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Posted Jan 14, 2010, 8:39 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Vancouver
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Couldn't find the other thread with similar articles...
Nothing really new in the article - but at lea it contnued pressure on the City of Vancouver to densify around SkyTrain stations.
Note that the cost for these nice-to-haves (or the impact of cost in delaying them) hasn't been mentioned (the author is a UBC professor, not a businessperson). i.e. Metrotown's parking lots will be eventually built out.
Quote:
Is Vancouver a truly global city? Maybe
By Michael Goldberg, Special to the Sun
January 14, 2010
Vancouver began in 1886 as an international city and transportation centre tying Canada to Asia. Our 100th birthday party, Expo 86, reaffirmed our transportation roots and firmly established Vancouver on the international stage.
A year later, the unique federal-provincial $6-million Asia Pacific Initiative (API) heralded Vancouver as "an Asia-Pacific Centre for trade, commerce and tourism." API began numerous efforts fostering Vancouver and British Columbia as key Asia-North America links. Among API's successes were the privatization of Vancouver International Airport, new gateway concepts and recognizing the power of our immigrant communities to connect us to the world. During this period, B.C. trade with Asia exceeded trade with the U.S. for the first time, reinforcing Asia's importance in the province's future.
Post-Expo, Vancouver became a target for high-profile Asian real estate investment with Li Ka-shing's purchase of the Expo site on the north side of False Creek, a tacit endorsement of Vancouver as a locale for large Asian developers. The resulting high-density housing transformed Vancouver by bringing highrise living for families.
In the late 1980s, immigration from both Taiwan and China further placed Vancouver on the Asia-Pacific map, giving us more family, business and cultural ties across the region.
Vancouver is now recognized on numerous international city rankings. We are a credible international city, but can we compete in the network of leading global cities? It is this network that will lead the global economy, and being in it is vital for our long-term economic success.
Accordingly, let's assess our strengths and limitations to see how we can succeed in the urban-based global economy. Our competitive strengths and achievements are significant. Vancouver is a beautiful city, a superb place to live. Our port and airport connect us efficiently to the world and our universities and diverse public and private educational systems are globally competitive and recognized. Our tourism, performing and visual arts, architecture, design and engineering exports are globally known and competitive. We have also achieved great renown for our new media, information technology and video gaming sectors and our vibrant, innovative, if underfunded, biotech sector.
We have numerous planning and urban development successes bolstering our competitiveness. Populating our downtown and developing and opening our three waterfronts is deservedly globally known and recognized. Vancouver city council's decision in November to create a high-density residential and office community in Northeast False Creek is key to densifying the core and expanding the supplies of housing and office space. The creation of public ceremonial space in that decision is also significant.
Further strengths include our highly educated population and our tolerance, diversity and openness to the world. Our excellent infrastructure like rapid transit, the Vancouver Convention Centre, BC Place, the Olympic venues, False Creek and Coal Harbour waterfront walks and marinas, and much more, all represent valuable competitive assets. Our extensive, widely used and greatly admired parks and recreation resources add to our ability to attract and retain talent, the key resource in the global knowledge economy. We have great restaurants and are globally known for them, enhancing our edge, but our liquor laws and regulations negate some of this advantage.
In sum, we have wonderful assets to compete globally, but we also have major areas where we need to improve to be an economically successful city-region. Despite our achievements and deserved kudos we face a range of challenges and shortcomings. We have a balkanized and increasingly ineffectual regional governance system, including that for TransLink. We face growing congestion, pollution and travel times resulting from increasing sprawl in housing, office parks and shopping. To add to these problems we have zoning bylaws that greatly restrict density, height and land-use flexibility, resulting in high housing and real estate prices. These regulations hamper architectural and land-use innovation. Zoning and permit restrictions also limit outdoor dining and street activity, adding substance to our reputation as being boring.
Vancouver's restrictive zoning policy is "rent-seeking" in aiming to receive all the value created by rezoning, leading to slow, rigid and often inappropriate planning responses to changing economic and development environments; for instance, the five-year lag in Cambie Street corridor planning, which began only as the Canada Line opened. The two to three years needed to rezone properties also seems out of touch with economic reality and need.
