The Vancouver Plan—Listening to Neighbours or Nobodies?

City Conversations No One Else is Having, #16

November 23, 2021—I made some notes at the Special Council Meeting with a panel of “national and international city builders”:

“People should be able to choose where in a neighbourhood they want to live”—Paty Rios, panelist

“The best ideas for a community come from the residents in that community”—Andre Brumfeld, panelist

“Low-rise and mid-rise homes make more sense than “sykscrappers”—3 to 4 storeys is ideal”—Paty Rios

“Vancouver has been excellent at not having just bedroom communities—US cities are gleeful at how lively we have been during the pandemic”—Solomon Wong, panelist

***

“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” My son was looking over my shoulder at the title of this Conversation.

“Well, I’m writing about the Special Council Meeting held today for the ostensible purpose to “enable a panel discussion and dialogue with national and international city-builders to discuss emerging directions for the Vancouver Plan.”

“I’ll bite,” he responded. “Isn’t discussion good at the emerging directions stage?”

“It would be if it were really discussion and dialogue, rather than a continuation of the flawed Vancouver Plan process.” He’s used to me making sometimes inflammatory comments, so waited patiently for me to continue.

“So let me start with the lineup of this panel of national and international city-builders: it was chaired by an architecture critic from Toronto who writes consistently from a build, build, build perspective. Of the three panelists, only one is from the Vancouver area, and they’re a transportation consultant.”

“So we’ve got one Vancouverite—where do the rest of the panel come from?”

“Well, we’ve got a social planner who’s done a few projects in Vancouver but has been in Montreal for quite a while. Then there’s an architect/planner from Chicago who’s apparently in the process of setting up a Vancouver office.”

He paused a moment before responding. “You regularly tell me about Vancouver’s crop of internationally renowned architects and planners—why aren’t any of them on this panel? Surely they would have more perspective on emerging directions?”

“Ya think!” I answered with emphasis. “Which is why I think the entire event is designed to mask the incredibly undemocratic process that’s been taking place for some time now.”

“Dad, that’s also sounding a bit harsh. How can you say the process has been undemocratic? Haven’t there been many surveys, workshops and meetings over the past couple of years?”

…Still Looking for Neighbourhood Association Engagement

“Well,” I answered, “I take issue with your use of the word “many”—and as for the surveys, workshops and meetings, I’m afraid they’re deeply flawed.” “How so?” he asked.

“Let’s start with “many” as a description of the public engagement. You only need to look at the recent round of so-called “community workshops” to get a sense of what’s really going on. Vancouver officially has 22 Neighbourhoods, in fact 50 if you use walkable city criteria, the overriding importance of which today’s panel emphasized. Yet city staff have bundled together public engagement into two workshop events only in each of six multi-neighbourhood areas:”

50 Becomes 22 Becomes a Convenient 6

“So there are actually fewer workshops than there are official neighbourhoods?” He asked hesitantly—sometime honest math is itself appalling.

“Yes—even city staff’s own graphics show how they’ve bundled together as many as five official neighbourhoods into each of their six areas of convenience.”

“What do you mean, areas of convenience?” he asked.

“I mean it’s convenient for city staff, not for anyone else. I participated in the last workshop in the west area—I was unable to attend the first, as it was “full.” But since there are no participation rules, we had folks from Marpole and the West End in the Zoom “breakout” room I participated in.”

“So are you biased against those folks?” he asked, pointedly.

“Not a bit,” I responded, “But how can we have a discussion about west when only two out of five participants are from there? I don’t know their neighbourhoods intimately, and they don’t know ours.”

“Speaking of neighbourhoods, where are they in this process? Shouldn’t they be involved?” I was pleased he was drilling down to the essence of the matter. I paused a moment, to gather my thoughts.

“Well, through three rounds of engagement workshops, only two of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhood associations have ever been contacted, even then only on the day of the final workshop, at which point the workshops were almost completely full.” I paused for effect. “And as I have described before, the workshop format muted most input, allowing city staff to decide which questions were addressed—they even got to rephrase the questions if they didn’t like how the participants couched them—actually, they did the same thing today to City Councillors!”

Changing the subject, my son asked, “So what did this expert panel actually say?”

“Their words were actually quite interesting,” I answered, “but not necessarily in the ways staff thought they would be.” He stared at me, knowing I would continue.

“Each panel member as well as the moderator started with a brief presentation about their perspective in relation to city staff’s “big ideas” about the Vancouver Plan. They were very revealing about what was said and unsaid, both.” He continued to be silent.

