Tag Archives: development

Vancouver Broadway Plan, and Its Impact on the Kitsilano Neighbourhood

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This past Thursday evening, in an event sponsored by CityHallWatch — the online activist civic affairs journal — in a crowded, overflow event held at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House, a broad spectrum of speakers addressed the Broadway Plan — an extensive development plan for the future of Vancouver’s Broadway corridor, a growth plan that envisions an additional 50,000 residents who will take up residence along the corridor from Clark to Arbutus streets, between 1st and 16th avenues — and the implications of the Plan on the Kitsilano neighbourhood.


The Broadway Plan will provide a framework for the types of buildings, with towers between 20 to 40 storeys allowed in the light blue ‘centres’. The graphic above was supplied by the City of Vancouver.

The evening was MC’d by Larry Benge, a co-founder and co-Chairperson of the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods — an alliance of more than 20 community and residents’ associations, who have long sought and continue to seek a respectful relationship between the powers that be at City Hall,  and the 23 neighbourhood communities that comprise and are at the heart of the City of Vancouver.


Video | Vancouver’s Broadway Plan: What does it mean for Kitsilano? Townhall Meeting March 14, 2024

Well-informed, respected and accomplished speakers at Town Hall included …

    • Brian Palmquist, a Vancouver-based architect, and publisher of the ‘you must subscribe to’ City Conversations substack, an in-depth journal that provides detailed coverage of development in the City of Vancouver, and its implications for the health, safety and well-being of those of us who reside in the city;
    • Arny Wise, an urban planner, retired developer, and mediator of municipal housing disputes in Vancouver;
      In front, l-r: Stephen Bohus, Brian Palmquist, Randy Helten. In behind: Arny Wise.
    • Michael Geller, an urban planner, real estate consultant and property developer, who serves on the adjunct faculty of Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Sustainable Development and School of Resource and Environmental Management. His blog may be found at gellersworldtravel.blogspot.ca;
    • Scot Hein, a retired senior urban designer employed by the City of Vancouver for more than 30 years, and at present an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Urban Design Programme at UBC where he works with his colleague …
    • Patrick Condon, the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design programme.

    In addition to those named above, during the question, answer and commentary portion of the meeting, former Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick spoke about the lack of civic democracy, while an architect present with his family in attendance spoke of the work of an old Simon Fraser University pal of VanRamblings, the University of Victoria’s Robert Gifford, a Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies, who in his paper titled The Consequences of Living in High-Rise Buildings [PDF], writes …

    “… high-rises are less satisfactory than other housing forms for most people, are sub-optimal environments to raise children, social relations within high-rise towers tends to be more impersonal and less than satisfactory than is the case with more ground-oriented housing forms, there is an increased incidence of crime and fear of crime among those who reside in high-rise developments, social cohesion is more difficult and substantively less present in tower developments, while independent studies have found that tower high-rise living may well be a strong contributory and determinative factor that can lead to an increased incidence of suicidal ideation and actual suicide among residents who live in concrete, steel and glass tower constructed buildings.”


    The future of the Kitsilano neighbourhood along the West Broadway / West 4th Avenue corridors

The thrust of Arny Wise’s address to those gathered at the Kitsilano Neighbourhood House Town Hall was that the advent of environmentally unsound steel, concrete and glass towers to increase density in the Kitsilano neighbourhood is simply not an optimal form of development to achieve the density desired by planners at Vancouver City Hall.

Scot Hein made reference to the Arbutus Walk neighbourhood, west of Arbutus Street and West 12th Avenue that, originally, was presented by the Molson-Carling developers and planners back in the day at Vancouver City Hall as three 50-storey concrete and steel towers — a development which the neighbourhood residents very much objected to — that under Mr. Hein’s watch was transformed into a neighbourhood-friendly and livable townhouse, 3-5-and-10 storey condominium and affordable housing development, with a walkable green space centering the development, and a 10-storey housing co-op established in the northwest corner.

It should be noted in passing that the final Arbutus Walk neighbourhood achieved much higher densification, overall, than would have been the case had the originally planned three 50-storey podium and tower development gone forward.

