Frances Bula header image 2

Rize tower @Broadway/Kingsway to come down 7 stories, density down almost 20 per cent

April 13th, 2011 · 40 Comments

This just in from the Rize people

This Mount Pleasant site was previously identified by the city’s Mount Pleasant Community Plan (the result of three years of community consultation by the city with area residents) as one of two sites suitable for high rise and high density, partially due to its proximity to the busy Broadway corridor.
After extensive community input, including a March 20th community workshop where locals voiced strong opposition, Rize revised its rezoning application for the Kingsway and Broadway site and they showcased the changes yesterday.
 
The changes include:
 
·         Overall height reduced by 27%- from 26 storeys to 19 storeys
·         Low massing changes-height and form of massing at Broadway similar to Lee Building, masonry arcade similar to Lee Building added along Broadway, height reduced 1 story at Kingsway and 1 storey at Watson with setback penthouses added along Broadway.
·         Overall density reduced by 17%- before 6.44 FSR, now 5.33 FSR


·         Architectural character-City Planning Department  to draft conditions requiring that architectural character, expression, materials and details to reflect Mount Pleasant neighbourhood character
·         Community Amenities and Benefits- 9,200 sq. ft. community art space unchanged, 6,600 sq, ft. increase and improvements to public realm, $528,000 public art contribution, STIR homes reduced from 62 to 20 units 
 
After listening to the community’s concerns and revising their proposal for the site, Rize hopes to continue working with city staff and the community to move forward with a project which will add to Mount Pleasant.
 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Jay

    Is this considered a victory for the community? The height was reduced from 26 stories to 19 stories, at the cost of the rental units. Just like clockwork.

    Is anybody at all concerned about the high rents in our neighborhood? Because renting is the only chance most of us have at living in neighborhoods like Mt. Pleasant.

    Each year our demand for rental units goes up, and each year our supply falls further behind, driving rents up higher and higher.

    The renters in Mt. Pleasant are it’s lifeblood.

    I hope our community activists are just as outraged that the neighborhood lost 42 badly needed rental units and aren’t all about superficial things like height.

  • Joe Just Joe

    That’s pretty close to what I figured would’ve ended up happening. I expected between 16-18 stories and who knows we might still still another revision. I wouldn’t worry about a lack of rentals though as more then half all the market units will be rented out, since the stir units are market rentals as well the real loss is much less then precieved.
    Too bad they are including an arcade, hate them. I’d love nothing more then seeing the citygate development down the road get rid of their arcade by buying up some spare density from the heritiage bank and bringing the retail out to the sidewalk which is still very wide there.

  • Roger Kemble

    There can be no end to the expression of community prejudice and myth when it comes to towers and affordable housing.

    There are some facts however . . .

    The Rize configuration is atrium with tower: an improvement on the Yaletown podium: especially if the atrium is public accessible á la Anchor Point.

    A tower for 19/27 floors allows cost and energy benefits: within reason, the higher the better . . .

    i. Unit cost diminishes incrementally the higher the floors: as on subsequent floors allowing reduced rental and mortgage payments if passed on . . . If!

    ii. Vertical energy transfers heat to upper floors and the tower form encloses more interior space for less exposed surface . . .
    http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/pudpn/Comparisons.pdf

    Both Broadway and Main are wide enough to ameliorate “tower claustrophobia“: i.e. Yaletown, False Creek North.

    To contemplate the replication the Lee arcade is an admission of our ability to create a semiotic reflecting our times. I would much prefer to see a continuation of the incremental, colourful, local storefront, Main than that dull dark obscurity. Sun light does much for the shopper as the merchants will appreciate.

    Lee may be safe and familiar but it is still an ugly clump!

    We are bereft of creative instincts and replace the power of our imaginations playing numbers.

    To quote one Vancouver planner in her more brave and creative past, “. . . heritage is not about the present.
 It is not even about the past. Heritage is about the future.

    I do not have her permission to name, yet this is the most poignant comments I have yet heard on the ad naseum excuse “heritage“.

    . . . “Memory is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to deal with the past!”

  • Roger Kemble

    Correction . . . an admission of our inability to create a semiotic reflecting our times . . .

  • Tiktaalik

    Rize anchored in the discussion at 26 stories, and so it appears that the drop to 19 is some sort of victory but it’s not at all. Looking at it from the reverse perspective, 19 stories is well over the ideal described in the community plan. 70% of workshop participants advocated 5-12 stories, and 20% advocated 12-15. This design is still completely out of touch with the community.

    The arcade looks awful. Not much to say beyond that.

    This redesign didn’t mention any changes to the anchor retail component. While the main retail space isn’t big box as defined by the city it’s still reaaally big. Bigger than the Buy-Low foods across the street. This isn’t really in spirit with the Mount Pleasant Community Plan either, which advocates small retail.

  • gmgw

    An arcade to ape that of the Lee building? Sigh. So very much of Vancouver architecture is based on imitation. So little of it is based on innovation.
    gmgw

  • Tim Agg

    This is a debut post: How nice to see so many neighbours at the open house. As a long-time resident of Mount Pleasant (and of a heritage building), I would wish for architecture that intends to be future heritage. I want to see the stock of rental accommodation maintained and grow. I’m happy with the density increases we have seen in recent years. I love the revitalization process that has turned this neighbourhood into such a great place to live. I think that 26 or 19 stories is not compatible with the community plan; I will support community efforts to ensure that Council does not approve the rezoning until it works for us. High rise and high density does not work here – medium does. Someone should also check with Translink about whether or not at least one of its Broadway options would require a major bus loop at this site. The community plan asks developers to consult with residents in advance -don’t mistake this for Nimbyism. Let’s get a good start with the Kingsway/Broadway property.

