#VanPoli | Housing & Development | Making The Vancouver Plan Irrelevant, Pt. 1

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Vancouver Planning Staff and Developers Set to Turn Vancouver into Manhattan West

A core element of Colleen Hardwick’s successful 2018 run for office as a Vancouver City Councillor was the need for the city to draft a visionary planning document — to be called The Vancouver Plan — a bold, comprehensive and inclusive city-wide, neighbourhood and heritage community development plan for all residents living in the City of Vancouver, a 30-year plan that would focus on creating opportunities to integrate new housing, recreation centres, jobs, and amenities across our city.

As a first order of business early in her inaugural term of office, working with three term Vancouver City Councillor, Adriane Carr, Councillor Hardwick seconded a pioneering motion that would have staff employed within the Planning Department at Vancouver City Hall draft The Vancouver Plan (initial title, the City-Wide Plan) document, towards the creation of a livable, affordable and sustainable city, a single, city-wide plan that would guide future growth consistent with key community priorities, a guide to our city’s future growth …

  • The provision of affordable housing in all of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods;
  • Working on a meaningful climate action plan, and environmental sustainability;
  • The provision of well-paying jobs city-wide & in neighbourhoods + economic growth;
  • Prioritizing public and active transportation needs for Vancouver residents;
  • Arts & culture, and the provision for related community amenities;
  • Infrastracture, including community pools, ice rinks and recreation centres.

Public input would be sought in The Vancouver Plan engagement process, which continues through until this day.

The final draft document of The Vancouver Plan is set to be presented to the public and to members of Vancouver City Council in early spring of 2022.

In the video above, the narrator of the visionary Vancouver Plan intones …

“Now more than ever, it’s important to reduce our use of carbon fuels, and adapt to climate change. To advance these big ideas, we need to rethink our low density neighbourhoods. To that end, we could help shape future growth more in major transit areas. New housing, jobs, child care centres, and public plazas would be built along these transit corridors.”

Remembering for just a moment that The Vancouver Plan is far from having completed its community engagement process, and is not due to be presented to both the public and Vancouver City Council until spring 2022, this past Wednesday, November 3rd, the Planning Department presented The Broadway Plan to the members of Vancouver City Council, a fait accompli document that will add 50,000 new residents along the Broadway corridor, framed by Vine Street to the west, 1st Avenue to the north, Clark Drive to the east, and 16th Avenue to the south.”

As reported in The Daily Hive Vancouver by civic affairs reporter Kenneth Chan …

“The emerging direction of the densification strategy calls for increasing Central Broadway’s population by up to 50,000 to about 128,000 residents — an increase of 64% compared to 78,000 residents today. This would be achieved by growing the number of homes in the area from over 60,000 today to up to 90,000 units, with much of this is intended to be more affordable forms of housing.

Added office, retail, restaurant, institutional, and creative industrial spaces would grow the number of jobs from 84,400 today to up to about 126,000 jobs.”

The residential and employment targets outlined above would occur over a period of the next 30 years, through until 2050. Tower heights between 30 and 40 storeys will be built in areas around the stations. Shoulder areas adjacent to the immediate area surrounding the stations — generally within a two or three block radius — will see height allowances of 20 to 30 storeys.

Example of a “Centre” area near the future South Granville Station, November 2021. (City of Vancouver)

Example of “Shoulder” areas along Broadway in the Broadway Plan, November 2021. (City of Vancouver)

More details on the “Broadway Plan” may be found both in Mr. Chan’s story in The Daily Hive, and John Mackie’s story in The Vancouver Sun.

The question has to be asked: if the reasoned, thoughtful and neighbourhood resident consulted 30-year visionary document, titled The Vancouver Plan, is not due to be presented to Vancouver City Council until spring 2022, why are the members of Vancouver City Council being asked by the City Planning Department to approve The Broadway Plan as early as next week, on either November 16th, 17th or 18th?

