to inappropriately large swaths of land in the first place. Ever notice it takes longer to drive from the “Welcome to Squamish” sign to Squamish than it does to drive through town? So now that tiny population is compelled to fill the space. No wonder it’s such a sprawling mess.

  3. That first section is just dumb! Living close to work is the same as working close to home. Our suburbs have failed to attract jobs except by allowing to the worst of the worst: business dumps (some people call them business parks). The whole region, including Vancouver, has failed to create truly mixed use neighbourhoods. We don’t need everyone moving to Vancouver in order for everyone to be close to work. We need job clusters throughout the region.

    At the modest densities of mid-sized European cities we have so much available land it is absurd to think that it is a constraint. We don’t need to plow under our farm land Eric! And we don’t all need to live in high-rises either. But single family suburban lots should never have been the norm. The white picket fence has been a nightmare that we all pay dearly for.

    There are many ways to offer affordable housing without it impacting current prices. But one horse that has unfortunately left the barn is that, perhaps, we should never have allowed private property in the first place. If forces conspired to raise land prices under long term lease arrangements we’d all benefit from the lift. But speculation wouldn’t be one of those forces. Everyone would be allowed to improve their land lease but land value increases would always go back to everyone.

    1. May u suggest a read of ” Why capitalism works in the west and has failed everywhere else” by Hernendez Desoto.

      It is essentially a book about the land title system, and it’s history.

      The gist is that only once there is clear ownership of land and property will someone lend you money at favorable interest rates. To grow an economy one needs money, lots of it. The reason why many states fail is that lending money is too risky.

      Land ownership, lending and economic progress are tightly linked.

      1. I would also add that the word “works” in the title is only true if you believe that the incredible delusion of endless exponential growth is possible. That delusion is what is causing many of our current problems.

        1. Yes being poor is so much better: less greenhouse gases emitted as walking is far more healthy than being able to afford a car or a diesel emitting bus, lower life expectancy, less travel, smaller houses.

          Let’s all move to Cuba, N-Korea, Burma, Iraq or Central-America. It is so much more desirable !

        2. The problem is not capitalism or growth as you lament. The core issue is excessive government and associated taxation and entitlement thinking by the populace that votes in overspending politicians!

          “When Mitt Romney was outed saying 47 per cent of Americans would never vote for him because they were dependent on the state, he should have seized the opportunity to start a real national conversation. Chickening out instead did him no political good. And sooner or later Americans will have to have that conversation, possibly while looking into a cracked mirror.

          Government is sucking the life out of the economy with excessive taxes to fuel spending that sucks the life out of society. It runs trillion-dollar deficits to fund trillion-dollar social programs. And with all this free money flying around, nobody has any.

          The welfare state model is busted. And so are Americans.”

          http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-robson-the-welfare-state-is-bust-and-so-are-americans

        3. Much simpler. The core issue is: finite planet – exponentially increasing demand on it. Your points are just about politics – a miniscule issue by comparison.

        4. Finite ?

          The planet is vast.

          We have the capacity to hold 20B or more people as we have increased food production per acre vastly, and have reduced water use and energy use per GDP $ vastly, although of course we can do better still.

          Money is certainly not finite nor is human’s inventiveness. Massive amounts of oil, or or yet unexplored mountains or areas remain.

          We can even make more water If we want from clouds, humidity or oceans. We can make more land as Peter the Great showed us in St. Petersburg swamps or the Dutch.

          The core issue is pollution of rivers, earth or air. Much work needed here but with excessive taxation and excessive focus on CO2 and alleged global warming we do not have the resources to do it properly. Taxation of dirty energy is great and clean energy is great. Lower my income or property taxes in lieu, please as my ability to pay taxes is definitely finite !!

        5. You’re all backwards and have a poor grasp of English. Vast /= Infinite.

          If money is infinite then the ability to pay taxes is also infinite. The planet and it’s resources are definitely not infinite. The earth may well be able to support 20 billion but not with a standard of living we’re accustomed to. We’ve already surpassed the earths limits and are paying for it through climate change and collapsing ecosystems.

          Human inventiveness may also be infinite but that doesn’t mean it can overcome physics.

          Fossil fuels are absolutely not infinite but try burning them all and they might as well be. Does time end when anything capable of caring about it ends? In all likelihood the only things that are truly infinite are illusions like money and delusions like infinite growth.

      2. Just to echo Ron’s comments — claiming we can easily support 20 billion people on the planet, while noting pollution is our biggest issue, and assigning money actual existence (it’s no more than a symbol used for trading convenience) is to double down on the problems that got us here; while ignoring the fact that this untrammeled growth approach is absolutely a sure-fire recipe for increased pollution.