Two final notes for today (there’s more coming tomorrow) …

As UBC’s Patrick Condon pointed out at meetings’ end …

“Vancouver has tripled the number of housing units in our city since the 1970s, more than any other urban centre on the continent, certainly a laudable and unprecedented development feat, far outstripping the number of developments elsewhere. Yet, if supply is “the answer”, why is it that even with a 300% increase in development in Vancouver, we have the poorest supply of affordable housing for residents, the highest land prices, the highest rents of any jurisdiction across the continent, and the most expensive condominiums? Supply, alone, is not the answer.”

And, finally, on a somewhat hopeful note: both Arny Wise and Brian Palmquist pointed out during their presentations that the Planning, Urban Design and Sustainability Department at City Hall has had a change of heart respecting tower development along the Broadway corridor. No longer will citizens face the prospect of dark corridors lined with towers on either side of arterial streets.


Sensitive Urban Infill Charette Report City of Surrey. Drawing: Neda Roohnia, Landscape / Urban Design

Rather, arterial streets like the Broadway corridor will allow six storey developments, while the allowable 20-to-40-storey tower developments will be situated one block behind either side of the arterial street, so as “to prevent shadowing” and obviate the dark arterial corridor residents have made known in no uncertain terms to Vancouver City Hall that, that under no circumstance they want or desire.

Arterial streets must remain walkable, and neighbourhood friendly.

Not good news, of course, for those residents who live along the tree-lined streets, off Broadway (9th Avenue), along West 10th and West 8th Avenues.

But there you have it, for what it’s worth. As we say above, more tomorrow.

#SaveOurParkBoard | The Genesis of the ‘Movement’ to Abolish Park Board

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Vision Vancouver celebrates their overwhelming victory at the polls on November 19, 2011

Developers have long run the City of Vancouver, with various of the elected City Councils over the years acting as their all-too-willing handmaidens.


Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver founder, standing outside, near his home in Railtown

The godfather and founder of the Vision Vancouver municipal party in 2004 was financier / philanthropist / real estate developer, and heir to a capitalist fortune, Tennessee émigré Joel Solomon, a political organizer who cut his teeth working on Jimmy Carter’s successful U.S. presidential campaign in the mid-1970s.

In the early 1990s, Solomon found his way to British Columbia, as he sought refuge on Cortes Island, while recovering from a serious health issue. In 1993, Solomon  met a young organic farmer named Gregor Robertson. Their views aligned, especially on the urgent need to address climate change. The two became fast friends.

In 2002 Solomon made a decision to form a Vancouver civic party, which in time came to be called Vision Vancouver.

Recruiting Mike Magee from Stratcom —  a strategic communications company dedicated to progressive causes — working with Magee, Solomon promised the then Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) Councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson and Jim Green their political futures lay with his newly-formed Vision Vancouver civic party, committing to them that he would dedicate substantial financial resources to their re-election in 2005’s Vancouver municipal election.

Long story short — following the untimely death of Jim Green, who was Vision Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate in the 2005 civic election — in 2006, Joel Solomon recruited his friend Gregor Robertson to seek the nomination to become the Mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver in our city’s 2008 municipal election.

The rest is history: Vision Vancouver became government, from 2008 through 2018.


Gregor Robertson, Mayor in the City of Vancouver, from November 15, 2008 through October 20, 2018

Upon assuming government at Vancouver City Hall in 2008, Joel Solomon was quick to establish a secretive, behind-the-scenes “Mayoral advisory Board” — most members of which were not only longtime friends of Solomon’s dating back to his days in Tennessee, but were, as well, extremely successful real estate developers.


During their time in government, 12 development-related lawsuits were filed against Vision Vancouver

Over the course of their years in power, there were a number of development-related lawsuits that were filed against Vision Vancouver.

Perhaps the most egregious — and many thought, corrupt — development-related failing by Vision Vancouver involved a legal petition filed with the BC Supreme Court on May 6, 2014, by the Community Association of New Yaletown, to prevent a mega-tower development on the city block containing Emery Barnes Park.

