Two items in the Twitter feed: the first from CBC Radio:
Vancouver needs more density says urban theorist Richard Florida
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“We’ve got to get over this nimby mentality, ‘Not in my backyard. We can’t build here.’ … We’ve got to engage in real city-building,” Florida told Rick Cluff on CBC Radio’s The Early Edition.
He says Vancouver needs more housing to stop the growing divide between those who have, and those who have not. …
Florida praises Vancouver’s vibrant creative class, which includes scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, and business professionals. These knowledge-based workers represent more than one-third of the city’s workforce.
“The bad news is…like most advanced countries, [Vancouver is] also becoming more divided,” he says.
Those with higher levels of education and better paying jobs are clustering in the city core. At the same time, blue collar workers are being priced out of the city’s key areas.
Service and resource industries employ roughly 45 per cent of Vancouver’s workforce, he says. Those are the people being squeezed out of the metro area, into the south and east of the Lower Mainland. …
“We need a massive investment in this country in transit to connect our outlying areas, to increase density out in the ‘burbs, and make sure people don’t have to drive cars to work.”
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The second is a practical example of how that density can be achieved when the consultation and planning processes work – from Peter McMartin in the Sun:
Kensington-Cedar Cottage: Where dense doesn’t mean stupid
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It happened through densification, and Kensington-Cedar Cottage was one of the few neighbourhoods in the city to embrace it.
It was one of two pilot neighbourhoods involved in CityPlan, the now defunct planning process initiated by the City of Vancouver exactly 20 years ago this month. …
But beginning in 1992, Kensington-Cedar Cottage went through a 10-year design process to accommodate densification on its own terms. During part of that process, Buckberrough acted as chair of the neighbourhood’s CityPlan committee.
(Dunbar went the other way, and fought densification fiercely, presaging what would be the pattern for most neighbourhoods today.)
“The neighbourhood was dead or dying,” Buckberrough said. “The local Safeway was closing. We needed a new library, and the shopping areas along Kingsway were tired-looking. So we had to kickstart the area. And we thought the best way to revitalize the neighbourhood was to get more people in it.”
Before CityPlan, it had been a neighbourhood of single-family residences, many of which had seen better days. But under CityPlan, roughly two blocks parallel on either side of Kingsway and Knight Street were rezoned RT10, allowing development of strata housing. Infrastructure improvements followed — new sidewalks and street lighting, tree plantings, landscaped medians, traffic circles, bikeways, redevelopment of parks.
The result: Developers began assembling lots, and well-designed townhomes and lane houses began appearing. Across the street from Buckberrough’s house — a tiny, 1,100-sq.-ft. cottage built in 1911 — there is now a handsome seven-unit strata built in the neo-Craftsman style. …
Buckberrough admits that affordability remains a problem. But it has, he said, offered buyers a variety of housing that is less expensive than if their only choice was a single-family residence. Densification didn’t solve the affordability problem for Kensington-Cedar Cottage — nothing can, except the market itself — but it did demonstrate how densification can remake a neighbourhood for the good, and how it can be achieved by a government that listens.
Gord – Too often the chapters of the Vancouver story are not very complete, especially outside the downtown peninsula, since nobody with thorough insider knowledge has yet attempted to write it. (Hint-hint, Ray S., Larry B., Ann Mc. and Brent T.)
So I’m going to attempt to give credit where it is due for the success of the Kingsway and Knight Centre Implementation Program, strictly from a (former) City Hall insider’s perspective. Trish French was the very effective manager of this program, overseeing the housing element work done very effectively by the talented Patricia St. Michel (Not so incidentally, Patricia is one of the very few remaining urban designers left in the COV, which has seen a fast exodus of key talent in recent years.)
Along with former Engineer Melina Scholefield, I co-led the staff team concerned with the public realm, streetscape and public art element. The key takeaway for the latter was joint leadership by Engineering and Urban Design.
Each of these two key elements involved committed and engaged community working groups you’ve noted in your piece, meeting bi-weekly and working within a consensus model. The implementation part of the program took about two years, not ten, BTW. (The Community Vision program was a few years earlier and there was a time gap in order to allow some of the same personnel to work on the Millennium Line.)
The housing element in particular is noteworthy in the current discussion, given the success of the close community collaboration, its willingness to densify gently and incrementally, all based on significant attention to the relevant and appropriate form and character of infill development and small-scale redevelopment, again undertaken primarily by Ms. St. Michel. This work ultimately resulted in the RT-10 and RT-11 zoning categories and their attendant design guidelines, which are worthy references for others to consider in similar lower density neighbourhoods.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to pass along a few inside tidbits and kudos.
Author
Frank
Thank you so much for taking the time to document this and give credit. I too wish there was more of this.
BTW, was the Knight and Kingsway complex part of the program, or a separate project?