gc
07 July 2003, 03:47 PM
Maria Cook
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, July 03, 2003
What Ottawa can learn from 2010 Olympic host Vancouver. Bringing people downtown and keeping the cars out has helped make Vancouver a world model for urban living. Maria Cook reports.
It used to be that Toronto was held up as "the city that works." Not any more.
Vancouver, the city awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics yesterday, has emerged as a world model for urban design and quality of life. Blessed with stunning ocean and mountain views, Vancouver is now also envied for its ability to develop attractive high-density residential neighbourhoods downtown.
"We have gone through a very dramatic process of rethinking and restructuring over the last 15 years, driven by urban design," says Larry Beasley, the city's co-director of planning.
He has presided over the doubling of Vancouver's downtown peninsula population, from 40,000 to 80,000, in the last 10 years. It is projected to increase to 110,000 within the next decade.
Vancouver has been ranked by the United Nations, Economist magazine and major executive relocation firms as one of the best places in the world to live. American writer Robert D. Kaplan, in An Empire Wilderness, called it a rebuke to American cities "where the automobile ruled and often the only people sitting on sidewalk benches were homeless."
Greater Vancouver has a population of about two million, with about 650,000 living in the city of Vancouver.
The city's waterfront redevelopment, limit on car capacity, slim towers that don't block views, child-friendly rowhouses, and interesting, safe streets, have all attracted a steady stream of international politicians, architects and planners who want to learn how to fix their cities.
Mr. Beasley recently gave a public lecture in Ottawa titled "Learning from Lotusland."
"The message is that you can think of the city primarily as something that can be designed, and not just the result of the economics of the moment, or the politics of the day," he said.
Ottawa's new official plan aims to limit costly sprawl by restricting development within already-serviced lands.
With a projected population of 1.2 million in 2021, the plan says the city will need 172,000 new homes. About 60,000 of them should be built inside the Greenbelt, including 9,500 in the inner city.
Vancouver may offer some answers on how to live close together comfortably.
"I find Ottawa a very urbane city, approachable and attractive," says Mr. Beasley. "I think that a strategy well-thought-out and designed can realize the incredible potential here."
After an explosion of growth in the 1980s, and aided by a tide of Asian capital, Vancouver city council adopted a new central area plan in 1991, aimed at luring people, including families, downtown.
The enticement is a lifestyle more exciting and convenient, yet as safe and secure as the suburbs -- going to the theatre, being minutes from great restaurants and shops, biking to work or taking an evening stroll.
Because the city is bordered by mountains and ocean, this has led to intensive, high-rise, high-density development.
"We're learning density is not this nasty evil component of city building," says Ralph Segal, a city of Vancouver senior development planner and urban designer.
"When you get more people utilizing the infrastructure of a neighbourhood they function more efficiently."
Some eight million square feet of excess office capacity and old railyards along the waterfront were converted to residential development. The south end of Granville Street and the Yaletown warehouse district were transformed, and new communities sprung up on False Creek and Coal Harbour.
"If you start intruding upon areas that people care about, they kick you out," says Mr. Beasley. "We tried instead to go to areas that were very underutilized or industrial."
Over the past decade, Vancouver has built or approved more than 150 high-rise towers on the downtown peninsula, many of them pre-sold before the sod is turned.
Such buildings can be 40-storeys high with a 2500-square-foot floorplate to maximize the views that are protected by city policies. There is at least 80 feet between towers.
Some 26 hectares of new parks have been added downtown, tied together by a walkway-bikeway system. The water's edge is dedicated to public use.
Because the value of rezoning land for high density development is so great, Vancouver requires developers to pay for public amenities such as parks, community centres, schools, social housing, walkways and bike paths, day care centres, libraries and public art.
For example, in the North Shore False Creek area, formerly Expo lands, the public amenities are worth $250 million. "Our city could never ask taxpayers to put that kind of money into new communities," says Mr. Beasley.
The city requires 20 per cent of new residential development to be low-income housing, and a quarter must be designed for families with children.
Ottawa Councillor Elisabeth Arnold, who represents Somerset ward, says land values in Ottawa haven't reached the same intensity as Vancouver, making it difficult to look to developers to contribute to amenities.
In Vancouver, the scarcity of land, proximity to water, high demand, and ability to develop at high densities mean that developers can recover costs as well as make a rich profit. Zoning for development in Ottawa does increase land values, but not to the same degree as Vancouver, and developers here often see development charges as obstacles to being able to build.
Ottawa won't need a lot of highrises to achieve density, adds Ms. Arnold. It can be done with five-or-six-storey buildings.
