From childless tower to child-full density: families and the evolution of vancouverism

ABSTRACT

Vancouverism – amenity-rich neighbourhoods comprised of thin residential towers set on street-defining podiums – has been globally promoted as a new model of urbanism: high-density yet livable, even for families with children. Boosters claim profitable sustainability on a human scale; critics decry a sanitized elite vertical suburb. Lost in these debates is the little-known history of how this foundationally low-density city – where the single-family detached home dominated both the landscape and policy – became an international symbol of livable density. This history starts with a single confined mid-rise apartment zone in the 1920s designed to protect the majority detached-home city. In the 1950s policy promoted towers for childless professionals to bolster the tax base. Negative public reaction to the towers led to the election of an anti-density, yet anti-highway city council in the 1970s. Ironically, a cancelled highway spurred the council to build moderately-dense equitable family housing near downtown. After residents reported a desire for higher densities, Vancouverism was born.

KEYWORDS:

• Vancouverism
• families
• urban design
• density

Acknowledgments

This article draws from a dissertation submitted to MIT August 2019, and was supported in part by the institution's Sagalyn and Hack DUSP Grant and Rodwin travel fellowship. The manuscript has benefitted greatly from comments by Neal LaMontagne, Brent Ryan, Lawrence Vale, Annette Kim, and two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Beasley, Vancouverism.

2 Punter, Vancouver Achievement; Sandercock, “Civic Ambition in Vancouver.”

3 Roehr, Soules, and Burger, “Mirage Metropolis”; Soules, “‘Livable’ Suburbanized City.”

4 Punter, Vancouver Achievement; Sandercock, “Civic Ambition in Vancouver”; Beasley, Vancouverism.

5 Roehr, Soules, and Burger, “Mirage Metropolis”; Roehr, Soules, and Burger.

6 Cox and Pavletich, “International Housing Affordability Survey,” 3.

7 Vale, “Affordable Homeownership Efforts”; Hirt, “Privileging the Private Home.”

8 City of Vancouver, “Central Area Plan,” 23.

9 Wiley, “House as City.”

10 City of Vancouver, “HCA”; City of Vancouver, “West End,” 2016.

11 Harland Bartholomew & Associates, “A Plan for the City of Vancouver,” 216.

12 Macdonald, “The Efficacy of Long-Range Physical Planning,” 180.

13 Harland Bartholomew & Associates, “A Plan for the City of Vancouver,” 211.

14 Hirt, “Privileging the Private Home,” 288.

15 Euclid v. Ambler, 272 U.S. at at 272:394.

16 Wiley, “House as City,” 80.

17 Harland Bartholomew & Associates, “A Plan for the City of Vancouver,” 231; cited in Wiley, “House as City,” 119–20.

18 Wiley, “House as City.”

19 Wiley, 81.

20 Langford, “Gerald Sutton Brown.”

21 Langford, 33.

22 Walsh, “Origins of Vancouverism,” 166, 170–72, 181.

23 City of Vancouver, “Discretionary Zoning Backgrounder”; Punter, Vancouver Achievement, 18.

24 Walsh, “Origins of Vancouverism,” 177.

25 Punter, Vancouver Achievement, 19 emphasis added.

26 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” March 30, 2017.

27 Hardwick, “Responding to the 1960s,” 348.

28 City of Vancouver, “West End,” 2012.

29 see Ryan, “Couple with Baby.” The Strata Property Act is Provincial legislation and jurisdiction. With the exception of senior housing, the City has prohibited “adults only” discrimination in rental and non-market buildings for decades, see Beasley, Vancouverism, 218.

30 As Walsh, “Origins of Vancouverism,” 167 notes, until the 1980s, taller towers in the West End required larger consolidated lots. Yet around two-thirds of the towers built between 1956 and 73 were only between 10- and 14-storeys, which would allow for multiple per block.

31 Walsh, 145–205.

32 Ley, “Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City”; Punter, Vancouver Achievement; Wiley, “House as City.”

33 quoted in Ley, “Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City,” 250.

34 interviewed on Williams, “Residents of False Creek South Face Uncertain Future.” emphasis added.

35 Vancouver Achievement, 39.

36 Urban Land Institute, “False Creek.”

37 Hardwick, “Responding to the 1960s.”

38 Hardwick, 346.

39 Hardwick, 348.

40 Ley, “Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City.”

41 Hardwick, “Responding to the 1960s.”

42 cited in Wiley, “House as City,” 162 emphasis added.