  • Mike

    Grr. This kind of thing makes me angry. Lower density = higher prices, more sprawl, and more paved over farmland in Surrey and Langley. Another million people are going to be moving here in the next 30 years — where are we going to house them if we can’t even *think* about adding density without the NIMBYs going into revolt.

  • False Creep

    Bad move to mimic the Lee Building. That sort of “heritagey” architecture is very popular in east coast suburbs, where new buildings try to look a bit oldy timey. We have one of those on the corner of Main and 12 and I think it’s unfortunate. Little brick windows and such. Ug.

  • A Dave

    I think the strategy here is tower approval by attrition.

    I mean, c’mon, the placards on Tuesday clearly showed the public response to this proposal: every item on the proposal rating list was rated VERY POOR, except one, rated POOR.

    How much clearer does community feedback get?

    And (approx)…

    1% support for 26+ storeys
    4% support for 19-26 storeys
    20% support for 12-18 storeys
    70% support for 6-12 storeys (as in the Community Plan, duh)
    5% support for less than 6

    So what do they propose in their revision? 19 storeys!

    So, er, congratulations on listening to the community and revising your proposal, Rize, you now have 4% community support…

  • Roger Kemble

    @ A Dave #9

    1% support for 26+ storeys

    4% support for 19-26 storeys

    20% support for 12-18 storeys

    70% support for 6-12 storeys (as in the Community Plan, duh)

    Not so, see below.
    5% support for less than 6 . . .
    So what do they propose in their revision? 19 storeys!

    I dunno Dave, you tell me! Whose numbers? How many were at the recent meeting? Who were they? Is this yet another select group’s NIMBYISM?

    I assume you were at the November meeting . . .

    DRAFT – NOVEMBER 2010 MOUNT PLEASANT COMMUNITY PLAN . . .

    3.4 Large Site Development.

    As a general guideline for the whole neighbourhood, the community supports greater use of infill opportunities over high-rise development – but the Mount Pleasant community also sees opportunities for some high-rise as well as mid-rise development in some specific locations, such as for large sites (i.e. Kingsgate Mall, IGA site, and Broadway, Kingsway, Watson Street, and 10th Avenue site).

    There is an old derogatory saying “Phucc’ you Jack, I’m inboard” meaning, obviously, I have no intention of helping you because I’m okay. Is that your cohort?

    That’s sorta sad when you thinq of all the future families who will drive to Agazzis to find their family homes! So much for Green City!

    Believe me, after sixty years in the biz, I hold no brief for developers or my supine architectural colleagues whose lack of understanding of tower design is biblical.

    I hope, however, in #3 I went beyond the anecdotal in order to explain the need for atrium towers as an important component in a building typology mix for equitable living standards in the city.

    Right now the city is acquiring a risible reputation for its inability to provide reasonable accommodation for it’s less fortunate citizens and your anal dog-in-the-manger attitude reinforces the joke!

  • Paul

    With all this talk about displacement of families directed at supposed NIMBY’s, will the unit mix prevent this displacement? Or is it just more of the same investor-grade 740sqft two bedrooms?

    Also, is anyone surprised with the 26 to 19? Be told you’re getting a quarter, ask for a dollar, and get 75cents.

    It’s so sad that the tower is seen as the ultimate solution to our housing problems. It’s become rather clear that it is in fact one of the causes of our affordability crisis.

  • Roger Kemble

    Paul @ #12

    Read my lips.

    It isn’t about towers.

    It is about tower-atriums with a mix of tower (some like a view) one, two bed condos, family town houses, atrium garden and street commercial amenity . . .

  • MB

    @ Paul 12: “It’s so sad that the tower is seen as the ultimate solution to our housing problems. It’s become rather clear that it is in fact one of the causes of our affordability crisis.”

    ***

    It’s a little more complex than that:

    — Two + a half million souls living on land hemmed in by the sea, the mountains and protected agricultural land.

    — The economics of living in an internationally desireable locus with significant spatial limitations (see last sentence).

    — Zoning that complicates these spatial limitations further artifically by constraining even modest increases in density to only 30% of the land base (city of Vancouver) or less (all other cities in the Metro).

    — Allowing over 1/3 of such a limited land base to be consumed by low value uses defined primarily by asphalt.

    I am a veteran resident of Mt Pleasant too, but I don’t have a problem with this particular development, especially since they lowered it a bit, and feel it’s appropriate for the eastern end of the dense and active Central Broadway corridor, which is Metro’s second most dense CBD. It is also in direct adjacency to a planned station on of one of the most important future rapid transit lines in the region … when they finally build it.

    Many of us recognize the high value and attraction of human-scaled urbanism limited to six or less storeys, but these are not usually areas with regional significance. Broadway has an urbanistic melange of utility and amenity with an inherently intense rate of growth and importance to the region.

    I read somewhere that if the entire human race (approaching 7 billion now) was housed in one big city with the density and desireable urbanism of Chelsea (five or less storeys), that city would be no larger than Senegal, a pretty small country.