There appears to be little understanding of land and property markets, which results in planning without grasping economic forces, as with banning condos in the downtown core to encourage offices, when there is little demand for office space.
Given the foregoing, let's turn to exploring ideas and actions that can overcome our weaknesses and vitally improve our global future.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
. . . and here are the steps we must take to ensure it is
By Michael Goldberg, Special to the Sun
January 14, 2010
First, and likely the most difficult hurdle, we must recognize we have significant problems to overcome while also acknowledging the need to compete globally. We must be strategic in our local, regional and provincial policy actions.
We need regional economic strategies and public-and private-sector leadership to attract and retain jobs and investment, while understanding how to achieve this. A "Montreal, Inc." approach of broad cooperation among senior government officials and private-sector leaders is a must to provide direction and influence with senior governments. We have not been effective in working with either the province or the feds to garner the support needed to realize our potential. The Vancouver Economic Development Authority just got the resources and mandate to chart an economic strategy for Vancouver, and, it is hoped, for the region too through its Metro Vancouver Commerce activities.
We need to address both larger issues and more granular details to prosper. On the big-picture scale, we must understand that success is not pre-ordained or effortless: We must earn our place in the world. We can no longer be smug about livability and past successes: Being pretty and not strategic won't cut it in the future. Toronto is paying for complacency as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently stressed.
Local government fiscal straitjackets are an issue: Cities need more diverse and stable revenue sources, which require provincial backing. This should be among the first efforts of "Vancouver, Inc." More solid local government finances reduce rent-seeking land use and zoning processes to improve the supply and cost of urban development. Despite numerous planning successes, we still have not addressed some key small-picture issues, failing badly at virtually all levels of government to integrate transportation and land-use planning and development. Rapid transit is poorly, if at all, integrated into local land-use decisions or integrated within buildings or large developments. The Canada Line is the worst example with only the Granville and Georgia station linked directly into more than one building. Even Brentwood and Metrotown densify less than half the land around their stations. In well-integrated settings, stations are invisible functioning parts of buildings.
We have built wonderful parks and waterfront open space while failing elsewhere to improve our built environment. Creating pedestrian zones (Granville and Robson are my first choices) would greatly broaden urban enjoyment (if New York can close Times Square, and Frankfurt, Lyon and Buenos Aires their major thoroughfares permanently, we can). More ceremonial and public gathering spaces are needed as city council did in Northeast False Creek. Fostering shopping arcades and mid-block walks in our long downtown blocks would add to livability, use and enjoyment as occurs in hundreds of cities around the world. We can borrow the best ideas, while expanding our highly valued program of street closures and street festivals and make it vastly easier to enjoy outdoor dining, and socializing. Other valued pedestrian-friendly infrastructure would include underground system connections analogous to Toronto's PATH system. Poor transit integration hampers this, but opportunities still exist to link the Bentall and Pacific Centres and tie Robson Square to Pacific Centre.
Much higher densities are a must on major streets and bus routes to add housing, stem property prices, and allow aging householders to stay in their neighbourhoods, providing stability through changing land use and broader housing opportunities.
Most pressing here is upzoning around transit stations. We have spent more than $7 billion on three rapid transit lines while doing almost nothing in Vancouver to increase station area densities. Broadway and Commercial is the worst example with two rapid transit lines and myriad buses: Its central feature is a supermarket and parking lot. Oakridge is another example of not densifying and integrating transit into the neighbourhood, as are Nanaimo and 29th, and King Edward and Cambie. The "transit-oriented development" at Cambie and Broadway isn't. Its station connects to nothing; one-and two-storey buildings occupy two of the four corners; a "dense" six-storey complex is diagonally across from, and not connected to the station. Rapid transit must be an integral part of urban development from inception, not isolated afterthoughts.
What Vancouver needs to do is known and commonplace elsewhere. The paths to our future success are neither novel nor risky. Our biggest challenge is educating ourselves about the necessity of what needs to be done. Many solutions already thrive in Vancouver.
We just need to extend them so we can protect neighbourhoods, and enhance our biophysical, economic and social sustainability.
Michael Goldberg is H.R. Fullerton Professor of Urban Land Policy at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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Couldn't they go 214 so we can at least get a 700 footer.
Can't wait to see Robson and Granville as pedestrian malls during the Olympics.
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