The legal petition alleged the City, in approving development of the 36-storey tower at 508 Helmcken St. and a related building across the street at 1099 Richards Street violated the Downtown Official Development Plan (DODP) bylaws in in numerous and significant ways, while thwarting the long-planned expansion of Emery Barnes Park “to help reduce the City’s significant shortfall in meeting its own green space targets in the area.”


Emery Barnes Park, in the heart of New Yaletown, adjacent to Davie and Seymour streets

That Vision Vancouver had not consulted with the community, nor even made any mention of their plans to build yet another mega-tower in the New Yaletown neighbourhood — a “favour” to the Tennessee-based developer, Brenhill Development, who just happened to be friends with Joel Solomon, and members of the Mayoral Advisory Board — exacerbated not only the ire of residents of New Yaletown, but esteemed British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan, who ruled in favour of the New Yaletown residents, “killing the New Yaletown development”, even though it was already under construction.

Read the Vancouver Sun article on Brenhill Development’s “sweet deal” here.

Some months later, the City of Vancouver prevailed at the B.C. Court of Appeals.


Peter Armstrong, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer, and founder / financier of ABC Vancouver

Now Peter Armstrong — who we know and very much like, who has pulled our behind out of the fire on more than one occasion, and who refers to us as his “favourite socialist” — will not be happy that we’re writing about him (reasonably, we can expect an irate call from Peter at some point today, as in “Why didn’t you call me to confirm with me what you’re writing about today?”).

But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do (also, we hate to risk being lied to).


Founder Peter Armstrong’s Rocky Mountaineer offers unsurpassed luxury travel to discerning travelers

Now, Peter Armstrong — a pulled himself up by his bootstraps east end kid made good (we share a history as ‘east end kids’) — for many years was president of Vancouver’s oldest and most successful civic party, the Non-Partisan Association.

That is, until some dastardly folks staged a coup, taking over Peter’s beloved Non-Partisan Association in his absence, as he sailed his yacht to visit his good friend, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, at his luxurious, well-appointed villa in Italy.

The consequence of the coup? Four of five NPA electeds resigned from the party.

And what became of the now former Non-Partisan Association Board members, who succeeded in killing the NPA, which party secured only, a paltry, unimaginably small 2.3% of the vote, when voters went to the polls in October 2022?


“Raymond, do you really think I’ll win re-election in Point Grey when we go to the polls in October?”

Premier David Eby will be heartened to know that these same far-right-of-centre nimrods are currently running the show with the nascent B.C. Conservative Party.

VanRamblings readers won’t be surprised to learn that ABC Vancouver founder, financier and Ken Sim backer, Peter Armstrong — as was the case with Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver, and Mayor Gregor Robertson — has also created a secretive, behind-the-scenes Mayoral Advisory Committee, said committee comprised of developers, but mostly Peter and his very good friend, Chip Wilson.

A narrative, related to us recently by a very reliable VanRamblings source …

“Ken Sim ‘disappeared’ for a week this past autumn.

No one, save his family, knew where he was. In fact, Ken Sim was on board Peter Armstrong’s yacht, sailing up the west coast of British Columbia.

When Sim arrived back in town, returning to the Mayor’s office, he consulted with his Chief of Staff, Trevor Ford, after which the Mayor called in the ABC Park Board electeds to inform them of his decision to abolish the independent, elected Vancouver Park Board, leaving his now former ABC Park Board Commissioners in the room with Mr. Ford and David Grewal to explain details, and what would happen going forward.

Soon after, now former ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen made the decision to sit on Park Board as independents.

Subsequently, Sim called a press conference to announce his intention to eliminate the 133-year-old elected body, the much cherished, independent, and beloved Vancouver Park Board.”

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Whether it’s developer Mayor Tom Campbell in the late 60s, or Joel Solomon and Gregor Robertson for a 10-year period when Vision Vancouver was at the seat of power at Vancouver City Hall, or in these latter days, with an avuncular — but dare we say, avaricious — Peter Armstrong and Chip Wilson, we who call Vancouver home are reminded yet again, and much to our consternation, this is not our city, for Vancouver is owned lock, stock and barrel by the developer class.

#SaveOurParkBoard | Tender Moments of Change at Park Board, Pt 2

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In 2012, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson opined about the idea of scaling back Langara Golf Course and turning part of it into residential housing as part of the city’s broad new approach toward creating denser neighbourhoods.

