The Sun quotes some ‘authority’ who doesn’t think the suburbs are all that sub:
The lure of the backyard and the white picket fence still draws young families away from city centres and to the suburbs – in spite of pop culture representations of the “burbs” as a graveyard of conformist culture stocked with desperate housewives and blighted by urban sprawl.
Not only are our suburbs thriving, we love ’em.
People in the age group 25 to 44 are flocking from urban centres to the green grasses of the suburbs in Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
According to Statistics Canada data taken from the 2001-2006 census and released Tuesday, most likely to migrate among this age group are new parents, those in the $70,000 to $99,000 income bracket, and people with college or bachelor degrees.
“You come to the city to find DNA and go to the suburbs to procreate,” said Gordon Price, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University and former Vancouver city councillor. “It’s a pattern that is still intact.”
The role of housing prices is mentioned, but without sufficient emphasis.
Is Vancouver going to densify sufficiently to signficantly lower the price of apartments? Not without huge pressure from Victoria and Ottawa, neither of whom would be inclined to offend several hundred thousand property owners who would be uncontrollably furious at any public policy that reduced their asset values.
Wouldn’t rezoning of single residential zones increase property values as developers could then by smaller lots up from the owners and then assemble them to create larger lots that allow for mix use highrise/mid rise buildings that would both have more people using them and also presumably if this is occuring with in say in Vancouver I believe these new developments would require also to get perks from the developers such as improving community centres added park space etc. Any remaining single residential house ie historical relevent homes and there residents would benefit from new community centres addition of parks and with new apartments the additional amenities such as possibly daycare centres. The schools in Vancouver would also I assume benefit from increase enrollment which might take some heat off of say Surrey for a example. I personally am in favour of rezoning.
P.S. would rezoning single residential also take of pressure of redeveloping much needed industrial lands thus helping to keep jobs closer to the city. Just a few thoughts
I despise apartment living: Riding elevators, walking blank common floor corridors, smelling crappy food that i didn’t cook, standing on teeny balconies, sharing park space with strangers, waiting with bags of groceries for an elevator that never gets there, and dealing with transitatory neighbours. I dislike having to hump my garbage to the garbage chute room. I can’t stand having to buzz people up or, worse, having to register their car in visitor parking. Having to cram my ever increasing number of belongings into a space that can’t increase in size is silly. Strata committees? Daycare wait lists? Storage lockers? I mean really? Not anymore!
I’ll take my house in the burbs any day. And yes, I am between 25-44. And I use to live in the city. I wouldn’t trade my backyard,greenbelt access, or proximity to freshwater swimming for a 1000 trips to starbucks or a walk to the opera. I have a family to raise and I’m not going to do it in a closet stacked with a bunch of other closets. I want room. I want a front and back yard. I want a two car garage (One for the Westfalia and the other for the “good” car). I want a room big enough for my 52 inch tv. In fact, I’m considering a urinal in my Man room in order to get a laugh from my suburban buddies.
Its economics that drive my decisions, not urban planners trying to pigeon hole me into their idea of living. Sorry planner dudes, but your ideas are all hooey. Just hurry up and get the “NEVERGREEN” line built wouldcha? The traffic out here is horrendous.
Thanks to all those Vancouverites for paying for the building of all those bikeways for me to use on my commute to and from work. I really, really appreciate you paying for them while I enjoy my big back yard, my weekend road hockey in the cul-de-sac, and wandering the greenbelts through my suburb. Oh, and I love swimming in a freshwater lake 5 minutes from my home.
@Greg.
I sincerely hope you see the delicious irony in your rant ending with a lament about the horrendous traffic!
Greg, sounds like my life at the Woodward’s. But you forgot the noise and the vomit all around in the morning. Try walking your dog with that, fun.
I use to be a big fan / believer of the urban life, high density living, walk every where, the works. I just bought a Subaru Outback and I’ll be building a house on a 5 acres of land in the countryside (Sutton, QC).
Living in 650 sq ft does funny things to your brain.
Enjoy the Skiing the Eastern Townships!
There are various reasons why the suburbs will still continue to beat central cities when it comes to drawing people to them, for the foreseeable future at least.
1) Despite the fact that most suburbs aren’t culturally stimulating or aren’t “cool”, most people don’t care about cultural stimulation or being “cool” because most people prefer to do the same boring old “family oriented” things that they always do, regardless of whether or not they live in the city. Those “cool” things cater to the childless with money, an increasingly important demographic that is still outnumbered by families. For the sort of people who would move to the suburbs, work and children are too much, umm, work to be concerned with before thinking about cultural stimulation or being “cool” (i.e. most parent’s aren’t hipsters, though they might be yuppies). So why bother to live in the city to go out eating random ethnic or organic botique food, or have the ability to easily go and see a play, or to go and see live music if the city is more expensive?
