Former Vancouver mayor Jack Volrich and retired UBC librarian Joseph Jones have lived at opposite ends of the city for nearly three decades.

Volrich is in the West Side's Arbutus Ridge–Shaughnessy neighbourhood, and Jones owns what he describes as a "character house" in the working-class Norquay district on the East Side. As residents of separate areas, the two wouldn't normally have many common concerns. But, of late, they've come to share a sense of anxiety: change is coming to their neighbourhoods, thanks to the city's EcoDensity initiative.

In different stages, both areas are facing the prospect of being rezoned to accommodate more compact communities, including more residential dwellings from condominiums to duplexes and townhouses. Mayor Sam Sullivan suggested this would be an inevitable outcome of the EcoDensity initiative, which he announced in June 2006.

According to the city's EcoDensity Web site (www.vancouver-ecodensity.ca/): "The West End of Vancouver has less density (fewer people per hectare) than Manhattan in New York City and the Paris Centre arrondissement." But the greatest concerns so far around EcoDensity are centred on the West and East sides of the city.

"The people who live down here are very concerned about what the people at City Hall are wanting to do here," Volrich told the Georgia Straight. "There would be concerns."

On May 3, council approved a staff report providing for a planning program for the redevelopment of the Arbutus Village Mall. Property owner Larco Investments is making a $397,000 contribution to this program, which will look into its proposed mixed-used redevelopment of the area.

Georgina Spilos spoke before council against the staff recommendation, noting that more condominiums would increase the number of residents, resulting in fewer retail and commercial spaces to serve existing residents. "We think that they're trying to push this through as part of their EcoDensity whatever," Spilos told the Straight. "It's also that the city is showing a disdain for neighbourhoods."

She suggested that this could serve as a forerunner for other areas on the West Side. "Any small shopping area–like, there's one on 25th [Avenue] and Oak [Street], and there's one on Alma [Street] and 4th [Avenue]–any of those one-block shopping areas, I see them going and becoming condominiums," she claimed.

The Norquay district covers 2,400 houses in an area bounded by Gladstone and Killarney streets, and 24th and 41st avenues, according to Jones. He told the Straight that the city wants to rezone the area to allow the development of duplexes, courtyard houses, and three- to four-storey apartment buildings.

"We're going to end up with an urban monoculture," Jones said. "It will be a loss of diversity. It will be boring."

Jones is particularly proud of Wenonah Street where his house, built in 1929, stands. He and his wife raised three daughters there. "When you walk down the street, you'd get a sense of history through the houses that were built here in different years," he said.

The Vancouver-based Urban Futures Institute studies population and land-use shifts, and their effects on housing and business. Its executive director, David Baxter, told the Straight that increased density will give young families an opportunity to live and work in Vancouver.

"That trend is everywhere," Baxter said. "Sam Sullivan did not invent this idea. If you don't increase density in Vancouver, you build more houses in Abbotsford. If we don't put it there [in the city], the next generation of families has to go out to the suburbs."

But Baxter also said that the solution doesn't lie in massive densification through high-rise towers. Pointing to Kitsilano as a model, he said that moderate densification can be achieved through the addition of townhouses and duplexes. He explained that in Vancouver, where the minimum lot size is 33 feet, it means having a couple of extra houses on every block.

"You wouldn't notice the difference," Baxter said. "We're not talking about towers; we're not even talking about apartments. We're talking about the same sort of profile."