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URBAN DESIGN

New Urbanism's Moses comes to Tsawwassen

TREVOR BODDY

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 5:48 PM EDT 17/05/08

My own view is that history will regard New Urbanism as a last-gasp attempt to reform suburbanism from within, before high energy prices and new respect for land compels much denser development. ...Read the full article

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  1. Antonio San from Canada writes: Obviously there are the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys can receive rave compliments building some sprawling $20 million house on 67acres while the bad guys get today's rap. What really gets me going is this "New Urbanism is dangerous because it claims to cure the very sprawl and social class separation that it causes." Ahhh the social class separation. Mr Boddy thinks that affluent people will pay multi millions to live comfortably among the those who can afford $250,000 condo and that somehow all will live happy together thereafter. He is sadly not alone in this. The hypocrit mayor of West Vancouver has indeed approved in council of a high density project to be developed at Rodgers Creek despite the well founded objections of neighboring residents and the logical conclusion traffic of Lion's gate bridge would dictate. These new eco-collectivistes expect to have present high tax paying residents who wanted to enjoy the exclusivity of West Vancouver and forked multi millions to guarantee their tranquility, to subsidize the less fortunate who seem to be invested with a supreme right of living there as well, BUT without having to pay the bills. Mrs. Goldsmith-Jones of course is in this since no politician would refuse to play Robin Hood as a sure ticket to re-election and who knows where the apex of the curve might take her? As for H.H. lecturer that only history shall judge, it seems that wherever the politically correctness blows, we shall find his scribling like a dandelion seed in a gutter.
  2. Mar Koz from Vancouver, Canada writes: I have neither the funds to purchase a SFH near my work nor the patience to commute from Maple Ridge. I am, however, disheartened by the desire of developers and the politicians who support them to shuffle us all into half million dollar 400-800 sq ft shoe boxes. Having large numbers of extra rooms you don't use is wasteful, but stifling yourself in a tiny concrete catacomb is worse for anyone whose creative impulses require more space than is provided by a tiny wedge-shaped desk with barely enough room for a laptop computer. We can't all have what our heart desires, but my father had far more space to live than I will ever have, notwithstanding that I have a post secondary degree and one child, where he had a skilled trade, 2 kids, a wife who didn't work and her mother to support. The world is closing in around us due to speculators purchasing homes that remain unlived in (for an expected capital gain) and developers whose desire for profit is best realized through the construction of tiny, poorly constructed suites. Those suites can serendipitously be branded eco-friendly while coincidentally providing a very high return on investment for the developer. Are we really running out of land or are we simply the victims of real estate speculation? Countries with far more people per square mile than Canada are seeing their real estate markets take a turn for the worse as limits of affordability are reached in one nation after another subsequent to nearly a decade of price gains exceeding salary increases. Our inventory is building rapidly and sales are falling. Do we need "eco-density" or do we need less real estate speculation?
  3. John Meech from Canada writes: As a member of the Southlands Community Planning Team, I find Mr. Boddy's analysis sadly lacking not only in understanding of the plan but in terms of the accuracy of his report.

    The plan that culminated in the design presentation on Tuesday evening by Andres Duany derived from the collective wisdom of 24 volunteer citizens of Tsawwassen who spent over 15 months studying how the Southlands might be used to provide what is currently missing in our town - affordable housing for young families, smaller homes for seniors wishing to downsize and stay in our community, proper farming of the Southlands (not the unproductive tinkering that has occurred since the 1970s), better recreational facilities, better arts and theatre facilities, an post-secondary education facility (there is none in Delta - a city of over 100,000), less reliance on the automobile, (a community for people, not for cars), and we wanted to do this without destroying or reducing the beauty of the open land that all Tsawwassenites hold dear.

    Tsawwassen like most suburbs across Canada and the U.S. is a bed-room community with daily commuting times approaching one hour to reach downtown Vancouver. People live in Tsawwassen but there is little daily interaction with each other.

    The net density reported by Mr Boddy is not 4 units per acre. Over 42% of the site will remain as agricultural land and be run as a community farm by the Southlands Agricultural Trust. Some of the one acre blocks to be developed on 1/3 of the land will have densities as high as 60 units per acre. The S.A.L.T. will guarantee that the farmland remains used for agriculture in perpetuity.

    If we can pull off this development, it will stand as a showcase of how North American communities must adapt themselves to produce their own food. The 42% of the land to remain agriculture will produce value per acre 2-3 times current levels. This is clearly a win-win solution for Tsawwassen and a great idea for the world.
  4. Trevor Boddy from CambieLandia, Canada writes: DEAR ANTONIO SAN: REGARDING YOUR COMMENT FROM LAST WEEK, YOU OBVIOUSLY MISSED THIS MAJOR STORY BELOW, PERHAPS BECAUSE IT RAN ON THE BC PAGES, NOT REAL ESTATE. -TREV COVER STORY: ANALYSIS: ARCHITECTURE Vancouver's threatened legacy Recently, some of the region's most historic buildings have fallen victim to the wrecker, smashing to dust an irreplaceable part of a city's soul. Is there any way to save the remaining architectural masterpieces? TREVOR BODDY December 29, 2007, Globe and Mail It was downtown Vancouver's last building that could remind us of the 1930s - a whirling wedding cake of streamline stucco that most of us knew as the Fido outlet at Georgia and Richards, first built as the Collier Auto Showroom. It got knocked down early one morning during the civic strike, leaving one more empty-tooth slot in the mug's face of downtown. Then, on Dec. 6, the wrecking crews went to work on one of Arthur Erickson's most world-renowned and influential houses, a grand sequence of portals and frames elegantly descending down a Horseshoe Bay cliffside. This 1963 house for David Graham was featured on the pages of Life magazine and leased as a love nest to Warren Beatty and Julie Christie when in town to shoot Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. West Vancouver resident Barry Downs, one of British Columbia's most-respected house architects and authors, says "the Graham House was Arthur Erickson's Fallingwater" - a reference to Frank Lloyd Wright's career-reviving, rural Pennsylvania concrete and brick house, which similarly cascades over rocks down a hill. The Georgia Street Collier/Fido showroom was a vision in white from when modernism was new, and the West Vancouver Graham House was the evolution of these same ideas of seeing architecture afresh, but tempered to our climate, our building materials, and West Coast lifestyles. Someone broke the law, surely, when these two got whacked? Alas, no.
  5. Antonio San from Canada writes: Thank you Trevor Boddy for correcting me.

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