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Reader's Soapbox: Vancouver’s future depends on balanced planning

Vancouverites are speaking out about current local area planning efforts. This makes sense.
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Photo Dan Toulgoet

Vancouverites are speaking out about current local area planning efforts. This makes sense. There are few Canadian cities where liveability at the street level is so broadly discussed, and where so many citizens have such passionate and generally informed opinions.

While everyone has their pet peeves, the fact remains that generations of City of Vancouver planning officials have done a remarkable job in facilitating the maturing of an urban area that is the envy of many others around the world. And given the constant criticism, I suspect our City planners have also developed some of the thickest skins of any in their profession.

Nonetheless, going forward, the local planning system does need a significant reboot to remain relevant.

LOCAL AREA PLANNING IN BRIEF

As part of my volunteer work in the community, I have had some recent involvement with several of the four current local area planning efforts, including the one for the Downtown Eastside. It has been an eye-opener for me. My professional career has included two decades of economic and business development ventures on four continents, and this fact guides the opinions I express here.

Despite the achievements of the past, I believe the approach to local area planning, as it is practised in Vancouver in 2014, reflects a model that is quite dated. As such, it does not serve the best interests of its citizens.

Community planning efforts in Vancouver consider many things, but actually deliver on a narrow although important set of issues. These typically relate to how we live in our respective Vancouver neighbourhoods, and this ultimately gets boiled down to housing policies concerning real estate and amenities development.

This is fine as far as it goes, but these matters no longer exist in a vacuum, if they ever did. The individual characters of particular neighbourhoods are a big part of what makes a city interesting, but we must also remember that each is simply one piece in a larger mosaic.

If our leaders are able to articulate a grand vision for the city as a whole — as they should — then all areas must play their part.  Attaining the two-headed Holy Grail of balanced economic and environmental sustainability — the obvious centrepiece of any overall urban plan in 2014 and beyond — requires nothing less. Sadly, Vancouver local area plans contribute very little to attaining such goals.

A key component of local area planning is public consultation, which too often leads to long and unrealistic wish-lists from neighbourhood representatives, or alternatively a “don’t you dare touch our wonderful community” attitude. Neither is very helpful in a dynamic, ever-growing but fiscally challenged city like Vancouver. But this is were the clashes with City hall often begin and invariably end. 

The City draws what it can from the public discourse and then formulates and implements a plan that, one would hope, reflects best development practices to the greatest extent that resources allow. I suspect this is what will be the outcome for the four local area planning processes that are now in play for the neighbourhoods of Marpole, Grandview-Woodland, the West End and the DTES. Increased density through high-rise buildings around SkyTrain stations is just one example of how this will play out.

IS THERE A BETTER WAY?

But if the final reports deal primarily with housing policies and real estate development at a detailed level, while leaving other key considerations as aspirational afterthoughts, then I believe they will not be practical over the long haul. And the commendable goals of the Greenest City initiative, let alone the stated policies of promoting affordability and diversity, will be undermined.

In short, how can the City of Vancouver plan its residential, commercial and industrial mix when it has neither reliable information nor pragmatic tools regarding the optimal approach to creating a local economy that attains all its social, cultural, environmental and economic goals? Specifically, if the City does not have a handle on how the type of citizens it says it cares about most will make a living and use their leisure time, is it possible to properly direct the real estate developers or allocate the City’s resources towards attaining the much discussed aim of “highest and best” use of land?

I contend that built-form land use of all kinds must follow from a carefully considered plan to attract highly productive, permanent job-creating industrial clusters to Vancouver, rather than being dictated by development interests focussed on selling off chunks of real estate, for largely unproductive uses, to the highest bidders from around the world.

A sceptical person could be forgiven for thinking that many of the stated goals of our local government are insincere, if not cynical, and that what is really intended for Vancouver is simply more of the same. It is said that Vancouver is in danger of becoming nothing more than a home and playground for the rich and famous, where others may only enter occasionally to service the needs of the occupants. Some believe that the only economic metric that matters here is the fact that luxury residences generate optimal property tax revenues.

I prefer to believe that the aspirations of our political leaders in Vancouver are genuine and that, while they want to act creatively and holistically, they simply do not have the bench strength to get the job done. Has our city succumbed to the will of narrow specialists when multi-disciplinary lateral thinking is what is really required? To be fair, it is difficult to know what you don’t know, but open-mindedness is the best compensator.

