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“Living First” in Downtown Vancouver
This article first appeared in the American
Planning Association’s Zoning News April 2000 (Reprinted by permission)
By Larry Beasley, former co-director of Planning
“Downtown residential” is the mantra for urban vitality
in the new century. With the flattening of downtown office growth, continued
expansion of the suburban economy, and the flourishing of “edge city”
as a way of life in North America, many city centers are deeply in trouble,
deeply in debt, and desperately in need of a new destiny. Enticing people
back to town is an obvious solution. The question is how to make this
happen in the face of long-standing fears about the inner city, the unquestionable
attractiveness of the suburban home option, worries about displacement
of those at risk, and the lack of good models for living close together
comfortably.
The Vancouver Example
The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, may offer answers. “Living
first” has been the strategy of choice for downtown growth since
the 1980s. While the socioeconomic circumstances of Canadian and American
cities are very different, especially at the core, the determinants for
housing choice are not all that different. Households are often looking
for the same things in both countries.
Vancouver sits in a spectacular setting of water and mountains on the
west coast of North America, roughly 20 miles north of the U.S. border.
With a regional population of close to two million, it is Canada’s third-largest
metropolis. The whole city, but especially the inner city, has experienced
explosive growth since mid-century-first with the office boom that hit
most North American cities, then with a diversifying knowledge-based economy
and tourism. Throughout the whole period, immigration has played a role,
particularly because Vancouver serves as Canada’s gateway for Asia.
Located on a small peninsula with the vast green space of Stanley Park
at its tip, the central city has constrained site potential and limited
access coupled with very high amenities to support growth. This has led
to intensive, high-rise, high-density development. Some liken it to the
form, wrought large, of a medieval walled city.
In its West End (1960s) and False Creek South (1970s) neighborhoods,
Vancouver has evolved a tradition of close-in living on and near the Downtown
Peninsula. Even so, by the 1980s growth was stalled for lack of properly
zoned residential sites, housing stock was suffering from age, and square
footage for housing per person was expanding. The population base gave
signs of eroding, and redevelopment pressures were creating extreme community
anxiety.
At that point, with new development initiatives looming and many choices
for the future up in the air, Vancouver’s council took bold, definitive
action in adopting a new Central Area Plan based on the “living first”
strategy. In a major stroke of rezoning, some eight million square feet
were converted from excess commercial (office) capacity to allow residential
development, old railyards along the waterfronts were earmarked for housing,
and an aggressive planning effort commenced to make the housing future
real.
Favorable local demographic reinforced the thrust of immigration to support
an urban lifestyle. There are increasing numbers of dual-income and dual-professional
households, couples marrying and having children later, many alternative
households, and a wave of senior empty nesters with strong assets. Moreover,
many immigrants come from older cities, are fairly wealthy, and have little
interest in the single-family lifestyle. Adding the Canadian factors of
general safety and cultural tolerance, the result is a strong market for
downtown living.
The numbers tell the whole story. Currently hovering at about 61,000
people, the Central Area population has exploded by over 20,000 people
since the late 1980s. With current growth, that population will grow to
90,000 people before 2015, and the ultimate residential capacity is even
greater. It is all happening faster than anyone expected.
Organizing Principles for Downtown Housing Vancouver’s “living first”
success, however, is not just the result of favoring housing and changing
the zoning to allow it to happen. Nor is it just the result of a vibrant
market. The secret lies in a comprehensive integrated strategy: pushing
for housing intensity; insisting on housing diversity; structuring for
coherent, identifiable, and supportive neighborhoods; and fostering suitably
domestic urban design and architecture.
Lacking few contemporary examples to emulate, Vancouver has framed a
made-at-home urban model founded on basic organizing principles for downtown
housing.
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The first principle has been to limit commuter access into downtown and
let congestion be an ally in a household’s profound first decision to
live downtown or in the suburbs. Vancouver doesn’t have a freeway system,
so its downtown is not connected by freeways to growth areas at the edge.
