“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
This was something a planning professor of mine once told me which I never really thought much about … that is until I moved to Vancouver.
Hi, let me introduce myself formally, my name is Ian Robertson, and I occasionally show up in these woods with ‘Items from Ian’. I did my Architecture Undergraduate in ‘merica, worked for a while in the Netherlands, MArch in Australia, worked for a while in Vienna, and finished my degree right around the time that the world called an architectural timeout for a while, and I found myself in Vancouver.
What links my experience in these other places is that they all involved looking forward. The aforementioned quote from my planning professor, masterplanning cities and countries while in the Netherlands (itself a product of what must be the most comprehensive masterplan anywhere in the world), then Sydney Australia – where I was first exposed to the kind of 2030 vision which Vancouver also now espouses (except in Sydney’s case, it actually backed up by a Master Plan to give it institutional heft), and finally Vienna, which has a uniform building fabric and density which puts most cities to shame, and which turned the old Hapsburg Stables into a technology and culture and startup hub which exists only in Vancouver’s dreams.
This week I will be under the broad category of ‘Ideas from Elsewhere’ (‘Ian’s Items from Elsewhere’ if I wanted to keep the branding alive) … frankly I am always amazed that there is such a strong desire here to reinvent the wheel instead of looking for what works (and what doesn’t) elsewhere (transit referendums, city planning, existance of a master plan, regional transit, fare gates, bike path design, foreign investment, affordable housing, sea level rise planning, etc… are all examples of issues where in either trying to be unique, or in willfully ignoring precedent, Vancouver/BC is certainly ‘planning to fail’).
So, with that lengthy introduction, I give you my first post, written for a recent architecture criticism competition requiring one to talk about a Library of one’s choice. As you will see, the Library wasn’t really my topic of interest 🙂
Many thanks for Ken and Michael, and all the rest filling in … and most of all to Gordon Price, for his care in establishing this great platform from which to view the world deliberately and with consideration.
-Ian
(Longread) Nov 2015, Criticism of the Mount Pleasant Library (Longread)
It is not often that a library erupts from an intersection like the prow of an ocean liner cutting through the neighborhood, but when completed in 2010, the Mount Pleasant Library did just that. Immediately it was the tallest building in the neighborhood, and it represented the starting gun for a race to redevelop much of the surrounding neighborhood.
Height is an unusual quality for a Library, as the Dewey decimal system is an inherently horizontal concept. The library’s apparent mass is the result of the nine stories of affordable housing stacked on top, as well as child care, retail, and a community center beside1 — a configuration resulting from the unique desire to place all its civic infrastructure in one basket.
The building, designed by what is now Perkins+Will, is additionally unusual because it was developed by the City of Vancouver itself as a mixed-use structure, combining older, insufficient and inconvenient infrastructure into one centralized location, as well as provide additional affordable rental to address the city’s almost zero-percent rental vacancy, and rapidly increasing rents. The mixed-use aspect is itself not that unusual for a rapidly urbanizing city, what is unusual is that the developer was the City of Vancouver, and Vancouver does not often place itself in the development game — much of the Vancouver’s recent civic infrastructure has been created by leveraging the ‘Community Amenity Contributions’ (CACs) of developers.
Vancouver’s urban infrastructure, such as this library, is dictated by a unique set of influences which directly affect the manner in which Vancouver builds its libraries, and other public amenities.
Infrastructure, being a public amenity, is typically funded through a city’s tax revenues. In Vancouver, CACs are not a tax, but rather are “are in-kind or cash contributions provided by property developers.”2 These contributions take place to facilitate a rezoning application, the value of which is arrived at in closed negotiation and which is agreed to before the rezoning takes place. As each redevelopment application is negotiated independently, the resulting spot zoning creates a patchwork of zones-within-zones, which suggests that zones are more of a guideline to be negotiated, than a rule to be followed. In many cities, this kind of spot zoning is unusual, discouraged or illegal.3
The Mount Pleasant Library was not funded directly through CACs, but as these payments totaled about $250 million, out of a roughly $1.25 billion budget,<sup>4</sup> it is not much of a stretch of accounting to consider that this building was also financed in part by CAC funds. Why does this matter? It matters because a city which relies on development to fund civic amenity can easily become reliant on these funds, and the developers who provide those funds and with it bring a potential to influence city decisions.5
The first major influence, then, in the discussion of the Mount Pleasant Library, is whether or not Vancouver’s civic infrastructure follows the rule of money – is it a Plutocracy? Contributions made to universities carry with them a growing set of questions concerning purchased influence,6 so too must CACs.