And why, if The Vancouver Plan is a city-wide and neighbourhood visionary development plan for Vancouver as we head towards 2050, why is the City Planning Department taking a piecemeal approach to presenting any number of development plans in the pipeline to Council now — months in advance of the presentation of The Vancouver Plan to the public & members of Vancouver City Council?

Tomorrow on VanRamblings, we’ll present 1) several more “visionary” large scale developments currently in the Vancouver development pipeline — of which you may not be aware — that are destined to have a major impact on the livability of our much cherished Vancouver home; 2) a continued exploration of VanRamblings’ ongoing thème du mois — “A city for whom? Benefiting whose interests?”; and 3) whether the tens of thousands of housing units set to be built as envisioned in proposed Vancouver development plans to be presented to Council even before the final draft of The Vancouver Plan will be made public, will result in an overbuilt city that will cater explicitly to wealthy and offshore investment interests and their developer friends, rather than to the implicit and explicit interests of Vancouver residents living in the 22 neighbourhoods across our city.

The 70+ storey Bay Parkade development — due east of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and sandwiched between Seymour and Richards streets — one of seven 65+ storey downtown developments approved by Vision Vancouver (the first two, the Shangri-la Hotel on Georgia, and its neighbour across the street, Holborn’s “Trump Tower”), the Bay Parkade development will be presented to Council for approval sometime before the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

#ArtsFriday | Passing | Searing, Heartbreaking, Tragic Cinema | #Netflix

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Début film by Rebecca Hall (left), Passing, stars Tessa Thompson (centre) & Ruth Negga

A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of a 1920s-era Harlem Renaissance that celebrated Black novelist Nella Larsen captured in her seminal 1929 novel, Passing, marks British actress Rebecca Hall’s assured feature directorial début — a certain 2022 Oscar contender, having taken New York by storm last month at their annual New York Film Festival, and already up for a passel of Gotham Awards — will be available on the Netflix streaming service this coming Wednesday, November 10th. “We’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” muses Tessa Thompson’s melancholy character, Irene Redfield.

Ms. Hall’s choice of material for her début as writer-director is elevated by her evident personal investment in the story, having learned years ago that her American maternal grandfather was Black passing as white for most of his life. That intense personal connection pervades every lovingly composed shot of a work that takes a subtle, unwavering approach to the film’s subject matter, that resonates at a moment Black Lives Matter has exposed the simmering racial divides within society.

The story takes place in 1929, as Harlem resident Irene (Thompson) carefully navigates her way through a sweltering New York City summer day, tucking her face inside her hat so as to all the better, well, maybe not hide exactly, but at least obscure her face so that her black skin isn’t as evident to the privileged white locals surrounding her. Feeling self-conscious about being out of place, she’s shocked to run into Clare (Negga), a school friend with whom she had lost contact, now married to a wealthy (and avowedly racist) white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who has no idea that his wife is black. Clare “passes” for white, allowing her entree into an upper-crust American society that contemptuously shuns people of colour.

Inviting Irene up to her hotel room, upon returning to her home, there’s a marked visual switch from Clare and John’s suite, an airy space drenched in white light, to the more textured look inside the Harlem brownstone where Irene lives with her doctor husband Brian (André Holland) and their two boys. The action flashes forward to the autumn, when a letter from Clare, postmarked New York, indicates she has moved back to the city as she had hoped. Irene is hesitant to open it, but Brian is more curious, arching his eyebrows at Clare’s florid description of “this pale life of mine,” as she gently chides Renie for exposing her “wild desire” for another life.

Shot in luminous black-and-white by cinematographer Eduard Grau (a choice that, given the material, might sound gimmicky, and is not), Ms. Hall also opted for a boxed-in 4:3 aspect ratio, all the better to heighten the film’s constant tension and the sense that its piercingly sad characters can’t escape the confines of their lives.

