Architecture
October 17, 2019

The Grand Bargain, Illustrated

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You won’t likely find “The Grand Bargain” in a planning text, even though it explains in a phrase the de facto understanding that has shaped many of the places where Canadians live.

The bargain looks like this:

This is North York* between the Sheppard and Finch subway stations – a one-block-deep corridor of high-density mixed-use development on either side of Yonge Street.

Go another block further and there is a cliff-face drop in scale, where single-family suburbia begins under a canopy of street trees.

Post-war Toronto and its suburban cities decided to accommodate density (those concrete towers especially) where there was primarily commercial and industrial zoning.  With the opening of the Yonge Street subway in 1954, the station areas made ideal locations, especially where there was already a streetcar village.

To deal with community blowback at the sudden change in scale and alienating architecture, especially if the bulldozing of existing residential neighbourhoods might be required, planners and councils struck a compact: we won’t touch a blade of grass in your single-family zones.  Your status will be maintained.

Hence the Grand Bargain: high-rise density, low-scale suburbia, little in between.  Massive change for one, almost none for the other, and spot rezonings thereafter.

On the other side of the country, something similar was going in Burnaby.  In the fifties, the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board produced a vision – ‘cities in a sea of green‘ – and provided the guidelines to go with it, notably where to consider apartment zoning.  David Pereira details the evolution of Burnaby’s commitment to the regional vision and its apartment zones, renamed town centres, in the 1960s.

That bargain when built out looks like this:

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Architecture
October 16, 2019

Daily Scot in Victoria – 3: Harris Green

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From Daily Scot:

Walking through Victoria’s Harris Green neighbourhood located just east of downtown, you witness first hand the city’s density boom as construction cranes and development-proposal boards proliferate. I noticed an intense cluster of projects around the Cook and Johnson Street corridors.

A new Bosa development on Pandora has condos built above an urban Save-On-Foods location, a new precedent for mix use in Victoria:

There is also preservation of heritage for two developments (Wellburns Market and The Wade)  which incorporate existing landmark structures with new apartment living.

 

Keep your eye on this area as Victoria pushes for more options to address the housing crisis.

 

 

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Un-named Skytrain Station Public Transit
October 6, 2019

Show Me The Way To Go Home

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What is this — a café? A library? A corner store?

Unless you regularly travel by transit to Langara College or the Alliance Française, you’re forgiven for not recognising this as the 49th and Langara Skytrain station. This photo was taken from the west side of Cambie Street looking east on 49th Avenue.

And unless you’re standing in front and looking directly at the entrance, there’s no way to identify this as an essential part of urban infrastructure.

Why is Translink so bad at signage? The last time we travelled by Skytrain from Waterfront Station to the airport, we wondered why, unlike every other subway system on the planet, Translink didn’t have big prominent station names on the walls of the stations. One station looks pretty much like another, and when you look out the window at a station platform upon arrival, there’s no obvious signage to tell you where you are.

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Architecture
October 4, 2019

Panel: What’s the Use of Heritage? – Oct 9

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Shaping Vancouver 2019: What’s the Use of Heritage?

Conversation #2: What do we do about neighbourhoods?

Some argue that “neighbourhood character” must be maintained to preserve the diversity of the city. Others note however that “neighbourhood character” frequently serves as an instrument of exclusion, making people feel unwelcome and marginalizing them.

Neighbourhoods that do not evolve risk stagnation, while neighbourhoods that change too rapidly erase the attributes that make them unique.

Are there then qualities of neighbourhoods that should be cultivated or protected? As Vancouver faces a housing crisis, how do we go about discussing neighbourhood change?

Four panelists share their insights about their local places:

Richard Evans – Chair of RePlan, a committee of the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association

Scot Hein – adjunct professor in the Master of Urban Design program at UBC, previously the senior urban designer with the City of Vancouver

Jada-Gabrielle Pape – facilitator and consultant with Courage Consulting

Jennifer Maiko Bradshaw – renter, pro-housing activist and director of Abundant Housing Vancouver

 

Wednesday, October 9

7-9 PM

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (SFU Woodwards) – 149 West Hastings Street

Free, donations appreciated.