Vancouver has an unusual ability to create spot zones because it is incorporated under the Vancouver Charter, not the British Columbia’s Municipalities Act, which means that the city is not required to create an overall Comprehensive Plan for development. A community plan was issued for the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, but it was passed by Council after the Library was already open.7
The second influence affecting the discussion of Vancouver – whether it is an Inconditopolis8 – a city run without a plan. If there is no openly approved plan, what is there to guide decisions? How is it possible to negotiate CACs when they exist apart from the typical planning process, and when there is no Comprehensive Plan to act as a long term guide? It has been said that these CACs are ‘Corrupting Vancouver’s Soul,’9 if that is the case, then so too are they corrupting the City’s civic infrastructure, and the creation of this library.
In Vancouver, where much of the new civic infrastructure is tied to new private development, there is an apparent incentive for developers to propose large projects, which have both the potential for more profit, and which might have more likely development approval because the larger project would yield the City the enticement of larger CACs, and therefore a means of financing otherwise-unfunded infrastructure. Opposing such new development projects, often in equal and opposite reaction to the scale of the development itself, are those who belong to the neighborhood. There is no cost premium to those in a neighborhood in keeping their neighborhood exactly the way it is, and whereas a proposal by the City to simply build a Library would likely be met with open arms, a neighborhood’s reaction is understandably different if that Library is instead a part, for example, of a ten story tall tower, when the existing context is otherwise no taller than two or three story retail.
This is the final influence affecting Vancouver and the Library – the neighborhood NIMBarchy [Rule by ‘Not In My Backyard’]. When Public Goods, such as a library, are tied to private gains in a transactional manner, the concept of an intrinsic ‘Public Good’ is called into question. If a neighborhood fights development, it implicitly fights the provision of civic infrastructure, and it becomes easier for the City to forgo building this infrastructure in the future, because it can point to the opposition faced by that infrastructure elsewhere in the City as ‘proof’ that such civic amenity is unwanted.
The risks in reliance on CAC and spot-zoning lie in the creation of deserts of civic investment – neighborhoods which are successful in keeping their character but receive little/no investment – and in the creation of neighborhoods which undergo extensive development. This unplanned and potentially ad-hoc feast-or-famine of civic development follows easily from a politically expedient decision to not raise taxes to fund the public realm and the absence of a Comprehensive Plan.
Andrew Carnegie once said that “a library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” The Library is one of the few truly democratic spaces where status and qualification is irrelevant. The act of combining the Library with housing, and retail development presents a risk, as the presence of the most private of space colours the activity which is considered acceptable – the space becomes implicitly privatized also, and its public function made precarious, and it loses its ability to be agnostic to individual interest and risks becoming another commodity to streamline, or make redundant.
This essay is not so much a specific criticism of the Mount Pleasant Library – although in truth it is a bit small, quite cramped, and overall is rather insufficient to serve the neighborhood whose development boom is quickly outpacing the Library’s planned capacity – as much as it is a criticism of the City that has largely stopped building civic infrastructure, does not have a cohesive plan to guide its development, and ties the creation of civic infrastructure to large developments, risking the character of the very neighborhoods which are to benefit from the city’s growth.
1 Kingsway was built under the pre-existing zoning that the building sits on (C-3A). It has about the same density (around three times the site area – or 3 FSR) as the 9 storey building built behind on Scotia Street, ‘Social’, completed a year later. ‘Stella’, a little further up Kingsway, has 13 storeys, is also 3 FSR, and was completed two years earlier. ‘Uno’ across the street was completed four years earlier in 2006, has 11 storeys, is 3 FSR and was also designed by Busby and Associates. Metrovista, next door to 1 Kingsway (up the hill) dates back to 1996, has 9 storeys, a similar density and was also built under the C-3A zoning.
As we understand it, the City of Vancouver took the opportunity to add rental housing on the site that they had previously acquired for the badly-needed new Community Centre and Library. They chose to build under prevailing zoning, and not to add any additional density through rezoning. We assume the return from the rents covers the funding of the additional cost of adding the rental housing. We think the Community Centre and Library were funded by the capital plan that has funded other new and replacement facilities for many years. (For example, a new Strathcona Library is currently under construction with non-market housing above it).
As far as we know, rezoning and CACs had absolutely nothing to do with this scheme. If we’re wrong about any of this you can check with Michael Mortensen – according to the Minutes posted on the City’s website he attended the Development Permit Board that approved the project.
