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Victoria Community Planning Forum: Downtown

by Jared

June 30, 2010 at 9:51 am
Tagged: deliberation, urban planning, Victoria OCP

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.

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1. Ryley

   on July 5, 2010 at 11:55 am

   Very cool nugget about the Vibrant Victoria forums… I guess I’ll pay even more attention to them than I already do