    That says everything we need to know about how much of the land’s surface we consume to support the world’s economy, and about the waste.

    Chelsea is also has some of the most expensive housing anywhere. An 800 square foot basement suite was advertized recently just off Kings Road (and within 600m of a tube station) for 850,000 pounds (about C$1.4 million).

    There are very few towers in Chelsea or its neighbours, Kensington and West Brompton.

  • Bill McCreery

    Agreed MB. I’ve lived in Chelsea too (in a 3 storey townhouse). Walked everywhere, biked to work, car parked out front, drove it weekends). Wonderful urban life, pub at the top of the street.

    Roger, the atrium is 2 storeys up. It looks on the model like a terraced stair on the south would be great, but, then I’m reminded of Anchor Point, as you mentioned and where my condo resides. The ounce elegant publicly accessible was fenced off to keep out street people and skate boarders.

    The revised design is a very welcome and positive improvement. With a few more tweaks this proposal will be a model for not only how to get it right, but how to really work with the community. The developer, architects and City staff are on the right path here.

    The lower tower starts to be a better fit into Mt Pleasant neighbourhood, but it’s not quite there. Perhaps since the STIR rentals (@+/-$3/sf, ie: expensive) are reduced to only 20 units, they can eliminated altogether. This alone will reduce the tower by 2 storeys, and if a further storey were removed we’d be at 16 storeys. STIRs aren’t financially worthwhile and at 20 units are not a viable size to manage either. With the elimination of the STIRs perhaps a heritage transfer from the overstocked Chinatown allotment can make up the difference.

    To secure the wrath of some here and support of others, I would like to suggest a look at both a 16 and a 17 storey version. 17 might work. Somewhere at that height together with the triangular tower and the now stronger base, the proportional relationship between the 2 will be quite elegant. This design in that light has the potential to demonstrate a fresh solution which is neither tower, nor tower and base, or just base. There is also, at this lower height range the potential for a kind of symbiotic form relationship to the Lee and the other Mt Pleasants with the upper tower. If something like this can also be done opposite at the School Board property there can be a coming together of the existing Mt Pleasant built form character and a newer larger, but nevertheless at a scale that does ‘fit’, built form.

  • Joe Just Joe

    I concur I think we are almost there, and 16flrs would be ideal, I also second the call for a triangular “flat iron” shape. Kingsway cutting diagonally across the city leads itself to supplying ample opportunities for flat irons along it’s stretch. The flat iron design is keeping with the immediate area character.

  • Gentle Bossa Nova

    Make this is a but-but post: How nice to see some neighbours… But, but, too bad to see them drinking in the Kool-Aid.

    Let’s face it folks, what defined Vancouver since 1970 was the Freeway Fight. We are redefining ourselves all over again. What will it be this time… “Episode II: The Tower Wars”.

    If the developers had asked for 30-storeys would they have gotten 23. Right? Why are we dumbing down urbanism to a height discussion? We can get high density in our neighbourhoods with human scale. All it takes is spreading it around a few more sites. That’s a loss for one investor. But it is a gain to 10x more builders.

    “Dave” reports back from the meeting that:

    1% support for 26+ storeys
    
4% support for 19-26 storeys

    20% support for 12-18 storeys
    
70% support for 6-12 storeys (Community Plan)

    5% support for less than 6

    Put me down with the 5% that support less than 6-storeys and are either deluded, or very knowledgeable about urbanism in the best sites the world over.

    Manhattan’s dirty secret is that the other burrows bear the brunt of all the money and all the geeze-wheeze done on the peninsula. Manhattan’s other dirty secret is that most of the peninsula really doesn’t work as “urbanism”: Too dark; too empty after 5 p.m.; too dirty thanks to all the traffic and the density.

    No. We need a better formula for our neighbourhood intensification that either the towers, or the neighbourhood plans done a decade ago.

  • Bill McCreery

    Valid points Gentle. But, today is today and we have a development application which this misguided and uninformed Council are processing whether you, I or anyone else likes it or not. I am commenting constructively within that context.

    I also respect what I’ve seen the design team and Planning doing in this particular process.

    It is important to recognize another distinction which makes Vancouver different from places like New York, London, Paris, etc. And, that is that Vancouver has a history and a culture which has evolved around the sanctity of the single family home. It is not politically possible to change the built form of entire Vancouver neighbourhoods from single family to 2 to 6 storey London town homes and flats. The only place we managed to do that was in Fairview Slopes.

    So, yes indeed, if we want density we have to have greater concentrations than what may be ideal. Having said that, IMO the City is currently going too dense, sometimes just a bit, but in several cases vary excessively over what is acceptable good urbanism.

    In addition, another unique Vancouver quality is our splendid views. We all love them. And, we buy properties which have them at a premium price, and quickly too. So, higher building forms do have a place here, and that’s OK. It’s another thing that is making Vancouver become itself.

  • Morry

    “I don’t want to have SkyTrain cutting our communities in half -that is going to destroy our city,” Watts told nearly 500 people at her state of the city speech at the Sheraton Guildford Hotel.

    Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Surrey+looks+light+rail+ease+huge+growth/4605885/story.html#ixzz1JbbYHEx1

  • Ron

    The arcade is a bit odd. Presumably it will be set back from the curb, unlike the Lee Building’s arcade. So that will just set back the retail from its customers – see Citygate along Main Street just north of Main Street Station. Mt. Pleasant is more vibrant than the DTES fringe, however, so maybe it will work.