Author
I’ve parsed it a bit obliquely, I realize, I think the oddest thing about the library is that I feel that the library suffers from all of the issues (which I’ve talked about) which would be present were it to be funded by CACs, and were it to be a rezoning, without those things actually being involved.
You are correct that it is entirely allowable density, but at the same time, it was certainly visually out of scale with its Main Street neighbors It fits well with the new scale of buildings in Olympic Village and adjacent, and were the entire area to be subject to a master plan, it and the other buildings on Kingsway would be an excellent example of an area plan increasing density along an arterial, just like Cambie now it. However, at the time there was no such holistic plan, and given the big fight about the height of the nearby RISE building at Main and Broadway, there were and are certainly local objections to tall buildings in the area. The haphazard zoning system in place seems to be created to specifically create as much of this strife as possible, as each building becomes its own special fight. There is precedent to the height on Kingsway, yes, but that precedent itself is pretty sparse (Metrovista had none, and was unguided by any master plan to suggest that it would become the new norm, C-3a has a max height of 9.7m, and density of 1.0, and as it had no precedent, it seems difficult to see how a relaxation requiring “relationship of the development with nearby residential areas” is possible without a plan for the area suggesting that the relaxed height will become the new neighborhood normal).
I’m entirely in favor of combined public infrastructure, the new Strathcona Library seems like a great project, but at the same time, there is the appearance that in general, public infrastructure is only created as a tag-along to private good, and not considered a good in and of itself.
I have been careful (I think) to parse that ‘Vancouver has these issues’, ‘The library building also has these issues’, but not specifically ‘The library has these issues because Vancouver has these issues’ … the library is, however, a good example of the how Vancouver’s issues might manifested in form. The argument in this case would be neater if it had been built with CACs, and had been a rezoning, but in many ways, this is a moot distinction.
Vancouver still has haphazard zoning. It still has no plan to guide it. It still has buildings which are subject to community opposition because of their height not fitting the neighborhood’s conception of itself (exacerbated by the previous two points). It still has public amenities which don’t really serve their neighborhoods (see: community center fights), it still has a lack of affordable housing, and it still has a tail wags the dog reliance on CAC funding, which is a kind of funding which is still illegal in many other places specifically because it tends to cause exactly the same questions that private funding to universities does. The library building has the appearance of suffering from all of these issues, and until writing the piece, assumed that the preceding points were the cause. The fact that the library has its own reasons for having essentially the same issues doesn’t disqualify it in my eyes from being used as an example of the city’s issues.
-Ian
Indeed the two reviews above have noted that the development was approved within the context of EXISTING C-3A Zoning. This was not a “spot rezoning” and it is unhelpful to characterize it as such.
UNDERSTANDING VANCOUVER’S DISCRETIONARY ZONING SYSTEM …
The C-3A zoning IS part of Vancouver’s “Discretionary Zoning” controls that have been in place since the 70s. Under C-3A zoning, the outright use for a basic “box” is 1.0 FSR (1 Floor Space Ratio = the area of the site) however, good design responding to the C-3A guidelines can earn up to 3 FSR of mixed uses. In addition, the zoning allows for density bonusing above 3.0 FAR for other social benefits including but not limited to heritage, social facilities and affordable Housing.
C-3A zoning info is found here:
* General: http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/c-3a.aspx
* Bylaw: http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/BYLAWS/zoning/c-3a.pdf
* Guidelines: http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/guidelines/C013.pdf
Readers should be aware of the significant public benefits generated by Vancouver’s discretionary planning system and CACs: for example, see http://tinyurl.com/gqg79wr . Many people are quite unaware of all of the various amenities in our city that we enjoy because of CACs generated by more intense forms of land use. Indeed, the downtown has doubled in population but has become in my estimation MORE livable (driving demand and, unfortunately, prices).
There are people on the academic and development side of the CAC debate who argue that the pendulum for negotiated CACs has swung too far and is distorting the land market either with too much risk and uncertainty or with excessive density. Some interesting articles here:
– SCARP report from Dr. Penny Gurstein http://tinyurl.com/jlpsma8)
– A nice summary from Karen Swatzky: http://karensawatzky.ca/2014/10/29/7868/
———
Now … CACs and Discretionary Zoning can occupy us all day … on to 1 Kingsway:
ON 1 KINGSWAY PLANNING PROCESS
For full disclosure, I was involved as a planner facilitating the Public Process and the City Review of the 1 Kingsway application under its Major Projects review process.
