City Conversation #142 was first published 21-Nov-2024. (For a list of City Conversations by Brian Palmquist on CityHallWatch, please visit this page.) In this post, he is referring to a rally at City Hall on November 23, 2024. More details here.
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I am privileged to have recently returned from a vacation to Australia. Despite its unique flora and fauna, it’s a land with more similarities to Canada than we might think, especially regarding the housing affordability and neighbourhood destruction challenges that bring us here today.
I visited Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, which Forbes business magazine describes as “impossibly unaffordable,” as well as Brisbane, which the magazine describes as “severely unaffordable.” In between visits to koala and kangaroo sanctuaries, I saw what four towers per block, what five towers per block looks like—and it ain’t pretty. I only started paying attention to these city’s planning after my second four-star hotel room had as its view the wall of another high-rise less than 20 feet away.
Brisbane’s four towers per block
Local, state and federal politicians in Australia are saying the same things as they are in Canada— “build it and they will move right in and, oh yes, a bit will be affordable.” Except in Australian cities as well as here, costs of rent and ownership in new buildings dramatically outstrip incomes—the rental vacancy rate in Brisbane is less than 1%, salaries and wages are stagnant and rental costs are quoted per room, not per suite, which may be an important detail as at least one Lower Mainland landlord has been recently caught subdividing existing apartments in order to dramatically raise rents.
The reason for this introduction from away is to put the lie to the assertions that if we just build a lot more, everything will be more affordable. In fact, there are no scientific or economic studies—by scientific I mean peer reviewed, which is the standard for true knowledge— no studies that support the Abundant Housing Vancouver or Vancouver Area Neighbourhoods Association or Vancouver Planning Department assertions that building more results in affordability. There are no such studies in Canada, none in Australia or New Zealand, nor in the US or the UK—nowhere in the English-speaking world. Period. There are narratives. There are unscientific assumptions. But there is no supporting science or economics. None. But there are more and more studies indicating the contrary—that dramatically increasing density does nothing for affordability, in fact destroys it for many existing residents.
Some of you may know that more than two years ago Stephen Bohus and I created the first computer model of the Broadway Plan. I read the Plan as soon as it was published and Stephen modelled for me the results we predicted might arise. We were heavily criticized by the then-mayor, by the development industry, even by architects.
And yet, after just two years into this so-called 30-year plan, Stephen and I have sadly been shown to be correct, with more than 90% of the first dozens of proposed rezonings located in exactly the places and at exactly the heights we predicted. 40% of the thirty year plan’s targets are in play in just two years—a bonanza for developers, despair for the affected neighbourhoods.
But it gets worse. City staff are about to produce an update to the Plan in which they will recommend that the 2 towers per block in the original Broadway Plan that we modelled to criticism and disdain be replaced with 4 or even 5 towers per block. The illustration above shows what 4 or 5 high-rises per blocks looks like in Brisbane—let’s not forget the windows facing walls 20 feet away. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t spacious. And it sure ain’t affordable.
The province has exacerbated these conditions with its Bills 44, 46 and 47 which mandate ever higher density largely at the cost of affordable rental and ownership homes for folks who are not wealthy and have spent their adult lives living in and contributing to the Vancouver that is now imperilled by the unsupported and unscientific claims that “If we build it they will move right in.”
The recently blocked off steps to city hall are a metaphor for the effect of these bills and Vancouver’s Council—to effectively block any public input to a spreading pox of spot rezonings that are already destroying neighbourhoods, evicting long-time residents and threatening all of the community amenities that used to be funded by modest redevelopment. “Growth pays for growth” has been replaced by “Lost affordable homes, lost dignity, lost community pay for the cancerous growth that profits the few at a cost to the many.”
There are alternative solutions that some of the following speakers will touch on. Many have been successfully implemented elsewhere and here in Vancouver in the past. They lie in our own recent history, forgotten or never learned by the current generation of politicians and city staff. Their adoption requires the bold leadership we currently lack. We can do this and we can do this better by working together in our neighbourhoods and in this city where we love to live.
The post above is 815 words, about a five minute read, two minutes longer than what the Vancouver City Council now permits for public presentations at its meetings.
Brian Palmquist writes on the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of the Musqueam people. He 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.” A glutton for punishment, he recently started writing a book about how we can Embrace, Enhance and Evolve the places we love to live.
