SpongeG
Aug 13, 2007, 3:57 AM
By Jeff Nagel Black Press
Aug 10 2007
The Greater Vancouver Regional District is reviewing its 11-year-old Regional Growth Strategy signed by all mayors in 1996 to look ahead for the next 25 years. Once considered leading edge, the Livable Region Strategic Plan is due for a review. A new plan will be drawn up in the next several months to guide development in agriculture, housing, employment and transportation but in ways that will be more sustainable. In the second of a four part series, The Tri-City News examines the competition for land as the region moves forward with its Regional Growth Strategy Review.
Competing pressures for land – to grow food, house a burgeoning population and keep people employed – are on a collision course as Greater Vancouver politicians try to cut a new deal to contain the region’s growth.
Redrawing the 11-year-old Livable Region Strategic Plan won’t be easy, GVRD directors admit, particularly if tougher, more enforceable controls are placed on member cities.
Signed by all the GVRD cities in 1996, some fear a critical second consensus may be elusive, leaving the region rudderless as it balloons toward three million people.
“If we get into details, that’s where the blood’s really going to flow in this region,” predicts Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt, vice-chair of the GVRD’s land use and transportation committee.
Particularly contentious will be any formula to amend the Green Zone, which includes farm and park land and acts to contain urban development.
GVRD directors got a first look at the challenges last spring with the release of a preliminary discussion paper by GVRD staff.
It calls for the Green Zone to continue and for the creation of a new “Grey Zone” that would protect existing industrial land.
But Hunt says any new accord is going to have recognize “huge inequities” that have emerged between the City of Vancouver and the surrounding suburbs it blames for many of the region’s problems.
In essence, Hunt argues, Vancouver has paved over its farmlands, chased away its ports, and redeveloped its sawmills and industrial sites.
It’s transformed those undervalued lands into posh districts like Coal Harbour and Yaletown and now reaps immense profits in the form of vastly higher property taxes.
Meanwhile, port expansion is happening in Delta, not downtown, and many low-value land uses are priced out of Vancouver and pushed into outlying cities.
It’s a bit rich, Hunt says, for Vancouver to try to freeze redevelopment in cities that happen to be decades slower to develop, and then spank them for the evils of urban sprawl and failing to densify or embrace transit fast enough.
“Once the inner core gets rid of something, then we have to protect it in the other areas,” Hunt said, summarizing the Vancouver attitude.
“We cleaned out the port. We’ve cleaned out all of the industrial out of False Creek. We’ve turned all that urban and we’ve got huge taxes coming off of it. Now we’d better protect it out in Surrey. Who cares that Surrey doesn’t get a dime out of it?”
The latest example that rang alarms at Surrey city hall is the realization that 60 per cent of all new big rig trucks being registered in the region are coming to Surrey.
“Our city is being expected to handle those trucks,” Hunt said. “Just to park those trucks is going to take 34 new acres each year.”
Where will that land come from?
Unless more agricultural areas are turned into truck tarmac, it will go in other areas that could have been developed more in line with the region’s vision.
Somehow, Hunt argues, core municipalities need to recognize the disparities and compensate outlying areas.
If carbon trading markets can offset companies’ climate change impacts, he says, perhaps some mechanism can be crafted so local cities can offset the sacrifices some parts of the region will make in the name of livability and sustainability.
“That’s not a very helpful conversation,” says Vancouver Coun. Suzanne Anton, who also sits on the committee.
She says each part of the region must take on the sustainability challenge in a different way.
Vancouver, she said, is embracing eco-density to help take more population growth.
“If we can put people in the city, maybe we don’t have to dig up all the farmland in Langley,” she said. “I really don’t believe we should be digging up any more farmland. I really don’t believe we should be building any more single family.”
Anton is in favour of ripping up the LRSP and starting over, rather than trying to tweak the existing accord.
And everything should be seen through a green lens, she said.
“I don’t think we should be thinking about anything except global warming, climate change and peak oil,” she said. “Everything else should fit within that.”
Planners note in their preliminary paper the GVRD is accused of inconsistently enforcing development restrictions in the Green Zone.
That fuels demand from some quarters for a much tougher implementation system in the new plan – and resistance from some cities.
How far to go on a spectrum between a voluntary system that relies entirely on the moral suasion of the region and one that is much more enforceable is a key part of the challenge ahead.
A highly regulated approach would be inefficient and potentially very divisive, the report warns.
But entirely voluntary policies, it notes, are “surely doomed to failure” and would end up as “another eloquent but empty soliloquy.”
One city will always be tempted to take advantage and approve developments that its neighbours have passed over for the regional interest.
Farmland has been largely protected in the Lower Mainland, it notes, because of the rules adopted with the Agricultural Land Reserve, not “because of the collective voluntary idealism of land owners, developers and councils.”
Planners are virtually begging area politicians to come to the table with an open mind.
“It will clearly help manage these discussions on implementation strategies if inflexible positions can be avoided,” their paper says.
“It would not be helpful,” they say, to view all opposition to tighter regulation as “parochial” and all calls for it as “an unwarranted intrusion on local autonomy.”