“At this point it is debatable as to whether that is valuable green space,” the mayor said. “The public can’t access it, it is not biodiverse ,” as he went on to suggest that Langara is “underused”, that there may be “opportunities to transform that space, to maintain golf on that site, to increase public access, to increase public housing.”


Pictured: Park Board Commissioners Melissa De Genova, John Coupar, Aaron Jasper, Constance Barnes, Niki Sharma & Trevor Loke. Commissioner Sarah Blyth had stepped out for a moment, during a break.

On July 9, 2012, the Vancouver Park Board met to consider the instruction of Mayor Gregor Robertson to “hive off half of Langara Golf Course for the development of low cost condominiums.”

City Manager Penny Ballem and Mayor Robertson’s Chief of Staff Mike Magee had, previous to the meeting, called in Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Aaron Jasper to City Hall to demand he move a motion to redevelop the Langara Golf Course, in order that the Mayor’s wishes might be realized, that half of the golf course would be developed for housing.


Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Aaron Jasper, set to carry out the wishes of the Mayor

Subsequent to Aaron Jasper’s meeting with Ballem and Magee, in an interview with the media, Jasper suggested that the course could be downsized from 18 holes to nine holes, which would free the land for public park space.

Alternatively, Jasper pointed out that the course could be eliminated altogether to develop a full park in its place. Golfers would be redirected to the city’s two other golf courses, McCleery and Fraserview.

One hundred and fifty irate, activist members of the community turned up at the contentious July 9th meeting of Park Board — spanning every age group, from young pre-adolescent children to seniors, with members of the cultural and ethnic mosaic of the Vancouver well-represented among those who had gathered to oppose Mayor Robertson’s “vision” for a redeveloped Langara Golf Course.

More than two dozen speakers slammed the Vancouver Park Board that cool, mid-summer Monday evening, fearing they said that the city-owned Langara golf course might be changed into a park or affordable housing.

Many speakers, as well as Commissioner John Coupar, said they feared the motion to ask staff to compile usage and revenue figures for the city’s golf courses might be the first step toward turning Langara into a park or residential development.

“The way this has been rolled out, I think is a little scary,” Coupar said of the motion, which came after Mayor Gregor Robertson publicly questioned whether Vancouverites are best served by a golf course in the area.

The first speakers to present to the Park Board Commissioners that evening were two 23-year-old women of Chinese descent, who said the following after introducing themselves …

“The two of us grew up in the area surrounding the Langara Golf Course. We grew up in some degree of poverty, living a kind of hand-to-mouth existence. Our parents each ran business, one a small corner store, the other a dry cleaning business. We were often left to our own devices, alone, without much to do. This was in an age prior to social media, when cell phones — which we couldn’t have afforded anyway — were not a feature of life.

With the Langara Golf course nearby, and given that it was the only green space in the neighbourhood, we took to walking around the trails that surround the golf course. Soon, we were running around the golf course, and over the years, from age six through our teens, we continued to run around the trails surrounding Langara. Over time, our running skills were strengthened, we joined the track team at our high school, and not long soon after we were recommended by our PhysEd teachers to the Canada Olympic Committee.

Long story short, the both of us became Olympic gold medal winning runners at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Later this month, we will both be competing again at the London Summer Olympics.

Were it not for the opportunity we were afforded to, over many, many years, to run around the track surrounding the Langara Golf Course, we most certainly would not have become Olympic gold medal winners. Langara is a critical resource to families like ours, a welcoming green space like no other. We do not want to see the Langara Golf Course developed into condominiums.

With all due respect to the Mayor, we are present here tonight to speak against the initiative moved by Commissioner Jasper, on behalf of Mayor Gregor Robertson.”

At the conclusion of the address of the two accomplished young women, applause broke out. Observers, and Park Board staff and Commissioners, could well see that the 150 members of the community who had arrived at the Park Board offices to oppose the initiative of the Mayor to develop the Langara Golf Course were heartened and moved by what they’d heard. A new feeling of hope permeated the room.

