Post

Listening to @michaelgeller.bsky.social giving his take on vancouver’s planning history

As per usual I agree with some of Michael’s points - and I think he’s off the mark sometimes, but at least reasonably entertaining in his moments of wrongness

Now former dirs. of planning Larry Beasley and Anne Mcafee speaking.

We’re getting a mix of nostalgia with LB saying (unironically) that “20 year old ideas don’t work, we need new ideas”. To be fair, the ideas and concerns they are raising are all valid and worthwhile but they have the same blind spots (specifically they want to limit change to single detached)

Anne asks “how are we going to pay for things if not for development fees” Uh Sorry that’s a disturbingly myopic view.

Michael is making good criticisms of Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) - mostly that it’s unfair to put all the burden of infrastructure and affordable housing on just new housing (vs existing owners)

LB says all levels of government should be contributing to infrastructure vs relying wholly on CACs. Also: At the same time if amenities don’t grow then existing residents oppose density. (I’d argue they’ll oppose anyway but a lack of amenity is a problem)

Again this group (and the many older audience members) seem to be applauding the idea of doing all of this nice sounding stuff in someone else’s neighbourhood.

Michael is talking about what I call “alt ownership” - incl shared equity, land trust, co-op, affordability covenants. This is all good but needs a way to scale up, and to land in all n’hoods not just the odd gov owned site.

LB talking about the need for gov / industry collaboration. Says it needs to be layered with recurring work year after year.

Now LB is talking about “speculators” - but he is badly conflating what happens in pocket rezonings vs citywide rezoning. The latter doesn’t fuel speculation. The former does.

LB complaining about multiplexes - “There’s no affordability” “there should be affordability requirements” %^*! That This is so gross. You’re fine with a single family house being $6m, creating wholly privatized wealth, but a 4 plex should have “affordability covenants” It’s so infuriating!

Now AM talks about the planning process… says online forms create an illusion of engagement that is different from the olden days when n’hood meetings were more in person. This is a fair critique … but I wonder how representative the processes actually were that are being lauded.

Andy Yan « there’s a single letter difference between “engaged” and “enraged”

MG talks about alternative lease structures to reduce up front cost. Says land leases can be phased in vs paid up front.

LB gets a question about “n’hood veto - engagement bias toward older residents” Good question LB says you can reach residents by appealing to their self interest “where will your kids live”… hmm this is true but speaks to a narrow band of engagement

MG talks about working with Pat Condon on multi day charrettes (workshops) when kicking off SFU planning. Pat has done a lot of good work on these types of collaborative design processes over the years (despite my more recent concerns w his planning economics)

MG describes a Dunbar planning charrette coming up… it’s a citizen led event. LB: these are residents that are so angry they’re going out and doing it themselves Me: good. It’s about time they try to do something other than just being oppositional.