Columbia Square

Posted on October 29, 2024October 30, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

We had a special meeting on Monday to decide on whether to give three readings to a rezoning bylaw for Columbia Square. This was a decision deferred from last week, where there was some robust discussion and some adaptation of the proposal rising from that discussion, so Council taking an extra week to chew on it was probably a wise move. It is also the highest-profile project since Pier West was approved back in 2017, and is the largest single development to reach this level of approval since I started on Council a decade ago, so it is worth spending some time writing out the details and addressing some of the feedback, as I did with Pier West all those years ago. The reports for Council are all here if you want to read all of the details.

Not to bury the lede, Council voted 5-2 to support the three readings. It is a slightly unusual process we are going through, so I want to be clear what that means. Voting against these three readings would effectively kill the project as proposed, though the developer could come back at a later date with a revised proposal which would be a lengthy process. Approving the three readings will launch a development planning process to determine how the objectives of the proposal will be met within the density and land use allocation included in the zoning bylaw. After that process, Council would have the option to Adopt the Bylaw (“final approval”) or reject it. This planning process will take several months or longer. In approving three readings, Council effectively said “we like where you are going here, prove you can keep all of the commitments to the community as you build”.

The details of the project are that the strip mall and parking lots on the 7.2 acre site would be replaced in a phased process. When built out, it would include up to 3,000,000 square feet of residential floor space in up to 8 towers. The existing 122,000sqft of retail space would be replaced, in a phased process so that every operating business has first right to refusal to relocate to the new spaces, starting with the major grocery store. There would also be 42,000sqft of Class A office space, a 9,500sqft non-profit childcare, and up to 12,000sqft of additional childcare. The current parking lot and strip model urban form would be replaced by towers-on-podia, with 25% of the ground space dedicated to public green space, including a 50,000sqft public square.

The housing tenure is one of the things that will be further refined though planning, but as current proposed, it would be about 3,800 residential units that meets the City’s Family Friend Housing policy n regards to two- and three-bedroom units. At minimum, 20% of the units would be Purpose Built Rental at market rates, and a minimum 20% of these would be non-market affordable housing operated by a non-for-profit at HILs rates.

One of the complicating factors here is the desire for a school site downtown. The developer is committed through this agreement to work with School District 40 to accommodate a school site on the property. For practical reasons, this would likely involve an “air space parcel” in one of the podia. However, the developer cannot commit that the School District or the Provincial Ministry of Education will agree to this model, or even if the School District will want this (as they may come up with alternate plans on a different site), so the extra 12,000sqft of childcare space on site will be delivered by the developer if the school site is not.

My reasons for voting to approve may be different than those of other members of Council, so I am only speaking for myself here. Recognizing some details we need to work out, the question before us was whether we want 3,800 homes or a car-oriented strip mall one block from a SkyTrain Station and in the centre of our Downtown. We have seen other neighbourhoods from Broadway and Commercial to Braid Station remain parking oriented because proposed development in these key transit hubs have always fallen short of perfect and ended up the enemy of good. We need homes in this region, and in this City. Our own Hosing Needs Assessment demonstrates the need for market housing that this will go a long way toward fulfilling (recognizing that it will not address as much of our non-market housing need, but more on that later).

In this project, I see that the retail is protected, not just the space, but in a phasing plan that allows the retailers and service businesses there to remain whole though redevelopment. We have a unique opportunity to secure a school site (not to mention several million dollars in School Site Acquisition Charges directed to the Provincial Government). I also see the re-imagining of 7 acres of parking lot and strip mall as vibrant public space just steps from a SkyTrain station. The project will also provide tens of millions of dollars DCC funding to upgrade the adjacent water, sewer and transportation infrastructure, including more than $10 Million in Park Land Acquisition DCC funding.

The affordable housing math on this site was always a stumbling block. With the commitment of 4% of the total residential space as true non-market affordable housing secured for 60 years, we could have between 140 and 170 units (depending on unit size and breakdown) of affordable housing on site – that is equivalent of two Móytel Lalém projects (the new Affordable Housing building across from the High School). It also includes an estimated $60 – $70 Million in Density Bonus money, the bulk of which Council has committed to land acquisition to support affordable housing development. It’s a bit “inside baseball” here, but the City is less successful than we could be at securing senior government affordable housing support simply because we don’t have a lot of City-owned land to put forward. Having access to these reserve funds as seed to new affordable housing investments could turn the table on affordable housing development in our city, and might be the best tool we have to reach our housing targets for non-market housing. This is a really important step for the most pressing need for our community, and will put New West in the driver’s seat with BC Housing and BC Builds.

I’m not satisfied waiting when housing is in such a need in our community and in the region. We can wait for a market to shift to eke out a few dozen more on-site affordable homes, but waiting does nothing to get affordable housing built now when the need is so acute, and does nothing to get the market housing we also need to get built. The region is growing, 1,000,000 new people by the 2040s, and not building high-density high-service housing nest to SkyTrain station in our Downtowns simply pushes the need out to the fringes of the Lower Mainland. It adds pressure to sprawl outside the Urban Containment Boundary, and not only erodes our farm and ecological lands at the periphery, but exacerbates our regional transportation challenges, undermines our Climate goals, and puts enormous cost pressure on our utilities and infrastructure. Homes on Skytrain is not only our OCP, it is our regional plan.

This is a big project, and many concerns were raised about it, so it only fair that I respond to the ones I heard the most. I am not going to engage in silliness like comparing this site to Revelstoke (it’s not a comparable, nor are Chetwynd or Lloydminster) or “Four World Trade Centres!”. That king of misinforming rhetoric is pure politics and best responded to in my Newsletter (subscribe here). But there are real concerns from residents that deserve response, and I can pull most from just one Facebook thread (citations removed to protect the innocent, this isn’t about punching down, it’s about addressing concerns)

“The City has no proper infrastructure to support thousands of more people! Schools, hospitals, policing, fire, and city services”
This project will provide tens of millions of dollars in DCC funds to upgrade the water sewer and transportation infrastructure around the site. There will also be upgrades to electrical and other infrastructure along with the project. There is an opportunity for a school on the site and the project will provide School Site Acquisition Charges at the maximum level permitted by Provincial Law. RCH is current in phase two of a massive expansion, more than doubling its size, but its ability to serve the community may be limited by the lack of housing for critical workers who run a hospital, this housing may help with that. Policing, Fire, and city services are primarily paid by property taxes, and the annual property taxes paid for this site will (by Councilor’s McEvoys back-of the-envelope estimate) increase by almost $5 million a year, while the cost to service high density residents in high rises is the lowest per capita.