    WRT rezoning single family homes to higher densities – downtown south and the west end were previously single family homes too. I just think that politicians won’t make “unpopular” or “tough” decisions these days.

  • Help Save Mt Pleasant

    Re Morry #19

    I notice it states in the Sun article, “Another one million people are expected to move to Metro Vancouver in the next 30 years with 70 per cent of those settling south of the Fraser River.”

    So that leaves 300,000 coming to north of the Fraser – or 10,000 people per year to an area that includes (in addition to Vancouver) the cities of Richmond, Burnaby, New West, TriCities, Ridge/Meadows, Mission.. So even if Vancouver absorbs half of this number – is it really necessary for us to be in a panic believing that Vancouver’s only option is to build up in order to absorb 5,000 people per year? If towers are not truly a necessity, then what’s really fueling this frantic trend in ‘urban design’?

  • MB

    I believe the Lee building went up when Broadway was a narrower road with far less traffic. The arcade does amplify the traffic noise, and its columns are now close enough to the curb to smash the mirrors on passing buses. The upper floors are set right over the public sidewalks. I’d be surprised if the Rize was permitted to do that.

    But the arcade is also a great respite from the rain, and is unique in Vancouver. It could be made wider in spots if they’d allow an exterior sidewalk-level wall or two to be recessed further into the building.

    The HBC store in downtown Calgary has a wonderful arcade that has worked for decades. It’s quite wide, both in column spacing and the wall-to-curb dimension. I still marvel at how the beautiful terrazzo pavement hasn’t cracked and spalled in their brutal winters.

  • Tessa

    @Help Save Mt. Pleasant

    I think part of the point is that 70 per cent of the newcommers shouldn’t go south of the Fraser, as that is likely assuming a worrisome continuation of sprawl in Langley, Surrey, Delta and places beyond.

  • Tessa

    I think this project is different enough that we should have another meeting similar to the previous one, get the community together and see what people think. I think the result would still be similar, that people still feel this development needs some changes.

    I, for one, strongly disagree with Bill on the STIR units. I’m disappointed that it seems every time we reduce density it always comes at the expense of rental housing, and this neighbourhood in particular is has been a rental neighbourhood and I wouldn’t want to see that lost.

    I do think the height reduction makes this tower a lot better, but I think the developors really need to step away from the tower and podium development model and find a way they can keep the new density while still making the development more mid-rise and in the style of Mount Pleasant. Also, I still feel there’s too much glass and it’s got too much of that Yaletown look, and if, as previously mentioned on the comments, it includes a big-box style retail space, that’s another major concern I would have (smaller retail maxing out around the size of Buy Low is what I’d prefer).

    So, to sum up, let’s have another meeting similar to the previous one to talk about the changes.

  • Bill McCreery

    Tessa, another meeting can be useful.

    The STIR programme does not produce ‘affordable’ rental housing. The half dozen STIRs I’ve analyzed all have rents of $3+ / sf / month. Average rents in Vancouver are $1.50 to $2 / sf. I have not sen the STIR unit plans at the Rize, but they are typically substandard (390 sf Studios, 490 sf 1 beds).

    The reality is many of the units in this project will be bought by investors. They will rent them at below their monthly costs. So that, in fact, is subsidized housing, not by government but by private investors. The lower floor units where the STIRs are located would, if they’re not there and condos are, would be where a concentration of such units will be. So you’ll be able to rent a bigger, 525 sf, 1 bed for the same price you’d get the 390 sf STIR studio.

    Which would you choose?

  • Gentle Bossa Nova

    “There is also, at this lower height range the potential for a kind of symbiotic form relationship to the Lee and the other Mt Pleasants with the upper tower. If something like this can also be done opposite at the School Board property there can be a coming together of the existing Mt Pleasant built form character and a newer larger, but nevertheless at a scale that does ‘fit’, built form.”

    Bill McCreery 15

    Clearly, we belong to different generations, Bill. “…a kind of symbiotic form relationship…” or “a coming together of the existing Mt Pleasant built form character and a newer larger, but nevertheless at a scale that does ‘fit’” to my sensibilities is just Dr. Spok-speak [Star TREK, not Star Wars]. It is quintessentially “modernist”. But, we are past that now. We are in the age of imitating the past in order to build a ‘district’ it may be necessary to be less inventive (to the moderns), yet more authentic to the ages (the Lee Buildings and at least two other sympathetic developments in its vicinity; one of them from the present era).

    “With a few more tweaks this proposal will be a model for not only how to get it right, but how to really work with the community. The developer, architects and City staff are on the right path here… The lower tower starts to be a better fit into Mt Pleasant neighbourhood, but it’s not quite there. ”

    Bill McCreery 15

    I can’t see how bringing downtown towers into the neighbourhood as a model of anything but a failed urbanism. I have held my breath, and let stuff go up at the Community Center and just across from the Wester Front. But it is stretching credulity to suggest that this built form is nothing else than profiteering at the neighbourhood’s expense. Who in the neighbourhood wants streets forever entombed in shadows for the sake of corporate bottom lines?

    “Vancouver has a history and a culture which has evolved around the sanctity of the single family home. It is not politically possible to change the built form of entire Vancouver neighbourhoods from single family to 2 to 6 storey London town homes and flats. The only place we managed to do that was in Fairview Slopes.”