Tickets here.

 

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Architecture
October 4, 2019

Portland Has a Choice: Garages or Low Prices?

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The latest from Michael Anderson at the Sightline Institute:

For three years, Portland’s proposal to re-legalize fourplexes citywide has been overshadowing another, related reform. …  This proposed mid-density reform, dubbed “Better Housing by Design,” includes various good ideas  … like regulating buildings by size rather than unit count; and giving nonprofit developers of below-market housing a leg up with size bonuses.

But one detail in this proposal is almost shocking in its clarity. It turns out that there is one simple factor that determines whether these lots are likely to eventually redevelop as:

  1. high-cost townhomes, or as
  2. mixed-income condo buildings for the middle and working class.

The difference between these options is whether they need to provide storage for cars—i.e. parking.

According to calculations from the city’s own contracted analysts, if off-street parking spaces are required in the city’s new “RM2” zone, then the most profitable thing for a landowner to build on one of these properties in inner Portland is 10 townhomes, each valued at $733,000, with an on-site garage.

But if off-street parking isn’t required, then the most profitable thing to build is a 32-unit mixed-income building, including 28 market-rate condos selling for an average of $280,000 and four below-market condos—potentially created in partnership with a community land trust like Portland’s Proud Ground—sold to households making no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income.

This is worth repeating: As long as parking isn’t necessary, the most profitable homes a developer can build on a lot like this in inner Portland would already be within the reach of most Portland households on day one.

But if we require parking on these lots, we block this scenario. If every unit has to come with an on-site garage, the most profitable thing to build becomes, instead, a much more expensive townhome.

When people say cities can choose either housing people or housing cars, this is what they’re talking about. 

I’ve never seen a more clear-cut example.

Lots more detail here.

 

 

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Climate Change
October 3, 2019

Is Andrew Scheer an Extinctionist?

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How to make an editorial comment in a front-page layout …

Not sure how deliberately The Globe juxtaposed an Andrew Scheer profile with a climate-strike march to make a statement about Scheer on the Environment – but it really doesn’t matter.  Scheer did that on his own.

In Vancouver, he took that day when a hundred thousand marched on climate to announce money for highway expansion.  (Because more lanes means less pollution because that always works.)

And that’s got to be deliberate.

Though the message may be oblique, it’s clear evidence that Scheer discounts climate change whether as a political issue or as reality.  He’s basically doing a Harper 2.0 – similar to Stephen Harper’s Arctic tours when the words ‘climate change’ never passed his lips.  Harper’s message to other decision-makers: don’t take climate change too seriously. I have no intention of doing anything drastic.  You don’t have to either.”

Scheer looks to continue that strategy.  Reality might make a difference in Scheer’s indifference, but not mass marches.

Is he, then, an extinctionist?* – the ultimate pragmatist.

I doubt he’s reached the point where extinction of some kind seems so inevitable that it shapes his policy.  But I think he believes he can afford to be indifferent now.

So Andrew Scheer is an extinctionist-in-making.  Perhaps already made.

 

*What’s an extinctionist?  Here’s my definition:

Leaders and decision-makers who accept extinction – minor or major, local and global – as an acceptable outcome of climate change; and justify it in order to maximize power and benefit.

It’s not that they are so sociopathic they don’t care or will even revel in the apocalyptic.  But they are resigned to the inevitability of the threat and believe we are powerless to do anything consequential about it .  They therefore have to accept when making decisions that will hasten extinction, particularly for immediate benefit, that that’s okay.  Not desired, not expected, but possible.  An acceptable outcome to consider.