“The moderator used the lens of Toronto to describe how downtown population and home size have been shrinking, reinforcing with US city population patterns. My favourite graphic was a heat map of the entire Northeastern US showing (Surprise! Surprise!) that American suburbs use more energy due to larger homes and transportation requirements than do the adjacent city centres—this was intended to illustrate the climate logic of denser city development, something few folks disagree with.” He nodded at the sensibleness of this.

“We kept jumping from US city maps to a 45-year summary of population growth in the Lower Mainland, ending in 2016, which showed much growth in Vancouver’s downtown, a moderate amount in Kitsilano, Marpole and parts of the East side.”

“Where was he going with this?” my son asked.

“Well, much of the West side, pretty much everything west of South Granville, showed little population increase—the implication was that these areas are stagnant and not accommodating growth.”

“Well,” he answered, “isn’t that about right?”

“Yes and no,” I responded. “The graphs end in 2016 with the last census. The 2021 census is not published yet, so not shown. But consider that in the last five years, laneway houses have been permitted, in fact there is no more single-family zoning in the city.” He looked surprised so I explained.

“Various Canadian and American cities have been congratulating themselves on allowing in the last couple years what they call Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), usually one per lot—California and Oregon are particularly proud of this. Meanwhile Vancouver allows up to four homes on virtually every lot—a main home, which can be a duplex; a secondary suite under the main home; and a laneway home. The city is currently permitting about 400 laneway homes each year, plus 150 duplexes—I couldn’t find the data for secondary suites under the main (basement suites), but I’d bet there are hundreds of those as well.”

“Still,” he responded, “550 above grade plus an unknown number below is not many.”

“Until you set that against, for example, the proposed Streamlining Rental policy, which boasts it will create 470 rental homes per year, less than laneway homes + secondary suites, which must be rental. Not to mention all the hassles involved in trying to get permits for simple residential projects.”

“Back to the Special Panel. What did the three speakers have to offer, Dad?”

“As you would expect from a panel from away that had clearly not coordinated their remarks, there were some nuggets that were very relevant to Vancouver, together with a lot of irrelevant commentary.” He motioned me to continue.

“There seemed to be a desperate attempt to link Vancouver’s situation with that of the disadvantaged, often black populations (their descriptor) and large neighbourhoods in places like Chicago and Philadelphia, many of which are underserved by community facilities, open space and neighbourhood shops and services. Our Little Mountain fiasco (where the provincial government sold off land to private interests who then evicted the tenants from their social housing) was compared unfavourably to Toronto’s Regent Park, where private developers have gradually replaced social housing with new social housing and private development. Your Aunty Ginny has lived just a block from there for at least thirty years.”

“Seems like a fair parallel, Dad,” he suggested. I responded: “Until you understand that both were done with private development—in our case the province did the deal with no city-level involvement, whereas the process was pretty open in Toronto, which is as it should be. The Toronto deal was pretty good, the Vancouver one very bad, did not involve the neighbourhood or city politicians or staff—a confusing comparison at best.”

“So what was the outcome of this panel discussion?” he asked.

“I can only speak for myself,” I began. “Pretty much what you always do, Dad.” We both smiled.

“I heard from the experts selected by city staff that many cities struggle with growth, including Vancouver, but we must accommodate realistic numbers of a growing and shifting population. I heard that it is essential to resilient city growth that neighbourhoods be involved in their planning, and that low-rise, maybe even mid-rise homes are better than high-rise. I heard that those in a community know best how to plan it and should decide its character and where they want to live in it. I heard that Vancouver has been until now an acknowledged leader in so many ways—and I agree with all that.”  

“I hate to ask this question,” he hesitated, knowing I was not shy, “but when you use the term “Nobodies” in your Conversation title, are you referring to the expert panel or to participants in the various preceding workshops and surveys?”

I smiled sadly. “I’m actually referring to both. When you parachute in a panel of out-of-town experts to tell us locals what’s best for us, then the panel are nobodies because they lack local experience and understanding, can best make guesses about what we need. But when you disrespect Vancouverites, ignoring the concerns of many residents in most neighbourhoods in favour of the aspirations of a few, including the staff who pander to them and City Councillors who have their own agenda, then all citizens of Vancouver are Nobodies.”
            He was still leaning over me, watching my screen. He gave me a quiet but affectionate hug before deciding we had talked enough for now.

Brian Palmquist is a fully vaccinated Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He teaches and writes, is semi-retired, so not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 40+ 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.” He is also a member of team for a livable Vancouver, a new political party dedicated to restoring a livable Vancouver starting with the 2022 civic election.