There are many versions of “we don’t have the services to support housing” argument around the region, and in other high-growth cities from Surrey to Toronto . But there is a false math in this, the presumption that people will only come if we approve housing. The simple and measurable fact is that both this city and this region are increasing in population faster than the rate of housing growth – much faster. People are increasingly underhoused and facing terrible housing security as the vacancy rate bounces around 1% and prices spiral out of reach. Its not just that people need schools and childcare and hospitals; they need these things AND they need housing. Not building housing will not get those other things built faster. The City doesn’t build hospitals or schools, but we can be supportive and advocate for their being built (like we are right now with the RCH expansion, the expansion of the elementary schools at Queensborough, the upcoming Simcoe Park school, and our work to leverage a school site out of this project). And the people who work in those hospitals and schools are going to need homes – that is the part we are responsible for providing as Cities.

“It’s already a traffic nightmare and now you want to add even more traffic to the roads downtown new west.”
The biggest challenge we have with traffic in New Westminster is through-traffic, not residents. This project is completely in line with the regional plan (Metro2050) and Regional Transportation Plan (Transport2050), both of which emphasize building more housing on rapid transit, reducing parking requirements, and providing full-service communities to reduce the need for people to be automobile dependent. The success of those plans can be seen in New Westminster growing by 9% between the last two TransLink Trip Diary surveys, and our use of automobiles not increasing a single percent during that time. People are moving to the region, and need homes. We can choose to build high-service high-density homes near work places and near SkyTrain stations, or to build those other forms on the periphery of the region that give people no option but to drive for their daily needs. One of those two options creates more traffic. Those school and hospital workers, the people working in the retail and office spaces here in New West, if they all need to drive from Langley to get to work we have created the North Shore model of traffic congestion and harmed the livability of our city and others.

“Translink really does need a major upgrade to handle this kind of population increase, more bikelanes and greenways would be nice too”
I hear you. TransLink’s current expansion plans include a doubling the Expo Line train service and more than doubling regional bus service. It isn’t completely funded, but the Mayors Council is working hard to secure the capital investments and a secure operational funding model to meet these needs. I am confident the governments will see their way to support Transit, as it is the only real solution to getting around our growing region. Replacing a strip mall parking lot with open greenspace people can more safely walk, cycle, and preamble through will be a benefit of this project, as are the millions in Transportation DCCs this project will provide. Providing full-service neighbourhoods is why we work to leverage protection of the existing businesses and childcare out of sites like this.

“How about building more low income housing for those waiting on bc housing list? ”
This project will have between 140-170 non-market affordable homes. Saying “no” to this site right now will do nothing to add to the affordable housing stock. The biggest benefit to affordable housing will be the City’s commitment to use the bulk of the Density Bonus money to secure land and leverage senior government affordable housing investment here in New Westminster.

“What happens to all the businesses currently in Columbia Square?”
With the phasing of the project, there will be opportunity for the businesses to relocate to new spaces, starting with the large grocery store. The retail will be replaced one-for-one and the current operators will have first right of refusal on new sites.

The bigger question about businesses downtown is also relevant, as the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown BIA provided letters of support for the project. Aside from preserving the businesses on site, it shouldn’t be hard to see that 7,000 new customers a 5 minute walk from your doorstep every day should be a good thing for customer-serving businesses? And this means more business success and variety for the rest of us to enjoy as well. A vibrant commercial community needs a local customer base.

There is general anxiety about the rate of growth, in New Westminster, in the Lower Mainland, and in Canada. I hear it. and I’ll let the economists argue the benefits of this to capitalism, but also suggest that in an increasingly uncertain post-pandemic global order of climate disruption and authoritarian uprisings, Canada will only increasingly be seen as a safe harbour of stability, and the pressure in immigration will only increase. That said, I circle back to this project being consistent with the growth envisioned in the City’s 7-year-old Official Community Plan and completely in line with the anticipated growth in our Regional Growth Strategy, with the housing need identified in our community for the decade ahead. The project as proposed gives us access to infrastructure and amenities the community wants, either directly (childcare, school site, DCC funding) or indirectly (density bonus, increased tax revenue), and is a good deal for the community.

Now that Council had given the rezoning three readings, there will be a Master Plan process that will include community and stakeholder engagement. This is where the real details of the site will be shaped, and I hope people continue to engage.

This Happened – September

Posted on October 11, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, doing more of these types of community-happenings updates on my newsletter (subscribe here). But I am iterating how I use my communications channels with the community, and as will sound familiar to regular readers (Hi Mom!) I am working on how to keep loving, hopeful and optimistic in the face of a pretty negative political atmosphere online at every level of government. And being in the community in New West is what actually builds that hope and optimism in me. So here are some of the things I did last month that are only peripheral to my actual work:

I was honoured to give opening remarks at the annual Terry Fox Run. We had a solid turnout in New West yet again, thanks to the efforts of a strong volunteer force. In my remarks, I spoke about Terry’s perseverance and how only a hopeful vision of a better world could have motivated him though that first lonely 900 km through central Newfoundland. We feel the inspiration that is Terry’ gift, but rarely think of how hard it must have been for him to believe at times. https://run.terryfox.ca/55710

A crowd sits in the Sapperton Pensioners Hall with a screen on the stage that reads “PechaKucha Night”

PechaKucha New West was back with its 33rd edition, and it had a bit of a “getting the gang back together” feel. For those who missed this event, where people talk for a tight 400 seconds (“20 slides, 20 seconds each”) about something that inspires them or challenges them, from Philippine food culture to Boy Bands to public toilets, there is another event November 16th. https://www.pechakucha.com/communities/new-westminster

The Wosk Centre in Vancouver was the host of a public forum on Citizens Assemblies, entitled Public Dialogue: How a Canadian Innovation Sparked Global Democratic Change. We learned about the history of Community Assemblies, from the initial BC Assembly on Electoral Reform to the current models with examples from Burnaby, Gibsons, and New Westminster. You can watch it here and be inspired! https://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/news/2024/bc-citizens-assembly.html

In September, I was also witness to the opening of Móytel Lalém, the affordable housing development on Eighth Street belonging to the Lu’ma Native Housing Society and Swahili Vision. The building and landscape are beautiful, and features 96 truly affordable homes in the heart of the community. The opening was spiritual and inspiring, and helped reinforce the many partners that are required to make a project like this succeed. It was an honour to represent the City and thank everyone for making this happen in our community. More info here: https://www.lumadevelopment.ca/projects