If I recall correctly, City’s design planner carefully considered the height datums from the historic Lee Building and from the Metro Vista building to the south and sought and achieved significant changes to the massing of the development through the design review process with Busby. This was an “arm’s length” review with Busby as the applicant and the City’s Real Estate Department as the Owner and the process ran as it would for a private developer. The decision was made on the application after a fulsome public process that included one-on-one meetings between the applicant (Busby Architects) and Metro Vista residents and other people with interests in the application.
PT Readers may be interested in a unique circumstance in this application which involved “ransom strips” of land for which no records of living owners could be found. The land was expropriated with funds set aside for compensation if ever the heirs to the property could be found. If any PT readers are related to one of Vancouver’s original settlers, “Three Greenhorns” you may be in luck ;-).
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Greenhorns).
It may do readers well to consider the SOURCE documents with the ORIGINAL design and development rationale, conveniently found here:
http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/dpboard/2004/reports/1kingsway.htm
ON CITY LED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT …..
The City of Vancouver DOES have a relatively long history of developing non-market housing on city-owned sites over the past decades through it’s Housing Department. The City also owns significant properties through its successful Property Endowment Fund created in 1975 (the fund affords the City an excellent credit rating and allows the City considerable power when securing financing).
While many Canadian cities were withdrawing from building social housing, Vancouver continued to create new units through the 80s and 90s through partnerships with the provincial governments of the day.
The general route was that the City provided the land and senior levels of government provided the capital to build and ongoing subsidies. For those interested, the City’s Housing Plan is found here:
http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Housing-and-Homeless-Strategy-2012-2021pdf.pdf
So many meaty issues in one post!
Cheers
Michael Mortensen, MA MCIP RPP
A Vancouver Developer and Urban Planner abroad.
Addendum on 1 Kingsway:
* HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS – OUR PREDECESSORS BUILT FOR THE FUTURE
I think we have forgotten how ambitious our early 1900s predecessors were, and I often ask “Are we building for the future? Are we making the best use of our land?”
The Lee Building, completed MORE THAN A CENTURY AGO in 1912 is seven storeys (78 feet) which was pretty impressive for it’s day. It is located at an important urban intersection serviced as early as 1889 by multiple electric mass-transit streetcar lines. What smart people linking urban intensity with pollution free mass transit more than 100 years ago!! Here’s a historical map:
https://sunnvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/1929-vancovuer-streetcar-pl.jpg
At Granville and 12th, also see the Douglas Lodge (Bank of Commerce) Building by WM Dodd – at a 7 strorey scale similar to the Lee Building – again on the BCER Granville Street Electric Streetcar line.
Metro Vista built at 9 storeys (92 ft. height to main parapet) is only a couple storeys higher than it’s predecessors built 85 years before.
Our wide arterial streets are served by pedestrian, cycle space and transit lines and they do have a historic fabric that provides ample context for robust development at the scale of 1 Kingsway and neighbouring properties.
Would it make sense for the City to underbuild the 1 Kingsway site? I don’t think it would be in the public interest … and certainly not from the perspective of the 99 new households who live there … 150 or so people (by my guess) who now have access to good quality rental housing steps from transit, local shops and amenities.
* WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE IS NO PLAN?
There WAS/IS/REMAINS a plan and C-3A zoning and guidelines in place that anticipate buildings generally at a scale and height similar to 1 Kingsway. C-3A zoning has been in place in it’s current format since the 70s.
* A REGIONAL PLAN RESPONSE IS IN PLACE
Notwithstanding Vancouver’s special powers under the Vancouver Charter (those that enable discretionary planning for example), Vancouver DOES have to provide to Metro Vancouver a “Regional Context Statement” articulating how it’s City Plans support the overall Regional Growth Management plan. The City of Vancouver and it’s forward thinking leaders were the very founding members of the Greater Vancouver Regional District now called “Metro”. You can find the City’s Regional Context Statement here:
http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/regional-context-statement.aspx
* DO WE NEED TO UPDATE OUR CITY PLANS?
I think we do – but perhaps in a timely strategic way, looking at interests and opportunities common to various neighbourhoods within the City:
* Vancouver’s Downtown: (5% of land; 10% of population) has a particular set of growth opportunities and interests;
* Inner City Streetcar Suburbs and Arterials (Main Street, Kits, Mount Pleasant etc) which occupy 10% of our land and house FIFTEEN PERCENT 15% of our population have their own opportunities and needs;
* Vancouver’s suburban neighbourhoods which occupy 85% of the City’s land base but house only 75% of the population present altogether different opportunities and interests.