The next speakers up were two UBC climate scientists who spoke about climate change, making the case for the preservation of the Langara Golf Course …

“In its present form, as the ‘lungs of our city’, as a health resource for citizens not simply because of the recreational resource it provides, but for the vital role Langara plays in addressing the role of climate change in our city, preservation of the Langara Golf Course must be seen as a paramount consideration.”

The scientists were followed by a groups of baby boomer, Gen X and millennial age women who spoke about the safety that they were afforded in their daily walks on the trails surrounding Langara. “There are always eyes on us. We feel safe. Langara in its present form is an invaluable resource for us. Please do not develop the site.”

Next up: groups of young boys and girls, and seniors, who spoke about their love for golf, about how they could never afford the hundreds and thousands of dollars that would be required to join a private golf course, but that for as little as seven dollars they could afford several hours of play on the Langara Golf Course.

“Better that we should be outside and in the environment,” they averred, “than at home watching TV, or playing video games.”

And with that, the speakers / intervenors / community input portion of the Park Board Committee meeting drew to a close.


Aaron Jasper, Chairperson, Vancouver Park Board, 2012

During the course of the evening, several speakers who had presented to the Commissioners made mention of the fact that the Langara Golf Course was usable only six months of the year. Given the poor / virtually non-existent drainage on the course, users could not play the course when the autumn rainy season began, through the end of March, and sometimes April.

Without asking for remedy to such, Aaron Jasper had the following to say …

“I would like to make a motion asking staff to report back to the Board this upcoming early autumn, with recommendations and costing of installing a proper drainage system within the Langara golf course, such that the course might be used year-round. I would ask for the unanimous support from the Board for the motion I will put on the table.”

Aaron Jasper’s motion passed unanimously.


Sarah Blyth, multi-term Commissioner on the Vancouver Park Board

In a conversation VanRamblings had with former, multi-term Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Sarah Blyth earlier this week, she told us the following …

“From time to time, my Vision Park Board colleagues and I found ourselves in conflict with the Mayor, with city staff and our Vision colleagues on Council. Never once, though, were we bullied by the City Manager or the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, and most certainly not by our elected Vision colleagues on City Council.

The Mayor and the Vision Councillors realized that we had been elected by voters to fulfill a mandate to preserve, protect and enhance Vancouver’s parks and recreation system, and to work on behalf of all the citizens of our city to maintain the best parks and recreation system on the continent.”

Did Aaron Jasper, and his Vision Vancouver colleagues on the Park Board, follow the “instruction” of Penny Ballem and Mike Magee to pass a motion that would lead to the halving, at best, of green space on the Langara golf course? No, no, they did not. Instead, as it turned out, in the autumn of that year, the Board unanimously approved a motion from Mr. Jasper to have installed a new drainage system — at a cost of $4 million — on the Langara golf course property, allowing golfers to use the course year-round, more than doubling the revenue derived from Langara, easily “repaying” the initial $4 million restoration expenditure.

And what was the political fallout for Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioners Aaron Jasper, Trevor Loke, Sarah Blyth, Niki Sharma and Sarah Blyth?

Nada, zero, zilch.

The Vision Vancouver Commissioners on Park Board continued on representing the best interests of the citizens of Vancouver, unscathed and much admired.

At the conclusion of the 2014 Vancouver civic election, as the incumbent Vision Vancouver Commissioners chose not to seek another term, Vision Park Board candidate Catherine Evans topped the polls, on a newly reconstituted Vancouver Park Board that saw Michael Wiebe and Stuart Mackinnon elected as Greens on the Board,  with Non-Partisan Association candidate John Coupar re-elected to a further term in office, joined by NPA colleagues Sarah Kirby-Yung, Casey Crawford and Erin Shum, the four emerging as the new majority on the Vancouver Park Board.

What is being left unsaid in this column? Yes, you’re right.


Vancouver Mayor / autocrat “play ball with me, and my office, or consequences will be severe” Ken Sim

Unlike the autocratic “if you step out of line, we’ll end you” ABC Vancouver administration of Mayor Ken Sim, the Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association Park Boards were left alone by the Boards of Directors of each long serving Vancouver political party, as well as their respective party’s colleagues / elected representatives on Vancouver City Council — free to do their jobs as they best saw fit, the jobs they had been elected to perform, unbidden and unscathed.

For part 1 of this series, click on the following link …

#SaveOurParkBoard | Tender Moments of Change at Park Board, Pt 1

Click / tap on the graphic above to sign  the Save Our Park Board Petition started by Sarah Blyth

#VanPoli | Vancouver 2050 | The City of the Future

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A draft 30-year plan calls for limiting growth in Vancouver, and pushing new residents to the suburbs

All development decisions within the City of Vancouver that are currently being made by senior staff employed within the city’s Planning Department — currently slated to add more than 100,000 new residents to Vancouver, over the course of the next 30 years — is predicated on a rate of population growth that many commentators, and the most recent figures published by Statistics Canada, don’t jibe with population growth projections that are being made at Vancouver City Hall.

In an article published in The Vancouver Sun this past weekend, reporter Douglas Todd writes …

“In recent years about 12,000 more people have been annually moving out of Metro Vancouver for other parts of B.C. than have been moving into the metropolis. The vast majority of new arrivals into Metro Vancouver are foreign-born immigrants.”

Todd goes on to quote former provincial NDP MLA and current two-term Nanaimo Mayor, Leonard Krog.

“We have had lots of people from Alberta and the East cashing out and moving to Nanaimo — to get away from the crush and the smoke,” says Krog. “People are also fleeing Vancouver, and the Lower Mainland. Now it’s more common for people to ask why would you stay in the Lower Mainland when you can cash out on your $2-million house on a crowded Burnaby street, or $3 million Vancouver home and get a great $1 million home in Nanaimo?”

Krog says newcomers are pouring into Nanaimo for several reasons — affordable housing, less density, and a higher-quality lifestyle. “The strong overall shift of residents from other provinces, and from Vancouver or Metro Vancouver, to smaller B.C. cities, which have more young adults, is unsurprising,” writes Douglas Todd.

“Nanaimo’s rapid growth of two per cent a year”, Krog says, “is a result of a ‘perfect storm’ of conditions, including the attractiveness of the region’s oceanfront, university, airport, nearby ski mountains, climate and a lower cost of living.”

“It has all been amplified by the pandemic,” he said. “COVID-19 is helping many across Canada and in other parts of B.C. realize they might be able to permanently work out of their homes. So why not do it in a place that is pleasant and somewhat more affordable?”

If as lawyer, writer, and and community organizer Daniel Oleksiuk writes on the Sightline Institute website that population growth in Metro Vancouver will occur in the Metro Vancouver suburbs, and not in Vancouver, and if Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog is correct in his assertion that rather than remain in Vancouver, families are instead opting to move to smaller, more affordable cities such as Nanaimo, how can the Vancouver Planning Department justify a growth strategy, population growth projections, and the consequent tower-driven densification projects they are currently presenting to the members of Vancouver City Council for approval?

At Issue: Form of Development, and the Livability of Vancouver

Artistic rendering of the Esso gas station site at 3205 Arbutus, redeveloped into a mixed-use building

A deep issue of concern that has arisen for many, as Vancouver’s  Planning Department presents their plans to City Council, is “form of development”.

For the most part, if you take a look at many of the projects VanRamblings wrote about yesterday, they adhere to the ‘development at all cost’ ethos of the now discredited former Vision Vancouver civic administration, who were roundly and wholly turfed from office in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election: a plethora of greenhouse gas-emitting podium and tower-driven developments — whether they be in the northeast “forest of condos” False Creek neighbourhood, the newly-reimagined Oakridge Centre or nearby Heather Lands development, or in the southern sector of the Grandview Woodland neighbourhood’s ‘Safeway site’.

The question must be asked: whatever happened to the notion of ‘gentle density’?

Why is it that rather than construct high-rise condominum towers all along the Broadway Corridor, from Clark Drive all the way out to UBC, could we not opt instead for the kind of low-rise building illustrated directly above, in the proposed, neighbourhood friendly project located at West 16th Avenue and Arbutus Street?

Artistic rendering of a planned, environmentally-friendly wood construction building

Perhaps of even more importance to the stewards of our environment who sit on Vancouver City Council, why not mandate that future home construction be built employing sustainable, carbon-storing cross-laminated timber —  glued at perpendicular angles to make thick beams, and clearly visible in columns, beams, walls and ceilings? Wood construction has proven popular across a broad section of our developer, architect and contractor communities, who see building with wood as a way to increase density at a lower cost, while reducing environmental impact.

Now, that would be an innovation for our Vancouver City Council to truly consider.

Rowhouses such as the ones above are common in many cities around the world, but not in Vancouver

And what of fee-simple row housing , which architect Michael Geller argues for in an interview conducted by Carlito Pablo, in the October 6, 2021 issue of The Straight?

“In a fee-simple rowhouse or townhouse, there’s nothing owned by the association. The owners own their roof, their windows, the land under and around their townhouse. That means the individual owners are responsible for taking care of any lawn, painting the outside, fixing leaks in the roof, and shoveling the snow.”

Whatever happened to the notion of human-scale, gentle density townhouse construction, all the rage 40 & 50 years ago? Why, in recent years, has townhouse construction fallen so out of favour, as podium and high-rise tower-driven plinth construction has become the greenhouse gas-emitting building forme de la journée?

Vancouver Co-Housing, located on 33rd Avenue between Victoria Drive and Knight Street

And what about co-housing in Vancouver, housing that is family-supportive, senior-friendly and energy-efficient? For instance, Vancouver Co-Housing consists of 29 privately owned, fully equipped homes plus 2 rental units, in addition to a large and beautiful common house and outdoor common areas. This vibrant community is located on East 33rd Avenue between Victoria Drive and Knight Street.

The homes range from studios to one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom units – all with their own kitchens. The common house has an area of 6,500 sq ft. and includes a community kitchen, dining room, and lounge; activity rooms for children and teens; office areas; two guest rooms; a yoga studio; and rooftop gardens. As well, there are ground-level gardens, workshops, plus a courtyard and play area that encourage year-round social contact. All parking is underground.

By working together, Vancouver Co-Housing members are able to share amenities common to a traditional home and reduce the size of their private dwelling.


A 2014 Global BC video, identifying Vancouver as one of the high-rise capitals of the world

On July 24, 2014, during the lead up to the Vancouver civic election that year, VanRamblings published a column titled At Issue: Form of Development, and the Livability of Vancouver, which quoted a 2012 study conducted by University of British Columbia Chair of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, Patrick Condon, addressing the question of how Vancouver might reasonably approach the reduction of energy use and consequent greenhouse gas production in the city by at least 80 per cent by 2050, and how that goal might be accomplished.

The answer: the construction of compact, low-rise structures across the city, along its arterials and throughout its neighbourhoods, as a greener, more workable, more energy-efficient alternative to the present form of high-rise development that so captured the imagination of Vision Vancouver, as seems to be the case with our present Council. That 2014 VanRamblings column is well worth reading.

The indefatigable Patrick Condon, future — and absolutely necessary — Vancouver City Councillor

Again today, VanRamblings will leave you with the words of Patrick Condon …

“While it is true that high-rises, when combined in large numbers, create GHG-efficient districts, the buildings themselves are not as efficient as mid-rise buildings.

“High-rises are subject to the effects of too much sun and too much wind on their all-glass skins. And all-glass skins are, despite many improvements to the technology, inherently inefficient. Glass is simply not very good at keeping excessive heat out, or desirable heat in. High-rises, according to BC Hydro data, use almost twice as much energy per square metre as mid-rise structures.”

“High-rise buildings built largely of steel and concrete are less sustainable than low-rise and mid-rise buildings built largely of wood; steel and concrete produce a lot of GHG. Wood traps it. Concrete is 10 times more GHG-intensive than wood.”

Patrick Condon argued with heart and with purpose in 2014, as he does through until today, for the construction of thousands of primarily mid-rise wood frame mixed use commercial / residential buildings on Vancouver’s arterial streets.

And, most importantly, Patrick Condon argues for the retention of existing neighbourhood quality, and the supply of sufficient units to house the burgeoning wave of our elderly population, housing for young families, housing equity, and neighbourhood preservation, through the gentle infill of existing residential streets.