September also brought the Climate Strikes to Vancouver, and it was apropos to walk over from the wrap-up of the UBCM meeting on the Friday and join many New Westies at the Vancouver Art Gallery to talk about Climate Action. What I totally didn’t expect was an impromptu performance by Billy Bragg, and a chance to meet and chat with him. So here is a link of him playing my favorite song of his (and Woody’s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMAq49dqNlY

Every September, local Tabla virtuoso and cultural ambassador Cassius Khan brings the Mushtari Begum Festival of Indian Classical Music and Dance to Massey Theatre, and every year it is a remarkable showcase of music and dance. You don’t need to know your Satvik from your Mohan to be dazzled by the skill of the players, and the meditative quality of the music. You should see this next year! https://www.masseytheatre.com/event/13th-annual-mushtari-begum-festival/

World Rivers Day is also in September, and the Fraser River Discovery Centre celebrate with RiverFest, which includes one of those unique New West traditions- The Lucille Johnstone (no relation!) Tugboat Parade, which is a little bit parade, a little bit rodeo, a little bit dance performance. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sZZfpzxLGJw

This was the first year of a new event – Ukrainian New West Fest! A celebration of Ukrainian culture and traditions, and a coming together of the region’s growing Ukrainian community, hosted by the Holy Eucharist Cathedral on Fourth Ave. and the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of New Westminster. It was a great opportunity to tour the Cathedral with its remarkable art program, and to build solidarity with a community persevering through the horrors of a homeland wracked by invasion and war. https://www.heucc.co/

And finally, New Westminster really showed up for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Day events at Queens Park. I appreciate this event because I get to attend, listen, and witness without having to give a speech or speak for the City. This is a day where Indigenous people are centred and speak about their experience of colonization and residential schools, and those of us without those experiences are asked to listen, learn, and reflect on what it means to the work we need to do here on these unceded lands. Spirit of the Children society put together the program, which both inspires and challenges the community. It is a really powerful day. https://www.newwestcity.ca/calendar-of-events/events/7875/2024-09.php

Paving Sixth Ave

Posted on August 20, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Paving a stretch of road in the City shouldn’t be news-worthy, the City spends something like $4 million a year on pavement management, and there are lots of roads that have seen recent paving, but the stretch of Sixth Ave in the West End has been such a bouncy boulevard of broken seams for a while now that people have been asking me why this key road in the City is so bad.

Now that we have timeline for re-paving, it’s a good time to talk about why it took so long, and why bumpy roads are sometimes running on top of a good news story. The West End has been the location of a lot of infrastructure upgrades over the last couple of years, and some of it is coming to an end.

The big project is the West End Sewer Separation and Watermain Replacement project. The main drive behind this project is replacement of the City’s old combined-flow sewer systems in the area with separate sanitary sewers (wastewater from homes that goes to the sewer treatment plant) and storm sewers (rain run-off from roads that goes to the river). This includes 8.4 km of new sewers, along with 24 rain gardens designed to decrease peak flow runoff. This will result in less storm water going unnecessarily to the water treatment plant for expensive treatment, and less chance of combined sewer overflows in to the Fraser River during storm events. There are also some older water mains in the area that need to be replaced and upgraded, , and it only makes sense to coordinate that work at the same time if you are tearing up the road anyway.

The timing of this project was also influenced by the significant support we received from senior governments to make it happen. The total project cost is $14.3 Million, of which $3.8 Million will be paid off over time by water and sewer utility users. The rest was paid by infrastructure grants from senior government: $5.7 Million from the Federal Government and $4.8 Million from the provincial government.

At the same time, this project overlapped with two major Metro Vancouver projects – the Annacis Island Water Main and the Central Park Water Main, and although only one of these crosses Sixth Ave specifically, the overlap with the bigger West End project was such that timing needed to be coordinated to manage traffic flows, cross-cutting infrastructure, and some excavation works.

Finally, because of new federal requirements, these projects required archaeological assessment work and the development of new chance find protocols for the City. This is a new area of work for the City, but an important step in reconciliation and meeting our UNDRIP commitments. This requires (you guessed it) digging of various test holes to identify where the native soils and underlying non-organic sediments interface, and identification of potential hot spots for archaeologic findings.

Overall, this was about a year and a half of work, and there were many occasions to break pavement during these works: various trenches for sewer or water lines or relocation some existing infrastructure, along with installing access chambers, valves, flow monitors, and tie-ins and the occasional archeological test pit. At some spots poor quality soils needed to be removed and replaced with competent backfill to support the sewer works or roadway above. Over that year and a half, there is really little point in spending a lot of money re-grading the road base and repaving when there are so many more excavations coming. Those temporary backfills begin to pile up, and the road becomes the bumpy patchwork quilt that is Sixth Ave. With the bulk of digging work now completed, the pave is about to begin.

There are a couple of spots that will still need one more excavation, likely in the spring, for good technical reasons. So that means a couple of the intersections are not going to be re-paved this time around, but will see their permanent paving next year. But for most of Sixth Ave from 12th to 20th, a smoother ride is coming soon. Sorry it took so long.

Housing and Growth

Posted on July 9, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The discussion around provincial housing regulations hasn’t slowed down, as the first of several deadlines related to bills 44, 46, and 47 came and went. Some Cities have complied, some have chosen a different path. In New Westminster we adopted two Bylaws in June that make us complaint, and staff are busily working on the next steps- a renewed Housing Needs Assessment, OCP updates, and revising our DCC, ACC, and Density Bonus programs.

City staff are also working with provincial staff on their Housing Target Order methodology, so we can respond on the expected timeline, likely in August. I was on the radio last week alongside the Mayor of Langley Township talking to Belle Puri about this (you can listen here!), and we had slightly different takes on the core issue. I actually agree with the Minister that the introduction of Small-scale Multi-Unit Housing and Transit Oriented Area regulations will be a good thing. IT is clearly a massive hassle and staff time suck to implement, and will likely slow down development for a short period of time while everyone finds their path through the massive changes, in the end it will be a positive for the reshaping of the next era of regional growth.

My problem remains that we have had some significant tools taken away that we have used to fund infrastructure and amenities in our community. Equally troubling is that our ability to compel developers to build childcare, to provide spaces for new schools or parks, or to include affordable housing as part of their developments, has been eroded at the same time that the cost for development has gone up. It is unclear whether the Province is going to give us the money needed to make up for these shortfalls, or expect property tax to fill the void.

