IHII NDUIIR Pl N L-.--__ THE CITY'S STRATEGY FOR MANAGING CHANGE JULY 1986 VANCOUVER CITY COUNCIL 1982 - 1986 Mayor Michael F. Harcourt Donald Bellamy May Brown Gordon Campbell* Libby Davies Bruce Eriksen Marguerite Ford Warnett Kennedy** George Puil Harry Rankin Bill Yee Bruce Yorke *1984 -1986 **1982 - 1984 PUBLISHED JULY 19a6 BY THE CITY OF VANCOUVER PLANNING DEPARTMENT, RAY SPAXMAN DIRECTOR In mid-1984, after reviewing extensive public comment, Vancouver City Council concluded discussion of the draft Vancouver Coreplan. That discussion had begun nearly a year earlier and had involved over fifty pUblic meetings and group presentations, a forty-foot display which toured the city, two public questionnaires, extensive media coverage, and over thirty written and oral briefs to Council. The last required two special Council meetings to receive. The Coreplan resulted from over two years of research and thought about city trends and policies. It proposed a strategy to deal with some very significant, but uncertain, changes in store for Vancouver's future. These changes originated in the core - the downtown and surrounding centre city - but they had consequences for all of Vancouver. Therefore, The Coreplan strategy addressed the entire city. In recognition of this city-wide scope, City Council directed that The Coreplan, modified in response to public comment, become The Vancouver Plan. This booklet describes that plan. THE VANCOUVER PLAN has five parts: • THE FRAMEWORK for understanding change page 2 • THE CRITERIA for eyaluating change page 6 • THE OPTIONS for choosing change page 7 • THE DIRECTION for guiding change ., ", page 8 • THE PROGRAM for preparing change .. page 16 Together, they are THE CITY'S STRATEGY FOR MANAGING CHANGE. 1 THE FRAMEWORK DOWNTOWN OFFICE SPACE 1957-1984 for understanding change SO. FT (MILLIONS) The Vancouver Plan seeks to understand and 22 r then guide change by focusing on the relationship 20 r 18 ~ among four key elements of the city: core ~ employment, city housing, transportation, and 16 r urban environment. 14 ~ E 12 ~f • CORE EMPLOYMENT 10 Employment in Vancouver is undergoing a transformation. While natural resources, shipping, :1 and manufacturing remain important, many new ~ job opportunities are tied to growth in the service f , IIII , I , IIIIIII , , , I , I , II , I , , and information sectors of the economy ­ r--... 01 ...... (T1 1O r-... Cl ...... ('l"') t.n r-..... tTl ,~ (T) ~ ~ w w w w w ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ w w activities which occupy offices, rather than factories, and process numbers and ideas, rather than minerals and timber. Office activities tend to concentrate in the metropolitan core - the downtown and adjacent EMPLOYMENT 1971-1981 areas - and recent change in that part of the city has been phenomenal. The current growth in offices began in about 1967. Since then, the EMPLOYED (THOUSANDS) amount of downtown office space has nearly 250 f tripled, from about 7 million square feet to almost 19 million square feet near the end of 1984. 200 The employment growth associated with all those new offices has been less pronounced but still significant. Between the census years of 1971 and 150 1981, employment in the core increased by 27 percent. All net growth was in so-called 100 "white-collar" occupations. During the last decade over 46,000 new white-collar jobs were added to the core. By 1981 there were close to 220,000 50 people working in the metropolitan centre. These employees were divided about equally between 0'------ the small, dense downtown and the larger outer 1971 1981 core, including central Broadway. For a variety of economic and technological reasons, the rate of future core employment growth is highly uncertain. But the zoning ---~ffigutations1}OvefAtRgeoredevefopfAentwotlld tbl3prl3sl3l1t:z()nil1gc;()LJlcjPl3Ef11ita.fl1il1if11LJf11!5Q_ percent increase in employment. Under slightly allow much more growth than has occurred to more liberal assumptions, permitted new date. Present zoning defines an office development would result in at least a doubling of development capacity for the core of about 70 the number of people working in the core. All million square feet - 50 million square feet of these new core workers would have a this in the downtown. Were development to considerable impact on other elements of the city. continue at the same annual percentage rate as over the past two decades, the amount of office space in downtown Vancouver would nearly triple again by the end of this century all within the • CITY HOUSING zoning which exists today. Many new core employees would want to live Net job growth would not follow in lock step with somewhere in the city. But, if trends persist, fewer new office construction, but development within and fewer would be able to do so. In 1971 fully 2 62 percent of those working in the metropolitan addition to the housing stock, as new housing is core lived in the city of Vancouver. Thirty-five built at the same density as the old. percent lived in the core itself. By 1981 the proportion of core employees residing in Vancouver had declined to 54 percent, and only CITY HOUSING 1971-1981 a quarter of all core employees lived in the core. Between 1971 and 1981 the number of occupied NUMBER OF UNITS housing units in the city increased by only 20,000 or 13 percent. Core employment increased at 200.000 r twice that rate. Outside the city, in the rest of the 173.085 Greater Vancouver region, the occupied housing stock grew by a full 58 percent, a net addition of 150. 