For all our disagreements in the Lower Mainland, most people share a common understanding of how to make this place livable.
The big overview is spelled out in Metro Vancouver’s new regional growth strategy (RGS), finally approaching the finish line after three years of negotiations. It is strikingly similar to its 15-year-old predecessor, the livable region strategic plan (LRSP), which condensed the vision into a 13-word mantra: protect the green zone; build complete communities; achieve a compact metropolitan region; increase transportation choice.
The new RGS plan, now formally approved by 23 of 24 local governments, including Fraser Valley Regional District, Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and TransLink, has similar goals:
- build complete, healthy communities (prevent sprawl);
- support the region’s economy by protecting the industrial land base, identifying places for jobs and connecting transportation networks;
- protect agricultural, conservation and recreation lands; and
- address climate change (add density and transportation choices).
One big difference in the current plan is a more aggressive approach to protecting the industrial land base as a regional amenity vital for a healthy economy.
The development industry and some business groups are still chafing at the need for regional approval to remove lands from the industrial land zone, claiming that makes the plan a “no-growth” policy enforced by a much more powerful Metro Vancouver board and staff.
During the long negotiations, Metro Vancouver weakened its grip on industrial land by allowing municipalities to create an exempt zone called “mixed employment,” where industrial and commercial are mixed, say, around transit hubs.
Metro Vancouver officials insist that removal from the hard-core industrial land zone is easy: a municipality passes a motion to remove a piece of land; the motion goes to Metro Vancouver for a staff report and public hearing and a simple majority of the weighted votes at the board decides the outcome – three months at the most.
Notable among the outspoken critics pushing the Urban Development Institute to attempt last-minute provincial intervention are owners of industrial land counting on converting it to more lucrative uses and developers who have bought options on agricultural land adjoining new industrial lands in Delta and want to get them out of the agricultural land reserve.
Good luck.
Business groups are also saying the new plan is not tough enough in forcing municipalities to add density in “frequent transit development areas” along transit lines. So which is it: too much bureaucratic power or not enough?
Metro Vancouver planners counter that they have laid out “guidelines” for municipalities as they prepare their official community plan – the next step in the process – with “really strong messages” to direct at least two-thirds of all new growth into areas served by frequent transit.
Metro Van regional planning committee chairman Derek Corrigan said the biggest achievement of the new plan is renewed municipal commitment to regional goals – the municipalities’ feeling of ownership – and a confidence that the more flexible rules will give them enough autonomy. “But we can put a hold on if someone colours way outside the line,” he noted.
It’s not easy to sell industrial and agricultural land protection to suburban municipalities who see those as low-value, often unattractive uses: Vancouver gets cappuccino and penthouses; the suburbs get trucks and chickens.
Metro Vancouver is a bit of a mad conductor directing a few key instruments out of a full symphony – and not everyone wants to play the notes on the page. A plan like this is ultimately based on municipalities’ good will as they acknowledge their mutual interdependence. Metro Vancouver politicians and staff deserve credit for herding these cats this close to unanimous agreement.