That said, I did appreciate the Minister’s thoughtful responses the next day (you can hear them here!). We are all trying to get the same thing done on housing, and I hope that the province brings the kind of aggressive, proactive change to our funding model that they did to our building approvals model. Dare to dream.

There was another related piece of news that snuck out last week, and it was related to a report we received at Metro Vancouver Regional Planning Committee. Metro staff working with academic demographers have created updated regional growth projections. These are not “targets” the region is aiming for, but instead projections of what is likely to happen given demographic changes, birth/death statistics, immigration, and inter-regional and inter-provincial migration patterns. The numbers are all here in this report.

The local angle on this might surprise some folks, especially my colleague on the radio last week from Langley Township who always refers to his community as the “high growth region”, that the City projected to grow fastest over the next 6, 16, and 26 years is New Westminster. Here’s the numbers:

These are numbers for the medium-growth scenario, but both the low-growth and high-growth scenarios have us in a similar spot: top of the charts for proportional growth.

There are a lot of factors that drive this, including our commitment to Transit Oriented Development and the large proportion of our City that is near that transit, but also the balance of housing types, the “sweet spot” between affordability and location on the north side of the River, and the attractiveness to both young families in the growing stage, and new arrivals to Canada and the Lower Mainland – for every reason you choose to live here.

This speaks to our Housing Needs Report, but it also speaks to our need to invest in infrastructure now to support that growth, and the community amenities that residents want in a thriving, growing community. Adding austerity to this trend will be a disaster for the livability of our community, we need to show leadership to shape a community that serves today/s residents, and the people arriving tomorrow.

təməsew̓txʷ

Posted on April 30, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Wow. It’s really happening. After more than a decade of planning, we are finally opening the doors on təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre.

I don’t want to write too much here, I want the images to tell the story. Even more, I want you to go down to təməsew̓txʷ and see for yourself what an incredible facility the community has built.

The Grand Opening is June 1st, but as we slowly open the doors and bring programming to the new facility we have had a couple of opening events.

The first was a thank you to the teams that made this happen. This included Mayor Cote, who lead the Council through some of the most challenging consultation, design, and decision-making that led us to this day. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate with Councillors Puchmayr, Harper, Das and Trentadue, who each had a role in the development of this project. From the first decision that a new facility was needed, through public consultation, initial design, more public consultation, procurement, and the final go-ahead in 2020, these leaders were there to help guide us to today, and deserve a victory lap of the pool, and the gratitude of the community.

We also got to thank the team that made the vision a reality. The architects at HCMA, the project managers at Turnbull Construction, and the builders at Heatherbrae. They worked with our stellar project delivery team at the City to deliver this project within weeks of the planned opening and within 5% of the original budget.

If that sounds like I’m hedging “On Time and On Budget”, I want to walk you through the headwinds this project faced. Council had to make a procurement decision at the peak of the 2020 COVID pandemic – a time of unprecedented global economic uncertainty. We were guided with expert advice and (it turns out) incredible foresight to procure then the market conditions could not have been better. Since then, the news tells us of a protected regional labour action affecting the concrete industry, a global supply chain crisis, unprecedented regional construction labor shortages, and the highest construction inflation rates of a generation. Through all that, this incredible team brought this project home – an absolute gold medal performance.

And it is a beautiful building. An integrated and connected aquatic, fitness and community complex, physically and demographically accessible to all, and a new social hub and community destination. Two pools, one ready to support inter-regional competition, one more fun and accessible for a broader community of users. Two hot tubs sauna space, all accessible change rooms. Two gymnasia, dance rooms, meetings rooms, fitness area twice the size of the previous buildings, and a community living room connecting them all.

The first aquatic centre in Canada to achieve the Canada Green Building Council Zero Carbon Building-Design Standard, and designed to follow the Rick Hansen Foundation Gold Accessibility certification which considers people of differing levels of physical mobility, as well as addresses gender and cultural sensitivities.

The City’s largest ever capital investment, now having the keys turned over to an operation team who have already spent months staffing up, training up, and learning how to work in this new space. All of this required coordinated efforts across city departments, from Finance, to engineering to Parks and Recreation. There are a lot of kudos to hand out here.

The community has a new heart. I hope you head over there and check it out, because it belongs to you. The “dry side” is open now, the aquatic centre side will soft open on May 14, and there will be a Grand Opening celebration on June 1. All the info you need is available here.

This happened

Posted on April 21, 2024April 21, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Every week or so I put out a newsletter to subscribers. Usually Wednesday. It’s generally shorter-form than my posts here, provides updates on what I’ve been up to, with occasional opinion and politics. It’s free, no hassle to subscribe, just hit that “newsletter” link up at the top of the page.

Here’s a hint in what was in last week’s newsletter, where I wrote a bit more about these things:

**Opening of an affordable housing project in the Downtown.**

**Business Roundtable with the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions on the City’s Three Crises Response Pilot.**

**Vaisakhi events, including a tour of Queensborough Gurdwara.**

**…and a walk in the Park that passed a baseball game.**

Mixing Business

Posted on April 18, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As a follow-up to my Council report from last week, there were two items I promised to circle back to, like how I circled back to the preposition at the end of that sentence.

English teachers will find that last sentence fun. Hi Mom!

The two items spoke to supporting local businesses and streetscapes. We had a report on Bill 28, and the opportunity for us to explore whether Bill 28-style property tax relief might be a useful tool for our community, and we had a motion from Councillor Nakagawa to review our development and zoning policies to better support local community-serving small businesses. Both of these linked back to some recent chatter in the community around street-level commercial spaces, with people wanting to see more experiential retail and entertainment, and less service and office, to “liven up” the street (I got through all of that without mentioning dentists once). So I want to unpack each item a bit and discuss not just what a city/council can do, but more about the varying ideas about what a city/council should do.

Bill 28 – Property Tax Relief Legislation
I have written quite a bit over the last 9 years about how property tax works (examples here, here, and here). This new legislation changes this a bit for one category of properties, allowing us to provide some short term (5 year) property tax relief for some commercial property owners.

To review, the City sets tax rates, but the tax paid on property is based on BC Assessment Value, determined by “Highest and Best Use” – not necessarily the current value of the property, but the value the property would have if the owner sought to maximize that value. The change with Bill 28 is pretty specific, limited to properties where the “Land-value ratio” greater than 0.95, which means the value of improvements on the land (the existing building) is less than 5% of the total assessed value of the property. Where it is flexible is in how the local government can apply tax relief, and how much.