From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention with its striking aesthetics. Most notably, as mentioned above, the desaturated black-and-white cinematography and 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls both vintage photography and classic cinema. The period-appropriate costumes and production design — stylishly rendered by the production designer Nora Mendism, and the costume designer Marci Rodgers — gives a strong sense of a time and place when flappers lived their best life. To add an elegant finishing touch, the intermittent piano refrain of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Homeless Wanderer, and the gorgeous score composed by Black composer Devonté Hynes, provides a further nostalgic nod to the Jazz Age.

Passing tingles through the vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Thompson and Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups. A tear rolling down a cheek. The slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man. A stolen glance of desire. Under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their obvious and barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.

And it’s through this discomfort that Passing transcends its mannered trappings to resonate with us as a poignant and powerful exploration of the human condition.

#VanPoli | An Apartment on Every Block | Mass, Arbitrary Rezoning

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The graphic above courtesy of retired Vancouver architect, Brian Palmquist. “All the blue and orange areas up for grabs” in a mass rezoning of 16 of 22 Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Has there ever been a Vancouver City Council more seemingly in the pocket of developers than our current Vancouver City Council?

Oh sure, our Mayor and Councillors do the right thing on occasion — as they did last week in referring the redevelopment of False Creek South to the city’s Planning Department — but, objectively and overall, the commitment to “growth” in our city continues unabated, as it did in the decade Vision Vancouver was in power at City Hall, and as continues on through until this day.

Densification of our city is an inevitability, as more and more people move to our little burgh by the sea. The question arises, though: in whose interests, and to whose benefit will this densification of our city take place?

Where is the clarion commitment to non-market co-operative and co-housing, and supportive social housing that will house the broad swath of Vancouver residents who earn the median income of $44,000 for single persons, and $65,000 for couples (figures provided by Statistics Canada), seniors on fixed incomes, single parents of little means, the creative community, and persons living at the shelter rate?

A corollary to those questions is the question posed by UBC professor Patrick Condon In his latest article in The Tyee …

“The presumption is that by increasing rental stock all along the shown routes rents will drop to affordable rates. But will they?”

Today, VanRamblings will present two informed perspectives on a document titled Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas , the massive 348-page report provided by city staff to Vancouver’s bealeaguered City Councillors for action.

Click on this link to listen to Patrick Condon’s interview on The Early Edition.

In his column in The Tyee, Dr. Condon writes …

“The importance of this motion cannot be overemphasized. In effect this proposed bylaw change, in combination with the Broadway plan, probably predetermines the density, tenure and affordability of most of the city. If this is true, what then is left for the city to decide in its ongoing $18 million city-wide plan, three years in the making?

Providing affordable housing is the existential need in our city. Our service workers, many of who are our sons and daughters, are being forced out of this city in droves. This Trojan Horse of a seemingly technical change will, if passed, benefit mainly the land speculator, whose pockets are already stuffed to overflowing.

Our housing crisis and accompanying urban land value inflation is far worse than experienced by either Cambridge or Berkeley. We should do no less than what they have enacted, and find a way to stream land value gains into affordable homes for those who need them.

The crux of the matter is this: the mass rezoning of Vancouver, if passed by Vancouver City Council, will “allow for six-storey mixed-use, unaffordable market rental buildings development” in residential neighbourhoods across the city.

Not to mention which, should Council approve the staff report, there would be NO community consultation and no option for residents to address Council on future rental projects approved by staff for construction in their neighbourhood.

In the report currently before Vancouver City Council, our elected representatives not only have to digest all 348 densely-packed pages of the report, and make some sense of the lengthy document and what it portends for the city going forward, but vote on the most significant change to zoning — a mass rezoning of 16 of our city’s 22 neighbourhoods, sans much in the way of any palpable, informed input from residents now, or more particularly, in the future — Vancouver has ever witnessed.

Take a look at the graphic above. The city’s Planning Department envisions, and recommends to the members of Vancouver City Council, the approval of three to six storey apartment-style buildings along arterials in 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — as well as, three and four storey townhouses and apartment buildings along residential streets one block away from the arterials.

