From Ray Spaxman, Director of Planning in Vancouver (1973-89):
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Recently, someone at City Hall said to me when I was enquiring anxiously about a new development proposal Downtown, “Ray, it is no longer the olden days”.
It prompted me to share these thoughts with you.
In the “olden days”, say 20 years ago, if you were looking for a site in town to locate a new building, say an apartment, office tower, superstore or perhaps a hospital, you’d either look for a suitable site yourself or, if that seemed too complicated, you’d employ an expert in real estate development to help you.
They would scrutinize the City’s plans to see which part of town the use you were seeking was permitted. Then you’d look around those areas and find a site that seemed appropriate for the your building. You would likely find that City Hall, working with the community, had already considered the question and had produced plans describing where those areas were and also what size of building would be considered.
The City’s bylaws would tell you how high the building could be and how much floor space it could grow to. Accompanying those bylaws there might also be design guidelines to suggest some things you might want to take into account when you designed your building. Those guidelines were specifically designed through discussion with the various neighbourhoods to try to maximize good neighbourly design for new buildings.
The complex nature of the city with its varying typography, existing development patterns, road and transit systems as well as its wonderful setting and views, always presented opportunities for development that the bylaws had not considered. In such instances you could bring your ideas to the city and they, through a public process, would consider your ideas against their normal urban design criteria, and if they accepted your proposals they might rezone your site so you could proceed with the your building.
That was called rezoning. Astute developers would always be searching for sites where this could happen. If you were especially smart you could find a site, buy it at its existing value and then seek rezoning and reap the benefit of the added value.
Things could get a bit uneasy in the community at these times because the profits to be made this way could be substantial and, when profits are big, some people will strive to get a share in them where they can and, wherever they can influence the decision, they will. While systems were in place to ensure processes were transparent to the public, there was always a concern that the stress between being open and honest with the system and making a lot of money could lead to behind-the-scenes arrangements to affect rezoning considerations and influence rezoning outcomes.
By its very nature, urban development is very complex and fraught with risks that come whenever you make decisions about what might happen in the future. There is a long history of entrepreneurs going bankrupt when markets do not go as they had hoped.
Well, that is the story about the “olden days.” What about today? I am no longer directly involved in developing municipal rezoning philosophy but the way I see it is as follows.
A major change seemed to happen after the City decided it would be a good thing when a developer was able to achieve a major rise in value on a rezoning for the “public” to share in that increase. After all, it was the efforts of the whole community that was creating the attractiveness and value in the city. So, if you could arrange for the rezoning to occur with the profits being shared between the developer and the city, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
The way to do that would be to assess, before the rezoning took place, what the “uplift” value would be after rezoning and then work out an agreement with the developer for that uplift in value to be shared with the city. The agreement would be crafted before the formal public hearing and approval of the rezoning. Today, that can take the form of 75 percent of that “uplift” value going to the City.
I think I have mentioned in a previous communication to you that the City stated in its search for a new Director of Planning a few years ago, “You will also bring strong business acumen and change management capabilities to deliver on a mandate of transformation of the processes and technologies supporting the City’s primary revenue generating business.” (I have added the emphasis here.)
A number of issues start to emerge here. For example, the more rezonings you have, the more profit there is to be shared. The bigger the uplift, the bigger the profit. The higher the density, the higher the profit to be shared. Now, if the City becomes over-enthusiastic about their profit, they may begin to rebalance their evaluation systems to prioritize profit in their planning evaluations over other good planning matters; such things as good neighbourliness, view protection or enhancement, overshadowing, sharing daylight, privacy, protecting the public realm like streets and parks, good urban design, even transparency and rigorous rezoning evaluations. The City may also be tempted not to prescribe the real opportunities for growth and change for that would remove the speculative advantages that come with unforeseen rezonings.
Today, if you want to find where to locate your new building, where do you look? How do you find out what the community’s wishes are regarding development densities, building heights, building shapes and so on? Downtown is a puzzling place to find that out.
You will find that there is a system in place called Comprehensive Development zones. These are individual sites that have been upzoned to permit higher densities than the overall zoning sets as the maximum. The Downtown Plan is no longer a number of areas with coordinated zoning. It is becoming pockmarked with CDs showing where new developments have been approved at densities, heights and configurations that go beyond the zones shown in the Downtown Plan.
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Downtown Zoning Map (CDs in purple)
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The Downtown had, and has, large zones designated for a variety of maximum densities; in the last 20 years or so this has been changing through individual CD rezonings. In areas once at a 6 FSR, maximum buildings in new comprehensive zones now reach over 23 FSR.
