Patrick Condon makes the connection:
… closer to home and with none of the street demonstrations but with much of the same sense of profound shame, anger, and disappointment — we have the example of the Grandview-Woodlands area plan.
After months of collaborative engagement between stakeholders and planning staff, the city tabled a design centered around a number of tall glass towers; towers much higher than any building nearby and much higher than anything previously discussed.
Area stakeholders who had participated in good faith, who were assured again and again that in Vancouver planning was collaborative and democratic; were surprised, then ashamed of their gullibility, then outraged at the betrayal.
One expects this turn of events to have long lasting significance, and the signs are not good.
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My take: the City screwed up good with a last-minute introduction of towers around the Commercial-Broadway intersection. But that was a relatively minor part of the plan – just incredibly symbolic and, given the preceding process, a betrayal not just of the neighbourhood participants but likely of the staff in the field.
It also distracted from the reality of the plan, which basically keeps intact the existing urban fabric. And the controversy means another likely outcome will go unaddressed: accelerated gentrification. Without some substantial new accommodation provided to take the pressure off the existing housing stock, Grandview will revert to what it was originally intended to be: a middle- and upper-middle class community of single-family homes, with a modicum of increasingly expensive and smaller units integrated into the existing structures. Truly, an east-side Kitsilano.
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Gord – hasn’t this subject been beaten to death yet on this and Frances Bula’s blogs, among others?