By Ned Jacobs

In the introduction to her new book, The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, the renowned urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz writes:

Paul Davidoff’s 1965 article “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,” following shortly after Jacob’s book [The Death and Life of Great American Cities], accelerated the emergence of the advocacy planning movement. Advocacy planning takes a totally different approach to planning than most of the profession. Advocacy planners listen and hear what people on the ground have to say, recognizing that people in the neighbourhoods and in area businesses are better able to understand the conditions and contribute solutions. Advocacy planners learn what the real problems are, take seriously locally promulgated solutions, and provide technical expertise to the implementation of locally developed plans...Davidoff, considered the father of the advocacy planning movement, was greatly influenced by Jacobs.”

Advocacy planning, which Vancouver adopted in the 1970s—and is largely responsible for the livability of our many and diverse neighbourhoods—stands in contrast to the dysfunctional, top-down approach it replaced, but to which in recent years our city has returned, primarily in response to the overarching influence of the development industry. For example, I read in a recent staff report: “The interests and objectives of the community and the city will be balanced with the developer’s aspirations.” Huh? To equate public interests and objectives with a developer’s desire to maximize profit is twisted.

If manipulating the process and controlling outcomes is the objective, then you need lots of planners trained in the techniques of manipulation and control. In contrast, advocacy planning requires very little staff because the public does most of the work. This is certainly the case in the Norquay planning process, where the CityPlan “working group” grew frustrated with staff’s unwillingness to collaborate with the community, and with help from a local architect produced their own concept plan for a “Norquay Village Centre”.

The NVC plan is soundly based on local knowledge about where the core of a walkable neighbourhood centre, with much-needed community amenities, should primarily be focused—East 33rd Avenue between Slocan and Nanaimo streets—not strung out along Kingsway, a major truck and commuter route, rife with air and noise pollution.

As it happens, the city owns property at this location—the 2400 Motel. According to the working group, the highest and best community use for this site would be a landscaped plaza opening onto 33rd, partially enclosed by a building complex featuring a theatre space, café, various local services, and retail. Optionally, this could include several storeys of apartments, which would provide “eyes on the street” and block noise from Kingsway while adding value. The south side of 33rd would be rezoned for mixed uses, including retail wrapped around the corners and along both sides of the planned Clarendon Street extension to 34th Avenue. The adjacent Eldorado Hotel site has been rezoned for a 22-storey tower and day-care centre, providing additional residential density for this neighbourhood hub.

In contrast, the latest staff proposal (the third in four years), would not produce an attractive or functional neighbourhood centre. Six- to eight-storey buildings interspersed with towers strung along a 1.35-kilometre stretch of Kingsway describes a “starter condo” district, where few buyers or renters are likely to set root in the community because they will always be looking for something better somewhere else.

Zoning on Kingsway permits four-storey, mixed-use development, but there is little demand, and the existing low-rise buildings are still economically viable. “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings,” observed Jane Jacobs. “New ideas must use old buildings.” Instead of trying to spur land speculation and over-development on Kingsway through radical up-zoning, we should try to retain many of these serviceable buildings as affordable incubators for new ideas and enterprises.

Common sense says the city should work with communities to implement plans that are broadly supported and which do no harm. The staff proposal is based on the delusion that we need only give lip service to the needs and character of neighbourhoods, when in truth a sustainable city and region depend upon districts that are economically vital, culturally diverse and socially cohesive: where “affordable” does not mean intolerable and, in “single-family” areas—where a typical lot can now legally accommodate three households—“densification” will not mean displacement of low-income residents (who currently account for about a third of the Norquay population). Unfortunately, this has been one of the “unintended consequences” of mass rezoning for the disappointing “neighbourhood centre” at Kingsway and Knight.

“Bait and switch” has almost become standard practice, as amenities and below-market housing (the promised fruits of densification) fail to materialize. In neighbourhoods throughout Vancouver, residents are fed up with being short-changed and are starting to insist that community amenities, which are integral to affordability and livability, must precede or accompany development that is sensitive to neighbourhood character and scale.

It should come as no surprise that neighbourhoods are demanding that their community visions and local area plans be respected, and are objecting to “fast-tracked” spot rezoning, mass rezoning of entire neighbourhoods, and top-down planning processes which increasingly have become exercises in manufacturing the appearance of consent. Many planners don’t want to be a part of this—no wonder there has been so much staff turnover. In more than four years the Norquay process has produced nothing but frustration and mistrust, and now it is not even about planning—it is about control. If staff or council attempts to dismiss the NVC concept, it is not because it isn’t good, but because it isn’t theirs.

The question, then, is not whether we have enough staff to conduct responsible community planning, but whether our staff have “the right stuff”—the attitudes, experience and incentive to provide advice and assistance for plans conceived by the community—and whether our council has the integrity and courage to follow through on pre-election commitments to reverse the drift to top-down planning, enshrined in EcoDensity (which they promised to fix, but haven’t), and return to the core values of CityPlan: a “city of neighbourhoods” and “community involvement in decision making”.

I applaud the Norquay community for rejecting autocratic and imprudent planning, and urge residents and business proprietors to keep on rejecting it while building support for these superior neighbourhood-based concepts and plans. By doing this work and taking this stand they are not only serving their neighbourhood well, but every neighbourhood—indeed, the best interests of Vancouver.

Ned Jacobs, a son and student of the urbanist Jane Jacobs, is a spokesperson for the Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver network of community groups. This commentary is based on a talk he gave in Vancouver on April 29 for “A Forum on Norquay Village and Neighbourhood Centre Planning”.