I know we have now to consider higher densities, higher and fatter buildings and perhaps becoming more like Manhattan, but I am concerned that we need to get there knowingly, openly and honestly.
I think the solution to this lies somewhere with more transparency, more exposure of the pros and cons of the system, more available real information and effective consultation.
My purpose is promote discussion about things that might concern us. Are you concerned about this?
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Ray Spaxman
So there’s an election coming up, inform yourselves and vote for change if you want it
Small but important spelling error. Shouldn’t “… city with its varying typography …” be “… city with its varying topography …”?
Ray Spaxman’s guidance and attentiveness informed major planning policy and decisions way beyond his time as Director of Planning, He has boldly outlined the erosion of a complex and thoughtful way of examining change contextually, and in concert with communities.
What’s wrong with the city taking 75% of the upzoning profit ?
…as well as 75% of the loss if a project fails to sell?
You can’t just take the upside – but them you get into issues of control – and look what happened at Olympic Village – where the City had a heavy hand in dictating expensive environmental upgrades too late in the design process.
Also look at the empty units at the Residences at Hotel Georgia – I wonder who’s carrying the loan for those unsold units?
You won’t think so looking at the past few years in Vancouver, but development can be risky.
If course I am concerned. The lets make a deal approach of recent years has led to great distortion in land values and, equally if not more importantly from an urban design point of view, significantly increased bulk and scale of new development (I.e., taller and fatter buildings, closer together). Even more problematic is the unpredictability of future urban form in a given situation. The latter is what concerns many
neighbourhoods and citizens the most, IMO. Surprises way out of keeping with community-supported plans, policies and guidelines has led to deeply distrusting relationships with community groups, leading to extremely cynical outlooks about how deals are made behind closed doors.
Totally agree on the increased bulk and scale of the buildings, this is the worst part. Maybe everyone involved should get a copy of A Pattern Language, that would be a good start.
Be careful about a pattern language. I am deeply familiar with this book and while it means well, it lacks scientific rigor in some cases. For example the pattern about four story limits cites as evidence a paper that claims that tall buildings make people crazy, but if you track down the actual paper you will find that it is only comparing four story and two story buildings. I remain fond of a pattern language but it’s crucially important to keep in mind that it is “A pattern language” and not “The pattern language.” It’s claims to representing universal principles are wildly overstated. Thought provoking and inspiring? Absolutely. But just don’t accept everything it says as valid or universal.
Came across this read the 3rd article down on Why Investors Love These Kerrisdale Buildings. The key word is larger-site assemblies. Loss of scale at every turn in this city.
http://www.bisnow.com/commercial-real-estate/vancouver/2700-what-lured-manulife-to-burnaby/
Make that “Of course …”
Gordon, I believe that Comprehensive Development Zoning IS really useful and always will be, but Ray and others are right in calling for a long overdue update to key official development plans for the city centre and for it’s suburban neighbourhoods. Perhaps a process that is more ambitious than CityPlan (which yielded plans that more defended neighbourhoods than accepted change).
In the 70s we had SouthEast False Creek; the 90s brought us the new Downtown Neighbourhoods; the ‘naughties’ brought us SEFC. What then are the NEXT big moves for the City? I don’t get a sense that we’ve collectively worked this out. Laneway homes – explored in the 70s and 80s before the current re-run – are cute, but they alone won’t address demand.
To Ray’s observations I would add that what made Vancouver really work in decades past was this: A) an informed and involved public; B) Politicians who provided leadership and set policy; and C) a professional bureaucracy (in the good sense of the word) that managed policy without political interference. The City Manager used to be the “Hadrian’s wall” between Politicians and Staff. It seems to me that this wall has fallen (and thus the exit of so many of Vancouver’s fine planners and engineers in recent years). The triangle must be repaired if Vancouver is to continue to evolve as the world’s most livable city.
“I know we have now to consider higher densities, higher and fatter buildings and perhaps becoming more like Manhattan, but I am concerned that we need to get there knowingly, openly and honestly.
I think the solution to this lies somewhere with more transparency, more exposure of the pros and cons of the system, more available real information and effective consultation.”
This is easy to say as a couple of throwaway lines at the end of a (very interesting!) post, but isn’t this the crux? The “Vancouver is full” crowd seems to come out in force at any mention of densification whether in neighbourhood plans or spot rezonings, regardless of the quality of a given plan.
Public consultation is good and necessary, of course. But how do you govern a city after running on a public consultation platform and the loudest voice in any consultation is invariably “NO!”. Is this not a path to becoming San Francisco?