000 nearly 111,000 units. Opportunities for new core employees to live near their jobs are decreasing. The city of Vancouver 100.000 is now just about completely developed there l are only a very few small vacant areas left- and redevelopment at higher densities is 50. 000 ~ constrained by restrictive residential zoning. That zoning allows a maximum of about 210,000 housing units. The city currently has about oL- 1971 1981 180,000 units and is rapidly approaching the practical limit for development under present zoning. Net additions to the city's housing stock are declining annually and, without changes in permitted residential density, could come to a standstill during this decade. • TRANSPORTATION City housing supply would then become effectively As the residences of core employees become stable. But housing demand near the core, stimulated by new core employment, would more and more separated from the core work place, demands on the city and regional continue to rise. This would produce an upward pressure on housing prices. Many households transportation system grow correspondingly. Of the net 46,000 jobs added to the core between 1971 would be priced out of the city market, and and 1981, 34,000 were filled by suburban Vancouver's long-term goal of more affordable residents. That means that about three out of four housing would be thwarted. A rising proportion of core employees would need to commute over new core jobs were taken by people who must commute from outside the city. longer distances from suburban homes. Additional pressure for housing development would be Most of this new commuting occured during the placed on agricultural land and on other 7-9 AM peak period. Between 1971 and 1981, the environmentally sensitive areas near the suburban number of people entering the downtown during fringe. the two-hour morning peak increased by about 19 pefcenrff6ri1· 63,OOOl675,OOO.···lfmighfhave However, while recognizing the problems arising from lessened housing opportunity, most city increased more were the transportation system not already operating near capacity and therefore neighbourhoods continue to resist proposals to change residential zoning and raise average inducing a high proportion.of commuters to travel during non-peak hours. housing density. Higher densities and neighbourhood change are commonly thought to Of the 12,000 new peak-period trips added during threaten the quality of city life, and city the past decade, fully 11,000 were accommodated development policy has emphasized the by transit and only 1,000 put more automobiles preservation of existing physical scale in many on the road. However, use of the transit system residential areas. Nevertheless, demolition and stopped growing in about 1980, probably because redevelopment do occur - with substantial social there was no more room on the morning buses. and economic change but with very little net The number of buses in the fleet has been about 3 the same since the mid-seventies. levels of congestion from getting worse. Since the beginning of this decade, automobile Alternatively there would need to be at least a 30 commuting seems to have been gradually percent increase in the proportion of commuters increasing, filling up what little capacity remains carried by transit. Even the billion-dollar on the city's streets. In 1981 morning peak traffic investment in Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT) volumes on arterials entering the city were is not expected to produce that kind of change in estimated at about 88 percent of saturation ridership, so greater transit expenditures would be capacity Optimum use of the system is required along with a substantial shift in considered to be about 80 percent; above that commuting preferences. level significant delays begin to occur. Some routes, particularly bridges, were much more congested. Congestion has also become a fact of life at • URBAN ENVIRONMENT midday and during the afternoon peak. At these times shoppers, deliveries, and business trips Changes in core employment, city housing, and combine with home-bound commuters to create transportation would together also change severe congestion, especially within the downtown Vancouver's look and feel: the city's urban and on major business routes such as central environment. Vancouver could become a much Broadway. different city-both physically and socially-than we know today.