The Vancouver Achievement

I was struck by the simple yet profound guidelines that the city of Vancouver created for the False Creek North Development Plan in 1989. In some ways these simple guidelines seem ahead of many of the overall design guidelines for most of the cities of which I am familiar. What I didn’t pick up from the reading is why Vancouver has had such progressive and successful urban design strategies as compared with most North American cities and why so few cities have taken so long to emulate these guidelines? Are cities so different in their setting, nature, and culture that Vancouver’s examples seem too far-fetched to try to emulate?

Having spent the summer working for a developer I also wonder about the overall health of the residential real estate market in Vancouver. When the city was creating these policies was the residential market strong? I think the city of Oakland is a good example of a city council and planning commission which is, in many ways, beholden to developers because they fear that ‘over-regulation’ will result in reduced investment. And Oakland financially cannot afford reduced investment. The length of the debate surrounding inclusionary housing is a good example of the fear of scaring away real estate investment from the city. On the other hand, San Francisco seems like a strong candidate for implementation of an urban design strategy. Is the Urban Design Plan that Allan Jacobs helped write still city policy? During my summer, working on a variety of projects in San Francisco, we often discussed zoning and other city ordinances but I never once heard discussion about complying with or emulating any aspect of the Urban Design Plan. Why has Vancouver been more successful in creating an urban design plan and ensuring its implementation?

My direct experience in development also suggests that the articulation of street-level units toward the street is filtering down to developers and architects. Two of the projects I worked over the summer, one in Old Oakland and one in Richmond very specifically wrapped their parking structures with outward facing units of both units and retail space. Interestingly, similar to the developers in Vancouver, most of the units were considered less desirable than the above-grade units and have smaller square footage and cheaper price points. Unfortunately most of the street-level units in both projects lack some of the best-practice guidelines that resulted from the Vancouver study. I am fairly confident that neither of the projects included gardens or terraces in their design or on-street parking, which seemed to be two of the factors that most influenced interaction between the street and the private spaces within the home. Will this dramatically reduce their effectiveness as providing ‘eyes on the street’ and positive private/public transitions? While I was not involved in the initial designs of the buildings I believe that since both of the developments are being constructed in traditionally poorer neighborhoods there was a fear that these types of open terraces/gardens might reduce perceptions of safety and privacy in these dwellings. As new developments continue in these areas it will be interesting to see whether the designs for street-level dwellings will remain Spartan or expand to include better public/private transition spaces.
What remains to be answered for me is whether poorly designed street facing units on multi-family dwellings are better than no street facing units? So often in urban design it seems like great design gets ‘dumbed down’ to its most basic and understandable components. In this process the positive aspects of the original designs get lost or transformed often leading to ultimately negative outcomes. Personally I lean toward believing that street-level units in multi-family dwellings are good practice regardless of their ultimate form. I hope that the street-level units in the developments I am familiar with sell well enough that developers will find that creating even better designed street-level units are worth their investment.
Lastly, as a planner I am interested in the effect that so much residential development is having on the overall Vancouver economy. One of the most often-cited problems in the Bay Area is the housing/jobs imbalance. But places like San Jose and San Francisco, who have relatively strong (well, up until a few months ago) residential markets have essentially eliminated the ability of residential developments to replace commercial and industrial space. There are obvious fiscal reasons for doing this but the contradiction points to the complexity of the Vancouver model, which focuses so heavily on creating downtown residential neighborhoods, one might say, at the expense of office/commercial/industrial development