2) Speaking of which, the city is more expensive! Why? Land value. So obviously if you have two children and can buy a 2 bedroom apartment in the city, or a 3 bedroom house with a yard in the burbs you’ll buy the house in the burbs.
But there’s also an unseemly side to the suburban lifestyle too. It’s ironic as suburbanites are the least “socialist” politically, yet they tend to be the most willing to “share the wealth” when it comes to leeching off of city amenities and not paying their fair share. Don’t believe me, see Greg’s post! Another example, this one escapes my reasoning, is that suburbanites are allowed to use city facilities at the same cost as urbanites. This can’t be helped with regards to some goods like public parks or bike paths. But why shouldn’t a resident of the burbs pay a lot more to use the central city’s, consistently superior, Library, swimming, ice rinks, community centres, etc? Afterall they’re not city taxpayers, or renters who get the taxes passed onto them.
Or take the way the Granville Strip is used. It’s kind of gross on a Friday or Saturday night, with all the drunken morons. Heck, I’m in my mid-20’s, like to party (so it’s not as if I haven’t been a drunken moron occasionally), and yet I’d rather not be around there at that time so I’m usually not. But geuss what? With few alternatives, it draws people from the entire region meaning we Vancouverites have to pay for the policing costs, the clean up and the noise. I think there should be “satellite” strips throughout the entire region to prevent this sort of concentration of drunken idiots. Afterall group behaviour is often problematic. Another, if not unequitable cost is an illogical cost that central cities still pay for. Parking infrastructure that caters to car-owners, suburban or otherwise, doesn’t seem to be in the central cities best interests. Land is expensive and parking spaces are a waste of money and space, best to spend that on other things and tax the hell out of what few spaces are left over. If people want to get to the central city, they can and do use transit.
3) Speaking of costs, for the last fifty years provincial, federal and regional governments have been giving too much money to suburbs at the expense of urban and rural regions. Take Motordom for instance. I’d prefer to call it Motordumb, because, it seems dumb to put all that money into car infrastructure that’s harmful to the environment, may not be used to capacity, and won’t be economically competitive with less oil-intensive transportation when Oil prices shoot up substantially. And trust me, as the developed world tries to copy our development lead, those Oil prices won’t be getting any cheaper. Think 1.5/L of gas is bad? Try 15$/L in today’s dollars when the Indians, Chinese and others start driving cars at even 1/3rd the rate we do! Frankly too many governments are too scared to make suburbanites pay for their wasteful lifestyle.
Take the Deepwater horizon spill as a classic example of Motordumb. Everyone is all up in arms about BP’s disastrous handling of it, suburbanites included; yet the majority of people still can’t seem to get it through their heads that it’s their gluttonous lifestyles that are the cause of the disaster! Had we not needed all of this oil, we wouldn’t need to drill for it in risky places. Suburbanites, of course, are the worst when it comes to this sort of thing with their car oriented, single-family-house-dominated, two-car-garage-built, strip-mall-designed-and-cul-de-sac designed neighbourhoods.
4) Speaking of urban design though, re-zoning is important. Local politicians, in established “streetcar suburbs” are too afraid to allow too much of it lest the “character” of certain neighbourhoods be tainted. It’s a ridiculous concern seeing as some of the cleanest and yet most vibrant neighbourhoods in Vancouver, and other cities, are dense without being Manhattenesque. Now obviously one doesn’t want the same level of density one would see in Manhattan on the south side of Vancouver, but for the life of me I don’t understand why new single-family housing is being allowed in “streetcar suburbs” or inner-ring suburbs.
All new housing in these areas should be townhouses, du/tri/quadplexes, low, i.e. two-four floor apartments, or at the very least single family houses with secondary suits and lane-way housing. As it is we get the worst of both worlds. Only limited neighbourhoods are being re-zoned, raising their property values to the point where new-time buyers are priced out of the market, while the remaining single-family only neighbourhoods in “streetcar suburbs” and inner ring suburbs are also benefiting from an overheated housing market due to low housing stock and high demand. Again, obviously people will move to places where they can afford better housing should transportation costs and job opportunities not disuade them. I’m a pseudo-environmentalist urban snob, but once I have a family I’ll try but I can’t gurantee that I won’t become a suburban slob. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)
5) Sprawl! Luckily for Metro Vancouver at least its natural geography and border with the US means that it can only sprawl so much. The ALR has been a mixed blessing when it comes to preventing sprawl, as obviously, it hasn’t done its job well enough. In other cities the challenge is even greater. What the heck is an Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Montreal or Quebec supposed to do about sprawl when they can sprawl to their hearts content? Some of these cities have regional ALR-like agencies, but again, they’re of limited effectiveness.