A farmland reserve and secure Crown forests further limit the suburban
options. Walking, biking, and transit get priority for both space and
spending.
Back at the core, a major organizing principle has been to extend the
fabric, patterns, and character of the existing city rather than see the
new areas developed in ways that make them distinctly separated and different.
This means extending the existing road grid, open space networks, building
morphology, and materials usage, and even place names.
Another basic principle has been to develop a complete neighborhood unit
at a pedestrian scale with mixed use, an infrastructure of necessary utilities
and amenities, an associated local commercial high street, and phasing
to make ancillary amenities available as people move in and need them.
It was necessary to include what sociologists call the essential “third
places,” after home and work, where people gather to create the tangible
society of their neighborhood.
Coupled with this is the principle of insisting on a rich housing mix,
including both market and nonmarket housing, mixed incomes, family and
non-family households, special needs housing, and unique housing choices
(such as, for example, houseboats and lofts). The city has emphasized
avoiding the creation of the differentiated ghettos that appear in so
many other cities. A strong target is to bring security to low-income
people who have long resided downtown.
Whenever possible, the city attempts to bring an economic ecology to
each district on the principle that home, work, and services should be
as close together as possible. Partly, this has to be arranged internally
by true mixed use of buildings, such as live/work, and partly this is
achieved by fine-grained adjacencies among building types.
Use and special treatment of the public realm are necessary to express
community identity and provide for community social life. Examples include
sidewalk beautification and street art and unique styles of lighting and
signage. The principle is that sidewalks must become the effective living
rooms of the neighborhoods.
A related principle is that open space and green linkages bring both
amenity and image to each neighborhood. A high park standard has led to
65 acres of new parks being added in the Downtown Peninsula over the last
decade. Everything is tied together by a spectacular walkway/bikeway system.
The water’s edge must be dedicated to the public, at the time of zoning
approval, and must be delivered fully developed for recreational use.
This is Vancouver’s single most popular civic initiative, now stretching
over 20 kilometers, out from the core.
It is absolutely necessary to ensure that the cost for public utilities
and facilities will be borne primarily by the development that must be
served. In principle, the city avoids burdening the existing taxpayer
with the costs of this growth. Otherwise, we would have seen a taxpayers’
revolt, closing the door on housing growth.
Also, solutions must be found for the potential negative externalities.
Noise, danger, overviewing, invasion of privacy, and insensitivity to
the needs of children can limit the attractiveness of urban living. Vancouver’s
solution has been to create a humane, domestic building form for high-density
housing, which can tend to become quite harsh for its residents if poorly
designed.
Finally, with every new neighborhood, the city has been learning more
and pushing the boundaries on environmental sustainabiliry. One new neighborhood
now on the drawing board should establish an urban, high-intensity model
for responsible environmental stewardship on all technical fronts. This
model will be relevant to all cities.
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The Importance of Design
All of Vancouver’s planning, urban design, and development management
has been based on these primary directives. But there was still the trickiest
part: how to achieve good urban design at the level of the details, so
that the place, even though it is dense and complicated, will function
well, be comfortable, and look good.
Vancouver made the same discovery as the New Urbanists. The city’s planners
depend upon the traditional relationships between the street, the sidewalk,
and the building wall and among buildings to solve many of the problems
in making high densities work. In turn, high densities can generate enough
value for a project to carry quality materials, great on-site amenities,
and a nice contribution to the neighborhood’s infrastructure.
Design guidelines, enabled by the zoning, set the form. The guidelines
emphasize thin towers with small floor plates, and the base of the tower
is hidden behind a nicely scaled minimum three-story street wall. At street
level, these towers almost disappear from one’s perception.
Retail and other on-street uses are separated to manage noise and to
bring housing right down to the sidewalk level. Yet blank walls are not
tolerated, which forces the incorporation of doors, porches, stoops, windows,
terraces, and almost any fascinating detail at sidewalk eye level. Neighborhood
sidewalks are lined with grass boulevards and at least a double row of
street trees, which effectively greens and tames the harsh concrete. Vehicular
crossings of sidewalks are minimized, individual garage doors are banned
from the streetscape, and even porte-cocheres (vehicular entrances into
interior courtyards) are kept at a bare minimum. The tendency is to avoid
useless private plazas in favor of the respite of green public park spaces
built into every neighborhood building cluster.