Some folks would suggest any tax relief for business is good, but we need to be clear this tool provides us a potential tax shift – giving one type of taxpayer some relief transfers that taxation to other taxpayers – not an overall decrease in the revenue on the part of the City. We are taking a more cautious approach here, because not only are there more devils in details, there are likely perverse incentives in there as well.

There is a general feeling that high lease rates and tax rates make it harder from small neighbourhood-serving business to set up shop, and that is surely a factor. The diversity of business types on Twelfth Street is almost certainly a product of low per-foot lease rates. So one part of the thinking here is that if the lease cost (including taxes) was lower, we would more likely get smaller, more diverse, and more interesting business types setting up. Instead of dentists (there, I said it).

One potential challenge with the Bill 28 approach is the recognition that property owners pay taxes, not business owners. Sometimes a business also owns the property they operate out of, but for most small neighbourhood businesses in New West a lease is paid to a landlord. It is the common practice for the landlord to pass the property tax bill directly to the tenant (through “triple net leases”), but there is nothing in Bill 28 or elsewhere that forces a landlord to pass any tax relief savings down to the small business person, so a tax incentive may not get to the small business types we are trying to support, and might actually make the situation worse for the business owner, but better for the Landlord. It may also be a disincentive to upgrading, repair, or improvement of marginal buildings, reducing the attractiveness and safety of commercial spaces.

The City of Vancouver is the only City that has taken on a Bill 28 approach, and we are going to hope to learn from their example as staff bring some data and analysis back to council to see if this approach can be made to help. It may be a useful tool, if we can wield it creatively enough.

Ensuring that ground level retail spaces in new developments prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations
This motion from Councillor Nakagawa was a bit more all-encompassing, and completely within our jurisdiction. It was asking that the City “review and refresh current policies relating to ground level retail” and “develop policy to ensure that future ground level retail spaces in new development are built to prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations in alignment with the retail strategy.”

When people ask what Council can do to assure a (insert type of business you want to see) opens in a specific location instead of a (insert type of business you don’t want to see), I often retort with the question: are you sure you want to give me the power to do that? Council has some power to restrict different business types through zoning, but do you really want 7 elected people picking and choosing the businesses in your downtown? Are we the wisest ones to choose this, or is this somewhere we need to ask “the market” to address? Clearly there is a huge spectrum between completely hands-off and being so prescriptive that we end up with streets full of unleased spaces because Council of the day fails to understand the market. Personally, I would love to see a small hardware store downtown. But we had one for a few years, and it was really great, but it was not supported enough to stay open and now you can buy discount shoes in that spot. The reasons for that specific store closing may be complex and global (as they were part of a nation-wide chain that changed its focus and has now closing many Big Box offerings across Canada as well). The City saying “only hardware stores here” would not change those global forces, and we would likely have an empty space in its place, and angry landlord, and a decaying business district. That said, we do exercise limited powers to restrict uses like cannabis or liquor stores (for example) to address perceived or suspected risks.

Nothing against dentists, but mine is Uptown and on the second floor, which is probably a better space for the kind of use that doesn’t really “activate” the street or lead to good walking-around experiences. One thing we can all agree is that a street is more fun to live near and shop on if we have a variety of interesting retail and service experiences along it. As part of our Council Strategic Priority Plan, we talked about supporting a people-centered economy, supporting retail areas that address the needs of the local community.

When Starbucks made a global decision to close thousands of stores including Columbia and 6th, people lamented this loss. Since that time, three new coffee shops have opened downtown, and the old Starbucks location is a popular Italian deli. There are literally dozens of businesses Downtown that were not there at the beginning of the Pandemic, and there is not a lot of lease vacancy. By many measures, the business environment Downtown is pretty healthy. Still, the community is engaged in a conversation about retail mix, though it’s not clear how the community wants to get there.

There are two policy areas inherent in this motion we can look at. We can look at how we approve new street-facing spaces in new mixed use developments like 618 Carnarvon, where a brand new dentist office is opening in a space where folks might have wanted to see a coffee shop, or boutique, or other more experiential use. The other is to look at policies that rezone existing spaces to limit the variety of uses possible when businesses turn over, much like we do with liquor stores. To traditional businesses this sounds like a lot of “red tape”, and may result in an incredibly complex zoning bylaw that makes it harder for any business to find the right space. One can imagine this resulting in any new and innovative business types wanting to set up in town having to come to Council to ask permission, because their specific type that doesn’t fit the Bylaw. We went down that path with a video-game arcade that wanted to serve alcohol – and it was a massive pain in the ass for staff, a difficult challenge for the business owner who felt unsupported, and left everyone feeling soured. And that was for a business idea that that everyone on Council liked!

There is a guy I have had lunch with (Hi John!) who suggests the City should simply open more restaurants downtown. I don’t think it is that simple, because I don’t know what the role of the City is in doing that. Restaurants are permitted in almost every business storefont on Columbia Street, there are no rules or regulations preventing them from opening now. At the same time, we cannot force the landlord to kick out the current tenant and put in a restaurant. Reducing taxes of set-up costs will not have any positive effect on a restaurant business model that it doesn’t equally have on a nail salon or dog grooming business model. Further, we are limited by Section 25 of the Community Charter (the part that says it is illegal for a City to “provide a grant, benefit, advantage or other form of assistance to a business”) from directly incenting a specific business owner to do a specific thing. We could, I guess, buy up the land and start leasing it to the business types and business owners we like, but I’m not sure that is the best role of a City government.

All this to say, there is an interesting bit of policy work we can do here, but we are also limited in our powers by legislation and common sense. This also speaks to and augments existing work we are doing around the recently-adopted Retail Strategy.

COP28 part 3

Posted on January 3, 2024January 2, 2024. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have written a couple of posts now on New Westminster’s presence at COP28, and the experience of the Local Climate Action Summit. I’m going to try to wrap up this series pulling highlights and major themes that came out of the event instead of daily run-down, because this blog series is already 5,000+ words and because there were a LOT of topics covered and incredible speakers:

Aside from the LCAS, every day had overlapping conference events at different locations; it was simply impossible to attend them all. I spent some time at Bloomberg Green Forum, at the Canada Pavilion, at the Urbanization Pavilion and EU Pavilion, and other event sites. My criteria for choosing what to attend was partly geographic (see my first post about the expansive site), but I tried to attend events that spoke to local climate action (inspiration!), financing the transition (where’s the money?), innovation in electrical grid upgrades (very relevant to New West), and “Just Transition” discussions that spoke to what that means in the “developed world” context (this is one area where, interesting enough, the US is way ahead of Canada in many ways).

