Is it too late to save our cities?

Public policy

Oct 14

Guest: Larry Beasley, former Vancouver city planner

On this edition of Journal, we take a look at one of the hot issues in our current municipal elections: housing.

Part of the controversy comes from the push for more and more density. Top-down planning, not neighbourhood-up.

The provincial government has certainly embraced this argument by forcing individual cities to build imposed numbers of housing. But as one mayor told me, “One size does not fit all.”

I know. There are experts who believe supply is the answer to everything: affordability, social housing, the missing middle, and seniors’ homes.

But is it? If it were, why do we have 5000 newly-built condos lying empty in Vancouver? Why do we tear down good moderate-cost 6-story older apartments, only to replace them with unaffordable high rises which very often can’t accommodate families?

And more top-down planning, this time from some municipalities. Like Vancouver. It drives me crazy: prezoned condo towers imposed across large swaths of our established neighbourhoods where they absolutely do not fit? No consultation, no public hearings.

So how did we get here? And is it too late to save the liveability of our cities?

That is an absolutely legitimate question for our politicians to address during this election.

It is one that Larry Beasley, former Vancouver city planner and author of a book that Douglas Todd has called an “influential text in the world of urban planning” has joined with a group of like-minded experts demanding a “housing reset.” It’s time for neighbourhoods to demand a voice at the table. It’s time for top-down planning to stop. It isn’t working.