More than 100 people gathered at Vancouver City Hall on Saturday in opposition to the proposed Broadway plan, which would allow for a significant new density on the Broadway corridor.
The extensive proposal, which is now being addressed to the council, aims to guide the next 30 years of development in an area that needs to be transformed by the completion of a new multi-billion dollar metro.
The plan will allow towers of up to 40 floors near transit stations and 20 to 30 floors in so-called “shoulder” areas, which have already undergone some development.
In the residential areas you will see apartments up to six floors on side streets and “strategic” buildings from 12 to 18 floors, if they have housing below market price.
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People from nearly two dozen neighborhood associations and community groups took part in Saturday’s protest.
“The concern we have is that we have somehow jumped into an unsustainable, inaccessible high model and it will not work,” architect and opponent of the plan Brian Palmquist told Global News.
“It’s a universal approach. There are more than 50 new areas on the Broadway plan.
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Palmquist and other opponents say the proposal will dramatically change the area and add inaccessible new housing, while displacing people from existing, affordable low-rise housing in the area.
Instead, they want to see the priority of four- to six-story buildings that they believe can achieve the city’s housing goals.
Strategist Bill Tilleman, who also heads the opposition to the proposed towers in Jericho, said the plan would create a “concrete canyon” in the Broadway corridor.
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“We can increase the density without building towers,” he said.
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“The alternative is low density, Parisian groups, in Paris there is no building higher than eight floors in the center of Paris, Paris is a world city with metro stations and they do not have 40-storey towers.”
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Former Vancouver chief planner Brent Toderian said trying to emulate Paris just doesn’t work in a city like Vancouver, where single-family zoning still dominates most of the land.
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“When people talk about the Parisian form, they have to remember that the whole of Paris, not just the city, but even the region, is this scale of (medium-density) urbanism. So, yes, you transfer your population to miles and miles, miles and miles of city building, “he said.
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Toderian acknowledged that the plan was controversial, but said it didn’t actually go far enough.
The corridor, he said, is functionally the second center of the city, and since billions are spent on the subway, the city must think big to get the maximum return on this investment.
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“The climate emergency is changing the game. Investing in the subway changes the game. And we can’t pretend that the old approach to thinking about population density and growth will work, “he said.
“It will also not work just in terms of adding enough houses to match even the number of people we are looking for houses at the moment, let alone the number we will have to accommodate in the next five years and 10 years.” 20 years.”
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The mayor of Vancouver, for his part, insists the plan will help tackle the city’s housing crisis.
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Kennedy Stewart argues that because the plan has been implemented in stages for more than 30 years, it will not affect most tenants who currently live in the area, adding new apartments at an affordable price over time.
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“The Broadway plan is helping people who need the most help by building tens of thousands of new homes over the next 30 years, most of them for rent and many for rent on the market,” he said.
“These are not apartments we built in the past. These are mainly rental housing and rental housing. “
Stewart said he plans to offer “Canada’s strongest tenant protection” as part of the plan, which will, among other things, give displaced tenants the right to opt out of their old rents first when the new homes are completed.
Tilleman called the plan “ridiculous,” saying there were currently no homes for those who would be resettled, and that returning them to a new unit years later with historic rents would not make economic sense.
“I do not buy it. This is a fantastic country, “he said.
The Council is expected to receive the plan on May 17.
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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