    Bill McCreery 18

    Re-state the argument incorrectly in order to defeat it. I challenge that. The jump to “politically possible to change the built form of entire Vancouver neighbourhoods” belies the present process. These things are being perpetuated one site at a time, Bill. No one in their right mind thinks that the proposals are being floated as fiats to serve the neighbourhoods as a whole. No one can build entire neighbourhoods out of towers. They need space to breathe. You know, towers need “green belts around them” typically provided by lots with the unfortunate and dwarfed single family homes the sanctity of which was sold to the highest bidder (if you’ll pardon the unintended pun). Outside the downtown tower sites are simply and plainly sweet-heart deals given to one or another sympathetic corporation.

    “I believe the Lee building went up when Broadway was a narrower road with far less traffic. The arcade does amplify the traffic noise, and its columns are now close enough to the curb to smash the mirrors on passing buses. The upper floors are set right over the public sidewalks. I’d be surprised if the Rize was permitted to do that.”

    MB 22

    Good urbanism will elude us until sites like the Rise are “directed” to do just that.

    “Tessa, another meeting can be useful.”

    Bill McCreery 25

    I take exactly of the opposite view. It is not the number of meetings that matter, but rather what the meetings are about. If meetings are about what a neighbourhood should become on a site by site basis, don’t bother to show up. Our system has been compromised when the issue pits the elected official against a developer of a single site…

    However, if the meetings are about how the neighbourhood should ‘build out’ over a 20 to 40 year span, then fine. Of course, that’s not what City Plan was about.

    The flip side of the spot rezoning for towers issue is the hang-over of a City Plan process that took too long, and had nothing to contribute about either good or sustainable urbanism in the neighbourhoods.

  • Bill McCreery

    Well Bossa, there may be a generation gap, but I hope not. In my experience the basics don’t change, how we selectively employ them does. In situations such as this, I would hope there is a common understanding. So, let’s see.

    1st — please keep in mind that I don’t support the present Vision Council’s uninformed, opportunistic spot rezoning process here or anywhere else throughout the City. My position has been and will be next year, if elected, to remove the DoP’s arbitrary powers to over-ride neighbourhood visions and zoning and reinstitute proper community based planning process in Vancouver.

    2nd — I am quite clear: “today is today and we have a development application which this misguided and uninformed Council are processing whether you, I or anyone else likes it or not. I am commenting constructively within that context.”

    3rd — your idea of appropriate scale and height might well be different from mine. This is not generational. There are differing opinions on this subject in all generations.

    4th — your suggestion that a 16 or 17 storey Rize built form is a “downtown tower” completely misunderstands the point I was making. I was saying, in fact, we all might learn something from what this proponent is doing at the Rize. The height and bulk of the higher building compared to the ‘base’ can relates well to the scale and bulk of the existing Mt. Pleasant character if properly executed at the design development stage. I don’t know about you, but I’m open to new and innovative ways to achieve those core principles. I don’t think our thought processes need to stop with 18th century London.

    5th — for reasons I’ve previously articulated Vancouver is not London nor New York. We need to generate our own urbanity to suit our own needs and preferences. We have made considerable progress in doing so until this last Council. Hopefully we can continue to do so. And. in that context, the Rize is a step in that direction, albeit in a very flawed process.

  • Evilfred

    Jeez, this isnt the only developable land in the area. A FSR of 5.33 is still plenty high. I’d be happy with 16 stories. And maybe another development nearby also at 16 stories.

    STIR is a total joke. Most of the regular units will be rented out by their investor owners anyways, so it seems pointless.

  • Evilfred

    Also t

  • Gentle Bossa Nova

    Oh, there’s a gap BMcC… alright, but it’s not a game ender. On the contrary, I am really hoping it is the start of the new. In full appreciation of the discussions we see here, I push back on some of your views…

    Like other voices on this blog, and throughout this city, I see a need to change our approach to planning. A charrette-based approach is closer to the direction I would like to see the neighbourhoods go, where a “consensus vision” is set in pictures and words well before staff and Council have dealings with individual sites.

    However, the charrette process has a down side—political leaders and senior staffs may see it as a loss of power and deal making.

    Do you feel that? And where do you come down on the issue of doing the public consultation early enough, and well enough, that it is completed before the proponents bearing community amenity gifts rear up?

    I agree “today is today” (“it is what it is”)… but, since I don’t have a vote at Council, my preference is to continue to voice a clear discontent right to the end of the process.

    Okay, on to specifics…

    “The height and bulk of the higher building compared to the ‘base’ can relates well to the scale and bulk of the existing Mt. Pleasant character if properly executed at the design development stage…”

    My generation has a thumbed-up, working copy of Vitruvius (or the internet version) and our understanding of “human scale” speaks to the ages. This Rize discussion is profiteering pure and simple wearing a short toga as an excuse. “Core Principles” are timeless, not “new”, and that is one of the key differences between the “modernist-let’s-try-anything” approach, and where we are now. A panoply of tools allows us to make metric comparisons and wonder how it all got so far off base.

