After 100 Conversations, What next?
City Conversation #100: Reflections on where we’re headed in our third year
January 31st 2022—A brief interruption. Today (January 31) my blog host, Substack, introduced “Pledges” without any clear advance notice to me or any other blog writers that I am aware of. While I appreciate the few City Conversation readers who then “pledged” modest sums, monetizing CCs was never my intention—I was surprised to see the pledges, took a while to determine what was going on without my permission. I have since turned the “Pledge” option off. Folks who pledged will NOT have any funds taken from them. But thanks for the gestures.
February 1st —An even 100 City Conversations seems a good point to think about what lies ahead.
I published the first City Conversation almost two years ago, but the first real City Conversation with my adult son only happened in June 2021. He’s in Whistler now, but our early conversations taught me the importance of speaking clearly about sometimes complex issues—if I stray from that approach, please, readers, be as blunt as he about what’s gobbledy gook—I am nothing if not teachable.
I have already summarized here what I see as 14 unresolved planning and urban design issues facing Vancouver in 2023 and beyond. I will continue to monitor those and additional emergent challenges, reporting out progress or regress as it happens.
Rather than taking the considerable time and effort to edit most of my previous City Conversations into book form, I have decided to move on—all of my 100 posts remain visible in what my blog host, Substack, calls my archives. They total well over 100,000 words, certainly book length. At my age, I’ve decided it’s better to look forward than to edit what’s already happened.
I see the 2023 City Conversations comprised of two parallel threads:
Issues: As with many of my Conversations, I will continue to write about urban design and planning issues of the day—spot rezonings, both those with illustrations and those without (which now comprise half of all spot rezoning proposals since the 2022 election); emergent area plans such as the Jericho Lands; etc.
Neighbourhoods: It became clear to me during the 2022 election campaign that Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods matter to most of its citizens, but not to city staff. Neither has been equipped (neighbours) or interested (city staff) to articulate their value. I hope to write about all 23 in a way that celebrates their unique, positive qualities while shedding a light on the challenges they face from local conditions such as spot rezonings, area plans and the Vancouver Plan. I will also consider neighbourhood impacts of the fed’s expanded immigration and provincial planning (or lack thereof) for schools, affordable housing, healthcare and planning and urban design support for those with mental health and drug addictions.
Issues happen when they happen—during one exhausting week last year I wrote four posts. So they will be peppered throughout.
Neighbourhoods are susceptible to more rational analysis even as they are bombarded by city staff’s aggressive menu of spot and area rezonings. City staff continue to “hide in plain sight” information about what they are planning and facilitating throughout the city. I recently opened up my Homes for Whom database of spot rezonings, asking neighbours to alert me to new and progressing developments—formal information from city staff often lags the reality of site signs, “virtual open houses,” referrals to Council, etc. I am pleased that many citizens have started to feed me the project information they find as they walk about their neighbourhoods and come across new project signs, new demolitions, new construction sites, etc. In return I add them to my neighbourhood-specific alert system so that they receive updates about each neighbourhood project’s arrival and progress. It’s early days but it’s working! You are welcome to join in.
The most accurate Homes for Whom data together with all-city data such as population growth informs but does not replace what’s missing from city staff analyses: an understanding and appreciation of the elements of each neighbourhood that make it successful and memorable.
As a 48-year resident of Vancouver I have a reasonable knowledge of our city’s history and the placemaking elements that created our 23 neighbourhoods. But my personal knowledge is limited—I need your help.
I will start my neighbourhood analyses with a couple that I know best. Please, if you live in them, correct my errors and fill in the gaps. Consider these first essays as templates for later Conversations about where you live and work. Don’t wait for me to write a thousand words about the neighbourhood you know and love, missing what you know to be its essence, its beauty, why you love(d) to call it home. Contact me with your thoughts and images as they occur to you, also links to sources you value. I will capture them and include them when writing about the neighbourhood you call home. In fact, I have already started that process with an email folder and a database location to store information about each neighbourhood.
We have somehow come to live in a city whose administration treats its citizens not as the holders of vital knowledge about our city. Rather, we are seen as a boundless source of funds to pay for programs and projects that have not solved any of our challenges—neither affordable housing nor homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction, sufficient and maintained schools, parks and community spaces, to name but a few. These have all worsened in the past decade.
I was privileged to participate in COVID-era Zoom meetings with folks from half of our neighbourhoods, a large sample scattered from east to west, north to south. In every case, when asked, “Can your neighbourhood accommodate several hundred new homes each year and how would you do that?” neighbours were thoughtful rather than defensive, accepting their need to accommodate their fair share of population growth—ready to roll up their sleeves and welcome new friends and neighbours.
It’s not revolutionary, it’s common purpose. We can do this!
Today’s questions: What’s one aspect of your neighbourhood that makes it (or made it, if it’s going or gone) a great place to call home?
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Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired for the moment, still teaching, writing and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 45+ year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and working on a book about how we can accommodate a growing population while saving the Vancouver we love.
Carol, Thanks for taking the lead with comments about Dunbar-exactly what I’m hoping to see.
On Dunbar between 43rd Avenue and Southwest Marine Drive, on both sides of the street, there are Rezoning Redevelopment signs on single family properties, and the signs depict multi-unit apartment blocks, exactly like the signs on 10th Avenue just West of Alma Street. Again, there is nothing in the area currently similar to these proposed apartment blocks, so their construction would radically decimate the existing family-oriented, single-family property community and set the precedent for more of the same. Where is the accountability to that community? What studies have been done to determine justification for the total destruction of existing neighbourhoods in favour of extreme densification at all costs? Let us not forget that it has been our City government, and its developer friends, who historically in recent decades solicited national and international immigration and investment in real estate that created the current housing crisis. It was not the fault of the majority of residents or their neighbourhoods. It is galling to the extreme that our government officials continue to make residents pay the price instead of taking responsibility for their past errors and making policy that would slow densification and plan carefully and aesthetically for the livability and satisfaction of all.