This election should be about the voters deciding which party has the best densification plan, but I’ve heard very little of this from any side.
I agree.
If there was community consultation in the 1960s, there wouldn’t be a West End. It would be full of single family houses with basement suites and only now building laneway “density”.
Communities are bound to be resistant to change – it’s human nature.
One of the problems nowadays, is that the condominium structure of building ownership (rather than landlords of yesteryear) means that once a project is developed in the present day – it will remain in that form for the life of the building (i.e. 100 years) – unless the condo owners vote to sell and dissolve the strata.
So if something is conservatively “under-built” – it’ll be there for 100 years, forcing density farther away from the core.
For example, there are only a handful of 40+ storey towers in downtown Vancouver – Shangri-La, Trump, Hotel Georgia, One Wall, West One, Capitol, Patina with 2 of those over 50 storeys.
Oakridge now has 40+ storeys proposed.
In Burnaby, there are a number of 40+ and 50+ storey buildings proposed at SkyTrain Station hubs.
In 20 years, the area most capable of housing higher density – close to jobs and transit – and still housing the largest concentration of jobs (even high tech jobs are migrating downtown from the suburbs) will be considered “under-built”.
With a transit analogy – if the community had been listened too for the Canada Line, it either wouldn’t exist, or it would be a light rail line with streetcar platform in the middle of the street struggling to meet demand (even more than the built system is doing).
Downtown heights and widths were restricted because the people of Vancouver decided that they didn’t want a giant wall built between the north shore mountains and the bulk of the city south of False Creek. Permitting Manhattan or Hong Kong to happen would completely obliterate that view. Now maybe the people of Vancouver circa 2014 no longer care about being able to see past the downtown peninsula, but we won’t know that unless the city asks us.
Those big projects from the past happened within the old consultative, city and neighbourhood wide planning structure that Ray mentioned. If you don’t believe it find pictures of Vancouver circa 1960 and compare them to ones from 1999. A heck of a lot of new buildings went up in the latter half of the 20th century. They went up where the collective had decided it was OK to put them.
The process of deciding where things should go and at what scale BEFORE any actual proposal is presented by a developer is the way a lot of people believe things should be. Instead we now get proposals first, the city reviews them to see how much money they’ll bring in and then when they’re basically one rubber stamp away from proceeding does the city bother to ask anyone if they’re OK with the fact that they don’t fit any of the existing plans for the area. Of course people are going to scream and yell at that point.
True leadership would be regular area planning sessions to decide what changes will be allowed in the next planning period, say maybe 10 years. Then development would, for that period of time, be forced to fit into whatever framework had been established for new and renewed structures within that area. To counteract NIMBYism the city would likely establish growth targets so people would be forced to say where within the study area those new people should be housed and at what scale. The discussions would also cover location and scale for all the associated services that will be required to support a larger population. The alternatives would need to be clear. Accepting a tower might allow preservation of an old streetscape whereas a decision to support only low rise would result in wide scale destruction of existing structures. Knowing that people would likely be much more amenable to a tower.
The thing to keep in mind about the West End was that much of the land was owned by absentee landlords who included rich elite families living a few miles to the south. NIMBYish was not a factor because it wasn’t in their back yards.
I believe the real mistake was enacting zoning codes that rewarded the demolition of the existing fabric instead of using a strategy that would have preserved more of the houses. As it was, the transformation of the West End succeeded in boosting residential density to the point where it has been able to function as a walkable district. It is not at all clear that this could have happened without adding the occasional high rise. Perhaps fewer towers that went taller would have been better?
Well written, Michael Mortensen.
Ray, correct me if I am mistaken but you must be referring to the search for the General Manager of Planning and Development as I believe that the position of Director of Planning has been eliminated. In this context responsibilities of this position would certainly include “change management capabilities ……. supporting the City’s primary revenue generating business” which I understand to be property tax revenue. I would decipher these statements to mean cut the red tape and facilitate project approvals (which in turn produces property tax revenue).
You do identify a serious issue in my opinion of multiple conflicts and contradictions when the City tries to act both as land use regulator and property development beneficiary. The quality of the public realm and general livability are certainly at risk in such an environment.
One aspect which continues to puzzle me about Vancouver is why there hasn’t Been an effort to develop a coherent master plan for areas outside of the recent mega project zones? May parts of the urban fabric of the downtown are actually pretty dismal, with narrow sidewalks, townhouses that face the street but which are accessed from hidden below grade parking lots, an frequently looming towers that are becoming monotonous. The waterfront areas are terrific, but the rest of the city could be a great deal better and it causes me to wonder where were the planners when this was being decided?