    “I don’t think our thought processes need to stop with 18th century London…”

    Dive! Dive! Dive! London’s development really got going in the 17th century (the 1600’s—following on Parisian examples), and hit the wall in 1858 with what Fleet Street dubbed “The Summer of the Great Stink”. Private development had exercised its power, and neglected to observe the necessities of coordinated action in the all important areas of hygiene, water supply, and public sewers. That is an incriminating patrimony for our society.
    Yet, by the 19th century (1800’s), local geotechnical conditions, & a handful of Paris-trained engineers, combined to give London the upper hand. The human-scaled build out (retro-fitted with the Victoria and Albert embankment’s main sewers), the Underground, and the tireless fleet of buses, combined to make London into a great, modern metropolis without the need to build higher than 3.5 stories above the street. Compare that with the 6-storey streetwall of the contemporary Parisian model.

    “Vancouver is not London nor New York. We need to generate our own urbanity to suit our own needs and preferences. We have made considerable progress in doing so until this last Council.”

    I agree with the statement right up until the twist of phrase that makes it political, “until this last council”. I find very little difference between one party and another when it comes to getting the urbanism right.

    Both have failed us miserably.

  • Bill McCreery

    Bossa, a charrette process has been, and can again be incorporated into the the neighbourhood visioning process.

    “…before staff and Council have dealings with individual sites.”

    It was before and can also be again that Council should not have to deal with individual sites, except in exceptional cases. Blanket spot rezoning is not sound planning nor does it produce viable neighbourhoods or cohesive communities.

    Your suggestion that “…political leaders and senior staffs may see it as a loss of power and deal making.” may be how this Council operates. It is not how the Council I was involved with in the 70s and those after operated. By eliminating the spot rezoning and having a community generated plan, which will normally have to include added densities, but in a way which is accepted by the community and the development industry (both have a role to play here), the zoning by-laws and design guidelines can govern the what and how of proposed development. And from there, that way staff, the Design Panel, Heritage and Planning Commissions, et al can properly function. In the present circumstances they cannot properly perform their functions.

    The object is not “losing Power” for many in the political process, it’s making Vancouver a better city. Having said that, even Vision would no doubt say they are trying to create a better city. Unfortunately they don’t know how to go about it. (I apologize, and yet I do not for my political observations, however, these things must be said because IMO this Vision Council is doing a great deal of damage to this City, not just in planning, but fiscally and by their divisive policies which pit factions against each other unnecessarily.

    Your generation is not the only one which has some understanding of “Vitruvius”. And some of us older types have also incorporated Renaissance principles into our own work. We also have used ideas from sources such as Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander and many others who have rightly argued for a more human scaled built environment. I object to your claiming exclusivity to “an understanding of human scale”. You do not.

    This discussion about generations reminds me of a time in the 80s when I had some very talented younger architects working with me. One day on of them, Alex, came into my office, obviously distraught. He said: “Do you know what the generation gap is down to now?” I said: “No, what?” He replied: “3 1/2 years.” He’d had a go-round with a younger colleague who’d graduated 3 years after he had. He thought they were on different planets, in the end they had a different opinion. And differing opinions are vital.

    The modern Movement was a process we had to go through because the technological, population and social norms had drastically changed in the +/- 19th Century. Modernists, with exceptions such as Frank Lloyd Wright, were not generally concerned about human scale. They were focused on the economic technological production of built form on a mass scale to house the burgeoning populations of the day.

    We may differ here also Bossa,:

    “I find very little difference between one party and another when it comes to getting the urbanism right.”

    Please look a little further back historically. Your perspective is to short.

    Anything happening with the charrette you spoke of?

  • MB

    @ Gentle 30: “A charrette-based approach is closer to the direction I would like to see the neighbourhoods go, where a “consensus vision” is set in pictures and words well before staff and Council have dealings with individual sites.”

    ***

    This would be the most democratic approach, and one would hope the resulting Neighbourhood Plans would be updated every decade or so with more extensive workshops and not perpetually locked in.

    The workshop approach may also require some neighbourhood activists to drop their slogans and placards at the door (and developers to ride their bikes to the meeting instead of driving their beamers), open their minds and sit down at the same table as their ideological opponents with real plans spread before them, crayons hoisted in every hand, and be issued a challenge they may find hard.

    Compromise can be painful. All neighbourhoods should be forced to address accommodating physical growth, environmental stewardship, eenergy and food security, and accepting responsibility for it’s fair share of millions of new immigrants and residents, houses for the homeless, mass transit infrastructure, and detox / addictions treatment centres. Government can reciprocate with things like better local public services and urban design.

    As the result, we may finally see fee simple attached single-family houses of all sizes and built for a range of family and single incomes, true pedestrian-scale urbanism and transit-oriented development, healthier, more efficient neighbourhoods, and an economy that practices a deeper level of accountability.

    But neighbourhoods are not isolated villages. Mt Pleasant is very close to Western Canada’s most dense downtown, and is bisected by Western Canada’s second most dense downtown, the Broadway corridor. The former occupies an entire peninsula contained by the sea, and need to expand to points beyond. The latter is linear in form.

    Like it or not, Mt Pleasant is in line for vastly increased development pressures that could well pop the artificial glass ceiling of highly-prescriptive urban design “laws”. The five-storey rule in London or seven-storeys Paris is in fact eight or ten stories here when you translate their much greater ceiling heights, often 16 feet in Paris’ retail ground floors. The height limit in central Paris is, I’m quite sure, 100 feet with mandated Mansarded roofs.