Almost all parking is underground except for the traditional short-term,
curbside parking on local streets. Because Vancouver is located in a temperate
rainforest, the guidelines also emphasize protection from the weather.
However, above or below-ground walkways are not allowed, as they prevent
people from coming together on the public sidewalk. Views are carefully
managed. Sun access and shadows are manipulated with a painterly touch.
And, lastly, the city facilitates the creation of wonderful private courtyards,
where residents can escape the action of the street for the privacy and
quiet of their own little garden. If all this is done carefully, a great
deal of housing can happen with little negative effect.
The underlying theme in Vancouver’s strategy is to bring out the competitive
advantages of the urban lifestyle in preference to a suburban lifestyle.
To truly make the residential city a reality, the city must succeed at
the intuitive level of lifestyle choice. Part of the strategy is obvious:
to try to create an attractive surrogate for the single-family dwelling
in the single-family suburb. The rowhouse initiative typifies this. More
than 600 new rowhouses ginger the mix of downtown housing, generally in
projects that also include apartments in towers. Whether the problem involves
children or a dog, fear of heights, preference for a private front door
or garage, or a need for basement storage, the rowhouses are a great solution.
Many families with children, for the first time, see the practical chance
to move back downtown because of this option.
The other part of this theme is to facilitate a life experience even
more exciting and convenient, yet equally as safe and secure, as that
offered in the suburbs. Going to the theater, being minutes from a host
of great restaurants and shops, taking an evening stroll, biking to work,
and connecting with all kinds of people is what the urban lifestyle is
all about. For Vancouver, this has a powerful attraction for an ever-widening
cross-section of citizens.
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Making the Process Work
The last challenge in realizing the city’s housing vision has been to
revamp the regulatory and planning process to manage major downtown change.
Early on, it was realized that the traditional way of orchestrating planning
and managing growth in Vancouver was completely inadequate to both the
scale and complexity of the new projects. New tools and techniques were
developed with the private sector and resulted in an arrangement called
the cooperative planning approach. Put simply, this is a way for staff,
politicians, developers, and citizens to interact positively, as each
does their part to invent the future residential city.
The approach is based on a highly discretionary regulatory framework,
which emphasizes guidelines and incentives over hard regulations. This
allows a great deal of ongoing learning and innovation. The planning process
goes from large-scale and conceptual to specifics in stages. Building
consensus is an ongoing effort, and issues are discussed and resolved
early. Public consultation at every stage, with very wide outreach, is
required, and it is undertaken in iteration after iteration. The public
and private sector join forces around a table for the actual design exercise.
Politicians decide policy, appointed officials handle development approvals,
and for all practical purposes city decisions are final, with appeals
being very rare. The result is that, even with the grandest urban development
gestures, the rezoning process seldom fails, public hearings are relatively
calm, and most citizens seem satisfied with the results.
Without the strong political commitment and wide public buy-in of its
comprehensive “living first” strategy, Vancouver would be lightyears
behind where it needs to be to position itself for the future. The city
would not have drawn the flood of investment that has kept its economy
strong. Local planners would not have learned how to design or manage
high-density housing and neighborhoods. The city would not have leveraged
the public goods that support so much other growth. Most of all, the city
would not have realized its dream for an urban lifestyle that will draw
people back from their 50-year romance with the suburbs, bringing with
them their resources, energy, and creativity to build the kind of remarkable
city that an extraordinary natural setting and the city’s people so richly
deserve.
Related Link: The
Changing City
Zoning News is a monthly newsletter published by the
American Planning Association. Copyright ®2000 by American Planning
Association, 122 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 1600. Chicago, IL 60603. The American
Planning Association also has offices at 1776 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.,
Washington, DC 20036: www.planning.org
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the American Planning Association.
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