Michael Kluckner makes the case for this:
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Kerrisdale is a good example of an urban village: an east-west street (West 41 Avenue) intersected the interurban line at West Boulevard (red line above).
A century ago, there were shops, a ring of small houses, then larger, more expensive properties a few blocks farther out. In the 1940s and ’50s, the inner ring
became apartments, most low-rise, but some as high as 10 or 12 storeys. It worked well, evidenced by the number of aged people who have been able to live independently within their own community. …
Looking at the big picture, Vancouver and its neighbours need more villages like Kerrisdale to absorb new people and make the lower-density suburban areas more walkable with more housing options. Not Metrotowns or Surrey Centres, but something a bit leafy with a wider range of options, mixing fee-simple ownership with strata. …
Full article in The Sun here.
Michael makes a point that is almost never raised in discussions about growth and density in this city. We have a model from the 1950s, also used in the West End and South Granville, that has never been duplicated since – probably because the politics are simply too difficult.
To create an urban village like Kerrisdale requires the city to rezone an area at least three blocks deep on either side of an arterial, preferably one with a ‘streetcar village’ that grew up between the 1890s and 1920s.
Michael makes a point that is almost never raised in discussions about growth and density in this city. We have a model from the 1950s, also used in the West End and South Granville, that has never been duplicated since – probably because the politics are simply too difficult.
To create an urban village like Kerrisdale requires the city to rezone an area at least three blocks deep on either side of an arterial, preferably one with a ‘streetcar village’ that grew up between the 1890s and 1920s.
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All kinds of housing could be integrated: some of the existing housing stock, preferably with heritage merit; low-rise ‘walk-ups’, medium-rise apartments and condos up to about 12 storeys; and even row-housing and cottages. Such a mix provides varying levels of affordability, a far more interesting architectural mix, room for experimentation – and all within walking distance of shops and transit, with sufficient density to support the services and amenities.
But there would be a dramatic change of character within the zoning district for the village. The creation of a new urban form would have to happen within an existing district that would remain largely suburban: single homes separated by lawns and lanes. The interface in Kerrisdale looks like this:
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And there’s the problem. Where in the already-built City of Vancouver would you find such a place: an area at least six blocks wide where the majority of the existing homes would be demolished for a new urban form? What neighbourhood would go along with such a proposal?
When you look at all the concepts of the last few decades, from Patrick Condon’s corridors to the local-area plans currently underway, the higher densities are accommodated either along arterial streets or on brownfield sites, preferably parking lots. And even those, in the case of the Grandview plan where highrises were proposed for sites around the Commercial-Broadway station, were so roundly rejected that they were pulled from consideration.
The planners didn’t dare suggest that the leafy side streets be considered for any major change; they remained the white parts on the draft map:
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Even Michael concludes his article with this hands-off warning:
As for the old villages like The Drive and Kitsilano, they’re working just fine and don’t need to be “fixed up” with more density.
So are there any places within the City of Vancouver where the political capital invested to accommodate this scale of change would be worth the price?
Fraser Street & 49th Ave?
Broadway & Nanaimo?
What’s frustrating about a lot of the rhetoric around Grandview-Woodlands and other spots is that you end up with ‘but Parisian ‘Quartiers’ (what a pompous word) achieve more density at six storeys’ type comments, without any acknowledgement of the extent of that density or of the political cost of filling in those white spaces and replacing single detached homes with rowhousing or mid-rise. There are implications to choosing to freeze those (very beautiful) white spaces in amber and restrict change to the corridors…
It’s interesting that Kerrisdale is so rarely mentioned in all of this talk about intensifying beyond the low-hanging fruit. That interface (and really, a lot of West End development’s pretty lame bushes and ground-floor apartments pretending they’re on the 22nd floor) could certainly be improved…
The Alma to Macdonald stretch of Broadway is declining due to the existing housing stock getting both pricier and less populated. Last time I checked it was still part of Kits. I suppose there’s still some room to intensify Broadway itself, or that a line to UBC will step up the pressure but I wish we could have a reasonable discussion prior to either of those possible outcomes
http://members.shaw.ca/aguaflor/The.Urban.Village.html
NOT OAKRIDGE!
The interface also looks like this: https://www.google.com/maps?ll=49.236431,-123.032455&spn=0.235376,0.510864&cbp=12,13.39,,0,-0.78&layer=c&panoid=9OLR8ST7_BVA3g7NpH1VZA&cbll=49.236569,-123.162688&dg=opt&t=m&z=11
I often wonder why we insist on creating walled corridors along arterials.
What could be of interest WRT “the Kerrisdale model” of is that the mixed use 4-storey developments on W. 41st avenue (and other similar C-2 zoned strips) are typically denser at 2.5FSR than the 12-storey “towers in the park” located behind 41st Avenue. The latter max out at roughly 2FSR if my memory serves me right, due to the very low lot coverage of the towers and the 100% lot coverage of the mixed-use developments..
That density anomaly could be changed if there were to be lowrise components added to the towers, and perhaps a slight adjustment in height to, say, 15-16 storeys, to encourage ground-oriented family units amongst the “vertical suburbs” which may cater more to childless households.