"I think the policies that we have in our official plan are very similar to Vancouver," she says. "It's a matter of getting the resources to build some of that infrastructure and the buy-in from the development industry."
She says Ottawa could learn from Vancouver's methods to help achieve official plan goals. "That's where Vancouver seems a bit ahead of us."
In Vancouver, design guidelines set the form.
Rows of townhouses hide the bases of high-rise towers. Blank walls are not tolerated. The city insists on doors, porches, stoops, windows and terraces at sidewalk eye level. An advisory panel of the city's distinguished architects provides peer review for new buildings.
"At street level these towers almost disappear from one's perception," says Mr. Beasley.
Neighbourhood sidewalks are lined with grass boulevards and at least a double row of trees on each side to tame the harsh concrete. Gardens and courtyards provide privacy and quiet.
Individual garage doors are banned from the streetscape. Almost all parking is underground, even for new supermarkets, except for short term, curbside parking on local streets. Legislation controls size and location of commercial signs.
The city has allowed a variety of building types, including residential/commercial. One big-box store has underground parking as well as 1,000 housing units above.
A plan for a sustainable community with new approaches to recycling, sewage treatment, and a focus on walking and transit is drawing international attention.
Groups of city employees called neighbourhood integrated service teams work with communities on issues such as unsightly premises or seniors complaining about noise from a pub.
Vancouver takes a "co-operative planning approach" that seeks consensus between staff, politicians, developers and citizens, and employs a discretionary regulatory framework that emphasizes guidelines and incentives over regulations.
For example, in exchange for an increase in the height of a proposed tower (which was determined to have minimal impact on views or shadow), a developer agreed to dedicate 0.48 hectares of land for a public park in a park-deficient area.
There is no British Columbia version of the Ontario Municipal Board, which means that Vancouver decisions are final, with appeals being rare. In Ottawa, too many developments wind up in costly, bitter OMB fights.
"The rezoning process seldom fails, public hearings are relatively calm, and most citizens seem satisfied with the results," Mr. Beasley has said.
But is downtown living affordable? According to Mr. Segal, it ranges from $100,000 for a studio apartment to $2 million for a penthouse. Rowhouses cost $200,000 to $800,000, with waterfront commanding a premium.
Trevor Boddy, the Vancouver Sun architecture critic and a former Carleton University architecture professor, points out that despite policies about mixed neighbourhoods, the city has concentrated social housing in downtown's east side, creating the worst slum in Canada.
"We're turning our downtown into fun city for baby boomers," he adds. "Soon, there will be no place for corporate headquarters or retail."
While Mr. Boddy praises the city's urban planning, he criticizes some of the new buildings as "bottom dollar architecture" by "designers who are somewhat less than world class."
In Ottawa, he suggests intensification around Preston Street as well as along Beechwood Avenue, Carling Avenue, Baseline Road and Bank Street south.
Vancouver is the only big city in North America without a major freeway. The provincial government's 1998 decision -- cheered by Vancouver council and North Shore municipalities -- to fix the Lion's Gate bridge instead of building a bigger bridge or a tunnel has resulted in a downtown that's not overrun with cars.
"We will not expand capacity into the city, not even by one lane," says Mr. Beasley.
The number of vehicles entering downtown actually began to drop in the late 1990s. At the same time, the number of pedestrian trips rose by more than 50 per cent from 1994 to 1999, and some 8,000 bicycle trips are made downtown each day.
"At the same time as not expanding the road network they also invested heavily in public transit," says Ms. Arnold, praising the system of ferry, bus and Skytrain.
Unlike Ontario, British Columbia matches federal infrastructure money for transit.
"You cannot have high-density development without an excellent transit system and expect people to have a good quality of life," she says. "We need funding of rapid (light-rail) transit into downtown."
Nelson Edwards, a City of Ottawa urban designer, says that the big "wow" projects in Vancouver, such as Yaletown and Coal Harbour, are new areas designed from scratch.
The only thing comparable in Ottawa is the planned mixed-use redevelopment of LeBreton Flats.
"Our redevelopment is site by site," he says. "There's higher pressure in Ottawa to fit in."
Because of height and view protection "buildings become a little squatter, a little fatter. Because our sites are small there's pressure to fill them. It's hard to provide amenities such as pocket parks and wider sidewalks."
Mr. Edwards says city officials should explore the powers that the committee of adjustment has in negotiating public amenities from developers when higher densities are allowed.
"If we're going to offer such things as extra floors and enhanced development area, (which) is creating wealth for that site, we should ask what is a reasonable public benefit that should arise from that?"
