daphne bramham: building the best communities depends on the wisdom of many
fifty years ago this summer, ubc architecture students ...
5 minute read
stanley king drew this images based on surveys of close to 1,000 people who were asked to describe a perfect day in an imagined false creek community.
stanley king
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fifty years ago this summer, ubc architecture students spent weekends on the industrial wasteland of vancouver’s south shore of false creek talking to people about what their perfect day in an ideal community might look like.
during the week, they did the same downtown.
to spark the conversations that they had with close to 1,000 people, they showed them 94 cards of coloured drawings done by their professor, stanley king.
they got them to sort the images of various activities into two piles — things they do or would like to and things they don’t or wouldn’t. from there, the students asked people to talk about public amenities, what kind of homes should be in their ideal community, and what kind of people would live there.
funded by a federal youth grant, the responses were subsequently used by planners and politicians to develop the waterfront community of false creek south.
built mostly on city-owned, leasehold land, there are no single-family homes. instead, there’s a mix of townhouses, low-rise condos, rent-geared-to-income co-ops, specially built homes for people with disabilities, and low-income rentals for families and seniors.
vehicle traffic is limited to encourage walking and cycling. there’s a school, a few offices, shops and plenty of green space.
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at one point, the new york times called it the best neighbourhood in north america.
this little trip down nostalgia lane was prompted by two very different things.
when i was cleaning out files, i found some of the 1973 images that planner stanley king given me in 2011 when people were just starting to worry about what might happen when the majority of the false creek land leases run out in 2036.
the second is premier david eby’s promise-threat to override municipalities’ planning processes to ensure that affordable housing is built more quickly. he backed it up earlier this month with virtue-signalling legislation that ensures 129 units of supportive housing will be built at the edge of his own riding.
the legislation ended a resident group’s request for a judicial review, even though arbutus place had been approved by two separate councils after they’d received hundreds of submissions.
the 12-storey building on city-owned land will be close to public transit. it’s adjacent to a private elementary school, a park and the arbutus greenway.
within days of the legislation, b.c. housing purchased of a 12-storey, 115-unit seniors’ residence that will be renovated for people without homes or living in single-room occupancy hotels on the downtown eastside.
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it’s surrounded by a mix of older high- and low-rise rental apartment building and condos, many of which were built when south granville still had mom-and-pop grocery stores with fruits, vegetables and flowers spilling out onto the sidewalk.
now, the only grocery store within easy walking distance is meinhardt fine foods, a gourmet shop ironically owned by western canada buy-low food lp. of course, the recent addition of value village to what was once a high-end shopping district may be a sign of things to come.
both developments have been hailed as a triumph over nimbyism and a victory for yimbyism.
it’s a false and frighteningly simplistic narrative that avoids important questions.
is this the best form of housing for people with complex needs, who require high levels of support? does this location give them the best chance to thrive?
are these developments simply the most expedient options available to an increasingly beleaguered government?
of course when it comes to the latter, the homelessness crisis is so deep and has gone on so long that expediency is far better than the nothingness that’s come before it.
but it shows how far we’ve drifted from the kind of community planning that was possible up until 30 years ago, when the federal government quit funding social housing. it was planning that helped make vancouver one of the world’s most livable cities.
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what’s lost in the us-versus-them narrative is nuance and, perhaps, opportunities for better communities, not only ones with more homes.
the kitsilano coalition — the alleged black hats in the nimby-yimby narrative — didn’t oppose social housing. it proposed a lower percentage of supportive housing and a broader mix of people including women, children, seniors and people living with disabilities.
the same thing happened to grandview-woodland residents. they spent five years working with the city to come up with a community plan in 2016 that called for more density and more affordable housing.
when that plan was tossed aside, they were called nimbys for opposing the massive rezoning of nearly 500 blocks that allows 40 storey buildings on broadway and 20-storey buildings on nearby side streets with little consideration given to schools, parks or other amenities. they also feared rents in the new buildings will be unaffordable for most of the people displaced.
they were also called nimbys for opposing a revised westbank group plan for 438 units in three towers at broadway and commercial. only 93 units were at below-market rental rates, the daycare from the first iteration was gone and public space minimized.
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sometimes with virtuous enthusiasm, yimbys lose sight of the fact that more isn’t synonymous with better. sometimes less is.
for proof, they need only look to the concentration of low-income housing, poverty and addictions services on the downtown eastside.
yimbys could play a starring role regionally because not everyone needing supportive housing grew up in vancouver. yet, it has more units than the rest of the region combined. at 7,191 units, that’s nearly 10 times the number in surrey which has roughly the same population.
worse are the nimby victory grounds of delta, west vancouver, white rock and pitt meadows. there is no supportive housing there at all.
building more houses shouldn’t be the endgame. the goal should be to build goldilocks neighbourhoods with homes for everyone.
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