43 Hardwick, “Responding to the 1960s.”

44 Ley, “Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City,” 252.

45 Walsh, “Origins of Vancouverism,” 201.

46 McAfee, personal email correspondence.

47 Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow; Perry, “The Neighborhood Unit”; Perry, “City Planning for Neighborhood Life.”

48 cited in Wiley, “House as City,” 160 Figure 121.

49 Wiley, 165.

50 Wiley, 165.

51 Hardwick, “Responding to the 1960s,” 347.

52 Hardwick, 347.

53 Punter, Vancouver Achievement, 37.

54 Appleyard, Livable Streets; Moore, “Streets as Playgrounds”; Southworth and Ben-Joseph, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities; Norton, Fighting Traffic; Rosenthal, “Life Goes On Without Cars.”

55 Monty Wood, a young architect on the project, quoted in Ball, “Hippie-Era Urban Experiment.”

56 cited in Wiley, “House as City,” 160 Figure 121.

57 Geller, “EcoDensity.”

58 Geller, “Remembering Art Phillips.”

59 Geller, “EcoDensity.”

60 Geller.

61 Wiley, “House as City”; Geller, “Remembering Art Phillips.”

62 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” May 4, 2018.

63 The city and residents have been unable to agree to a plan to renew leases and proactively preserve the neighbourhood’s affordable housing, despite the residents coming forward early on in apparent good faith with a serious densification plan. See Fumano, “Frustration and Fear”; Gold, “New Path for False Creek South”; Williams, “Residents of False Creek South Face Uncertain Future.”

64 Geller, “Remembering Art Phillips.”

65 Geller.

66 Urban Land Institute, “False Creek.”

67 Urban Land Institute.

68 Ward, “Art Phillips Dead at Age 82.”

69 Geller, “Remembering Art Phillips.”

70 Bula, “Back from the ‘Burbs’”; Geller, “EcoDensity”; Geller, “Remembering Art Phillips”; Ward, “Art Phillips Dead at Age 82.”

71 Ward, “High Density Life,” 125 emphasis in original.

72 City of Vancouver, “False Creek South: Community Profile.”

73 quoted in Ball, “Hippie-Era Urban Experiment.”

74 quoted in Ball.

75 Punter, Vancouver Achievement, 40.

76 City of Vancouver, “False Creek South: Community Profile,” 17.

77 City of Vancouver, “ODP: Area 6 Phase 1”; cited in Wiley, “House as City,” 173.

78 Jacobs, Death and Life, 74–88.

79 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” March 30, 2017 emphasis added.

80 Ball, “Hippie-Era Urban Experiment.”

81 Ley, “Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City.”

82 Ball, “Hippie-Era Urban Experiment.”

83 Jacobs, Death and Life, 74–84.

84 Punter, Vancouver Achievement, 40.

85 For a more thorough discussion of the report, see Dr McAfee’s summary in Urban Forum “High Density Family Housing.”

86 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” May 4, 2018.

87 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” March 30, 2017.

88 City of Vancouver, “Housing Families at High Densities,” i.

89 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” March 30, 2017.

90 Ley, The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City, 24.

91 City of Vancouver, “Housing Families at High Densities,” 1.

92 City of Vancouver, 11.

93 City of Vancouver, 1.

94 City of Vancouver, 2 emphasis added.

95 http://www.maudancoop.ca/.

96 Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee, “Historic Area Height Review,” February 28, 2011.

97 City of Vancouver, “High-Density Housing for Families with Children Guidelines,” 3.

98 City of Vancouver, 3.

99 for a more detailed discussion, see Beasley, Vancouverism, 211–21.

100 Beasley, 219.

101 Statistics Canada, Census 1996-2016, custom order for City of Vancouver Local Areas; CensusMapper.

102 Sandercock, “Civic Ambition in Vancouver.”

103 former council member Price, personal interview.

104 Statistics Canada, Census, “Vancouver [CMA]”; cited in Pendakur, “Visible Minorities.”

105 McAfee, “Personal Correspondence,” March 30, 2017.

106 Parsons, “Greenbelt Towns.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louis L. Thomas

Louis L. Thomas is a Postdoctoral Scholar within the Urbanism Lab, Social Sciences Division, University of Chicago.