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, July 03, 2003
What Ottawa can learn from 2010 Olympic host Vancouver. Bringing people downtown and keeping the cars out has helped make Vancouver a world model for urban living. Maria Cook reports.
It used to be that Toronto was held up as "the city that works." Not any more.
Vancouver, the city awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics yesterday, has emerged as a world model for urban design and quality of life. Blessed with stunning ocean and mountain views, Vancouver is now also envied for its ability to develop attractive high-density residential neighbourhoods downtown.
"We have gone through a very dramatic process of rethinking and restructuring over the last 15 years, driven by urban design," says Larry Beasley, the city's co-director of planning.
He has presided over the doubling of Vancouver's downtown peninsula population, from 40,000 to 80,000, in the last 10 years. It is projected to increase to 110,000 within the next decade.
Vancouver has been ranked by the United Nations, Economist magazine and major executive relocation firms as one of the best places in the world to live. American writer Robert D. Kaplan, in An Empire Wilderness, called it a rebuke to American cities "where the automobile ruled and often the only people sitting on sidewalk benches were homeless."
Greater Vancouver has a population of about two million, with about 650,000 living in the city of Vancouver.
The city's waterfront redevelopment, limit on car capacity, slim towers that don't block views, child-friendly rowhouses, and interesting, safe streets, have all attracted a steady stream of international politicians, architects and planners who want to learn how to fix their cities.
Mr. Beasley recently gave a public lecture in Ottawa titled "Learning from Lotusland."
"The message is that you can think of the city primarily as something that can be designed, and not just the result of the economics of the moment, or the politics of the day," he said.
Ottawa's new official plan aims to limit costly sprawl by restricting development within already-serviced lands.
With a projected population of 1.2 million in 2021, the plan says the city will need 172,000 new homes. About 60,000 of them should be built inside the Greenbelt, including 9,500 in the inner city.
Vancouver may offer some answers on how to live close together comfortably.
"I find Ottawa a very urbane city, approachable and attractive," says Mr. Beasley. "I think that a strategy well-thought-out and designed can realize the incredible potential here."
After an explosion of growth in the 1980s, and aided by a tide of Asian capital, Vancouver city council adopted a new central area plan in 1991, aimed at luring people, including families, downtown.
The enticement is a lifestyle more exciting and convenient, yet as safe and secure as the suburbs -- going to the theatre, being minutes from great restaurants and shops, biking to work or taking an evening stroll.
Because the city is bordered by mountains and ocean, this has led to intensive, high-rise, high-density development.
"We're learning density is not this nasty evil component of city building," says Ralph Segal, a city of Vancouver senior development planner and urban designer.
"When you get more people utilizing the infrastructure of a neighbourhood they function more efficiently."
Some eight million square feet of excess office capacity and old railyards along the waterfront were converted to residential development. The south end of Granville Street and the Yaletown warehouse district were transformed, and new communities sprung up on False Creek and Coal Harbour.
"If you start intruding upon areas that people care about, they kick you out," says Mr. Beasley. "We tried instead to go to areas that were very underutilized or industrial."
Over the past decade, Vancouver has built or approved more than 150 high-rise towers on the downtown peninsula, many of them pre-sold before the sod is turned.
Such buildings can be 40-storeys high with a 2500-square-foot floorplate to maximize the views that are protected by city policies. There is at least 80 feet between towers.
Some 26 hectares of new parks have been added downtown, tied together by a walkway-bikeway system. The water's edge is dedicated to public use.
Because the value of rezoning land for high density development is so great, Vancouver requires developers to pay for public amenities such as parks, community centres, schools, social housing, walkways and bike paths, day care centres, libraries and public art.
For example, in the North Shore False Creek area, formerly Expo lands, the public amenities are worth $250 million. "Our city could never ask taxpayers to put that kind of money into new communities," says Mr. Beasley.
The city requires 20 per cent of new residential development to be low-income housing, and a quarter must be designed for families with children.
Ottawa Councillor Elisabeth Arnold, who represents Somerset ward, says land values in Ottawa haven't reached the same intensity as Vancouver, making it difficult to look to developers to contribute to amenities.
In Vancouver, the scarcity of land, proximity to water, high demand, and ability to develop at high densities mean that developers can recover costs as well as make a rich profit. Zoning for development in Ottawa does increase land values, but not to the same degree as Vancouver, and developers here often see development charges as obstacles to being able to build.
Ottawa won't need a lot of highrises to achieve density, adds Ms. Arnold. It can be done with five-or-six-storey buildings.
