Dean Murdock is running for reelection as a Saanich Councillor. He has proposed that Saanich require all new developments to sell or rent 10% of their units below the market value. This will have two side-effects:

• More development will happen in other municipalities, which don’t have affordable or sustainable transportation options.
• The price of new units in Saanich will rise.

Some of the rise in prices will come out of developer profits, but some of the increase will also be passed on to purchasers. Since new developments tend to be condos, townhouses and infill housing, they are mostly purchased by members of the middle-middle class. This is taking from the middle to give to the poor while the rich stay rich.

A better solution is to subsidize the creation of affordable housing units in both new and renovated development (like adding a non-market basement suite) using property tax refunds. The City of Victoria has been quite successful using property tax refunds to encourage restoration of heritage buildings.

The refunds should be paid for by raising the property tax rate for the municipality as a whole. Property tax is just about the only major policy level that local governments have, but it’s a good one because it’s progressive: mansions pay more than condos. The current owners’ houses have increased in value because of the scarcity of housing, so it’s time that they pay back the benefits of old policies.

Of course Murdoch can’t propose raising property tax to help the poor, because land owners are the only people who bother to vote in municipal elections. I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote for Murdoch, because this is better than Saanich’s current policy, fuck the poor. But is it not just to ask the middle to suffer for the good of the poor while taking nothing from the rich.

I got overwhelmed when the City of Victoria’s draft Official Community Plan came out, so I didn’t write any blog posts about it (I’ll be talking about those issues for the next 30 years, anyway). However, the city just published the collection of all the long-form correspondence they received in response to the draft. It’s over 9000 pages long, but I skimmed it and picked out a few choice quotes:

Note surprisingly, the neighbourhood associations were all against their lack of explicit power in the planning process. This was best summarized by the City’s patronage Public Planning Advisory Committee:

It is vital that the role of neighbourhood associations be made explicit in the OCP…Residents who are already engaged in volunteer activity related to neighbourhood quality of life issues are the most likely to be knowledgeable about area planning issues.

Except the Downtown Residents’ Association, who had no problems with the planning process but questioned the whole thing:

Does the OCP actually provide any ‘teeth’ in terms of guiding how the principles and strategic directions are applied? There seems to be very little language that actually quantifies/measures how the policies are implemented and applied. Reviewing the document, the OCP provides only vague, innocuous descriptors without specific meaning…

The neighbourhood association and private citizen submissions mostly worried about the idea of letting more people live in Victoria. But the Urban Development Institute, which is a developers industry association, pointed out that the plan doesn’t go far enough:

Increased density is noted as something that is desirable to ‘achieve the development objectives of this plan’ but is still being considered something for which applicants must pay significantly. The provision of amenity contributions may add to the cost of new housing, something that runs contrary to the stated objectives of this plan.

Finally, Deborah Curran of the UVic Environmental Law Centre noted a glaring omission:

The City of Victoria is located in the traditional territory of the Songhees/Coast Salish First Nations and that the City rests within the context of the rich history of the Coast Salish. I recommend that this be the first page in the OCP before the introduction in recognition of that Constitutional context.

In Andrew Potter’s sober analysis of the Vancouver riot, he argues that riots happen after major sporting events because it’s a time when people think about riots. (Although in Europe, sports riots typically happen after losses while in the United States they typically happen after wins.)

In game theory, this is called a focal point in a coordination game. The problem is classically set up like this: you and a stranger have agreed to meet, but you don’t know where (and your cell phones are broken) – what time or location are the two of you most likely to choose?

The focal times are, probably in order:

1. noon
2. dawn
3. midnight
4. 4:20 PM

In the Age of Trains, the focal location for New York was Grand Central Station. Coincidentally, the City of Victoria just sent out a notice advising residents to prearrange a meeting spot with their family in the case of disaster. I can think of three potential focal points in Victoria:

• The fountain in Centennial Square: centre of civic gravity
• The entrance to the Bay Centre: centre of commerce and public transit
• The steps of the Parliament Building: the most salient building in town

I would argue that a lack of a focal point is a serious problem in a city’s urban plan. What do you think about Victoria and other cities’ focal points?

Greater Victoria (formally: the Capital Regional District) is running some kind of CO2-reducing pyramid scheme (formally: a Ponzi scheme) or multi-level marketing. The idea is to get people to make small steps to stop raping the climate. First, they just ran a bunch of workshops to create contagious meme-zombies. Second, you can get yourself brainwashed online. Third, you can take pledges – here are mine:

• I will drive my friends around in car-share co-op cars to show them how nice they are.
• I will use Google Maps Transit to make the bus even more awesome!
• I will convert my fixie to a free-wheel so it isn’t such a pain to stop.
• I will strut more when I walk near traffic so drivers get jealous.
• I will let my brother try to teach me how to longboard again.

