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.

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.

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.

Victoria’s Community Plan is a strategic plan. Risk management is a big part of organizational strategic plans, but I was surprised to see it so explicitly in the climate change session.

Risk management says there are four ways to respond to a threat that may occur:

• Accept: do nothing
• Transfer: make it someone else’s problem (insurance is the most straightforward example)
• Avoid: change your plan to reduce the impact (called “Adaptation” in a climate change context)
• Mitigate: reduce the probability that the threat occurs

Most emissions happen in urban areas, but the City of Victoria is just one municipality in the region and just one city in the world, so mitigation is more about setting a good example and doing our part. Victoria’s emissions are divided about 50-50 between building heating & cooling and transportation (solid waste is insignificant and reducing it is a distraction from the real problems).

For heating & cooling, it’s more important to retrofit old buildings than set standards for new ones (most of Victoria’s buildings that will be standing in 30 years have already been built). I didn’t get a chance to ask if we have a potential for deep water cooling, but there are a few geothermal heritage-retrofit projects in Victoria.

The Capital Region per capita transportation emissions are 0.6 tonnes higher than the City’s per capita emissions, so the most important thing is supporting regional transportation plans (like keeping rail on the Johnson Street Bridge, hmm?). It turns out that not that many people are commuting directly downtown, so sticks like reducing parking may not be as effective as carrots. But there’s also lots of opportunity to reduce transportation emissions within the City.

Given that some climate change is inevitable, we also have to avoid the impacts. Victoria is well above sea level. We need emergency management to deal with increasingly weird weather. Our biggest problem is water security:

• water supply
• water-borne disease
• handling wastewater