Sorry for the lack of spaces in my post btw.
Greg – thanks for a great speech! Personally, I think the BC and federal governments need to get some responsible architects and engineers working on developing designs for livable apartments that are also affordable, the primary feature of which would be more space all around.
David – it would be wasteful in the extreme to attempt to reply to your post on a point by point basis. Suffice it to say that your urbanist distaste for suburbs and the kind of people who live there is obvious. And it’s equally obvious that this is a political fashion statement to which you attach a lot of your personal sense of self-worth. It’s your mark of distinction.
I just want to take issue with your assertions to the effect that suburbs leech off the central city and that the senior governments, federal and provincial, have spent too much money on suburban infrastructure and not enough in the City proper.
From where I sit in Maple Ridge, I believe the exact opposite is true. Vancouver and Burnaby enjoy an I/C tax base that allows their residents to enjoy more local government services for the same amount of residential taxes paid. Yet those I/C facitilies need the suburban skilled labour force to be economically viable tax sources. When the workers who make that machinery hum return to their bedroom municipality, they have to pay higher residential taxes for sports, recreation and other facilities than they would in Vancouver or Burnaby.
Much infrastructure, including the LRT investments and the health and education establishments are, and have been for years, centred in Vancouver.
What is needed in my opinion is an amalgamation of Metro Vancouver into a single, fully integrated municipality in order to achieve politically rational planning decisions and to share the I/C tax base equitably.
Here Here Rod!
An Metro Vancouver without municipalities is long overdue. Its the only way that we will really get a “municipal” government that works.
“What is needed in my opinion is an amalgamation of Metro Vancouver into a single, fully integrated municipality in order to achieve politically rational planning decisions and to share the I/C tax base equitably.”
Absolutely. I was about to make with the same point. Vancouver takes everything north of the Fraser and west of the Pitt River (including Richmond) and Surrey takes Delta and the Valley.
I would agree with Rod – the offices and businesses located in the City of Vancouver that rely on employees from all areas of Metro Vancouver pay much more into the City’s tax base than the residents do – and proportionately, outlying communities with smaller business-based tax bases would place a higher proportion of operating costs on their residential taxpayers.
the reason business pay property taxes is because we allow Landlords to pass those taxes onto the businesses (on a proportionate basis) that occupy the buildings. The Landlords get away without having to actually pay taxes on their buildings. Thats hooey in my humble opinion and one of the biggest problems in commericial real estate. Of course, Bentall would have a different opinion.
Yes Rod, it would be pointless for you to respond fully because you’d have no effective counter to my arguments surrounding the uniquely wasteful way that suburbs absorb resources and resist sustainable planning properties. Just so it’s clear when I say suburbs, I mean the word in the cul-de-sac outer-ring sense where public transit and dense mixed use development is nearly impossible due to infrastructure and established land use patterns. It’s a well established fact that grids:xlink=”http://www.humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-grids.html” are superior to cul-de-sacs’:xlink=”http://www.humantransit.org/2010/05/culdesac-hell-and-the-radius-of-demand.html” in promoting public transit usage.
In any case, suburbs were designed to fuel consumptive culture in a way that never existed before World War Two, that way being the “throw away” culture. This in itself isn’t uniquely bad seeing as urbanites and rural dwellers engage in the throw away culture with their purchasing habits too and it did fuel about twenty to thirty years of prosperity. The thing that’s uniquely bad about suburbs is that they’re physically designed to facilitate the throw away culture through car oriented development. If one were to live in Langley, for instance, is it really realistic to live without a car? Suburban zoning is segregated making the construction of complete neighbourhoods where people can live, work and shop difficult. Their commercial zones are dominated by strip malls making the possibility of walkable shopping districts difficult and unpleasant. And they don’t have grid systems making the possibility of creating sensible and effective transit networks difficult (see my links). All of these factors lead to an ipso facto domination of the car aka Motordom (aka Motordumb?).
