Price Tags regular Michael Alexander and I had a conversation about this Sun article by Jeff Lee: “Prominent architects slam Vancouver’s planning and development.”
Vancouver’s planning and architecture have suffered over the long term from a lack of foresight by City Hall and heavy-handed management, three of the city’s prominent architects said Friday.
From a singular focus on protecting view corridors and restricting height limits downtown to the departure of experienced staff unhappy with the consolidation of power in the city manager’s office, Vancouver’s architectural and planning direction has drifted off course, said James Cheng, Richard Henriquez and Joost Bakker at an Urban Development Institute luncheon. …
The trio also weighed in on the city’s long-term policy of protecting downtown view corridors from the incursion of tall buildings. Cheng said in theory it may have been a good idea, but needs to be reviewed.
Henriquez was more direct. Such policies have had a negative effect on livability downtown and have deprived the city of “billions” of dollars in development cost charges that could be used for social good, he said.
“When you are increasing density and you are not increasing the height, you are curtailing the possibility of open spaces. It compromises the livability of the downtown by not having open space and having buildings closer together without enough privacy,” he said. “There is tremendous value in the space up top. If you rezone something overheight, you can use the development cost charges for social housing or whatever. There are billions, billions of dollars at issue.”
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Says Michael:
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I’m not surprised to hear Richard Henriquez wanting to get rid of view corridors, as I’ve heard him make that argument before. I take your point that allowing it by law for a great architect’s towering masterpiece then allows greater height for the dross that others design. The alternative is the widely feared spot zoning. I also take your point that a view corridor from Queen Elizabeth Park may be unnecessarily restrictive.
But fundamentally, I think that Vancouver’s peninsula is defined by its relation to, and views of, mountains and water. The other day I was going south on Commercial Drive, and when I began my return trip north, I was so stunned by the view of the North Shore mountains that it felt like the first time I arrived here. Lose that, and Vancouver looks like every North American downtown. Evidence? Just look at the photo illustrating Jeff Lee’s story. Omaha? Kansas City?
But the part of this Vancouver Sun article that has me scratching my head is this:
The architects’ comments came on the same day the city finally made public a plan to divide in two the traditional role of planning director and manager of development services.
For all of its history Vancouver has relied upon the director of planning to also be responsible for managing development. But the decision to split the roles is an acknowledgment that they are now mutually exclusive and contain an inherent conflict, with daily development pressures impeding long-term city planning.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, but I was under the impression that the city has always separated those jobs, and only combined them when Brian Jackson was appointed. I thought Brent Toderian was Director of Planning, period. Wikipedia lists Larry Beasley as Co-Director of Planning (with Anne McAfee). Ray Spaxman’s website says he was Director of Planning and, among other things, Chair of the Development Permit Board. Nothing about being Director or Manager of Development Services.
I thought only Brian Jackson held both jobs. If that’s true, then the city is going back to its original system of separating the jobs.
Who’s right?
Seems to make sense to have planning under one person and development under another? They are two different things.
They are not different things, and thus unseemly. Development is the implementation of plans, the actual realization. It’s the 21st century; when you have an opportunity to combine theory and practice – especially in a union-dominated government setting – you do it. Look up ‘silo mentality.’
As for view corridors, I get why they are important, but then again I don’t get it. Corridors are corridors because you’re looking from a certain point at something. If the corridor is blocked, move over and there it is (simply, I’m sure you get the point…)
I’m not saying we should put giant towers everywhere, but it would sure take a lot of towers to ‘block the view’.
It’s much more reasonable to rezone big chunks of the single family into townhouse/rowhouse than towers, but for some reason that seems unthinkable to some, especially and ironically by those who complain that their view to the mountains would be blocked by big towers…
I believe it would be more affective to much higher density around mass transit and then the lowest possible density in areas with bad transit service.
Who has ever stood in the middle of Cambie Street and 11th Avenue (view 9.1 or 9.2) and contemplated the view to the North Shore Mountains? No one.
Certainly the view is not for drivers heading south and hopefully not for drivers heading north who should be watching out for texting pedestrians not the glimmer of mountain peaks in another municipality.
Many of the other view cones are equally nonsensical if not obscure and I would wager that the public does not have a clue as to the location of these views.
Street end views yes, but the other so called views – nonsense!
I have seriously considered setting up my camera and tripod in the median at 10th and Cambie. Does that count?
Are you kidding? The view from Cambie there is gorgeous. One of my favourites of Vancouver. Getting out of the Broadway Skytrain station after a flight into YVR and looking north: that’s when I feel I’m back in Vancouver.
I feel I’m back in Vancouver when I’m IN the mountains … if I wanted to simply look at them I can look at the photo I took last time I was in the mountains. Within reason, I couldn’t really be fussed about a curated view – there’s plenty of pretty places on earth who don’t have such protections, and they don’t suffer specifically for this … on the other hand, there’s London, which does have view protections, where you still get things like the Walkie Scorchie … it’s not the view protection that makes a good looking city, it’s the presence or absence of bad architecture.
Fair enough. For me, there’s more to Vancouver than the mountains, and from that spot on Cambie I can see a lot of the different aspects.
In this context, I just saw a presentation on the economics of biophilia in the workplace last week at a Buildex session by Jennifer Busch of Teknion. One area of research identified that the quality of a worker’s view was directly correlated to their productivity and absenteeism particularly when the view offers a strong connection to nature.