The global challenge to get a new energy grid built was an interesting theme. A place where some technical challenges need to be solved (and a better place for our innovation investment than CCS in my opinion). The core of the issue is that the world needs increasing amounts of electricity, and the cheapest ways to generate electricity, by far, are solar and wind. However, these sources rely on an integrated grid and grid storage technology that has technical, logistical, and even jurisdictional barriers to implementation. Coal and gas are dirty, and increasingly expensive, but they are easy, so the Global South and most rapidly-growing economies are still seeing them as a viable way to achieve their development goals. The grid is the problem, and there are lots of people looking to fix it, but will it be a public grid? (more on that later)

The Canada Pavilion had some interesting sessions. Don Iveson (former Mayor of Edmonton) led a panel on Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy (where I first heard the term “mutli-solving the polycrisis” as a description of local government climate response, and I will be repeating it) that included the Federal and Provincial Environment Ministers, along with local government represented by FCM and the Mayor of Regina. One interesting framing presented was that Climate Mitigation is primarily an energy problem, where Climate Adaption is primarily a water problem: drought and flooding are the two horsemen of this new apocalypse for Canadian cities. Rest assured, the message to the feds out of this conversation was (am I getting repetitive?) local governments are on the frontlines, and can do this work, if given the resources.

Another excellent presentation at the Canadian Pavillion was on the integration of land use with climate action, addressing how local government land use decisions impact our climate goals. Here I met Serena Mendizabal from Six Nations in Ontario (alas, 2023 Mann Cup Champions) who is doing interesting work bringing First Nations into the energy transition space, and developed a Just Transition Guidebook to help guide governments toward more meaningful Indigenous involvement in local climate action.

As I mentioned earlier, there were some sessions I attended with City Staff, and some where we went our different ways to cover more ground. The more technical aspect of staff’s work here really benefited from their ability to network with their cohort across North America, and even Europe and South America. They also had a chance to get facetime with FCM staff who hold the strings to the Green Municipal Fund, and staff in both the Provincial and Federal Ministries. That relationship building, and the ability to share our successes and our challenges – and demonstrate to them that we are a City committed to doing the work – will pay back in a huge way as staff move forward in implementing the Seven Bold Steps in New Westminster.

On our final day, I attended the Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization & Climate Change. This is where we stood (well, sat) shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the LMGA constituency to make our calls to the collected Ministers of Environment and negotiators from national governments around the world. In a weird coincidence, as I recently wrote about him in my Newsletter (subscribe here!), I sat next to Ravi Bhalla, the Mayor of Hoboken (the “New Westminster” of the New York Metro Region) during this session. I have already mentioned the Call to Action and Open Letter in the last post, so won’t repeat that here, but the dialogue with this group of Ministers was promising.
Also on our last day, we were able to attend the daily briefing of the Canadian negotiation team. This is where the representatives of the Canadian government (Minister Guilbeault and Canada’s Chief Negotiator Michael Bonser) update invited attendees on where the negotiations are, and then spend most of the hour taking questions from the audience. In the room were several stakeholder groups, including Elizabeth May (I didn’t notice any other federal party representatives, but I would be surprised if they were not there), representatives from Provincial Governments (again, I didn’t notice any BC Provincial elected types, though I assume staff from the Ministry of Climate Action and Environment were present), Labour groups, business constituencies, and activist groups. I’m not sure if it is a coincidence or a sign of something different happening in Quebec, but the activist questions to the Minister and negotiation teams were mostly delivered in French.
This was a really informative session for me, and gave insight into how the sausage of putting language to these international agreements is done. They spoke of early success (the Loss and Damage Fund secured on day 1), the failure to secure a food systems agreement, and the role the COP President had put on Canada to “find a landing zone” on Fossil Fuel phase-out (which even given hindsight, is not clearly a win given the weasel words included). Being Canadian, the most common answer to questions from the floor (which were almost all asking for more aggressive action and for Canada to lead in calling for it) was some form of “Yep, we hear you, that is consistent with our position, and we are working on it”.

The feelings brought home from 6 days at COP28 are complicated, but can be summed up in the Good, Bad, and Concerning.

Under “Good”, I am left with the positive feeling that local governments are On It. There were so many examples of local governments and inspiring local leaders doing to the work and building sustainable cities through a Just Transition lens. It was constantly repeated (and I’ll repeat here) that urban areas represent 80% of global GDP and 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and we are at the front line of climate action. At the same time there is pressure from the grassroots for local governments to meet and exceed Paris targets, because local governments from Langkawi to Bogota know that the actions needed to meet targets are the same actions that are going to make our cities cleaner, greener, more healthy, and more affordable to operate and protect.

On the “Bad” side, I don’t leave the conference convinced we were going to make it. I didn’t feel the national governments feel the same urgency that the scientific community is telling us we need. They all speak of concern, we heard many give addresses, from the Prime Minister of India to the President of Kenya and the King of Tonga, they all spoke of urgency, but then the language informing the negotiations gets much more nuanced. The timelines offered for fossil fuel phase-out (with even that bet hedged by talking “unabated emissions” and reliance on the CCS pipedream) or ending the construction of new coal power generation felt unambitious when the gavel fell on the 12th. The Global Stocktake told us clearly that the timeline for 1.5C is passing us by, and 1.77C might be the new ambitious target, and I’m not even convinced our collective national governments are there yet.

The “Concerning” part is a bit more about the nature of the conversations at so many of the panels and workshops, and this speaks a bit to the large presence of Global Capital in the room. There is a strong neo-liberal drive to get private capital involved at every level in the transition, especially in the Global South, where transition plans seem to bypass any public ownership of life-sustaining assets. I’m not a global finance guy, and cannot pretend to be, but a new language of colonization is apparent when we hear the entire conversation about reliance on private capital from Europe and America in the desire to build a modern energy grid to serve Africa, where wind and solar resources are ample, but the lack of a grid is a real development bottleneck.

The media and pundits loved to criticize the Oil Industry lobbyists being at COP28, but we all know what their game is. Everyone knows there is no viable path to a sustained climate unless we end the unabated emissions of fossil fuels, so let the producers hear that and be part of that conversation. It is the ubiquity of private capital from the Global North that is seeing a profit opportunity in energy transition in the South that is more concerning to me – as the language sounds just as extractive as past colonial discussions of the Global South. Maybe I’m too cynical, but when talk of Africa arose at COP28, at times it sounded like a new Berlin Conference. And with so much of the LGMA conversation about Just Transition and the need for climate solutions to also solve deep inequity problems, I cannot help but wonder how we will solve inequity through the privatization of – or the keeping private of – the next generation of public goods.

