Until this plan came out, I lived in Kensington Cedar Cottage, and the maps still say so. Suddenly, Grandview Woodlands extends to 12th Avenue, so please don’t try to tell me I haven’t taken advantage of the so-called “representation” for my area.

@Jenable I’d be more sympathetic to post-boomers complaints they bothered to show up at a polling station on election day. As we saw on May 14 a vast majority of that demographic can’t be bothered, so they should just suck it up.

Norman, I thought I’d get an answer straight from the horse’s mouth, so I called 311. Wow. I talked to two people, one who was in zoning… Neither seemed to have any idea what I was talking about. They weren’t insincere, or impolite, but man oh man. I explained that I was wondering what the south border of Grandview woodland was as there is conflicting information online. Is it Broadway or twelfth? What should have been a simple answer took thirteen minutes and fifty one seconds and ended with the zoning lady telling me to go on the website and click on Grandview. I have seen a sign up the street that is an info map for the neighborhood, and I’ve called them in the post to complain about the fact that the close up is just a square which doesn’t show anything below Adanac and is misleading. So I can’t really go by that one either. I encourage you to call 311…..they might learn something! You’ll also get to enjoy new hold music.. No more channel four community listing loop.. Now we have Greek jeopardy music!

Oops, it should say above that I have called them in the past to complain, not post.

The proposed heights at Broadway x Commercial are not the only troubling area of concern. Why on Earth would the planners reason that 12-storey towers on 1st Ave x Clark and continuous low rise (4-6 storeys) are justified along this arterial? To me the most important distinction to densifying arterials is efficient transit, which also hooks into the issue affordability.

Everyone harps on affordability with a singular focus on housing prices and rents, which are effectively subsets of land value. Yes, land / housing is more expensive in the inner city than in the suburbs, but that trend, if mapped, evens out quickly when transportation is included. Affordability is relative to income. When transportation is included, then the suburbs look a helluva lot less affordable.

http://www.slideshare.net/soccerforgirlfriends/driving-up-the-cost-of-living

To illustrate, I worked out that my rusty old VW costs me about $6,000 each year, which includes the purchase price, financing, fuel, repairs and insurance averaged over a decade. My commute is very reasonable, yet still costs about $1,200 a year in fuel alone. Over 10 years, this increasingly decrepit car has diminished our family income by about $60,000. Should we have gotten bitten by the lower-housing-prices-in-the-suburbs narrative, then we’d need two larger cars capable of long freeway commutes, orders-of-magnitude more fuel costs, bigger repair bills, and two insurance policies and financing plans, easily racking up to $200,000 over 10 years and many tens of thousands more hours spent on one’s butt behind the wheel instead of being more productive. Empty nesters have often spent a quarter century or more in the suburbs before downsizing, so the math suddenly makes the more expensive housing closer to the centre much more affordable relative to income over long periods of time.

Living near an arterial with good transit service and close to work, schools, shopping and amenities even in “unaffordable” Vancouver allows a family to spend more on a home on a smaller parcel of land and diminish their expenditures on transportation, and possibly save a lot more over a generation than if they had to drive more while living in less expensive housing further out.

When you look at affordability in this way, then building more housing using less land and improving transit are key to making living in an expensive city less of a drain on incomes over the long run.

As well, it’s good to see someone thinking, talking and designing about the public realm. What we’re seeing today has been dummed down to planning and design for profit. Public benefit is an irritating inconvenience. The wheel has gone full circle.

@MB #159:

“When you look at affordability in this way…”

Good point. IMO, the cost of commuting is a factor most people would take into account when considering how much they can afford when buying a property. By way of example, I live and work downtown and the fact that my commute is free (I walk) and that I fill up my little car once, or maybe twice, a year is definitely a factor which I took into account in determining how much I could afford to spend on a property.

However, I question whether this factor results in an increase in affordability, as anyone buying in the area would be able to make the same calculation. Arguably, it is a factor which would result in an increased selling price.

IaanS@ 163 “However, I question whether this factor results in an increase in affordability, as anyone buying in the area would be able to make the same calculation. Arguably, it is a factor which would result in an increased selling price.”

The (U.S.) Center for Transportation-Oriented Development estimates that the shae of income that a household spends in a “transit rich” location is 9%, while in “automobile dependent exurbs” the figure rises to 25%.

If the share of housing costs remain the same at, in there estimation 32%, that leaves 59% of income available for other things (food, clothing, eduction, entertainment, etc.) in the transit-oriented locations and only 43% availaable in the exurbs.

To put it simply, living in a transit rich location saves a household about 16% of their income.

This seems to support MB’s point, and that of a lot of researchers in this area, including New Urbanists.

We should stop all the current Plans today and re-think the entire process:

http://jaksview3.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/planning-failures-aplenty/

IanS – the analysis assumes people move out from cities to get more house for the same buck. I guess some folks could spend more for a house out in the exurbs but that is not the general case.

@Frank Ducote #169:

” the analysis assumes people move out from cities to get more house for the same buck ”

In my experience, they do. I know people who bought further out so that they could afford a detached house with a yard etc.

“What about the [del] workers [/del] Renters?

Why all the emphasis of housing when renters in many districts are the majority, and will move if the rents go up.

Many “houses” have been subdivided into rental suites, and that is supposed to be the case with so-called “Laneway Housing” [Granny shacks]?

With parties bringing in political operatives for the 2014 election coming in a few days, renters are more important.

StatCan’s numbers show average incomes don’t support house ownership anymore.
Dollars per hour, Southwest BC (Lower Mainland)
http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/LMI_report_area.do?lang=eng&area=25565&reportOption=wage

For those looking narrowly at the City proper. bcstats.gov.bc.ca/Files/654be930-15b5-44c6-ab1f-acb528aacb74/Socio-EconomicProfile2011CollegeRegion15.pdf

From InsiderDoug’s Tyee cite:

“We seem to have only one way [towers] of expressing density, but we know from around the world that’s not the only way…We hear nothing until we see a written report. At that point, the only intervention is yes or no.”

