Discard, Degrade and Destroy Jericho

City Conversation #123: A fictional account of how the Jericho community was destroyed

An early landowner concept for the Jericho Lands[1] — in the final submission in early 2024 the buildings in this NE corner were all 33-300% higher than what’s shown here.

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City Conversation #122[2] was a fictional account about how the Jericho Lands proposals might Embrace, Enhance and Evolve Vancouver. This fictional post, based on current events, is a plausible look at what might go wrong.

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In the end the land and the water prevailed, as they have always done—but not in the ways that had been predicted. People, politics and money were overwhelmed by nature and climate, as they have been throughout history. Nature reasserted herself in some ways predictable and others unexpected. In the end Jericho was destroyed for all but some of the flora and fauna. This is a fictional account of how that came about.

There were competing concepts for Jericho almost from the beginning. The eventual Jericho plan submitted for city approval looked like this, with a density 40% more than False Creek North[3] (FCN) and more towers than on the three times larger FCN site:

The final landowner proposal for Jericho, including building heights in storeys. Jericho Park is top centre.

The Jericho land use policy proposals that were accepted by the city in early 2024 focused on achieving a higher density than anywhere comparable in Vancouver. That was almost the entire focus—proponent and city documents all admitted the plans might change dramatically depending on what the land and water dictated—and they did.

But with the density of 3.5 (more than 13 million square feet or 1.27 million square meters) fixed and agreed in Jericho’s Official Development Plan (ODP), nothing else mattered to the city politicians, staff and the landowners, because:

• No further public hearings or community consultation was required[4];

• Density could be shuffled around the site depending on land and water issues that might only became evident when construction work started.

The landowners counted on benefiting from excessive federal immigration targets and provincial laws and regulations passed in 2023 that curtailed public engagement and neighbourhood planning. Vancouver planners helped by discarding decades of city planning history.

Discarding the community history

As was the case with the Broadway Plan and Vancouver Plan, the Jericho plans involved repealing all of the preceding decades worth of neighbourhood policies, plans and design guidelines, which had been based on extensive community consultation. More than 70 sets of community visions and design guidelines, including for West Point Grey, were consigned to the bonfires. When the Vancouver Plan officially became the city’s Official Community Plan (OCP) in 2024, it included Jericho as a “special area”, meaning that whatever plans were approved for Jericho were automatically part of the Vancouver Plan, with no further need for public consultation.

Degrading West Point Grey and Jericho Park

Community visions, design guidelines and preceding zoning in West Point Grey were all repealed but not replaced with anything except arbitrary spot high-rise developments in West Point Grey and the Jericho ODP. How difficult is it to oppose anything when the comparative options are all gone?

As for Jericho Park, just below the Jericho Lands, it became a twenty-first century terra nullius[5] — “nobody’s land.” Vancouver’s Park Board had been absorbed into and neutered by the Mayor’s office, eliminating any voice for conservation and stewardship. The landowner’s proposals ignored the impacts they would have on the Park, preferring to gather nature into narrow channels on their property while leaving the Park with a dramatically altered ecology and extensive shading during much of the year.

Landowner’s 2024 shadow diagram—the darker areas are shadows from the Jericho Land buildings[6] onto Jericho Park

Emboldened by the ease with which the Jericho ODP and its extensive density had been approved, the landowners quickly launched the next phase of their plans. Noting that there was insufficient local design and construction labour available to build the project, the landowners proposed two new measures:

• A version of the Certified Professional (CP) Program that had been created to manage the accelerated construction requirements for Expo 86—this new variant was called the Jericho CP Program (JCP);

• A special Temporary Foreign Construction Worker program to allow the landowner to import trades from abroad, as there was already a shortage of construction labour throughout Canada.

Except there were key differences that would prove problematic.