    The Laws of Good Urbanism are not as cut and dried as the infallible Laws of Physics. The Golden Mean and 19th Century height-to-width ratios (e.g. building walls to streets) are principles, not laws, and human habitation is as varied as culture.

    Lastly, Vitruvius lived and served in one of the most historically powerful imperialist capitalist empires ever. Did Caesar have neighbourhood charrettes to determine that his empire was to extract resources from as far away as Scotland?

  • Roger Kemble

    MB, Bill, Bossa @ passim

    Gentlemen, may I butt into a very interesting conversation and remind us all that The height limit in central Paris is, I’m quite sure, 100 feet with mandated Mansarded roofs. except for Tour Maine-Montparnasse.

    As for London: thanq god Wren’s plan, after the fire, never saw the light of day.

    Had Charles ll been amenable we would not, today, enjoy that exasperating warren of streets leading to Lime street and the magnificent rule-breaker Lloyds Tower.

    Much of the urban design we all flock to see abroad has usually come about for reasons other than commodity, firmness and delight: Baron Haussmann’s boulevards were created for the expressed purpose of moving troops to quell the mob and Nash was commissioned to build Regent Street London as a distraction to allow the Prince Regent latitude to play him as cuckold with his paramour Mrs. Fitzherbert.

    And that delightful curve coming off Piccadilly Circus was not so much intentional as a response to the militant merchants of Brewer Street just behind, to the east, in Soho.

    Apart from history IMHO the most potent instruments of urban design are the party wall and the build-to line. These are the instruments of public urban space if we knew how to use them.

    The charrette is, indeed, a most potent instrument of urban design: I have participated in quite a few, especially recently.

    The charrette has two major flaws: public passivity and the inability of the facilitator to listen.

    As for A Dave’s love affair with numbers: “ 70% support for 6-12 storeys (as in the Community Plan, duh)“.

    Dud is right because numbers mean nothing.

    To wit: Pop of MP = 24,000, voting pop = 16,000+/-. Likely number of people at A Dave’s meeting = 300 max.

    70% of 300 = 210. 210 = 1.3% stat of MP pop!

    And that is why developers and planners don’t take the public seriously.

    From Rize-A @ 26 to 16 floors urban design-wise is meaningless but it means a lot to families who must drive up the valley to find affordable accommodation.

    There is no shortage of land on the downtown peninsular or up the valley: take a windscreen survey anywhere in Metro lower mainland, witness the under developed, badly planned dormant land.

    There is an acute shortage of land caused by off-shore money looking for a hedge against a devaluing US dollar. Peter Ladner is right: we need curbs on that practice.

    There is an acute shortage of land that is not in the hands of speculators: be it local or off-shore.

    For example, in 1972+/- when the ALR was first inaugurated Genstar Corporation was the first to grab as much available ALR land for its corporate land bank as was available at the time, knowing in the fullness of time the rules will have to be broken: i.e. speculation for decades hence.

    Is it still holding land off market?

  • Roger Kemble

    PS . . . and Ricardo Bofill made an absolute fool of himself and the Post-Modern movement at Monpellier and Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines because he needed the money . . . and I’ll bet Charles Jenks would not have agreed with me at the time . . . but I’ll be he does now . . .

  • Gentle Bossa Nova

    “There is no there there”

    Gertrude Stein, an American living in Paris.

    One source tells of this quote as having been spoken by Stein’s automobile mechanic in Paris, referring to the lack of technical training exhibited by the young mechanics coming to work in his garage. Stein is also credited with coining “a lost generation” among other achievements.

    The generation after the boomers is a lost generation in the sense that they found little space left for action. More over the values of the boomers in the middle of the bell curve run to the ordinary and the markets. When contrasted to the merits of the few and the most gifted gaps appear that are difficult to surmount.

    Urbanism (values of latitude given in the brackets below) is a cultural product with a relentless tenacity that leaves signs everywhere.

    Athens (37)
    Barcelona (41)
    Berlin (52)
    Buenos Aires (34)
    Calgary (51)
    Charlottetown (46)
    Miami (25)
    London (51.5)
    Los Angeles (34)
    Montreal (45)
    New York (40)
    Paris (49)
    Quito (0)
    Rome (42)
    San Diego (32)
    Toronto (43)
    Venice (45)
    Vancouver (49)
    Winnipeg (49.5)

    The laws of good urbanism, for example, dictate a different street aspect ratio for places in different latitudes. Thus, in warmer climes tall walls and shaded streets are preferred; while in colder climates the streets should be wider than the fronting buildings are tall to allow solar penetration.

    The angle of tilt in the globe changes over time, but not significantly. For our purposes, solar values in the time of Augustus are more or less the same as contemporary values.

    “… eliminating the spot rezoning and having a community generated plan… the zoning by-laws and design guidelines can govern the what and how of proposed development. And from there, that way staff, the Design Panel, Heritage and Planning Commissions, et al can properly function. In the present circumstances they cannot properly perform their functions.”

    Bill 31

    I had a recent conversation with an elected official from another jurisdiction over this “what and how” business. But first, the suggestion that charrettes are difficult to implement due to the perception of a loss of power by staff and by councils is not my own. It comes from a source I was not able to locate and quote; and it was repeated to me recently by someone whose political gifts far exceed my own.