Sentiments expressed here for years.

So it’s very interesting who said it.

RK – ROTFLMAO!!

I’ve never said that before and hope to never again.

Good Lord, Mr. Kemble!

Where is the Yorkshire Lad we knew? Please don’t become a scribbling disgrace to our birthlace, blowing your cantankerous wind under the noses of people who have so far maintained their civility! Stop farting in the middle of the conversation at the dinner table.

Take a pill. Take it with two single malt chasers. Have s-e-x-u-a-l intercourse with the neighbour, for goodness sake! Do something to calm your chemical imbalance demon!

Please, my Dear Roger, we really don’t want to laugh at you.

With much affection, though it is wearing thin.

LG

To Roger Kemble. Your angry attacks are unintelligible. As are your links.

Venom?

Thanqu Frank @ #182 showing us the Grandview-Woodland plan and for your sage advice.

Sometimes eschatological terminology is preferable to scatological terminology. Indeed I will in future eschew both.

To the GVW plan. In its embryonic form it shows promise. The Drive is preserved, Hastings has, so far as I can see, given so little detail, been zoned in a Lee Building typology.

The Broadway and Commercial TOD needs a lot of work but essentially it attracts my attention.

In my opinion towers well sited with mixed usage is appropriate. The point of the towers is to keep amenity close, compact and convenient for walking

Pictures speak louder than words . . .

http://members.shaw.ca/aguaflor/The.Urban.Village.html
. . . accordingly I prefer to present solutions rather than engage eternal gossip. Unfortunately this is when the abuse enters the conversation.

My thesis is that a well-designed compact, diversified urban village centre, including entertainment, education, shopping and other amenities clustered in towers, for close proximity, is appropriate urban design for GVW’s TOD.

Much neglected in this conversation is figure ground treatment: i.e. buildings sprouting out of a garden-like base. By that I mean treatment of the horizontal surface between the buildings: an amenity completely neglected in the current local planning ethos.

It isn’t that people on this conversation don’t understand an alternative approach: they are hell bent on not understanding!

One very discouraging aspect is that the abuse begins immediately. When I check my web stats I find the abusers haven’t even checked in.

And this is when the invective becomes justifiable: an eye for a eye!

Have a good evening. Best wishes Roger K.

@Andrew Browne // Jul 4, 2013 at 3:55 pm #184

Collingwood Village as you put it, (it is a big area, which?) was a browfield site.
Warehouses associated with the rail line and light industry in the area and a few homes spread apart. See the vpl.ca/bccd

What is happening with the cut and the monster towers at Commercial and Broadway where few want to live is Norquay II, the forcing of the present residents out for rampant out-of-scale speculative land development.
See the Rennie-marketed Tower at Nanaimo and Kingsway, with retail only being the dead space of a bank and that blockbuster of Shoppers, (exactly the same tenants and street level desert as at 18th on Main and the “3300 Building” Great Wall of a sick building. [ Google street view still shows it being built, Bing.com/maps aerial shots show the previous car dealership in birds eye and the ground razing in aerial ].

@ Bill Lee #185

I appreciate that Collingwood was a brownfield site while Commercial & Broadway (and vicinity) is established, but so what? We don’t really have convenient magical brownfield sites anymore – they’re largely used up and, if not, tend to be far from significant transit. Should we just keep expanding endlessly out toward Langley and Chilliwack? Part of making plans is planning for change so that it doesn’t end up controlling you slowly, one step at a time. The idea that a neighbourhood plan would contemplate and plan for change is prudent and shouldn’t be startling.

If the ‘rule’ now is that we can’t ever contemplate change anywhere near something that already exists, we’re all in for a world of trouble. That’s a recipe for disappointment all around. I know it’s not quite that simple, but come on, most of the plan contemplates 4 storeys! I think sometimes that Vancouver residents need to get out a bit and realize just how much change the surrounding municipalities have been experiencing – not to mention that Vancouver badly needs housing options in the spectrum between ‘500 sq ft sky box’ and ‘5000 sq ft mcmansion’ (i.e. 3-4 storey townhomes, stacked townhomes, and apartments).

Jak@188 – Not being a resident of GW, I didn’t attend, despite my outsider’s interest in the outcome. At this point in the process it is the community’s fight, and you seem to be doing quite well, thank you.

One of the clips from your meeting on CBC this morning talked about the need for social justice in any plans coming forward, to applause. A very insightful and energizing comment, IMO. Keeping that issue and opportunity in the forefront will help in future planning, I would think.

I’m particularly happy that the proposed scale – and density – of development at Broadway and Commercial has been brought to the fore for a closer look. This is an already incredibly congested TOD that truly needs the Broadway subway to help relieve the pressure on it caused by all the mode transfers. Livability needs to be a primary goal for futuer intensification, it would seem to me.

I hope the the response to the original posting of this guest blog indicates a wider interest. At the least, it does seem to have helped foster a broader discussion of the GW planning process to date. Hopefully the next round will include options for development that the community can review and assess. I think that step got missed somehow but I don’t think it will in the future.

Good luck.

Thanks to Jak King and Frank Ducote for posting about the neighbourhood meeting – I will be very interested to see where this ends up.

I wonder why we are not exploring local-area type charges in support of transit? If the Broadway line is what is needed, why not assess $20/sqft (or whatever) for all development in the corridor area, held in reserve for the purpose of Broadway transit? Growth and change can be put to work for the benefit of everyone.

Although I did enjoy clr Reimer asking me if i wanted to take it outside with her. She should have known my answer would be yes!