An urban planner & former developer offers Council his comments re: Broadway Plan

 Arnie Wise is a former developer who lives in Kitsilano. He recently sent the following comments to Council. I share many of his concerns and observations, although I would note that the city has recently announced a new policy related to the relocation of existing tenants in affordable housing. A key aspect of this is that tenants who are evicted can move back into new projects at the same rent. This of course sounds admirable, but one needs to question whether developers will agree to this, and whether former tenants will want to return what might be 3 or 4 years after they move out.

During a recent interview with Stephen Quinn on CBC Early Edition, Theresa O'Donnell, the chief planner for Vancouver said that one of the reasons why the city is proposing such high densities is to help make this tenant relocation strategy happen. While I hope the city's plan will be modified to reduce the number of very high FSR towers by introducing more high density 'street wall' and other 'European Style' design concepts like this Amsterdam streetscape, I also hope I will live long enough to see how this relocation policy works out!

Here are Arnie Wise's comments:

Good morning Mayor Stewart & Members of City Council,

In the run up to a municipal election, we used to call this the “silly season”.

The Broadway Plan is a perfect example.

Respectfully,

ARNY WISE

urban planner / retired developer

	Broadway Plan
	The famous urbanist Jane Jacobs would be appalled by this Broadway Plan, because it has only one brutal objective - increased density.   This Plan ignores the communities on the ground where folks meet, walk, play, shop, bike, go to parks, schools & gyms. These are the community amenities that make a neighbourhood function and thrive. The Broadway Plan's rather simple & flawed bird's eye view of city planning ignores the mosaic of communities along the Broadway Corridor, that make up the City of Vancouver.  It's a good idea to Increase density in nodes around subway stops, but the rest of the neighbourhood need not be a sea of towers. That isn't how an organic city grows & functions.  This plan seems to have been designed by a city planner who has never lived in Vancouver and is out of touch with Vancouver's reality of being a series of local communities and neighbourhoods tied together by arterial networks. And any boosterism appeal to being "world class" because of high density is laughable if it wasn't so sad, in that Vancouver is the least affordable City in North America and the third least affordable City in the world. That's Vancouver's unenviable distinction as being "world class".  "World class" housing prices in Vancouver are forcing essential workers earning good salaries like nurses, firefighters, police & teachers to flee the city to the suburbs, and commute, spewing harmful gases into the environment, because they can't afford to live in the City they serve. This is also a strain on Metro's transportation network. This plan never mentions the word "affordable" in the midst of the worst housing affordability crisis in a generation.   As if more density and more supply will magically mean more affordable. According to Douglas Porter the Chief Economist of the Bank of Montreal, the idea that more supply will lower home prices is a self serving myth touted by the real estate industry to justify high housing prices. Recommendations: 1. Reject the Broadway Plan and send it back to staff for a major revision and rethink with different objectives - namely affordable housing, community amenities, a liveable scale, as well as increased density. 2. Direct staff to scale down the neighbourhood heights and densities beyond the immediate subway stop nodes, to respect the existing neighbourhoods and communities. 3. Require 50% affordable housing from the developer on all site specific up-zonings, in exchange for more density.   Why should the City give a gift to landowners without the landowner giving something back to the City and the Community in the form of affordable housing ?
Name:	ARNY WISE, urban planner / retired developer
Which neighbourhood do you live in?	Kitsilano