Scot Hein to Mayor and Council on the Vancouver Plan (July 6 Council decision)

With permission, we are sharing this letter to Mayor and Council regarding the citywide Vancouver Plan, which goes to Council the morning of July 6, 2022, for staff presentation, questions from Council to staff, public speakers, debate, and final decision. Scot Hein is a retired architect, former senior urban designer at the City of Vancouver, adjunct professor of Urban Design at UBC, lecturer at Simon Fraser University, and founding board member of the Urbanarium. The letter is also posted on Spacing Vancouver (http://spacing.ca/vancouver/2022/07/05/the-vancouver-plan-a-letter-to-council-from-abroad/).

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Comments from Scot Hein to Mayor and Council on The Vancouver Plan

July 4, 2022

Dear Mayor and Council, thank you for this opportunity to share just a few thoughts on the recently released draft Vancouver Plan 2050 that you will consider on July 6^th.

I want to acknowledge the well-intentioned, extraordinary, effort by staff to produce a first iteration that advances such a timely, complex undertaking.  From specific experience working on versions of this plan over my 20 years at city hall, I appreciate that this is very hard work.  It is difficult at the best of times to reconcile competing interests within such a large, well intentioned, bureaucracy but especially hard given the contradictory external advice offered during public engagement.  I have a deep appreciation for this challenge, especially given these recent COVID years.  I personally know most staff that have been leading this work and want to commend them.

I continue to strongly believe that a citywide “plan”, or perhaps “conceptual urban framework” as a better descriptor, is necessary to shape growth with clarity and predictability in the coming years.  I have always imagined the process of producing such a plan as “proactive and aspirational” with meaningful public engagement building the necessary capacities throughout the city to fuel implementation over many years.  Which is to say, implementation cannot solely rely on the public purse.  We must strategically set up the prospect for local initiatives that advance the ideas and passions of Vancouverites who love where they live, work and play.  I had always hoped that the process of making such a plan would cultivate “community champions”.

This is an important idea, as the plan must strongly resonate so that it is perceived as “honorable” and “relevant”.   The hard work that is necessary to achieve this outcome, despite the appreciated efforts to date, has not yet been done. 

The “plan” before you is not yet honorable or relevant, but it can be, which is where I will focus my comments to you.

The Origins of the Plan Diagram

The graphic representation of the plan is hard to visually decipher, even for those who are familiar with representational planning diagrams.  Further, and my first point of emphasis, this diagram does not assert, or even remind us, that Vancouver’s biggest and best idea is that we are “A City of Neighborhoods”.  Longstanding neighborhood boundaries, that residents and business owners self-identify with, have been omitted in favor of a “high level generic overlay” that does not capture the special qualities embedded in local context that have evolved over decades of practicing “pride of place”. 

Staff might say in response that “trust us, this more detailed work will come later”.  I hope you can appreciate the great potential in this moment to re-build civic trust through plan co-creation, and then co-implementation, yet the diagram visually conveys that such special, local distinction might be summarily dismissed in favor of a less than sophisticated approach to landing new capacities.  I believe you must address this lack of trust before you formally endorse any plan.  There are no guarantees that any of you will return to ensure that staff is directed to conduct this important more detailed work that will give the necessary additional clarity and certainty to all neighborhoods.   Trust is everything.   

In simpler terms, we must get this guiding diagram right before we move forward.  If not, we will all be fighting the diagram, and its perceived lack of integrity, for decades.

Secondly, such a real or perceived top down diagrammatic representation is symbolic of the lack of deep and meaningful local engagement that would capture distinction, and community insight, thereby making the process more relevant and honorable.  Despite the challenges of COVID, we must make time for this hard work to ensure that the approved diagram thoughtfully propels us forward.   My urban design students are taught to lead an exercise with local community groups where we co-discover the “DNA” (Distinguished Neighborhood Attributes) of a community.  These walkshops are highly productive events that symbolically give the community an opportunity to express what is important, even sacrosanct, while also “aspirational” in imagining a shared future that makes room for others, especially more affordable housing.  I should note that, during walkshops with the community, we are always able to proactively identify strategic sites to receive greater density.     

While there may have been some cursory mapping similar to this exercise, a more pervasive, substantive engagement is necessary to test and iterate the current plan diagram assumptions before formal approval.  I’ll note that this work is not hard, nor time consuming, and I have over 100 Masters of Urban Design and Planning Students standing at the ready to support staff to complete this work.