This stood in contrast to the LGMA call for local and indigenous-informed action, and maybe that is where I will close this too-long reporting out, quoting Call to Action 10:

Pursuant to their budgets, legislative and executive actions, and leadership mechanisms, subnational governments are publicly accountable institutions. Through the acknowledgement of their role in the Paris Agreement and Glasgow Climate Pact, they also play a key role in driving and engaging their communities into global action. From business to parliamentarians, from civil society to academics, from trade unions and farmers to indigenous communities, from faith groups to generational and gender equality advocates, we invite all stakeholders to consider their subnational governments as their ally in responding to climate emergencies.

COP28 part 2

Posted on December 31, 2023December 29, 2023. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In my last post, I wrote about how New Westminster was invited to COP28, and what the landscape of COP28 looked like. In this post I am going to write about the role of Local Governments at the event, and detail the Local Climate Action Summit that opened the conference.

The invitation came from ICLEI, which was the key coordinator of the LGMA (“Local Governments and Municipal Authorities”) Constituency to the UNFCCC. They worked with two other organizations, C40 Cities (who managed the travel logistics of Mayors and senior staff from more than 100 cities around the globe) and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. This is already a long series of posts, so best to follow the links if you want to know who those organizations are and why they exist.

The goal of the LGMA is to influence the UNFCCC negotiations, empowered by the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls on all levels of government to work together, and the Multilevel Action Roadmap put together in 2019. As a Constituency, we put forward a COP28 Position Paper (link here) with a 10-point Call to Action that is delivered to the national level government negotiating teams. The hope is (as is spelled out in their mandate) that these Calls to Action will be integrated into the deal that is struck by the end of COP28. This Paper and an accompanying Open Letter (link here) is delivered through a Ministerial Meeting, but before that, we had a conference to attend.

For us Local Government types, the first part of the COP28 program was a two-day conference-within-a-conference called the Local Climate Action Summit (“LCAS”). This was held in several sites within the COP28 Blue zone, but focused on a pavilion called the LCAS Hub. The LCAS was hosted by the COP28 Presidency, as a part of the commitment the UNFCCC has made since the preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement to include all levels of government in addressing climate change. COP28 represented the first ever LCAS, and it was opened by the COP28 President Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, by the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, and the Chair of the Board of the C40 Cities (and former Mayor of New York) Michael Bloomberg.

The attendees of the LCAS were Mayors and senior Climate Action staff from several hundred cities around the world. There were local governments from every continent, ranging in size from megacities like Rio De Janerio to small cities like Yellowknife. There were perhaps a half dozen from Canada, with New Westminster being the only municipality in British Columbia represented. The program was intensive and pretty typically conference-like with panel talks, some interactive table-top learning sessions, and lots of opportunity to network and share with local leaders from across the globe. I can’t write everything here, but I will try to summarize a few key takeaways.

In his opening remarks, Secretary General Guterres talked about the importance of this COP in it presenting the first Global Stocktake, while making it clear that conferences aren’t the solution to the existential threat we face, only local action will get us there, and local governments are key to that. Urban areas are where 80% of global GDP is produced, and where 75% of global greenhouse gasses are produced – cities are where the environment and the economy overlap. At the same time, this is where the impacts of climate disruption are being felt the most – floods, droughts, heat waves, and climate-driven human displacement are all impacting urban areas. Cities are the front lines of this battle, and must be the front line of the transition. Most importantly, local governments are closest to the people governments serve and understand the context of change for their community in a way national governments cannot. So while national governments can make deals and drive policy changes, the only way they will achieve on their promises is if they support (and fund!) the local level governments in doing the work.

Panel discussions were as varied as the Cities represented. In Tokyo, the feeling was that solutions will be found in technology (“SUStainability + HIgh tech = SUSHI” was the Japanese tag line). The dynamic and brilliant Mayor of Bogota, Claudia Lopez, spoke of the need for Climate Justice to empower people in need through the transition. There are economic and empowerment benefits to be found in transitioning to low-carbon cities, especially in the developing world and global South. These opportunities need to flow to the many marginalized and under-supported people seeking opportunity in those cities if we hope for the transition, and the communities, to be sustainable. From Cordoba, Argentina, we heard about programs to empower and train youth to do the physical work of transition – from converting streetlights to LEDs to developing stronger local food systems within communities and keep money flowing within the local economy. Most agreed local governments were doing what national governments simply can’t, and were doing it faster than national governments can even imagine.

It was interesting to converse with the Mayor of Copenhagen, and hear their presentation as one of the “Coalition of High Ambition Actors”. On the face, the numbers for Copenhagen and Danish cities sound impressive – they are on target to reduce GHG emissions by 76% (from 1990 levels) before 2030, and 97 of the 99 largest municipalities are on the same track (compare that to the New West and CleanBC Goals of 30% – 50% by 2030 depending on the sector). However, this is driven mostly by the decarbonization of their electricity sector – they are closing coal plants and phasing out all other fossil fuel generation. Compare this to a jurisdiction like BC where 99% of electricity is already non-fossil-fuel, we are not ever going to match their “reduction” numbers. (for context, Danish net GHG emissions per capita are about 10T/yr, compared to about 12 for BC). At the same time, Mayor Haestorp-Andersen was a bit envious of BC’s LGCAP program, by New Westminster’s access to Low Carbon Fuel Credit funding and a climate levy to fund climate action, and even of BC and Canada’s (perhaps tepid, possibly tenuous?) Carbon Tax models. Senior government funding of local climate action is one place we in B.C. are leading over even progressive and high ambition jurisdictions like Denmark.

A theme across many cities was cars, and this is a place we are definitely NOT leading in BC. The transition to EVs is a distraction to the need to shift how and why we move across urban space. In Bogota (where car free days are not just a block party, but occur city-wide), they are serious about the redistribution of road space and are investing in all alternative modes. Mayor Hidalgo of Paris spoke of the “peaceful revolution” happening on the streets of her City as active transportation is taking the space away from congested traffic, with massive air quality, noise pollution, and safety benefits coming on top of GHG reductions. The Mayor of Tirana framed the automobile as anti-child when so much more is spent by his residents on cars than on children – many in his city were spending 30% of their income “raising a car”. He said when he was young, they threw out the Communist dictator, tearing down his statue from the centre of the City, and previously-unheard-of private ownership of automobiles became a symbol of their new freedom. Now, the car itself is the new dictator lording over the centre of the City, preventing them from having the freedoms and economic prosperity they seek. Erion Veliaj, welcome to the War on Cars.