I like that they recognized longboards as a sustainable transportation option – too bad the people writing the Greater Victoria bylaws don’t. Personally, I’d like to see the cops handing out a dozen idling tickets (have they ever handed out one?!) for every skateboarder or cyclist-without-a-helmet they harass.

The materials for this Community Planning Forum had a bias toward the villages model of growth (either because the bias was in submissions or the planning department added it). This session was, more or less, a discussion about how to implement that model. Many of the other people attending this session were leaders of neighbourhood associations.

I am far more engaged and educated than the average resident of Victoria, and yet I don’t understand neighbourhood associations. The City’s website provides nothing more than a list of (broken) links. I believe that they specify development permit areas, which restrict aspects of development all over Victoria.

I expressed my opinion that neighbourhood associations are “undemocratic” (I’ll explain why I think this in a future post), which got an amusing response from the other people present. Apparently they hung around in the room to discuss this issue after I left for lunch. I also learned that “NIMBY” is a derogatory term.

My big concern is that the villages plan requires villages to accept thousands of new residents after the next few years. Villages cannot be allowed to choose whether to expand or whether to have services like a needle exchange, because all of them might choose stasis. I am reminded of the provincial NDP’s carrot & stick model for implementing affirmative action in candidate nominations.

I also put up for discussion whether mixed-use villages includes office space and expressed my concern about commuting between villages.

These sessions really disappointed my hopes for deliberation. It was more a process of:

1. share ideas and gripe about the past
2. present ideas collected to date
3. share more ideas and gripe more

There was no weighing of trade-offs and making hard decisions. There was little requirement to give reasons. I’m sure these sessions give helpful guidance to the planners, but it sure didn’t feel like we were authoring the Plan.

This weekend was the second round of Victoria’s Community Planning Forum. I attended planner Robert Batallas’ Friday evening session on Victoria’s Downtown Plan. There were only three people in the audience (apparently the earlier session was much better attended), so I got to ask lots of questions.

Why are the buildings higher east of Douglas?

I was worried this was just to support the “ampitheatre” design, where Victoria gradually rises from the waves, at the cost of not maximizing development along the future Douglas rapid transit corridor. But of course the west side of town up to Chatham Street is mostly heritage buildings, so there’s not much point in zoning for higher density. I still think that north of Chatham should be developed symmetrically.

What’s up with the density bonus system?

I now completely understand the Density Bonus System and Heritage Density Transfer. I’ll write a separate post explaining them.

The other audience member was the first real crank I’ve run into at these planning forums. In a long-winded statement, he expressed a degrowth agenda. He said he didn’t want Victoria to grow not only because it was bad for the environment, but because it would make it less nice of a place to live. I tried to deliberate with him about how we needed to grow the city to get people to move out of the less sustainable suburbs. But when he insisted that rural living was more sustainable than urban, because “cities have lots of problems”, I lost it: in my mind, I punched Habermas* in the face rather than punching this guy in real life.

After the presentation, I had a chat with Robert that blew my mind. He said that every planner in the city reads the Vibrant Victoria forums every day – it’s their best source to get new ideas and the pulse of the community. I’ve been wondering how to influence Victoria’s plan from here on out, it looks like I found my answer.

* The grandfather of deliberative democracy. Habermas produced the theory that people should give reasons for their positions.

At Victoria’s Community Forum this weekend, the chief item for deliberation is to choose one of four growth plans:

Waterfront and Green Spaces

More of what we have now: condos with great views and no jobs or shops in sight. This scenario should only appeal to developers and rich people with SUVs. I’m worried that people will support this because “hey, everybody likes trees and dolphins!”

Transit Corridors

This sounds good at first glance, but it results in long tracts of medium density development. They’re too long for walking and too busy for biking. Everybody spends all their time on the bus. I think of West Broadway in Vancouver as representative of this.

Diverse Villages

I’m tempted by this option. I think villages that have, as the poster lists, supermarkets, heavy transit access, services and cute shops are good for both residents and tourists. If all the jobs are in the core, then transit from villages is easy to arrange (but intervillage transit would suck). I doubt Victoria’s ability to pull this off properly: density outside the existing “town centre villages” must be strictly capped and office space must be forced downtown.

