VANCOUVER—In 1927, city planner Harland Bartholomew created a citywide plan for Vancouver that brought together three previously separate municipalities: South Vancouver, Point Grey and Vancouver.

“(His firm) was hired to take a look at the city, everything from the road network, park policy, some of the earliest urban design stuff,” said Vancouver historian John Atkin. “So they had proposals for housing and siting and setbacks and road width.

“But probably the most impactful thing was that they introduced zoning.”

Those land-use rules created today’s high-density West End neighbourhood, as well as strips of apartment block housing along transit lines in other neighbourhoods. They also created low-density areas where only single-family homes were permitted to be built.

Nearly 100 years later, in an era of scarce land, high property values and widespread anxiety about housing, Vancouver is about to embark on its first citywide plan since the Bartholomew plan was created.

Depending on who you ask, this is either “a dangerous fantasy” or an inspiring public conversation about how to create a 21st-century “city for all.”

Read more:

Council agrees to start a citywide plan to map out Vancouver’s housing vision

Real estate developers will have to change the way they do business, Vancouver’s new mayor warns

Subprime lending — and the risk that comes with it — is growing in Canada’s hottest real-estate markets

On Nov. 14, Vancouver’s new mayor and councillors unanimously voted to start work on a citywide plan that would determine who can build what and where. The plan would replace the city’s current collection of neighbourhood plans.

Gil Kelley, the city’s chief planner, says he believes such a system is “the missing piece” for Vancouver. He expects the public consultation process for a citywide plan to take 18 to 20 months, and the finished plan to be ready in three to four years.

It likely won’t just look at land-use planning, Kelley said, but community infrastructure needs like community centres, daycares and parks.

Not everyone agrees it’s the right path forward. In an April 13 debate hosted by Urbanarium, former city councillor Geoff Meggs called a citywide plan “a dangerous fantasy” that would “compromise the fight for social housing and rental housing.” Meggs was a member of Vision Vancouver, the party that held power on city council from 2008 to October 2018.

“During the period of a citywide planning process,” Meggs said, “we’ll hear the NIMBYs shouting loud and clear that none of that kind of stuff should be in their neighbourhood; it would be more suitable elsewhere.”

On Nov. 14, Vancouver’s new council also debated whether to include safeguards to ensure that housing for vulnerable people “will be prioritized in every neighbourhood” as the plan is created, but ultimately chose the less prescriptive language “informed by equity, spatial justice and the fundamental right to housing.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Meanwhile, residents like Alicia Barsallo, who is concerned about how denser housing is being added to her mostly single-family home neighbourhood, want assurances that the plan will be under “neighbourhood control.” Barsallo wants the city to eventually put the citywide plan to a vote.

“Neighbourhoods should decide how the plan is going to be implemented in their neighbourhood,” Barsallo said.

Kelley said the public consultation process needs to be designed to deeply involve residents, but also set out parameters that will make it clear all neighbourhoods are expected to accommodate population growth.

“The framing instructions for the community dialogue have to say, as you solve for your neighbourhood, how are you addressing the projected level of growth that we will allocate to the neighbourhood,” Kelley said. “And how are you providing options for multi-generational living, but also affordability.”

Vancouver’s former chief planner during a portion of the Vision Vancouver era, Brent Toderian, also welcomes a citywide plan. Plans to create one were adopted by Mayor Sam Sullivan’s council, but that process was delayed during the Vision Vancouver era – and the plan was never completed, Toderian said.

A current CityPlan started in 1995 sets out community visions and a framework for city planning decisions, but lacks the land-zoning teeth — “what could be built where” — that city plans normally have.

Toderian called the separate community plans that are now in place “a patchwork” that makes it hard for both residents and developers to know what can be built — “and that’s a recipe for frustration.”

Kelley has ideas about what that public engagement process will look like. It should include not just people who already live in a neighbourhood, but people who might live there in the future. That might even include people who don’t live in Vancouver right now.

“They tend to be younger, they tend to have a mix of incomes,” Kelley said.

To show people how their input will affect the Vancouver of the future, Kelley said city staff plan to use modelling tools that will allow the public or consultation participants to play around with the outcomes of different decisions.

“I think this is a great opportunity to open up that conversation about what does a 21st-century neighbourhood look like that is not dominated by towers, but has a different look and feel,” Kelley said.

Read more about: