City Conversation #131 was first published 11-June-2024. (For a list of City Conversations by Brian Palmquist on CityHallWatch, please visit this page.) For more information see “This is the Rubicon for our local democracy in Vancouver, a point of no return.“
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The Vancouver Plan—can you spot the 22 neighbourhoods?
This may be my shortest City Conversation ever. A three minute time limit = about 500 words. Period.
I only have 3 minutes to explain why I am opposed to this report and the use of the Vancouver Plan as the basis for Vancouver’s Official Development Plan—our ODP. Given the 3-minute time limit, I will not be able to address the integration of the Vancouver Plan with Provincial Bills 44, 46 and 47, except to say that the undemocratic spirit of that legislation, which is being resisted by other Mayors and Councils around the province, is echoed in this report’s turning its back on Vancouver’s electors.
Notwithstanding my almost 50 years as an architect and urban designer in Vancouver, I and my City Conversations blog are known more locally for our attention to the numbers underlying the Vancouver Plan, the Broadway Plan and others—so we will focus there—I only do the numbers because nobody at City Hall seems to bother with the ones that matter.
There are currently 22 official Neighbourhoods in Vancouver. The Vancouver Plan recognizes none of them—zero—they show up on no Vancouver Plan mapping—they, their character, history and vibrancy are all simply gone—erased. They are to be replaced with just seven “Neighbourhood types,” delineated on the fuzzy plan above on Page 55 of the Vancouver Plan. Five of our existing 22 neighbourhoods appear nowhere at all in the Plan’s 168 pages, not even in the Acknowledgements, which is the only place most of the other 17 neighbourhoods appear—that’s more than 1/5th of the city that’s been completely ignored in the Plan, with the other 4/5ths given very short shrift.
Vancouver currently has about 70 distinct zoning districts, not including its 700+ CD-1 spot rezonings, where the rules are made up literally on the spot. The Vancouver Plan wants to replace those 70 zoning districts with just seven “Neighbourhood types.” That’s 1 new for 10 current.
So Killarney becomes the same as Sunrise as Marpole as Dunbar as West Point Grey as Grandview-Woodland. Oakridge, the Broadway Plan area, Strathcona and the West End also become the same as each other. Need I point out that the reason we have 22 neighbourhoods is that we have at least that many distinct and valuable character areas in the city. But no longer with the Vancouver Plan.
When the Vancouver Plan/ODP has eviscerated the life and soul of our city, how do we ever get any of it back? When city staff discard 70 planning studies, design guidelines and neighbourhood plans just in the Broadway Plan area, how can there be any hope? When this report in Appendix A proposes a “governance structure” for the Official Development Plan with absolutely zero input from the community and its neighbourhoods, how can we dare to hope for a democratic future? Answer: we cannot; we are lost. Our city is destroyed.
This Council and this Director of Planning did not approve the Vancouver Plan. I urge you to send it back with direction to revisit the Vancouver Plan process with real community engagement. By all means ask the province for more time—we are, after all, the largest city in the province. We need to get this right and so far we are not.
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City Conversations
City Conversations is all about the future of Vancouver and similar communities.
Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, still teaching, writing and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 50-year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and hoping to start in 2024 a book about how we can Embrace, Enhance and Evolve the cities we love.
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