For all its charms – its seaside and mountain views, greenery and fresh air – Vancouver remains a decidedly suburban city. It’s traditionally been much more about CPR land transformed into residential enclaves than the right blend of high-density, mixed use and transit access that defines urbanism.
But with the high cost of housing and dwindling supply, a growing and aging population and an exodus of youth who can’t afford to live in the city, the game plan is changing.
While there have been other arbiters of civic sea change, the most exciting game changer in recent years has been the Canada Line that has spurred densification of the Cambie Corridor.
The unassuming north-south corridor, largely composed of single-family bungalows – now worth an average of $1.5-million – has always been a rather sleepy, suburban feeling enclave, where young families and empty nesters resided. But now both of those groups have changing housing needs that are being addressed by two groundbreaking developments – a mixed-use project on the site of the Oakridge Shopping Mall at 41st and Cambie and the new Marine Gateway project at the southern tip of the corridor.
The increase in density and new transit access have contributed to a dramatic rise in real estate prices, with some homes around the Oakridge area recently tripling in price. But while some long-term residents have expressed concern about rapid change in their neighbourhood, others are excited by the possibilities it will bring for more affordable housing and more urban amenities. The Cambie Corridor plan allows buildings up to 12 storeys in height, with allowances for greater height around the Oakridge Mall and at the southern end of Cambie Street near Marine Drive.
Patrick Condon, a planner and professor of landscape architecture at UBC and author of Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities, says that densification of the Cambie Corridor will help address the city’s “urgent housing needs.”
He contends that the city’s plan for the corridor, which aims to bring 15,000 more people to the area, is “the best of its kind in North America.”
“It’s the first corridor plan I’ve ever seen that focuses so much on what the buildings are going to look like rather than being just a zoning plan.”
Mr. Condon supports the largely mid-rise development plan that does not concentrate density exclusively around stations, saying “a more evenly distributed density is best as it supports a finer grain commercial activity and in many ways leads to a more sustainable city.”
Mr. Condon, who worked with students to produce a comprehensive masterplan of what Vancouver will look like by the year 2050, notes that in less than 40 years, 25 per cent of the population will be over age 65, a “ 250 per cent increase over what it is now.”
The plans for higher density housing along the Cambie Corridor, he contends, will benefit the “over-65s” who will be “increasingly mobility impaired and the ones who will be the largest group needing housing.”
He maintains that “it’s logical to put housing close to services and ways of getting around – unless you want the elderly to be imprisoned within their buildings or complexes – which is true in many parts of North America but hopefully not true here.”
At the same time, he says, the new housing will benefit young people and young families. “There were many young people at the public hearings,” he relates, “saying ‘yes, I need housing and I need it to be affordable and I need it to be in Vancouver – and if I can’t get it I will be forced to move to Maple Ridge – where I don’t want to go.’”
The alternative to high density mixed use housing developments he says, “is an older city where we will have fewer and fewer young people able to afford to live here – making it impossible for younger families to exist. How can someone take a job at less than $40,000 a year and pay more than half a million for a very simple place to live?” The equation is simple, he says, higher density housing means more affordable housing.
He thinks the Oakridge Mall area in particular is ideal as it “upgrades what is now an auto oriented shopping mall into an urban, attractive place.”