All in the name of what? Greed? A “gentle densification” of our city that will make living in Vancouver more affordable for families — is that the goal of The Plan?

In his substack article titled Rental—Streamlining or Steamrolling? , architect Brian Palmquist writes …

More than a generation ago, anything more than single family homes in the RS districts of the city, which are much of this report’s focus, was forbidden. Basement suites were illegal and their closure was vigorously enforced by city staff — laneway houses as we now know them were nonexistent.

Fast forward to this report, where the same staff who impose burden after burden on even the simplest laneway rental home are proposing that RS homeowners solve the affordable housing shortage largely caused by staff’s work pace and fee demands, by accepting a massive up zoning affecting 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — the other 6 are already subject to special, as-yet not revealed zoning such as the Broadway Plan and the Vancouver Plan.

Speakers presenting to Council may talk about various of the negative impacts of these proposals as they sit before you. As for me, I consider the proposal before you to be not so much streamlining as steamrolling.

VanRamblings presents the columns written by Patrick Condon and Brian Palmquist as edification on the Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas report before Vancouver City Council, and currently up for debate.

The key questions: Vancouver. A city for whom? Benefiting whose interests?

[Disclaimer. VanRamblings acknowledges that the members of Vancouver City Council are hard-working, dedicated public servants, who mean well for our city, and approach the very difficult work in which they engage each day with principle and integrity.  VanRamblings’ rhetoric is meant only as a ‘shot across the bow’, a reminder to our elected representatives that it is us who they were elected to represent, not the special interests who whisper, almost constantly, into their ears.]

COVID-19 | British Columbia Has Entered the Endemic Phase

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Over the past weekend, VanRamblings had the opportunity to speak with a senior member of British Columbia’s public health pandemic response team, and the information with which we were provided was hopeful for B.C.’s near term future.

“British Columbia has entered the endemic phase of what we’ve all come to know as the pandemic this past 19 months, in fact, some while ago,” our unnamed source, unauthorized to speak on behalf of the office of British Columbia’s Public Health Office, told VanRamblings. “We’re not far off from removing mask mandates in those areas of the province where the full vaccination rate exceeds 90%, as is the case in Vancouver city proper, where the rate of fully vaccinated persons is currently 95% plus. Other regions of the province — Fraser Valley East, the Interior and Northern Health — have a ways to go before mask mandates, and other restrictions are removed by British Columbia’s public health office.”

VanRamblings asked the individual with whom we spoke about the current high COVID-19 infection rates we’re experiencing in British Columbia — most recently, the 3rd highest in Canada — and how this phenomenon might be accounted for …

“In British Columbia, we’re experiencing a series of super spreader events brought on by the unvaccinated members of regional communities, mostly situated in the three regions of the province where vaccination rates are low. Fully 98% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations and admissions to hospital ICU’s has occurred either within the unvaccinated community, or resultant from vulnerable vaccinated persons coming into contact with unvaccinated persons,” avers our public health source.

VanRamblings was told that in all likelihood British Columbians will be out of the worst of COVID-19 — even given the current and deadly virulence of the Delta variant — by early spring 2022, when life will return to some sense of “normal”, as we’ve all been observing now with capacity restrictions being lifted at Vancouver Canucks home games, within movie theatre complexes, and even at concerts.

When we asked our source about the 327 doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in British Columbia who have yet to get their first mRNA vaccine dose, our source simply rolled their eyes, muttering …

“As a health care professional, you are a scientist. Why you wouldn’t acknowledge the science on vaccines is beyond me? To say the least, that unfortunate development is disappointing, for those of us in the profession, and for all British Columbians.”

Or, as British Columbia Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry stated on Monday …

On balance, it is probable that the comfort level for most of us in the general public will not be alleviated until infection, hospitalization and ICU rates are observed as being significantly reduced, with COVID-19 death rates all but eliminated on most reporting days, and the rate of death from COVID-19 in B.C. minimal at worst.