"I think the policies that we have in our official plan are very similar to Vancouver," she says. "It's a matter of getting the resources to build some of that infrastructure and the buy-in from the development industry."
She says Ottawa could learn from Vancouver's methods to help achieve official plan goals. "That's where Vancouver seems a bit ahead of us."
In Vancouver, design guidelines set the form.
Rows of townhouses hide the bases of high-rise towers. Blank walls are not tolerated. The city insists on doors, porches, stoops, windows and terraces at sidewalk eye level. An advisory panel of the city's distinguished architects provides peer review for new buildings.
"At street level these towers almost disappear from one's perception," says Mr. Beasley.
Neighbourhood sidewalks are lined with grass boulevards and at least a double row of trees on each side to tame the harsh concrete. Gardens and courtyards provide privacy and quiet.
Individual garage doors are banned from the streetscape. Almost all parking is underground, even for new supermarkets, except for short term, curbside parking on local streets. Legislation controls size and location of commercial signs.
The city has allowed a variety of building types, including residential/commercial. One big-box store has underground parking as well as 1,000 housing units above.
A plan for a sustainable community with new approaches to recycling, sewage treatment, and a focus on walking and transit is drawing international attention.
Groups of city employees called neighbourhood integrated service teams work with communities on issues such as unsightly premises or seniors complaining about noise from a pub.
Vancouver takes a "co-operative planning approach" that seeks consensus between staff, politicians, developers and citizens, and employs a discretionary regulatory framework that emphasizes guidelines and incentives over regulations.
For example, in exchange for an increase in the height of a proposed tower (which was determined to have minimal impact on views or shadow), a developer agreed to dedicate 0.48 hectares of land for a public park in a park-deficient area.
There is no British Columbia version of the Ontario Municipal Board, which means that Vancouver decisions are final, with appeals being rare. In Ottawa, too many developments wind up in costly, bitter OMB fights.
"The rezoning process seldom fails, public hearings are relatively calm, and most citizens seem satisfied with the results," Mr. Beasley has said.
But is downtown living affordable? According to Mr. Segal, it ranges from $100,000 for a studio apartment to $2 million for a penthouse. Rowhouses cost $200,000 to $800,000, with waterfront commanding a premium.
Trevor Boddy, the Vancouver Sun architecture critic and a former Carleton University architecture professor, points out that despite policies about mixed neighbourhoods, the city has concentrated social housing in downtown's east side, creating the worst slum in Canada.
"We're turning our downtown into fun city for baby boomers," he adds. "Soon, there will be no place for corporate headquarters or retail."
While Mr. Boddy praises the city's urban planning, he criticizes some of the new buildings as "bottom dollar architecture" by "designers who are somewhat less than world class."
In Ottawa, he suggests intensification around Preston Street as well as along Beechwood Avenue, Carling Avenue, Baseline Road and Bank Street south.
Vancouver is the only big city in North America without a major freeway. The provincial government's 1998 decision -- cheered by Vancouver council and North Shore municipalities -- to fix the Lion's Gate bridge instead of building a bigger bridge or a tunnel has resulted in a downtown that's not overrun with cars.
"We will not expand capacity into the city, not even by one lane," says Mr. Beasley.
The number of vehicles entering downtown actually began to drop in the late 1990s. At the same time, the number of pedestrian trips rose by more than 50 per cent from 1994 to 1999, and some 8,000 bicycle trips are made downtown each day.
"At the same time as not expanding the road network they also invested heavily in public transit," says Ms. Arnold, praising the system of ferry, bus and Skytrain.
Unlike Ontario, British Columbia matches federal infrastructure money for transit.
"You cannot have high-density development without an excellent transit system and expect people to have a good quality of life," she says. "We need funding of rapid (light-rail) transit into downtown."
Nelson Edwards, a City of Ottawa urban designer, says that the big "wow" projects in Vancouver, such as Yaletown and Coal Harbour, are new areas designed from scratch.
The only thing comparable in Ottawa is the planned mixed-use redevelopment of LeBreton Flats.
"Our redevelopment is site by site," he says. "There's higher pressure in Ottawa to fit in."
Because of height and view protection "buildings become a little squatter, a little fatter. Because our sites are small there's pressure to fill them. It's hard to provide amenities such as pocket parks and wider sidewalks."
Mr. Edwards says city officials should explore the powers that the committee of adjustment has in negotiating public amenities from developers when higher densities are allowed.
"If we're going to offer such things as extra floors and enhanced development area, (which) is creating wealth for that site, we should ask what is a reasonable public benefit that should arise from that?"