Mayor Sam Sullivan believes ecologically sound densification—he calls it EcoDensity—will reduce housing costs, alleviate traffic congestion, preserve key industrial land, and enable Vancouver to live within the confines of its ecological footprint.

During a busy month that saw Vancouver host both the World Urban and World Peace forums, Sullivan unveiled his own time lines for an EcoDensity initiative (see www.Van couver.ca/mayor/) to promote “high quality density to reduce our ecological footprint”. A motion goes to city council on July 18 to order staff to get to work on the initiative and report back with their findings this fall.

On June 26, Sullivan spoke to the Georgia Straight in Yaletown, blocks from his Homer Street home. He said the issue of urban density is one he has followed throughout his 13 years at City Hall, mostly as a councillor.

“This Concord Pacific site is 100 acres, with about 14,000 people, and 30 acres of that in parks,” Sullivan said. “If we accommodated those 14,000 people using average suburban density—about 4.5 units per acre—we'd have 10,000 acres of forest and farmland mowed under. This is 100 acres.”

John Irwin, director with the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation, is familiar with urban community planning. He told the Straight his group of stakeholders is meeting with Olympic Village developer Millennium Properties on July 6 to look at issues surrounding sustainable development, including “urban agriculture, parking spaces, green roofs, and water”.

“But EcoDensity is a good concept, and preferable to the crazy ideas coming from the provincial government that we can build more and more roads, and bigger roads.”

Sullivan added that he is not pandering to developers wanting in on the action downtown.

“Look, each person's average [allowable ecological] footprint is 1.8 hectares per person,” Sullivan said. “Currently, Vancouver is at 7.2. We need four planets [to sustain the world at Vancouver's current level of consumption]. So this is too important to ignore, and the development that is done has got to be done right.”

Sullivan did not elaborate on where the density would occur. “Under an EcoDensity initiative, most of the single-family-home areas would still be single-family for many decades to come,” Sullivan said. “I believe we should follow the [1995] CityPlan model, in which we would identify commercial nodes, neighbourhood centres, and that the densification would happen around them.”

Colleen Hardwick-Nystedt said Sullivan has left mid-level, off-road transportation and affordability out of the equation. “Look at the two developments on Seymour Street—including the old Capitol 6 [Theatre] site—and the site across from the Orpheum on Smythe,” Hardwick-Nystedt told the Straight. “With those two developments, right across from the entertainment corridor, they're adding 1,000 people, with reduced parking. How are the people going to get there? How will they get to the Orpheum?”

Like Irwin, Hardwick-Nystedt said she also worries that people working in low-paying retail jobs downtown will have to commute from farther afield than Yaletown. “They talk about the new jobs created in retail,” she said. “These people that work there are going to continue to live out where they can afford to live. But how are they going to get there with our crowded bus system? As we look...into the future, how can we conceive of a future without providing transportation options or alternatives for our growing population?”

Sullivan responded that he favours streetcars. He added that EcoDensity will ensure more housing, which “should have the effect of reducing the cost of housing in the city”.