As for amalgamation, that’s just never going to happen because it’s not a good idea. There’s strong evidence that it doesn’t save money. The Toronto mega city budget has taken a beating in the merger. Newly annexed areas of Toronto want the same level of services as the old city, which is fair enough politically seeing as they’re all Torontonians now. Yet for practical reasons they don’t have the density and therefore tax base to justify the services. It’s much more cost effective to provide frequent diversified service to a dense neighbourhood than it is to sparse one. Municipal workers in the suburbs have had their pay and job descriptions harmonized with the old city. All of these have led to a budgetary nightmare. Montreal, another amalgamated “Mega City”, was such a mess that when the residents of the amalgamated municipalities were given a chance to escape they did!
Beside the practical arguments, it’s unlikely the municipal politicians in any given municipality would ever want to give up their independence. The mayor of X place would rather be mayor than councillor of some merged city and they’ll use their full powers of persuasion to convince their constituents that the same independence is in their best interests as well. Don’t get me wrong, regional planning should be better, but it won’t be improved with amalgamation.
As for the differential in property taxes between the central city and suburban areas, that’s due to suburbs not being dense enough to support the same level of services at the same level of taxes as more dense areas. If a city with an average population density of 7000 ppl/square KM has its residents pay 1$/person and a suburb with an average density of 3500 ppl/square KM wants a similar level of services they’ll simply have to pay 2$/person to achieve it. Of course this is extremely simplified as these municipalities have other sources of revenue, but the general point remains true. If sparsely populated suburbs don’t like it they ought to increase their density. This has absolutely nothing to do with where those who work chose to live. In fact, studies seem to indicate that there are more jobs per capita in suburbs than are in the traditionally larger employment centres of the region, i.e. Downtown Vancouver, Central Broadway, etc, meaning that there are more (per capita) reverse commuters (though of course there are still more numerically traditional commuters).
I’ve got two kids, and we live in an apartment in Mount Pleasant. We got annual passes to the VAG, Science World, and the Aquarium. We walk to downtown, Granville Island, Kits, Commerical Dr, Gastown. Once in a while, we’ll cycle to the Trout Lake farmers’ market. We eat out a fair bit, up and down Main St. Lots of coffee. We make to most of the festivals around the city. It’s a great lifestyle.
But, we find ourselves questioning our place. We’re growing out of our apartment. “Decent” 3 bdrm places are all over $800k. We have lots of friends who are moving out to the burbs. The prices are much better out there. It’s definitely tempting. We probably won’t like the “lifestyle” as much, but it will be like someone giving us $2000/month to grin and bear it. 🙂
In terms of the whole peak oil, $15/L gas thing. When (not if) that happens, personally, I think ALL of Vancouver will disappear, not just the suburbs. Using the same logic that the suburbs don’t make sense in a post-oil era, I think Vancouver won’t make sense either. We’re far from everything. Already, we pay more for goods than most places because everything (including people) has to be shipped/trucked/railed/flown into the city. We’re not the “head-office” for anything, so when the world starts physically consolidating, we’re just not going to be practical anymore. It’s like having a LEED building in Las Vegas — they just don’t get it, the entire city is unsustainable.
Besides, lifestyle has more of an impact on the environment than commuting. My guess is that a local-eating vegetarian living the suburbs probably has a much smaller footprint than a wine-and-cheese, iPad-owning, world-travelling omnivore living in the city.
David
“Yes Rod, it would be pointless for you to respond fully because you’d have no effective counter to my arguments surrounding the uniquely wasteful way that suburbs absorb resources and resist sustainable planning properties. …”
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Thanks for the chuckle, David, I appreciate your air of superiority. I really should stop there, but I do want to reply to one of your points, the grid versus cul-de-sac piece which has alternatively amused and annoyed me for some time.
“Just so it’s clear when I say suburbs, I mean the word in the cul-de-sac outer-ring sense where public transit and dense mixed use development is nearly impossible due to infrastructure and established land use patterns. It’s a well established fact that grids:xlink=”http://www.humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-grids.html” are superior to cul-de-sacs’:xlink=”http://www.humantransit.org/2010/05/culdesac-hell-and-the-radius-of-demand.html” in promoting public transit usage.”
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Please rest assured that I certainly didn’t bother with the links, I have heard this stuff before and it’s total baloney.
The argument that a strict rectangular grid is somehow superior is a constructed argument, put forward in terms of green urbanist jargon about walkability and cyclability and suburban obesity, whose real purpose is just to assist in marketing residences in the older, inner parts of the city in competition with the newer parts in the suburbs. It’s a realtor’s advertising speech dressed up as city planning analysis, and in economics terminology amounts to “product differentiation”, making the consumer feel that arbitrary style differences are actually indicators of real quality differences. An example from the car industry would be the tail fin wars of the late 1950s.