Check out: http://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/the-economics-of-biophilia/
Maybe there is an economic argument to be made for preserving strategic view corridors and maximizing the quality of views for buildings in the city.
Wouldn’t there be a stronger argument for increasing the light and fresh air available to individual units? There are plenty of places that have ‘right to light’ codified, and that could go hand in hand with a ‘right to green’ … I think if there was any serious desire to create a biophilic city, we’d need to start there, with the individual and general right to light, not the specific and unevenly applied curated right to view.
Michael Alexander:
Lose [North Shore mountain views from -X- street], and Vancouver looks like every North American downtown. Evidence? Just look at the photo illustrating Jeff Lee’s story. Omaha? Kansas City?
Well that’s the point, isn’t it? We are so obsessed with views that we are ignoring the city. Besides, very few views will be lost if our urban design was taken up a couple of notches. But then we will gain less mediocre streetscapes AND still have the views. I’d really like to have a sense of what Georgia Street would look and feel like to the people walking on it if it was to realize its designated role as Vancouver’s ‘Ceremonial Way,’ which really has little to do with views.
I liken the view corridor policies to taking the low-hanging fruit. It’s so much easier to enact these policies than it is to gently but firmly up-zone detached home lots, consider pedestrianizing certain streets permanently, and promote an elected regional government with greater control over transit.
You’re missing the point. In Vancouver’s case the city IS the view. It is what we market ourselves on, that rare combination of mountains, sea and shore. Taking urban design up a notch has nothing to with height, that’s a rather juvenile way of looking at urban design (mine is taller than yours!). As a pedestrian you really only register the first few floors, that is where any improvement in design is most needed (see the post on how Bjarke Ingels meets the ground).
Architects asking for more height is like socialites asking for more plastic surgery, a plea to help them stroke their ego. And the affordability argument often put forward to justify more height is laughable. To pretend these monster high-rise apartments are destined for anything other than second homes for the 1% ignores economics.
No. I made the point you claim I missed: The pedestrian and human-scale perspective (“… people walking on Georgia St …”). The micro is missing in the macro obsession about views.
Gordon, you are correct that prior to Brian Jackson’s stint, there was a Director of Development Services position responsible for managing the day-to-day processing of permits (while seeking greater efficiencies in these operations) and liaising with the Director of Planning and his staff (primarily Development Planners) when, under the Dir. of Planning’s exclusive purview, Vancouver’s unique Discretionary Zoning system’s qualitative design considerations on development applications came into play (which was frequent). The Dir. of Development Services’ oversight of permit processing did not include reviewing the content of these qualitative design considerations. Escalating complaints from the development community some years ago that the process had become too demanding and lengthy, what with additional energy and other requirements tagged on, led, at the time of Brian Jackson’s hiring in 2012, to amalgamation of these two positions into a single General Manager of Planning & Development in the belief that this move could address these complaints.
Experience over the last 4+ years has shown that this arrangement generated its own problems, w.r.t. the city’s long-term healthy growth, all of which were exacerbated by the top-down management style of the since fired City Manager. A head-long pursuit, driven through her office, of too many ill-advised ultra-high density spot rezonings that often over-rode concerns raised internally by Planning staff, has eviscerated long-held proven Vancouver principles of urban design (this was discussed in my Feb.12, 2016 Price Tags post on CAC’s). Not coincidently, it has been during this same period that Vancouver lost a disturbing number of its quality, experienced staff. As Architect Joost Bakker points out in The Vancouver Sun article, this contingent needs to be built back up, along with a recapturing of the principles of urban design that had served Vancouver so well over the previous two decades and remain in place within the City’s Discretionary Zoning. Under a new Director of Planning these principles can be once again applied inventively and collaboratively by a resuscitated professional staff that will be given back the latitude to do their job with the vision and creativity required in today’s challenging environment of mistrust and cynicism over needed densification. And led by a Director freed up from the heavy administrative duties of permit processing overview. Along with the appointment of a new City Manager skilled in the art of facilitation rather than micro-management. A new dawn!
As for View Corridors, while it is considered, in most circles, heresy to challenge the theory of preserving views to our spectacular mountains, I find the straight-jacket of the present 27 corridors, so adamantly enforced to the exclusion, it seems, of all else, excessive. This, from someone who was their strongest advocate for many years but in 2010 realized their grip was too tight and fought for increased building heights at particular locations (eg.at Bridgehead entries to Downtown) to free up opportunities for towers exhibiting exceptional design excellence as part of the City’s then Higher Buildings Policy review. I hope one of the new Director of Planning’s first tasks will be to relax the tyranny of the view corridors, particular from those view points visited by perhaps 9 people and 3 dogs per day, for the expressed purpose of opening up opportunities for brilliant architecture that marks on our present uninspired built skyline important, recognized public downtown locations. This can be accomplished without any sacrifice to the power and supremacy of the mountains.
A very illuminating commentary, Ralph. Thank you.
But the obsession with buildings and their interaction with view cones alone still results in an utter lack of concern for streets, open space and the human scale. In other words, holistic urban design is defeated by these singular preoccupations. It’s time to move on.
Michael: you are right.
Brent Toderian