VANCOUVER—City council voted to start a citywide planning process that would help guide development, but some advocates warn that council needs to guard against the process being dominated by wealthy residents who don’t want to see their single-family neighbourhoods change.

City staff will now report back in January.

Councillors and the mayor universally welcomed the idea of a citywide plan as a way to better consult with residents and pave the way for higher-density development that is accepted, not opposed, by neighbourhoods.

Vancouver hasn’t had a completed city plan since the 1920s. Stuart Smith, a member of the pro-density group Abundant Housing Vancouver, warned that that 100-year-old plan by planner Harland Bartholomew should not be adopted as a model.

He said city plans in the past have been used to “build invisible walls around most of the land to exclude poor people” by allowing only single-family homes to be built in some neighbourhoods.

Joey Doyle, a member of the Vancouver Tenants Union, asked council to include the principle of housing as a human right in their motion.

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To guard against some of those concerns, OneCity Councillor Christine Boyle tried to include a paragraph requiring “an outline of how the input of housing insecure populations will be sought and how housing for vulnerable populations and persons with disabilities — temporary modular housing, supportive housing, social housing and purpose-built rental — will be prioritized in every neighbourhood during the creation of a citywide plan.”

Council ended up rejecting that amendment.

“What we’re really trying to accomplish is a citywide plan that recognizes the nuance of neighbourhoods,” said NPA Councillor Colleen Hardwick, “and now we’re going into this exercise, telling people what they can and cannot do.”

Hardwick has drafted a controversial motion proposing to roll back a previous council decision to allow duplexes in all city neighbourhoods, including areas where land use is currently restricted to one single-family home per lot, in part because of fears of how the change could increase land values.

She’s also questioned whether the city’s population will grow enough in the next 10 years to justify building the 72,000 new housing units the city is currently planning.

The three Green and five NPA councillors voted for a less-specific amendment from Councillor Pete Fry to “co-develop with Vancouver residents and stakeholders a citywide plan that is informed by equity, spatial justice and the fundamental right to housing.”

Vancouver’s mayor, Kennedy Stewart, Green Councillor Adriane Carr and the NPA’s Hardwick said that language was a win for the new council, which is made up of four different parties and one independent. The new council has pledged to work together, in contrast to the previous council that was sharply divided between the centre-left Vision Vancouver and centre-right NPA.

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They said that no existing housing projects, including any new temporary modular housing for homeless people, would be put on hold while the plan is being formulated. Some temporary modular housing projects, a quick and inexpensive way to build new housing, have been controversial, with neighbours fearing the buildings will bring crime and discarded needles to their neighbourhoods.

But Tristan Markle, who worked on COPE Councillor Jean Swanson’s campaign, said he viewed the rejection of Doyle’s amendment as a signal to the NPA’s voting block, which is concentrated in the single-family home neighbourhoods.

“They didn’t want their supporters to think the NPA was voting for modular housing,” Markle said.

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