    The “what” of urbanism is pretty clear to some:

    “… fee simple attached single-family houses of all sizes and built for a range of family and single incomes, true pedestrian-scale urbanism and transit-oriented development, healthier, more efficient neighbourhoods, and an economy that practices a deeper level of accountability.”

    MB 32 [I would substitute “politics” for “an economy”]

    The “how” seems to elude us. Charrettes are process. We have seen it in use in our city (South Fraser Lands). But we have not seen it used by our municipal governments.

    What takes place in the way of public consultation to an outside observer can look like professionals (there is no there there) asking the public if “everything is going to be alright”.

  • Roger Kemble

    Bossie @ #35

    Gertrude Stein’s reply, when asked why she preferred Paris to her hometown, was, “. . . Baltimore has no there, there!

    You say, “The laws of good urbanism, for example, dictate a different street aspect ratio for places in different latitudes“.

    Oh indeed! Who’s laws?

    All the latitudes you list have varying sunshine depending on the season and most definitely with varying street widths that do not follow your arithmetic.

    For instance Buenos Aires comprises mostly very wide grand boulevards and is called The Paris of the Southern Hemisphere for that reason: sometimes it is very sunny, sometimes not!

    Calle Florida, on the other hand, comprises very narrow looming towers: it is a most interesting shopping street.

    Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista is of average width lined with towers. Mostly SP comprises very narrow streets opening on to parks: the area surrounding Largo do Arouche is tight lanes and tall towers while Ave 7 do Avril is very, very narrow surrounded by very, very tall buildings.

    Mexico City’s, Paseo de la Reforma is very wide and replete in towers. Avenida de los Insurgentes is narrow, mostly, replete with towers and arguably the longest avenue in the world!

    Centro Historico, a warren of narrow streets, is a world heritage site with one tower, Torre Latino Americano of 45 floors.

    Your story of the lost generation is . . . errrrr . . . quit a stretch. I do not see the application!

    Academic dogma is no guide especially in city design and most other stuff too . . .

    Beware Bossie thumbs and rulers . . .

  • MB

    If we used latitude as a principle of urban design, then what season do we use to determine street width?

    In southern Canada the winter solstice sun is a scant 18 degrees off the southern horizon, and the shadows are very l-o-o-o-n-g.

    The amount of land that will be devoted to roads — especially those that run E-W — will be tremendous in order to avoid shading the neighbours, and will bump huge swathes of housing and businesses right off the Vanmap.

    On the other hand, the summer solstice sun is 62 degrees off the southern horizon and shadows are very short. Therein arterials become laneways.

    Where is the compromise, at equinox? Even there you’ll have trouble with Vancouver’s urban forest.

    You can see the problem with overly prescriptive urban design principles that become “law” and ignore real principles, like elementary land economics … oops! … politico-economy.

  • Gentle Bossa Nova

    “If we used latitude as a principle of urban design, then what season do we use to determine street width?”

    You’ll have to ask the guy that proposed it in the first place, MB. Andrea Palladio publishing in 1570, in Venezia, and veritably taking Inigo Jones and the entire English society by a storm in the decades following his death with his “Four Books on Architecture” added a wrinkle or two about urban design.

    There is a gap between what we perceive with our human lenses, and what is empirically demonstrable… Things are not always what they seem.

    However, as I have tried to suggest, it soon turns into a shirts and skins game. In the process the most important question is shifted to a less than critical matter: whose team are you on, anyway?

    That’s too bad, because the surest way to build consensus lies exactly in the other direction. We are not so much interested in the things we don’t agree about, as in the things all can support (empirical data).

    I used latitude as an empirical measure of where urban sites are on the globe. However, your are right to point out that other facts also weigh in.

    For example, I was surprised to see Rome, Barcelona and NYC aligning on the same latitude on the globe. From being there, I would have put Rome further south; Barcelona further north; and NYC almost on par with Paris and London.

    However, climatologists may well point out, that being close to a body of water (the Mediterranean) and a desert (north Africa) will have measurable effects and Rome will not feel like Barcelona.

    However, it strikes me as spurious reasoning to uphold the urbanism of Central and South America, on the one hand as exemplary, and condemn a normative urbanism as despotic.

    The implosion of Latin American social and political institutions in the post-WWII decades must stand as the strongest example of what we should try to avoid.

  • Roger Kemble

    Bossie @ #38

    However, it strikes me as spurious reasoning to uphold the urbanism of Central and South America . . .

    As for latitude, Latino urbanism spans from Patagonia in the cold south, thru the tropics, to cold foggy San Francisco in the north.

    Spurious? Not so. You could learn a lot from it!

    The ancestor of Latin American urbanism was Phillip II of Spain, who, in the 1600’s, decreed The Law of the Indies of which we are the grateful beneficiaries today.

    Any ordinance that lasts that long must be long on substance, would you not agree?

    Claiming anything that does not agree with your misinformed musings just exposes you as a purveyor of rhetorical mumbo jumbo.

    Your exotic reasoning is good for a laugh but not really to be taken seriously . . .

  • Ramp Vancouver

    RAMP ( Residents Association Mount Pleasant) has been formed because of this proposal. We feel that the size and scale of this building doesn’t fit inline with “density done well”. We dont think this building is in line with the community plan.

    Please read our information on http://www.rampvancouver.com

    Please like us on facebook, and please sign the petition online, or come out to see us at car free days in front of Cobs Bakery (June 19th)

    A city starts with a community, we aim to keep ours alive!