        And for Lord’s sake, quit whining about taxes. Such a broken record.

    2. The suburban job centres and office floor areas are not very significant at all. There is potential for places like Surrey and Coquitlam centres, but they have a very long way to go to equal downtown and the Broadway-UBC corridor. This is as much a policy failure as much as a corporate preference.

  4. We must figure out how to work with what we have within constraints … rather that wasting our time demeaning ourselves looking for someone to blame.

    A most appropriate comment.

    BTW, if you remove large city parks you are down to a little more 800 km2 that defines the Metro’s Urban Containment Boundary.

  5. If we pave over the ALR, it will almost certainly be in a dispersed pattern. If your point is that we could build it super dense along a train line…..OK but those train lines could similarly be built along actual, existing potential density corridors. Why does it need to be a greenfield to accomplish this?

    I agree that “food security” has a couple of problems: (1) it implies some apocalyptic scenario in which the Lower Mainland is cut off from the rest of the world, but nevertheless able to accomplish the free circulation of produce within the metro area. In what scenario can we not get foodstuffs from Vancouver Island, Washington state, the Okanagan, Alberta, etc.? But still get the blueberries from Richmond to North Van? and (2) even assuming such a scenario, how is this really going to give us “food security”? We’re not talking about a lot of arable land here — it’s not going to feed 2mm people on cranberries for very long. A commenter above said we could switch quickly to other crops in a crisis. Ummm, see point (1) above — we’re already assuming quite the dystopian scenario, so I’m not sure why you’d be so confident that we could get our act together to sow soybeans and quinoa when we’re cut off from the rest of the world (but again, not within the region).

    Has anyone who touts “food security” ever seriously grappled with these contradictions? Like, in what scenario would we ever be cut off like that and, if we were, why are you so confident the ALR would be able to help?

    Anyway, I’m still in favour of the ALR because it has forced density on the Lower Mainland. The NDP got it right for the wrong reasons. It has gotten us ahead of where we would otherwise be, because ultimately geographic constraints would lead to the same result eventually anyway. We might as well try to organize the city now into a manageable pattern of density. This is especially true for other cities in B.C., like Victoria / Saanich, where no ALR would have led to a much greater degree of sprawl than currently exists. Vancouver was always going to end up hemmed in by geographic obstacles.

    1. To make these comments you would have to understand the conditions within which our imported food are grown, and the emerging scenarios that are starting to really challenge food production there and here, and not just from climate change.

      Do you know anything about soil conditions in the San Joaquin Valley, the source of most of our produce outside of summer and fall? Of water management in California and Mexico? Of the source water issues now arising for Prairie agriculture? Of building up BC’s agricultural industry to its full potential? Of the characteristics that make the soils of the Fraser delta the most productive in Canada even without chemicals?

      Further, there is nothing wrong with sound long range planning.

      1. If the ALR is so bountiful then why is it that only around 10% of this rich soil is used for food crops, the rest being fruits and hay?

      2. By the time the Metro surpasses Montreal as Canada’s second largest city, the figure will be a lot higher than 10%. By late century we could well be exporting produce to California once their soil blows away and Lake Mead dries up, and your figure will be meaningless.

        With the ALR, it’s always about tomorrow’s food on a future generation’s table.

        1. We have more than enough land for housing without touching the ALR. We can have our cake and eat it too – at least for the next hundred years of foreseeable growth and probably a lot longer.
          So why would we want to make ourselves completely reliant on imported food? There’s nothing to be gained and it would just encourage the kind of mind-numbing sprawl that is causing so many of our problems. It still wouldn’t solve affordability because sprawl is expensive. We’ve just hidden the costs.

        2. The San Joaquin Valley and the contiguous Sacramento Valley (the Central Valley) is around 14 million acres in total – [Wiki].

          Alberta alone has 52 million acres of land used for agriculture.

          If we are in a period of a warming climate then this Alberta land will easily satisfy the needs of many millions of hungry souls, both here in Canada and in the USA.

        3. Roy, the ALR land in south Vancouver, Richmond and Delta is what is creating development further out from the city centre, in places like Central and South Surrey, Langley and now beyond. What some call ‘sprawl’.

        4. Better that those suburbs beyond Richmond become centres in their own right. No need to commute to Vancouver. Green pockets of agriculture and nature reserves between cities is not sprawl.

        5. “Alberta alone has 52 million acres of land used for agriculture.”

          Not the full picture by any stretch of the imagination. Do share your recipes for hay souffle and sod pie.

