Previous candidate for Vancouver City Council Stephanie Smith may have said it bluntly and directly on the platform formerly known as Twitter:
“Vancouver does not have a view crisis. It has a leadership crisis.Exploiting the affordable housing crisis to give away cherished public assets is misdirection and pandering, not leadership.”
On Wednesday September 5 Vancouver City Council in their “Standing Committee on Policy and Strategic Priorities” ran through an agenda item called “Modernizing the City’s View Protection Guidelines to Unlock New Housing and Economic Opportunities”. You can take a look at that motion here.
There was lots of chat on social media trying to figure out what exactly city council was doing, and it is clear that Council did not really know either.
There is a generation that does not know that the view cone policy was brought in to ensure that the views to the mountains and the ocean were available to every citizen and not privatized in luxury condo buildings blocking the major views. It is a public amenity that showcases the surroundings, and is highly regarded by other cities worldwide.
Part of what City of Vancouver should be doing for all residents is educating them to understand how the city works, and what the ramification of decisions are to how citizens live their lives. But as previously written, the ABC majority of Council who were elected only last October have wasted no time to show that they prefer a top down approach in their decision making-that they know better about things than the residents, and there’s no need to educate or explain. There’s also no need to conduct any public process, even on something that is as important to the public as the access to mountain and sea views.
It is no surprise that anybody without secure accommodation would immediately make the case for getting rid of Vancouver’s View Protection Guidelines, which was “sold” by these Council members as hindering affordability. Indeed, the motion put forward by Councillor Meiszner states that city staff 1. review the View Protection Guidelines to figure out how much additional housing, job space and “public benefits” could be built if view cones were scrapped; and 2. for staff to report back on that work by the end of the year, with a full report expected in the Spring of 2024.
This report (which will be done by the planning department) will also include a list of all the “enforced” (yes they used the word “enforced”) views and view cones in the city (which is kind of strange because all of that information is available already online right here.)
The last motion states that staff are to determine what “framed” views are “eliminated”, and Council will review those by the end of the year.
Council dallied about using the word “eliminate” for the view cones they are going to axe, and instead used the word “removed”. (It is the same thing.)
The complete amended motion is below.
But before you think this means that the ABC City Council is going to find you an affordable place with a view downtown before they are leaving office, there’s some other news: they are not. What they have just done is open up a pandora’s box of potential density for developers, and you need to know that it’s for supertall towers that will be marketed offshore, it’s not for local Vancouver renters.
It is bluntly obvious that this Council is being influenced by developers that have purchased these sites knowing about the current restrictions-they bought these sites at the maximum amount buildable for the site under the view cones.
But what Council also does not appear to know (and they just fired the Director of Planning so she could not tell them) is that any developer within a view cone that is going to redevelop simply does a negotiation with the planning department to have that density transferred to an adjacent site, or another accommodation made. There’s no reason to build into the view.
As Co-Director of Planning Larry Beasley stated in the Vancouver Sun, getting rid of the View Cones will NOT result in any new affordable housing.
“Whenever there was an intrusion of the corridor, the city established a policy that allowed developers to transfer that density elsewhere, noting that view cones limit the potential height and shape of buildings. Of hundreds of the buildings we approved near the view cones during my time as a planner, there were only one or two that were really tricky. The rest made their buildings a different shape to accommodate the lost square footage, or sold their density to a developer down the street.”
But here we are, with a to the right developer friendly majority on Council that need to look at the substantial work that was done on view corridors in 2010 in this report. A public process engaged over 500 people in three open houses and included businesses and residents in October, 2010. At that time a “General Policy for Higher Buildings” was established outside the view corridors for buildings of outstanding architecture that were landmarks and visually exciting “entrances into the downtown”.
This report also shows the complexity of work that goes into the view cones-and this report in 2010 actually created three more view cones after consultation with the public to preserve views from the south shore of False Creek to the north shore mountains-the same views Councillor Meiszner denounces as “full of sailing boat masts”.
There is clearly no overall plan by this Council to place or shape density unless developers downtown want it. Why does this Council want to increase residents downtown instead of supporting density in other neighbourhoods which need new populations for schools shops and services? If any “affordable” rental apartments are ever made after this Council rips out the view cones for developers, they will be bachelors and small one bedrooms. Why not locate new development close to transit in other Vancouver neighbourhoods where two and three bedroom units for people with children can live? Who is going to supply the additional community centres and parks and pay for the infrastructure to service these proposed supertall new towers?
Who is this Council serving?
images:VanSun,cityofvancouver, JustinMcElroy
The View From Vancouver 