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Business & Economy
September 30, 2019

Josh Kepkay’s Podcast: “What the Future Holds with Gordon Price”

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Josh Kepkay is a realtor, and now a podcaster – an opportunity, of course, to increase his profile while having conversations with “thought leaders, personalities and interesting people in the Vancouver Real Estate world with a story to share.”

As someone who always enjoys a little thought leading, I took him up on his invitation.  And here’s the result:

Click on the second podcast on the list: “What the future holds with Gordon Price”.

And yes, we go well outside the topic of the local real-estate market.  Of special interest to those interested in the strategies of city council in the ’80s and ’90s (as well as backstories on the West End) for lessons that might apply to the city’s future.

 

 

 

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Design & Development
September 27, 2019

‘Big Moves’ will Pre-empt City-wide Plan

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The Vancouver City-wide Plan, which with its $16 million budget to fund three years of conversations and consultations, starts its roll-out this fall.

It aims high: “… to create an integrated strategy that includes a vision for the future city.”  It’s ambitious, addressing every big issue and every good intention that councillors were able to pack in – equity, affordability, reconciliation, climate change.  It’s strategic, proposing to integrate existing plans for infrastructure and transportation, as well as coordinating with Metro, the Province, even UBC and the Parks Board.

 

But one thing it won’t do is inform you of what can ultimately be built on your block.

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Housing
September 26, 2019

Checking In on Rental Housing and Tenant Protection: City of Vancouver Housing Strategy Progress, VTU, and Making Your Voice Heard!

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In recent years efforts across the City of Vancouver are being made to not only create new rental housing stock, but also protect its existing stock and the tenancy rights of its residents. With rental housing making up an estimated 50% + of Vancouver households, this is critical.

Housing Vancouver Strategy (2018-2027)

Responding to Vancouver’s current housing affordability crisis is the most significant challenge facing the City today – with Vancouver residents facing among the highest housing prices and rents and lowest median incomes among Canada’s large cities. Housing Vancouver (2018-2027) is the City’s vision for ensuring that Vancouver can be a home for people of all incomes and backgrounds, by prioritizing affordable housing and making housing markets work for all people who live and work in the City.

The need for new rental stock, particularly that which is social, supportive, and affordable is critical for several reasons, including for example:

  • Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate continues to sit below 1 per cent resulting in renters having limited options when they are looking for rental housing and face substantial competition for a small number of available homes.
  • The number of people paying more than 30% of income (the CMHC measure for housing unaffordability) on housing has grown astronomically as cost of living has far outpaced the incomes of many Vancouver residents: over 46,000 renters in Vancouver across the income spectrum are paying over 30 per cent of their income on rent. Out of these households, 15,000 are paying over half their income on rent – 58 per cent of these are headed by individuals aged 20 to 45, 15 per cent are families with children, and a further 14 per cent are seniors over 65.8.
  • Much of the existing stock, particularly social and supportive housing such as the Single Resident Occupancy buildings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is old, unsafe, and virtually uninhabitable. This, combined with a growing homeless population makes the need for social and supportive housing that much more critical: The 2017 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count found 2,138 sheltered and unsheltered homeless individuals in Vancouver – a 19 per cent increase over the 2014 Metro Vancouver count, with seniors, youth under the age of 25, and Indigenous residents disproportionately represented in comparison to other populations. An additional 4,000 people are living in private Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SROs), many of them in inadequate conditions.
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Policy & Planning
September 26, 2019

The New Signifier of Our Urban Era

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Beginning in the 1970s and through the ’80s, in both the city and the region, the word used to describe the intent of our urban planning and policies – and the goal of our leaders – was the idea of the Livable city.

 

By the 1990s and into the early 21st century, the descriptive term used was “Sustainable” – otherwise known as “Greenest“:

 

As climate change became more of a priority – and the need for strategies to deal with unknown but potentially severe impacts – the word that showed up in reports and discussion in the last decade was “Resilient”

 

Livablity, Sustainablity, Resilency … and now the what may be the term most appropriate for the next decade and the one that will inform our planning strategies:

 

Urgency.

 

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