“What Makes Us Vancouver?” An Aspirational Portrait of Vancouver’s Planning Culture

“WHAT MAKES US VANCOUVER?” An Aspirational Portrait of Vancouver’s Planning Culture Special Event Summary

Prepared by PJ Bell (SCARP, UBC)

CONTEXT The City of Vancouver is currently undergoing a significant leadership transition, with vacancies in both the City Manager and General Manager of Planning and Development positions. These positions have great influence over the way in which the City grows and develops. As a result, any candidates for these positions should embody the principles that have helped form Vancouver’s identity and culture.

This brings up an important question: what makes us Vancouver? While various plan- and community-specific principles have been developed over the years, the City of Vancouver does not have a universal set of guiding planning principles. The purpose of this event was to share stories from the ground about Vancouver’s past and present city-building initiatives, with the aim of extracting valuable planning principles and painting an aspirational portrait of Vancouver’s planning culture.

PROCESS The “What makes us Vancouver?” An Aspirational Portrait of Vancouver’s Planning Culture event took place on October 13, 2015 from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM at Vancouver City Hall. It was co-hosted by the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Vancouver City Planning Commission (VCPC), and it was facilitated by Aftab Erfan (SCARP) and the Master’s students from her Negotiation, Facilitation, and Conflict Resolution course at SCARP. The event attendees were chosen based on their wealth of experience and their roles in shaping the planning, development, and culture of Vancouver. The invitation list included current and former City Councillors and Parks Board Commissioners, city and regional planners, architects, developers, academics, urban writers, and various representatives from city committees, non-governmental organizations, and community groups. Attendees were assigned to sit at specific tables in order to create diverse groups and increase opportunities for innovation. In total, there were ten different tables, each of which included two students to facilitate and record the conversations.

Following a brief introduction from Penny Gurstein (SCARP), Elizabeth Ballantyne (VCPC), and Neal LaMontagne (VCPC), Aftab Erfan framed the discussion, asking attendees to think about what makes Vancouver unique before introducing the storytelling round. One or more attendees at each table had been preselected to tell a story about planning, development, or simply life in Vancouver. The objective was to gather “on the ground” wisdom by examining both successes and failures and then reflecting on any lessons learned from these experiences.

The next round required each table to synthesize these stories and extract from them the planning principles that should guide the City

EVENT OVERVIEW Date................ October 13, 2015 Location........Vancouver City Hall Hosts.............. SCARP (UBC) and Vancouver City Planning Commission Attendees..... Approximately 80 Purpose......... To create aspirational planning principles for Vancouver

moving forward. Each table was instructed to produce approximately six principles, which were written on large sticky notes, presented to the entire group, and clustered into similar themes.

Finally, the clustered principles were redistributed to the tables and attendees were instructed to go discuss whichever topic interested them the most.

The objective was to create a more detailed description of each principle. The event ended once this round was finished.

OUTCOMES The storytelling round revealed a diversity of experiences, opinions, and lessons. At Table Five, for example, Sean McEwen, Peter Ladner, and Ken Lyotier each had unique and valuable insights.

Mr. McEwen described heritage conservation, displacement in changing neighbourhoods, and the positive results that occur when the City and its communities collaborate in a meaningful way. Mr. Ladner, on the other hand, discussed failings with public engagement processes and described the lack of transparency involved in the hiring of previous planning directors in Vancouver. Finally, Mr. Lyotier told a moving a story about life in the Downtown Eastside and emphasized that plans need to be both adaptable and human-focused.

The large breadth of stories in the room led to the creation of a diverse set of principles, as demonstrated in the small sample below:

• Allow play (by removing red tape) • Begin with comprehensive planning, move to more narrow options • Transparency • Long term flexibility in buildings • Keep Vancouver wild (socially and environmentally) • Geographical equity • Respectful dialogue The final round produced a set of detailed descriptions for each category of principles. For example, Table Five focused on “Industry and Business,” with discussion ranging from possible tax incentives and context-specific solutions to examples from cities like Portland, Oregon. In the end, the principle was broken down into the following statements: • Small businesses of all types need a relatively easy path to approval; • Empower neighbourhoods to respond to regional needs with neighbourhood-specific solutions; • Support fine-grained and detailed research by the City on trends and innovations in business and industry; and • Protect land for industry that nobody likes but everyone needs.

The full set of event outcomes will be compiled by SCARP and VCPC and used to inform the City of Vancouver’s candidate search. The City also plans to post video of the event on its website. Visit vancouver.ca for more details.

All photographs courtesy of Emily Rosen and Janet Knight, 2015