There is another tell in here – “removing cars form the roads” is the almost universal metric in assessing climate action. City X talks about planting Y number of trees, and calls it “equivalent of removing 10,000 cars from the road”. City A builds a new waste resource recovery plant that captured biogas “equal to taking 50,000 cars off the road”. Once your ear is tuned to it, you hear this measure everywhere. This is perhaps unconscious jealousy of places like Bogota and Paris, where they skip the middle man.

The conversations were wide-reaching, but always seemed to come back to youth. One of the quotes stuck on my brain was “Youth don’t believe in action plans, they believe in action”. From Makati to Missoula, there were stories of youth driving climate action in local communities, calling for climate justice, and seeking support to get more work done. This is not an unfamiliar theme in New West, and I was able to share the stories of Babies for Climate Action and the Monkey Rebels, two local ad-hoc organizations centering youth and pushing us towards more aggressive climate goals, while also holding our feet to the fire to achieve them. As part of an Innovation Studio workshop for Mayors, we were given some tools to better understand a 3C “Codesign – Coproduce – Cogovern” model of engagement, effective at giving youth the opportunity to learn and be active in designing the city of their future. We also learned of a fund available to help finance this work (we’ll see if we can tap into that here in New West). In the meantime, I am going to think more deeply about my role as Mayor in empowering young leaders in our community to replace action plans with climate actions.

The LCAS was intense, and a conference worth the time to travel to on its own. In my next post, I’ll try to sum up as briefly as I can the rest of the COP28 program for local governments, and leave you with some thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly of COP28.

Housing & Bill 47

Posted on December 3, 2023December 4, 2023. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have been writing a series of posts about the changes in how housing approvals are regulated in BC as the provincial government rolls out a series of new legislation. I previously wrote about Bill 44 and multiplexes here, then about Bill 46 and the introduction of ACCs here. This is part three, which could have a profound effect on the shape of New Westminster in the decade ahead:

Bill 47: Transit Oriented Development
This bill requires local governments to designate Transit Oriented Development areas around rapid transit stations and other designated transit exchanges where higher density residential development must be permitted and residential parking minimums cannot be applied. By the letter o the legislation, we will need to update our Official Community Plan to designate TOD areas at all SkyTrain stations by June 2024.

As with other aspects of what’s been introduced, I think this is a transformational change that will make our region more affordable, more sustainable, and more livable, and it probably could have been introduced 20 years ago. But I am afraid we don’t have the human resources available to do an optimal job of implementing it by the deadline.

The province is prescribing a minimum density for these TOD areas, saying the local government can permit more density, and any property owner can choose to build smaller than the prescribed minimum, but the local government cannot restrict density to below the minimums. There are details in how density is distributed with prescribed minimum Floor Space Ratios, but for most folks it is easier to envision building heights. Within 200m of a Sky Train Station (red circles below), heights up to 20 storeys will be prescribed. Within 400m (yellow circles), the minimum is 12 storeys, and within 800m (the green circles), buildings up to 8 storeys will be pre-approved. Here are what those TOD zones look like in New West:

As far as the 200m and 400m TOD zones go, this will not be much of a change for New West excepting the 22nd Street Station area (though this looks aligned with where we anticipated the 22nd Street visioning going) and a bit of Sapperton around RCH. Our Downtown zoning is already in this scale, and aside from Sapperton Green, there isn’t a lot of developable space in Sapperton within the 400m circle that isn’t already being built up. The 800m TOD zone, however, could have huge implications for the West End, the Brow of the Hill, Queens Park and Sapperton.

The implications of Queens Park are perhaps most intriguing. Much of the Queens Park Heritage Conservation Area south of Third Ave is within the 800m TOD area. It is unclear to me at this point if this regulation will supersede a Heritage Conservation Area, but for complicated mechanical regulatory reasons, I suspect it will. I am equally suspecting that Designated heritage properties will be exempt, meaning the extra protection offered properties in Queens Park that have had HRAs applied will be important. But I am perhaps getting ahead of myself and the regulations, so we will wait for clarity when those arrive.

The second part of the regulatory change is that all residential parking minimums will be removed from TOD areas. The City will still be able to require commercial parking and some accommodation will be developed to allow cities to require accessible parking for people with disabilities, but overall the number of general parking spots in new residential will be determined by what the market determines it needs, not regulatory minimums.

This will significantly reduce the cost of developing near SkyTrain stations, and is aligned with the City’s Climate Action plans and the provincial CleanBC transportation goals. I am generally in favour, but again there will again be devils in details. It is unclear what this means to goals for off-street EV charging, and what this will do to increase the need for already over-prescribed public EV charging. This will exacerbate pressure for street parking and increase conflict in communities around precious curbside space. Allowing “the Market” to dictate parking need tends to assume people make rational choices, such as only owning the number of cars for which they have parking, and experience indicates this is not how people behave. Further, the “market” relies on pricing signals, and the amount of grief we get for $50 annual parking passes for street paring in some neighbourhoods suggests people aren’t that enamored with market solutions when they are used to getting something for free.

Finally, Transit Oriented Development assumes that there will be transit service at those stations. That assumption will be tested in the year ahead, as TransLink needs a new financial model to sustain its existing service level, even as transit is back to pre-COVID crowding levels, and the Province holds the levers that will allow the system to survive. As this TOD plan rolls out across the region, it is clear maintaining the level of service we have currently won’t suffice, and the $20 billion Access for Everyone plan will need to be funded to keep up with ridership growth.

With those caveats, I will sum up by saying I am glad to see that we have a provincial government who is willing to take serious moves to address a decades-long housing crisis. For a city like New West that has already been doing so much in housing, meeting and exceeding our Regional Growth Strategy targets, getting region-leading numbers of new Purpose Built Rental built, while protecting the most affordable housing, it is positive to see that the load is going to be spread more widely across the region. These are the kind of moves that housing advocates have been calling for, but probably gave up expecting from a provincial government in Canada.

There will be devils in the details, there will be hurdles and potholes on the way, but a decade from now we may look back at David Eby’s first year as the time British Columbia finally took the housing crisis seriously. Yes, the shape of our neighbourhoods will change, but the change will probably be more gradual that you think (there are only so many developers and builders in the region, and they are mostly already working hard), and ultimately, we will have stronger and more resilient communities because of the changes.

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of the best one.

Tag: Urban Living