What cities should look like in the Lower Mainland’s famously constrained geography is often a debate about urban form rather than land use. Complete, compact communities are the ideal, but some people are happy with some land uses being elsewhere. Waterfronts across Metro Vancouver have been transformed from industrial hubs into upscale residential precincts, for example, while industrial uses have shifted further upriver into areas well outside the urban core.
While densification of properties increasingly crops up as a potential means of keeping certain industrial uses closer to the core, the economics of the proposition often fail to pencil out. The throughput of industrial businesses would need to increase significantly to make the structures work. Most often, industrial activities remain ground-oriented and need lots of affordable space.
This fact is key to a decision that’s starting to play out in Abbotsford, which adopted a new community plan last summer. Part of the vision for preparing the community to grow to 200,000 people from the current tally of approximately 141,400 was the recognition that more land would be needed. Hemmed in by the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), the city knew it would have to choose carefully if it wanted to make another application for ALR land.
Speaking with Business in Vancouver last week, Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said the municipality decided to limit residential growth and seek extra land for jobs space only (Abbotsford hopes to seek exclusion of up to 696 acres from the ALR for industrial use).
“This council, and I as a mayor, are not going to be looking for exclusions in the ALR for residential growth,” he said. “We have too much sprawl that’s happened over the years: we need to densify, and go up, and that’s welcome news for lots of people.”
Braun said the city is focusing on infill opportunities, not just to limit sprawl but also to limit the expense of sprawl on civic infrastructure.
Compact cities are more walkable and cheaper to service. Running infrastructure up Sumas Mountain is an expensive prospect, Braun said.
Similarly, Metro Vancouver encourages people to limit watering during the summer not because there’s a shortage of water (this winter was the wettest in recent memory) but because it limits the need for upgrades to the region’s water system to meet growing demand. Put another way, the district doesn’t want to build for peak flows of two billion litres a day if it can get away with building for 1.5 billion litres.
Similarly, Abbotsford is limiting extractions from the ALR when it can do more with the land it’s got.
Supply side
Sifting through files last week, the announcement issued when Andy Yan of BTA Works, the research division of Bing Thom Architects, released his first analysis of the city’s vacant homes came to hand.
Released at the end of May 2009, the study noted that the number of vacant condos in Vancouver was between 5.5% and 8% of the city’s stock – a range consistent with what a variety of sources (including this columnist) have reported. The latest census was in line with this, reporting that 8.2% of city residences weren’t occupied by their usual residents, up from 7.7% in the 2011 census.
But given the persistent concerns eight years on about vacant homes, it’s worth noting that the original study pointed out that tenants occupied a majority of downtown condos. While investor participation in downtown housing was confirmed, it wasn’t the bête noire it became in the years since.
Yan’s key conclusion, rather, focused less on who owns and doesn’t occupy Vancouver’s homes and more on the need for “more affordable family-
oriented housing units with great supporting amenities.”
Supply was the critical element, a point that continues to resonate today as rental construction across the region picks up and housing market analysts point to the lack of listings and straitened supply of new units available for purchase facing the market.