Whereas CPs were heretofore Architects or Engineers with special Canadian building code training, answerable to their professional associations and the general public, the Jericho CPs (JCPs) were largely without Canadian qualifications. Instead their credentials were vetted and they were trained by the landowners, just for planning and building Jericho’s structures. Over the objections of BC professionals, the JCP program was created by the landowners and sanctioned by the city and province, which had taken control of the architectural and engineering professions through the 2023 Professional Governance Act.[7]

Destroying Jericho for all

The landowner’s ultra dense plan was defeated not by legislation or regulation, rather by nature—specifically soil, water, gravity and fire:

• Soils were unable to support the proposed high-rises of up to 49 storeys. As the Jericho ODP fixed the overall project density rather than the form of development, the landowner decided to build many more somewhat shorter high-rises, covering most of the promised parks and open spaces;

• Water—there were many flowing streams and some major aquifers under pressure—think artesian wells becoming geysers when pierced by excavation. The salty water under the lands closest to the ocean ebbed and flowed with the tides. These had not been identified before construction started, but combined to dramatically raise construction costs in taller buildings and again redeploy the 60+ high-rise structures;

• Fire—One of several approaches supported by JCPs was the design and construction of single exit wood frame low and midrise buildings,[8] which were more cost effective, hence the chosen form for most of the mandated social and below market rental housing.

• Gravity—The Jericho Lands were proposed as a longterm buildout. The temporary foreign workforce allowed construction of buildings and the SkyTrain extension to proceed much more quickly. As with the FIFA 2022 World Cup construction in Qatar,[9] the temporary workforce of about 1,000 workers were housed in temporary structures on the Jericho Lands. In year five of the construction program, Vancouver suffered a long overdue earthquake—moderate[10] though it was[11], it set alight the temporary workforce housing as well as the first completed and occupied single exit wood-frame buildings. Three of the six high-rise buildings under construction collapsed as their soils liquefied. There was extensive loss of life in completed and occupied single exit housing, in temporary workforce housing and on collapsed construction sites, including the SkyTrain tunnel underway beneath the site.

And so it was that the Jericho Lands fell from grace. The site remains largely as it was when the earthquake struck. The landowners’s companies were bankrupted. The temporary workforce and the JCPs simply disappeared, although homelessness increased in the area. Makeshift memorials to the dead building occupants and temporary workers were erected by the grieving communities around, the same communities that had been ignored during the planning, design and construction. They were unable to gain access to the site to create more permanent remembrances.

Gradually the birds and wildlife began to return. And the land and the water were once again in harmony.

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The Jericho Lands Policy Statement is currently scheduled for presentation at Council’s Standing Committee for Policy and Strategic Priorities on Wednesday, January 24, 2024. You can sign up to speak at the meeting here.[12] Or, you can send your comments to Mayor and Council here.

The Jericho Lands Coalition[13] has asked the Jericho Lands policy statement to be held back from release until the proponent has completed a comprehensive hydrogeological study.

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This is my second fictional account of the good and in this case, the bad that could await Vancouver’s neighbourhoods. If you appreciated this post and wish to follow the series, consider becoming a free subscriber to City Conversations at https://brianpalmquist.substack.com/ . Also send me your thoughts about how Vancouver’s neighbourhoods might embrace, enhance and evolve their future, or discard, degrade and ultimately destroy it.

Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant (CP) and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, 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 co-author of a 1998 publication for CMHC called “Residential Guide to Earthquake Resistance[14],” author of the Amazon best seller and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and hoping to start in 2024 a book about how we can accommodate a growing population in the cities we love.



[1] Image courtesy of Stephen Bohus and City Conversation #38, May 2022 at https://brianpalmquist.substack.com/p/jericho-lands-ubcx-updatetime-is

[2] https://brianpalmquist.substack.com/p/embrace-enhance-and-evolve-jericho

[3] The False Creek North density as originally approved was FSR 2.5. Jericho was FSR 3.5.

[4] Under recently passed provincial legislation as interpreted by city politicians and staff, the ODP had the force of an Official Community Plan (OCP), meaning no more public consultation was required.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius

[6] Noting in fairness that December 21st is the shortest day of the year.

[7] https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/18047

[8] As I write this, there is increasing pressure to permit single exit wood-frame buildings to be constructed in BC in the name of affordability. The argument that this form is common elsewhere in the world fails to note that in those other places, most construction is concrete or masonry, inherently more fire resistant than wood.

[9] More than 6,500 foreign workers died during the construction of the various FIFA venues in Qatar. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022

[10] Vancouver’s last earthquake was August 1700. Geological studies tell us there is a major earthquake every 200-300 years—we are overdue. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/powerful-earthquakes-vancouver-bc-1944690

[11] Magnitude 7.2.

[12] https://vancouver.ca/your-government/request-to-speak-at-meeting-form-2.aspx

[13] https://jerichocoalition.org/

[14] https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/schl-cmhc/NH15-199-1998-eng.pdf