The suburban obesity bit is something of givaway, since everyone knows that “fat” is that last legal smear left, and using it is a clever marketing gadget.
Kirk
“Decent” 3 bdrm places are all over $800k.
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Kirk, this has been my point for a long time. People move to the suburbs because of the truly exhorbidant cost of inner city real estate, not because of the PMH1 project.
Someone has to ask, if city living is so environmentally conscientious, why is it so bloody expensive? Could it be that there are some issues around zoning that are causing excessive price premiums to be paid for in town locations? And if so, is it all an accident, or has someone been trying to achieve that very outcome?
You’re welcome Rod. But I must say I appreciate your posts in the local blogosphere as they’re always good for a laugh since your myopic views, paranoid defensiveness and know it all attitude are easier to spot than a pink elephant. Your response to mine was a good indication of that, seeing as you didn’t bother to read the links, which actually have an illustration as to why cul de sacs (suburban development) are inferior to grid patterns (urban/new urbanist development).
The posts weren’t written by me, they’re not some real estate marketer from the inner-city’s views, they’re written by a transportation planner with a Ph.D and far more expertise on the subject than you or I. Nor did I mention anything about suburbanites being fatter than average, even if they are (I haven’t seen data proving that, though I would assume it’s true if they drive more and exercise less than urban or rural dwellers) the point about urban/suburban form was made because public transportation is simply more efficient and effective when it can be placed where people don’t have artificial barriers in their way. Public transport also usually assumes that people will access it by a non-auto mode of transportation.
Cul de sacs usually have far more barriers to walkability/cycleability than Roads and your response dismissing “green urbanist” jargon is a de facto acknowledgement of this fact. Again, actually look at my links and you’ll see why. Cul de sacs can be improved for walkability/cycleability with walk ways linking previously unlinked cul de sacs, but that only does so much and doesn’t help transportation options that rely on roads (such as buses) efficiently get to their destinations. New linking roads usually can’t be easily built in existing neighbourhoods dominated by cul de sacs, since they usually have existing housing, commerce or some other use blocking them. Therefore bus networks can never be as efficient in the suburbs, assuming equal funding, as they would be in the urban core, despite everyones best wishes. This is why some newer suburbs are adopting “new urbanist” principles of using a grid pattern in their development.
@ Kirk
“Besides, lifestyle has more of an impact on the environment than commuting. My guess is that a local-eating vegetarian living the suburbs probably has a much smaller footprint than a wine-and-cheese, iPad-owning, world-travelling omnivore living in the city.”
I agree completely. Consumerism is a huge defining factor that’s rarely pointed out, that many think can be overcome with more hybrid cars, more public transit and luxury condos replacing stand alone luxury houses. But I’d also point out that an urban local-eating vegetarian living who doesn’t consume a lot of junk probably has a lower footprint than the same person living in the suburbs, assuming both have to commute on a regular basis to work, school or to see friends and family. These things are usually closer together in the city. Denser living also leads to things like district heating systems being viable in a way they never can be in suburbs, or more effective/efficient public transit.
“Already, we pay more for goods than most places because everything (including people) has to be shipped/trucked/railed/flown into the city. We’re not the “head-office” for anything, so when the world starts physically consolidating, we’re just not going to be practical anymore. It’s like having a LEED building in Las Vegas — they just don’t get it, the entire city is unsustainable.”
I agree up to a limited point. But Vancouver and Las Vegas aren’t particularly fair comparison models. Vancouver has the potential to be self-sustainable up to a point, if it’s metropolitan area doesn’t gobble up all of its farmland with sprawl. We are part of a “mega region” to a degree, the “Cascadia” mega region of Portland-Seattle-Vancouver that is somewhat of a local market. Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere in so far as it isn’t part of a region like we are. And while we’re not a “head office” we are the “head office” for our local resource producing region. We also have the water resources and hydroelectricity to sustain us that Las Vegas could only dream of. Besides, in the 21st century, regardless of oil telecommunications have been and will continue to be a great equalizer for non-goods producing industries. If anything you’d have to go to somewhere like Dubai, despite its greater regional market, to find a fair comparison for Las Vegas.
Unrelated, sorry if I made it sound like cultural life ends when you have children, btw. That’s not quite what I meant but it probably sounded that way now that I think of it.