Thanks for the posts, Michael – I live in 1 Kingsway and it’s great to hear the story of how it was built. It’s a fantastic place to live – steps from transit and the community centre, in the heart of Mount Pleasant. If it hadn’t been built, I and my neighbours would either be A) not able to live here, or B) bidding up the price of other units in Mount Pleasant so that other people could not live here.
Ian: you mentioned that the rental housing above 1 Kingsway is affordable housing. I’m not sure whether you meant to imply that it is below-market-rate, but I will note that the rental housing is market rate (at least mine and my immediate neighbours’ is).
I’m also less concerned than you are about “deserts of civic investment” in neighbourhoods that reject additional residents. The incentives there seem just right to me.
Author
Ripley: I read a couple of sources which said that there was at least *some* affordable aspect … those may be apocryphal however … my building in the Olympic Village also was to be ‘affordable’ but has ended up (like the rest of the village) with little which would be truly considered to be so.
Its actually more interesting if there is no ‘affordable’ aspect to the project, as it will tie in to something I will write more about later this week. Do you rent directly from the city? The stated goal of the project was to allow moderate incomes to stay in the city – has the rent truly stayed at *Market* rate or is in in fact now, to some degree, affordable by comparison?
Yes, I rent from the city (but they outsource management to FirstService, previously Colliers). It is market rate, but a bit cheaper than the surrounding buildings (likely due to slightly lower-quality finishings and appliances).
For the reasons described above, I would say it’s succeeded in helping individuals of moderate incomes stay in the city.
This is where the excellence of the City’s major project review process and its records of decisions is quite evident. The City always envisioned the 99 units as explicitly “market rental” housing.
Here is an extract from the Development Permit Board report:
“Secured, Long Term Rental Housing:
Where the provision of long term rental housing is considered in the earnings for height and density, staff would normally seek a covenant to secure the rental tenure of these units. However, in this case this requirement is not warranted because the City cannot enter into an enforceable agreement with itself. As an alternative, Staff seek to secure the rental tenure of the residential component over the long term through a letter of commitment from the owner and a condition of the Development Permit that the residential component will not be strata-titiled (Conditions 1.6 and B.2.7.).”
Thanks Ripley! That’s nice to hear! I think memory and story telling is vital part of City Building. As a developer and city planner, my cities are full of stories! Explanations for why things are organized the way they are!
I am reminded of a poem I heard while I was completing my MA at UBC. It’s written by Kim Stafford – I can only find part of it online but it’s worth the read:
”There Are No Names but Stories”
———————————————
When the anthropologist asked the Kwakiutl for a map of their
coast, they told him stories:
Here? Salmon gather.
Here? Sea otter camps.
Here seal sleep.
Here we say body covered with mouths.
How can a place have a name?
A man, a woman may have a name, but they die.
We area story until we die.
Then our names are very dangerous.
A place is a story happening many times.
Over there? We say blind woman steaming clover roots become ducks.
We will tell that story for you at place of meeting one another in winter.
But now is our time for travel.
We will name those stories as we pass them by:
[then what proceeds is a long list of place names including my favourite: “Insufficient canoe”]
Ian can you correct this:
* Inner City Streetcar Suburbs and Arterials (Main Street, Kits, Mount Pleasant etc) which occupy 10% of our land and house FIFTEEN PERCENT 15% of our population have their own opportunities and needs;
Author
edited
I remember that 1 Kingsway was originally proposed to be clad in a light yellow brick, but the City wanted red brick to match surrounding buildings.
I think it would have been a lot less “monumental” in appearance, look and feel, if it had been built in the light yellow brick.
I too recall some of that debate. Brick is nice at low scales when it is complemented by interesting building articulation and by nice details such as lintels, window headers, mansard roofs etc. When it is rendered large and plain on taller forms it can become oppressive and heavy. London where I am for the moment has many examples of both! Lovely buildings from the 1700s and 1800s contrast mightily with the monotony of prefab slab post-war tower blocks!
Author
That might be why I find it sticks out so much … it is amazing how a choice as simple as cladding colour can completely change the nature of a building’s ‘neighbourliness’ … because it does have a hulking presence on the street where other nearby buildings of similar heft don’t.
The library and its attendant community centre are entirely typical of Vancouver in that they were underbuilt. They were inadequate upon opening and have only become worse in light of the development frenzy unleashed by the city in the area.