Vancouver families are more urban than ever. They are choosing a life of sushi, parks and cycling around the Sea Wall for their children over the traditional tree forts and street hockey.
There are more children living downtown than in Vancouver’s most expensive residential neighbourhood. The higher-density plans of the past 30 years and the soaring house prices of the 2000s have changed the city’s demographic makeup.
Former city planning director Larry Beasley is proud that his celebrated 1980s density measures have made downtown appealing to people with kids.
“The quality of life we have been able to establish downtown draws more and more people,” Mr. Beasley said. “Historically, it’s been that you might want to hang out downtown when you are young and single, and come back when you’re an empty nester, but boy, you sure couldn’t raise your kids there. That’s not true of downtown Vancouver. There are more children downtown than there are in Point Grey.”
There are an estimated 7,200 children living in the downtown peninsula. In Point Grey, there are less than half that number. Point Grey has long been viewed as the choice family neighbourhood, and downtown the haven for singles. Not so much any more.
Peter Hoffmann and his wife, Juliette Hukin, have raised daughters Zoe, 9 and Talia, 6, downtown from birth. The family has a 20th-floor view of ocean and mountains, and access to movie theatres and some of the world’s best restaurants a few steps outside their front door.
“I think it’s really cool that kids get this urban experience. I think it helps them grow up faster in a positive way,” says Mr. Hoffmann, who lives in the downtown West End. “My kids have their favourite Japanese noodle restaurant. Vancouver is so international. And downtown is such a nice place to live.”
Former premier Mike Harcourt was mayor of Vancouver in the 1980s, when the foundation was laid for a thriving downtown.
“We wanted a livable city. We didn’t want to follow this North American model of a dead downtown and deadening suburbs. We brought in changes around False Creek, Coal Harbour and Yaletown. We made housing available downtown.
“Far more people are living in duplexes, townhouses and apartments than in single-family homes. I think that cultural shift is in the big cities and it’s irreversible.”
Development consultant Michael Geller also says there’s been a shift in thinking about families and dwellings.
“Around the world, whether it’s living in a Park Avenue apartment or an apartment in Prague or Budapest or anywhere, families with children live in apartments. That generally was not North America. Kids in an apartment here were considered poor.” Mr. Geller says. “Whereas now, there is a choice being made by people to spend $700,000 on a downtown apartment with maybe one or two young children, rather than live in a larger house in Burnaby or Coquitlam for the same money.”
Andrew Yan, researcher and urban planner for architect Bing Thom’s research division BTA Works, says the number of kids downtown doubled between census years 1996 and 2006. However, it would be a mistake to consider downtown a uniquely booming breeding ground. The population is higher downtown than in other neighbourhoods, which means the number of children would also go up.
But a denser downtown, with more families, was on the agenda back in the 1970s and 1980s – and it was a radical idea at the time.
Mr. Geller remembers working with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. to develop the South False Creek area with families in mind.
"I was the federal government project manager, and that was the first attempt to encourage families with children to live in the city,” he recalls. “And at the time, a city planner resigned because he thought it was so inappropriate for families with children to be forced to live in the south shore of False Creek. Prominent politicians of the day even spoke out against it.”
