Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s plan for 17 new 'villages' will increase uniformity, sterility

The city of Vancouver is ignoring long-standing neighbourhood centres in order to push forward its villages plan, say urbanists.

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First, Vancouver city council rammed through the Broadway plan, which is imposing more than 150 large, blocky residential highrises on a zone of 500-square blocks.

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Next, council summarily hit every Vancouver neighbourhood with small apartment buildings — pre-approving them for most of the city’s detached lots. Their oversized unsightliness has been the focus of debate.

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Now, city councillors, regardless of whether they are on the right or left of the spectrum, are pressing ahead with their sweeping so-called villages plan, which mandates high-density building clusters of up to six storeys in 17 Vancouver neighbourhoods.

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As has become common with this Vancouver council, complaints are coming from citizens and housing experts. They say the city and its planners are rushing through, from the top-down, another one-size-fits-all urban model, with superficial consultation.

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That said, some experts acknowledge that, on paper, the idea of 17 new “villages” in Vancouver sounds potentially promising, since it is being promoted as making the city more walkable. But the details are receiving scant public or media attention.

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The city’s massive villages plan is spelled out in a 329-page report released on May 26. It is moving rapidly to public hearing, on July 14. The plan encompasses 14 per cent of properties in the city.

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The villages concept, part of Vancouver’s 2026 official development plan, was ostensibly introduced to make it easier for residents to walk or cycle to nearby shops, cafés, grocery stores, nail salons and pharmacies. It also envisions hotels in villages.

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But urban designer Frank Ducote, a former senior planner for the City of Vancouver, North Vancouver District and City of San Diego, is among those who worry the villages plan is largely a rationale to further densify more areas of Vancouver, which in 2016 was already the most dense city in Canada.

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In addition to ushering in the Broadway plan and cross-the-city small-apartment zoning, Vancouver council previously approved towers around transit hubs, and this year upzoned 200 square blocks of east Vancouver’s Rupert and Renfrew area for six- to eight-story residential buildings. It imposed similar fast-track zoning last year along the Cambie Street corridor.

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Such broad pre-zoning, Ducote said, has reduced the need for councillors to meaningfully inform residents about the kind of new construction that is likely to occur in their neighbourhoods.

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“In many cases, people won’t realize what’s happening until the bulldozers show up.”

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Ducote is puzzled by the way the city now largely avoids using the names of the city’s existing neighbourhoods, which already have their own commercial centres.