Detailed proposals will be shaped in the weeks ahead, and the public will get a chance to join the debate in a regional forum expected in the fall.
http://www.tricitynews.com/
Aug 10 2007
The Greater Vancouver Regional District is reviewing its 11-year-old Regional Growth Strategy signed by all mayors in 1996 to look ahead for the next 25 years. Once considered leading edge, the Livable Region Strategic Plan is due for a review. A new plan will be drawn up in the next several months to guide development in agriculture, housing, employment and transportation but in ways that will be more sustainable. In the second of a four part series, The Tri-City News examines the competition for land as the region moves forward with its Regional Growth Strategy Review.
Competing pressures for land – to grow food, house a burgeoning population and keep people employed – are on a collision course as Greater Vancouver politicians try to cut a new deal to contain the region’s growth.
Redrawing the 11-year-old Livable Region Strategic Plan won’t be easy, GVRD directors admit, particularly if tougher, more enforceable controls are placed on member cities.
Signed by all the GVRD cities in 1996, some fear a critical second consensus may be elusive, leaving the region rudderless as it balloons toward three million people.
“If we get into details, that’s where the blood’s really going to flow in this region,” predicts Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt, vice-chair of the GVRD’s land use and transportation committee.
Particularly contentious will be any formula to amend the Green Zone, which includes farm and park land and acts to contain urban development.
GVRD directors got a first look at the challenges last spring with the release of a preliminary discussion paper by GVRD staff.
It calls for the Green Zone to continue and for the creation of a new “Grey Zone” that would protect existing industrial land.
But Hunt says any new accord is going to have recognize “huge inequities” that have emerged between the City of Vancouver and the surrounding suburbs it blames for many of the region’s problems.
In essence, Hunt argues, Vancouver has paved over its farmlands, chased away its ports, and redeveloped its sawmills and industrial sites.
It’s transformed those undervalued lands into posh districts like Coal Harbour and Yaletown and now reaps immense profits in the form of vastly higher property taxes.
Meanwhile, port expansion is happening in Delta, not downtown, and many low-value land uses are priced out of Vancouver and pushed into outlying cities.
It’s a bit rich, Hunt says, for Vancouver to try to freeze redevelopment in cities that happen to be decades slower to develop, and then spank them for the evils of urban sprawl and failing to densify or embrace transit fast enough.
“Once the inner core gets rid of something, then we have to protect it in the other areas,” Hunt said, summarizing the Vancouver attitude.
“We cleaned out the port. We’ve cleaned out all of the industrial out of False Creek. We’ve turned all that urban and we’ve got huge taxes coming off of it. Now we’d better protect it out in Surrey. Who cares that Surrey doesn’t get a dime out of it?”
The latest example that rang alarms at Surrey city hall is the realization that 60 per cent of all new big rig trucks being registered in the region are coming to Surrey.
“Our city is being expected to handle those trucks,” Hunt said. “Just to park those trucks is going to take 34 new acres each year.”
Where will that land come from?
Unless more agricultural areas are turned into truck tarmac, it will go in other areas that could have been developed more in line with the region’s vision.
Somehow, Hunt argues, core municipalities need to recognize the disparities and compensate outlying areas.
If carbon trading markets can offset companies’ climate change impacts, he says, perhaps some mechanism can be crafted so local cities can offset the sacrifices some parts of the region will make in the name of livability and sustainability.
“That’s not a very helpful conversation,” says Vancouver Coun. Suzanne Anton, who also sits on the committee.
She says each part of the region must take on the sustainability challenge in a different way.
Vancouver, she said, is embracing eco-density to help take more population growth.
“If we can put people in the city, maybe we don’t have to dig up all the farmland in Langley,” she said. “I really don’t believe we should be digging up any more farmland. I really don’t believe we should be building any more single family.”
Anton is in favour of ripping up the LRSP and starting over, rather than trying to tweak the existing accord.
And everything should be seen through a green lens, she said.
“I don’t think we should be thinking about anything except global warming, climate change and peak oil,” she said. “Everything else should fit within that.”
Planners note in their preliminary paper the GVRD is accused of inconsistently enforcing development restrictions in the Green Zone.
That fuels demand from some quarters for a much tougher implementation system in the new plan – and resistance from some cities.
How far to go on a spectrum between a voluntary system that relies entirely on the moral suasion of the region and one that is much more enforceable is a key part of the challenge ahead.
A highly regulated approach would be inefficient and potentially very divisive, the report warns.
But entirely voluntary policies, it notes, are “surely doomed to failure” and would end up as “another eloquent but empty soliloquy.”
One city will always be tempted to take advantage and approve developments that its neighbours have passed over for the regional interest.
Farmland has been largely protected in the Lower Mainland, it notes, because of the rules adopted with the Agricultural Land Reserve, not “because of the collective voluntary idealism of land owners, developers and councils.”
Planners are virtually begging area politicians to come to the table with an open mind.
“It will clearly help manage these discussions on implementation strategies if inflexible positions can be avoided,” their paper says.
“It would not be helpful,” they say, to view all opposition to tighter regulation as “parochial” and all calls for it as “an unwarranted intrusion on local autonomy.”
Detailed proposals will be shaped in the weeks ahead, and the public will get a chance to join the debate in a regional forum expected in the fall.
http://www.tricitynews.com/