Another historical note: in the late 1980’s when many of those towers were being built in place of affordable frame rental housing, Mayor Gordon Campbell’s council loosened restrictions on the C-2 zones to provide an attractive development alternative that didn’t involve demolition of existing housing stock. This was accompanied by a demolition moratorium in Kerrisdale while new policies were put in place, such as rate of change policies.
I think the innovative changes in C-2 zoning that we see along W. Broadway, West 4th, Dunbar and other similarly-zoned commercial strips in Vancovuer is one of the most remarkable but not widely-recognized aspects of Vancouverism, or more properly THe Vancouver Story.
The Cambie corridor planning process is ongoing. Phase 3 looks to be the one dealing with the wider corridor. http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/cambie-corridor-plan.aspx
A simple view might be that urban villages are the likely outcome of a lack of land use regulation (i.e. in the sense that this is what was happening before regulation was introduced). A more complex view would question the role of policies that might limit the potential for incrementalism in redevelopment and also increase the typical size of development sites (e.g. multi-level structured parking, rezoning and CACs, complicated procedures, other things that introduce uncertainty in timelines or other risk that might prevent small builders from participating).
New urban villages are most appropriate where busy and frequent transit lines intersect.
The busiest north-south transit lines are on Cambie, Main, Fraser, Commercial-Victoria, and Granville. The busiest east-west transit lines are on Broadway, 41st, and 49th. Or something like that.
Collingwood?
Remarkably, the HiRise development occured along the Skytrain line (Joyce station), but the heart of the neighborood is and has always been along Kingsway, which stretch, between Joyce and Tyne, offers a remarkable vitality:
Probably the best stretch of Kingsway, and certainly supported by the high density development nearby, which didn’t come with significant retail development:
It occurs only along Joyce but Safeway, the liquorstore and LondonDrug make for a commercial strong anchor on Kingsway
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Vancouver,+BC,+Canada&hl=en&ll=49.234581,-123.029451&spn=0.013086,0.03695&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.452734,86.572266&oq=vancouver&t=h&hnear=Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver,+British+Columbia,+Canada&z=15
The trend somewhat continue:
Not less remarkably, Bob Rennie managed to have the OneWall development (along Boundary, between Vanness and Kingsway) figuring as a park on the google map.
click on it, and you will eventually get a grasp to the overly massive development occuring there,:~1200 units, but no retail/commercial, where it was ~30 SFH lots…all that with no recorded neighborood opposition (it probably helps that half of the impacted neighbors are in Burnby, so who cares?)
An obvious prime spot for massive development on land assembly (some of the cheapest land in Van) is still on Boundary, south of Kingsway, leveraging the Central park views.
Safeway, the liquorstore, LondonDrug, former Ramada (now owned by CoV), the public library (at Kingsway and Rupert), the school (at Joyce)…a Joyce/41th tagged as a potential Eas/West backbone transit,all that offer potential to redefine the Kingsway streetscape in the Collingwood neighborood
and still the Kingsway orientation, and topography can make it a very sunny street, with amazing vista… if the streetwall high is not too high…but granted to be plunged in dark all day in other circumstance (you can experiment that at Knight, Nanaimo, … and compare it with the view at Rupert or Joyce).
It’s about time that someone used Kerrisdale as a positive example of densification.
It makes you wonder what the planners are thinking (i.e. that they have no sense of how to “sell” density to the populace.
Voony – it was part of the deal between the developer (now known as Concert) and Kingsway merchants to not put a whack of commercial at Collingwood Village. However, there certainly could have been more than the token amount there, in retrospect.
This is not to contradict Michael Kluckner, as much as to add to his analysis. Michael writes that Vancouver’s transit villages, such as Kerrisdale, worked well, evidenced by the number of aged people who have been able to live independently within their own community.
Elderly people stay put in Kerrisdale, and other places, because of the high amenity levels and accessiblity, but also because of Vancouver’s severe housing affordability issues. Often, one cannot find another place to move to, that is any better, that is as affordable.
BC’s “rent control” rules, whereby rent increases are severely limited, except when leases are turned over, cause people to stay put, and is definitely a factor here. People are loathe to move, because they will not find a better price anywhere else. Good for them, bad for new renters.
Michael mentions another old idea that’s all but disappeared — the bungalow court – a set of small attached dwellings on three or four standard lots forming a “U” around a common lawn. He cites one survivor, Tatlow Court on Bayswater near Point Grey Road.
There is another like it on the east side of Cambie between 41st and 45th Avenues.
I think there are some places for this. I think that the blocks around vine and 4th for example . The bigger question, however, is how to gradually increase housing options, affordability, zero GHG transit access for all, and resilient building stock. And make this a sustainable zero GHG city by 2060. When viewed this way there are obvious, and abundant, low hanging fruit along corridors.
And I have yet to see a place in this city that looks like a “wall of buildings” in the unattractive way suggested. There are so many parcels and history unfolds so slowly that such a fear is not high on my list. I agree that design controls for corridor buildings can and should be created.
Take a spin over to Marine Drive on the North Shore. There are some fine examples of horrendous architecture creating the sense of castle walls and ramparts overhanging desolate sidewalks.