Recent practical experience around the world, reflecting current and future economic and environmental realities, shows that urban development must integrate into its machinery the capacity to not only affordably house and provide amenities for citizens in an aesthetically pleasing setting, but also the necessity of addressing how its citizens will be gainfully employed in a rejuvenated, diversified and sustainable local economy. In fact, the latter is now a pre-condition to the former as broad-based consumer demand wanes, public finances remain tight and climate change progresses. The challenge is intensified in cities such as Vancouver, where property taxes are reaching outer limits and physical space is limited.

But it can be done, as various cities are demonstrating in their efforts to take on the future. In the past year, I have had the privilege of touring, in Boston and Barcelona, impressive examples of what are becoming known as “Innovation Districts”. To refer to these communities as simply mixed-use development areas would be to do them a serious injustice. Instead, they are precincts with an elegant, efficient and cost-effective blend of residential, educational, cultural, commercial and industrial space.

PROSPERITY THROUGH COORDINATED INNOVATION DISTRICTS

One of the best accounts of this emerging trend is a recent book by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution entitled “The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy”. 

Katz and Bradley write:

“For the past fifty years, the landscape of innovation has been epitomized by regions like Silicon Valley – suburban corridors of spatially isolated corporate campuses, accessible only by car, with little emphasis on the quality of life or on integrating work, housing, and recreation…That model now appears outdated…Innovative companies, talented workers and perceptive municipal managers are revaluing the physical assets and attributes of cities and a new spatial geography of innovation is emerging…The new model – The Innovation District – clusters leading edge anchor institutions and cutting-edge innovative firms, connecting them with supporting and spin-off companies, business incubators, mixed-use housing, office, retail and 21st century urban amenities…Innovation Districts are already found in the downtowns and midtowns of Atlanta, Cambridge, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco and St. Louis – not to mention key cities in Europe -- where existing clusters of advanced research universities, medical complexes, advanced manufacturing, tech and creative firms are sparking business expansion as well as  residential and commercial growth…Others are taking root in cities such as Boston and Seattle where underutilized areas – particularly older industrial lands – are being re-imagined and remade by leveraging their enviable location near waterfronts and downtowns and along transit lines.”

The “revolution” the authors are speaking about is a revolution in kind, not simply one of degree. Innovation Districts combine the physical, social, economic and technological in new forms and permutations unheard of in the recent past.

Innovation Districts require integrative thinking and action that goes far beyond considerations of zoning and “anything-will-do-as-long-as-it-looks-pretty-and-generates-property-taxes” built-form land use. Solid connections must be made between economic dynamics and urban experiences such as transportation, business development, housing, education and recreation, all of which are inextricably linked in reality, but traditionally separated in practice.

This reflects not only changing values, preferences and demographics, but also the shifting demands of leading advanced industries requiring collaboration and close coordination among workers, producers, suppliers and customers.

It is a significant departure from the major development patterns and economic theories of the last half of the 20th century. These led to cities dominated by large amenity-driven projects like sports stadiums, convention centres and performing arts facilities and suburbs typified by strip-malls, big box conformity and corporate sites far from residential areas. Dependence on the automobile for all mobility needs became standard. This is, of course, a precise description of Metro Vancouver today.

As Katz and Bradley put it:

“Innovation Districts combine the physical, social, economic and technological in new forms and permutations, unheard of in the recent past. Nothing will do short of an overhaul and implosion of traditional conventions, practices, disciplines, financing norms and institutions that make compartmentalization easy and integration hard.”

In short, oxen must be gored.

EFFECTIVE INTERVENTION

Accomplishing something like this in Vancouver will, in particular, require a much more hands-on approach by our municipal government to Vancouver’s local economy than has been the case in the recent past. And for this there is a broad spectrum of possibilities, as my visits last year revealed.

In Barcelona this is occurring in a highly structured and planned manner, with particular focus on targeting specific business and industrial clusters while shaping the physical environment. The emerging Innovation Districts in Boston, by contrast, appear to be occurring in a somewhat organic way, in which planning acts more as a platform or firm “nudge” than as prescription.