Core Area

I think ultimately this would result in the best city, but the “Core” on the map is way too big. Bay Street and the Roundhouse are not within walking distance of downtown. For this to work, the Downtown Core Area Plan needs to allow nearly unrestricted development in the “core core”.

My goal at the forum is to argue against the first two and raise my concerns about implementation of the last two. If you can’t make it to the forum, fill out the online survey.

The current Johnson Street Bridge has two car lanes going east, out of downtown, and one lane going west. Most transit systems seem to be designed around more condensed rush hour in the morning, so I never really understood why they weren’t divided the other way (perhaps growing out of the awkward approaches?). The plan for a replacement bridge maintained three car lanes – I like to think that the middle lane would be reversible, although there’s no evidence of that.

Right now there are signs stating that cyclists have use of a full lane and cars should not pass them on the bridge. I’ve always found this works well (I come from Wharf Street to the south mostly), but Ryley tells me he’s been honked at a few times. Whether they’re actually safer, most cyclists prefer a seperated bike path or bike lanes. So both refurbishment and replacement plans have always assumed one or the other.

JohnsonStreetBridge.org has a good argument that the City should try converting one lane of traffic into two bike lanes for a few weeks to see what happens. Given the cost of such an experiment compared to the amount being spent on analysis of the bridge, I think it’s a no-brainer. The question is whether it’s a fair test if the approaches aren’t tweaked as well?

I’d like to see the City doing a lot more experiments, like converting car parking to bike racks. How about some affordable housing experiments?

This session’s expert was Andrea Hudson, the City’s planner in charge of Downtown, North Park and Harris Green. She presented Kevin A Lynch‘s model from The Image of the City as a way to talk about urban spaces:

paths

streets, sidewalks, trails

edges

walls, shorelines, impassable spaces like highways (Hudson’s egs: Dallas Road, upper Blanshard)

districts

areas sharing an identity or character (Hudson’s egs: Chinatown, the Inner Harbour)

nodes

focal points, intersections (Hudson’s eg: Haultain Corners)

landmarks

distinct or distantly visible reference points (Hudson’s egs: Quadra Street churches, the Rockland water tower*)

I was a couple minutes late, but I believe Hudson didn’t discuss the Development Permit Map, which was on a big board next to her. The development permit system gives Council approval power over the appearance of buildings within almost all of Victoria. Combined with land use zoning, it’s how the City exerts control over development: I was shocked that it wasn’t the focus of this session.

It was the last session of the day, so everyone was tired, but I think also no one knew what we were supposed to be talking about. The urban design topic sheet has no specific issues or discussion points. Two Citizen Advisory Committee members planted in the audience trolled about “evil development”. I tried to start a discussion criticising the neighbourhood planning process, but apparently that was out of scope.

The real issue that citizens must discuss is how urban design and heritage conservation can peacefully coexist with densification and economic renewal. Is the development permit system working? Are density bonuses an appropriate trade for well-designed developments? Where does zoning come into this?

* Victoria has a water tower?! I had never heard about it until now.

This session was a hard-nosed look at the economic future of the municipality, less utopian than the rest of the forum. The discussion centered around discussing the current employment breakdown:

Government, tourism and construction won’t grow much in the next few years (although I didn’t get the impression that this was looking 30 years out like the plan is supposed to). Healthcare will grow on demand. High tech presents the best opportunity for growth but it has a variety of land use needs from office space to light manufacturing.

The session expert, Jay Wollenberg, thinks that Victoria’s waterfront represents our most underutilized resource for:

• tourism
• residential (which creates community-oriented and construction employment)
• industry
• public space (which could make the city more attractive for the Creative Class)

The City’s downtown plan is commited to maintaining existing industry on the harbour, but doesn’t say much about development. I like the idea of an intensified working harbour, but Ryley says it’s not necessarily great in practice.

Wollenberg’s other suggestion is that the City could try to get government offices to consolidate in the municipality (right now 7500 government jobs are outside the municipality in the region). Amalgamation would do that for local government. I’m not sure exactly how to get the province to do it, but I really like the idea.

Wollenberg also mentioned that there’s a trend toward raising children in condos and apartments – apparently Yaletown has a shortage of daycare spaces. This is a huge cultural shift that I’d like to know more about.

In the question period, a woman attempted to share her view that Victoria should pursue a no-growth strategy. I’m sympathetic to this concept and will be writing on it in the future, but she came off as a crank because she didn’t know how to articulate this complex idea (I took me a while to figure out what she was talking about and I’ve read papers on it!).

* Community-oriented: services and goods consumed by people living within the municipality