Balancing Top Down and Bottom Up

How about we develop another citywide plan scenario that builds from this diagram and see where the conversation takes us:

Image Credit:  Vancouver School Board

As the basis for plan iteration, this elegant “urban quilt” of Vancouver’s 119 public school catchments would motivate a different conceptual approach/value set that emphasizes more intimate and memorable community experience.  It looks nothing like the draft plan diagram before you.  Each school catchment could be further mapped for its DNA and locally serving shopping proximity, towards a deeper appreciation of locally tailored built form approaches that support a more socially intensive future grounded in “making community”. 

The Vancouver Plan, and its strategic guiding diagram, must make our neighborhoods stronger, not mute them via a more generic, simplistic approach that does not recognize the unique qualities that each neighborhood contributes to the quilt.

The diagram should therefore look more like a quilt.   The act of graphically capturing the qualities of this quilt of neighborhoods would ensure a greater depth of understanding by all involved in moving the plan forward.  Greater depth of understanding will lend greater integrity to the plan.  And a plan diagram, expressive of greater integrity, will build trust.

And trust is everything.

Let me go further.  It is at the experiential scale of the school catchments (quilt pieces) that convene community life on a daily basis.  It is the schools where lifelong friendships develop.  It is the schools where young people self identify with a sense of place.  It is the schools that cultivate social capital (I like the phrase “opportunities for barn-raising”).  It is the schools that are locally poised to support the mom and pop shops and the Business Improvements Area interests.  The schools provide locally serving recreational open space 24/7/365.  And Halloween night is the best night of the year because you trick or treat in “your neighborhood”.   We just need to find room for more trick-or-treaters by being clever about where and how we add more affordable housing.

And a final point, 119 quilt pieces means we already have a 5-Minute City.  Why go for a 10 minute, or certainly 15-minute city, when we are already the envy of the world with our equally distributed former streetcar grid as “5 minute armature” that is poised to receive much more housing and jobs.   Note:  I was honored when DOP Gil Kelly used my 5-minute city diagram that was produced as the city’s senior urban designer when he presented to council to secure the initial funding to launch the citywide plan program.  It appears we have now lost out way given such early prospect to strengthen our 5-minute walkable proximity.

Urban Systems and Fabric

This moment offers all of us the great potential to weave/integrate/strengthen ecological, food security, recreational, social/cultural/historic, movement, jobs and housing for all, but not at the expense of neighborhood integrity.  It is the intentional act of strengthening such integrity, in a way that is recognized by all stakeholders to be relevant and honorable that will reveal growth strategies that will be embraced by local constituents.  This proactive engagement hard work simply needs to be done before a citywide plan can be formalized.

And by more proactive, creative engagement, an array of new building types can be aligned more specifically to the inherent potential of each school catchment in a way that opens up much more affordable housing through the market under adjusted zoning.  There is absolutely no need to throw out the zoning by-law, or build our city through the expensive and cumbersome re-zoning process.  A more socially productive approach to entitlements, that are aggressive towards housing need while calibrated to neighborhood integrity, is all that is necessary.  And there will be no shortage of future growth capacity.  And we know how to do this work.

People First

Such aspirational, visually seductive, big planning diagrams as you will consider July 6^th may win awards but do not necessarily reflect the necessary hard work to support the daily lived experience of those on the ground.  We should be making plans for people first. 

I recommend that a second citywide plan diagram be produced that starts with people and place, at the scale of the community “heart” (local school catchment and nearby local shopping).  This alternative approach will ensure relevance and honor while proactively revealing specific built form strategies that will deliver the housing capacities we need to address our affordability challenges.  This approach, an approach that strengthens the neighborhood assets we have, will be more productive at generating the necessary social capital we will need at times of crises.  This neighborhood-centric approach will ensure we will be resilient given the expanded potential for sharing with new residents and business owners.

My recommendation is to receive the work to date as “foundational” for the purposes of another iterative round of deeper engagement.  After this engagement, further reflection for the purposes of comparison, and potential integration, should be completed before the next council votes to formalize.  The overarching diagram must properly reflect our shared aspirations.  And we can do this work while building community capacities.  Thoughtful iteration with another round of work will get us there. 

Please do not formalize yet, rather wait for greater local insight and narrative to influence the citywide plan values and related diagrammatic representation.

Thank you for your consideration and initiative to take on this important work.

scot hein

Retired Architect MAIBC
Registered Architect USA
Professor of Urban Design, UBC
Lecturer, SFU City Program
Founding Board Member of the Vancouver Urbanarium Society
Board Member of Small Housing BC
Former Senior Urban Designer City of Vancouver 2004 – 2014
RAIC Architectural Advocate Award Winner