In both cases, however, the municipal governments have done the hard work of determining, in some detail, the optimal path to enhancing both the competitive and comparative economic advantages of their cities. This required a specific program of capacity building that considerably broadened the type and range of technical and professional expertise that was relied upon.

 As for Vancouver, it is questionable if all the necessary voices are at the table to create the required counterpoint for true innovation to emerge that is relevant to 2014, as opposed to an outdated version that serves narrow interests.

More than anything else, Vancouver leaders must become conversant in creative financing arrangements, recognizing both the emasculation of the public purse and the excessive dependence on the real estate development industry. Drilling deeper, they must be fully aware of what truly incentivizes permanent job-creating businesses to not only locate in a particular locale, but build a strong future there. This has very little to do with low taxes and the dialing down of regulations. 

Bringing an approach to Vancouver that emulates that in Barcelona, Boston and elsewhere would be logical for the unoccupied industrial lands in S.E. False Creek Flats or the area south of Marine Drive. But even neighbourhoods composed primarily of single-family dwellings or low-rise apartment buildings can be brought into the mix, as has been shown by the location of low-impact, clean-tech industries in communities throughout New England and Western Europe.

TIME FOR A DETAILED ROAD MAP

Nay-sayers in Vancouver will argue that drawing from the experience of American or European cities is unrealistic, because our city has few fiscal levers to pull and the provincial government has so much influence on what happens here. These facts become problems only if decision-makers allow this to happen. 

Here are a few relevant facts that should motivate thoughtful and focussed officials at all levels to simply get on with the job of closely coordinating their efforts, politics be-damned.

The ultra-thin nature of the Vancouver economy where most recent economic growth has come primarily from real estate, retail and restaurant development (along with some ephemeral high tech wizardry) is not sustainable in any sense of the word. More important, this will not do if the brass ring is, in fact, to create a multi-faceted and multi-layered city which is notable for more than just its natural and man-made beauty.

And in the absence of local initiatives, the current provincial government’s primary economic plan of further resource development in the interior of the province only increases the number of Vancouver lawyers, financial professionals and sundry consultants who desire once again (along with the growing number of occasional residents with foreign passports) little more than enhanced real estate, retail and restaurant development, unaffordable to most.

This is hardly a recipe for attracting and retaining a true creative class or the companies that hire them. Cutting edge economic activity does not take place where the workers who make this happen are required to live like paupers.

Waiting for the invisible hand of “the market” to solve this economic quandary is a mug’s game. Evidence gathered over decades in Canada and abroad proves that the machinations of free enterprise alone, important as they are, cannot provide a city with the necessary innovation and concrete steps to fulfill its aspirations.

It’s a fact in 2014 that any level of government — not unlike any entrepreneur — has access to all of the necessary information to determine what the job-creating industries of the future look like and where they would prefer to locate themselves. Only with clear communication and a detailed understanding of what motivates productive sectors, will success be achieved in attracting the sort of firms to Vancouver that are able to serve as the pivot to finance our version of Innovation Districts.

So instead of waxing quixotic about its lack of ways and means, why would the City of Vancouver not beef up its human resources, do its homework, take action and then make the provincial government an offer it cannot refuse? It would be difficult indeed for the province to dismiss a plan from the City — backed by the right kind of corporations, educational institutions and non-profits -- that is specific, comprehensive, practical and which ultimately pays for itself. In other words, something like those produced and acted upon in Barcelona, Boston and elsewhere.

This strategic roadmap for economic and community development must go far beyond the standard practice of reasserting grand, sweeping and therefore easily dismissed ambitions. The devils and angels are always in the details and this requires complex work that needs to be done by the City itself because no one will do it for them. And one-dimensional neighbourhood plans that are only partially coordinated will hardly suffice.

This being “liveable” Vancouver, interesting, engaged and highly qualified people — often refreshingly young — constantly arrive and struggle to live here in a twilight zone of underemployment. More often than not they simply move on. A key question for Vancouver’s future must be whether it continues to cater to the glitterati, or a much more compelling and valuable cohort.

Ken McFarlane is the Managing Director of Regeneration Group LLP and an associate of the Building Community Society of Greater Vancouver. The opinions here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organization he is affiliated with.