          From official gov’t stats:

          “Total farm area in Alberta decreased 3.1% between 2006 and 2011 to 50.5 million acres. Alberta had 31.5% of the total farm area in Canada in 2011. Average area per farm was 1,168 acres in 2011, up from 1,055 acres five years earlier.

          Of the total farm area in Alberta in 2011, 47.7% was cropland, an increase from the 45.6% reported in 2006. Farmers reported 24.1 million acres of cropland in Alberta in 2011, up from 23.8 million acres in 2006. The province accounted for 27.6% of cropland reported in Canada. Cropland is the total area reported in field crops, hay, fruits, field vegetables, sod and nursery.”

          http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/prov/prov-48-eng.htm

        6. Chris, do you seriously want to argue over less than a couple of percentage points, depending on who you listen to? It’s still triple to what is in California – in Alberta alone!

        7. There’s no argument. You appear to be using a number that’s about a decade out of date and failing to note the crucial issue that what constitutes cropland producing human food is roughly half (or less) of your original figure. A link to the statistics were provided. End of story. You’re welcome.

        8. As you painstakingly point out Chris, whatever the number for Alberta is, there’s more than double and we mean way more, arable vegetable and crop land under cultivation in just Alberta alone than in the the undeniable bountiful and vast valley of California.

          Canada is indeed vast. You do know that British Columbia is larger than California, Oregon and Washington combined!

          Would you like to talk about Saskatchewan?

        9. Oh my gawd! Canadians worried about food security. The ludicrous indulgence is difficult to beat. It reminds me of the millionaire seeking the meaning of life and taking his boat and crew and water-ski-ing down the Ganges at Benares.

          There’s also a charity devoted to this. And they squeeze money from foundations. This really is the Decline and Fall. It’s exactly the same as lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills. How embarrassing.

        10. When you start with incorrect information and a flawed premise I suppose ideas that don’t correspond with your perspective probably do seem ludicrous. I would posit that’s why your remarks are spiralling down into gibberish at this point. They’ve come to reflect your position quite well.

        11. That Citizens for Food Sovereignty site is hilarious. It’s all just empty platitudes. I’m glad at least someone has done enough homework to establish that “food is sacred” and shouldn’t be a “commodity” (whatever that means).

          Their platform also “Recognizes the need to inhabit and to share territories.” I actually hadn’t realized that sharing territory was such a bedrock principle of “sovereignty”. Hard to disagree with them on the part about needing to “inhabit territories” though. It’s quite a perceptive observation, actually, in the context of the ALR.

        12. One of the kids in that Food Security scam actually published an article, with enormous help from our taxes, on the future prospects of alternative protein to Save-the-World (TM) and all-you-can-eat insect buffets. I’m salivating already!

        13. Yum, yum. Can hardly wait. Well, actually don’t really have to wait, there are plenty of insects and insect by-products already swarming and creeping into our foods already. Vij serves insect foods already. Entomology is the next big thing. I’m just waiting for that big city grant to get them breeding like flies.

          Next time you feel a tickle in your throat it just might be a live bug trying to get back out.

      3. So we’re going to grow almonds and avocados up here once the soil blows away in the San Joaquin? And, again, Canada is vast. There’s lots of arable land. What is the source of “insecurity” in sourcing our food from Alberta, e.g., rather than from within the metropolitan conurbation? Or from elsewhere in B.C. that are less populated? What is the scenario in which we all would starve but for the tended brambles of east Richmond?

        1. There isn’t nearly as much arable land as Canada’s size would suggest. There’s nothing wrong with importing food for the variety it brings. But becoming completely reliant is a needless risk. Besides, diversified economies are a good thing.

        2. The issue is that the majority of our fresh produce does not come from Canada’s vast arable land. It is imported via very long and tenuous supply chains and just-in-time delivery. That is not sustainable in the long run.

  6. It’s only a question of time before this outdated nostalgia for the ALR is revised. Everyone likes parkland and much of the ALR should be parks. Parkland with access for the citizens, not exclusive ersatz-farmland for the occasional berry fields.

    Satellite centres are a decent idea and they do, to a considerable extent, already exist around Vancouver. Yet, downtown Vancouver is still the most important centre, by far and therefore will always need rapid rail or efficient highway access from the outlying ares. Even just today, we see a road widening plan to relieve congestion from the north shore around the northern end of the Second Narrows Bridge.

    The UK is moving towards this critical understanding. Even the progressive Guardian has been running many articles in this vein.

    http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/mar/24/boris-johnson-build-green-belt-london-housing

    Once the yelling settles down progress will be made and more homes will be built, close to the city. This sis not a city of Vancouver issue, it’s a regional issue.

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