Introductory comments. Local Democracy and Sustainable Cities; Can They be Reconciled?
For Feb 12, 7 pm. Robson Square.
Welcome and thank you all for making this first in
our UBC SALA James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments
“community think tank” a success.
In this series we hope to productively contribute to
public debates with regard to local citizen control over their shared geography
– a civic process better known as “local democracy.” Tonight, we start with
what is clearly the number one local issue for this region: safe and attainable
housing.
In our city and other cities like it a pressing
concern has emerged — local democracy, once considered a cornerstone of citizen
control over the health safety and welfare of their city, is now accused of
contributing to the soaring housing prices that plague our communities.
The province has intervened, - passing a host of new
bills which collectively remove from cities the power to plan for new housing,
citing the need for a more unregulated approach.
This shift is significant, as housing covers a
staggering 80 percent of all city land. With traditional local authority over
city development dramatically eroded, citizens now have little direct control
on a city’s most crucial mission – safe and suitable housing for people of all
ages and incomes.
The rationale behind this intervention is a subject
of debate. Was removing city authority over housing a necessary measure to make
housing more affordable? or does it signal an unmerited distrust in the ability
of local citizens to make the kinds of decisions that benefit the broader
citizenry?
If distrust is the motivation, it stems from the
belief that local citizens, through democratic processes, may hinder social
equity by voting to restrict new housing supply within city limits, and that by
that action housing is made more and more expensive.
But is this true?
The case of Vancouver provides a unique test case for
this theory. Since the 1970s, leaders in this city have authorized housing
policy changes that led to a tripling of housing units within city limits. No
other North American centre city has come close to matching this feat. The residential
towers downtown are emblematic of this achievement. Less well known is that
already built out neighbourhoods have incorporated more than half of this new
density.
And yet Vancouver grapples with housing prices that,
when measured against average incomes, stand as the highest in North America
and the third highest globally.
This fact begs a simple question: if increasing the
housing supply within city limits is supposed to lower prices, Vancouver should
have North America’s cheapest housing. Instead it has north America’s most
expensive.
Why?
We hope that this public session can help us answer
this important question. By addressing this issue in Vancouver, inarguably one
of the most extreme examples of what is a global housing problem, we hope to
shed light on practical solutions - solutions that do not depend on what may be
false conclusions about this problem - solutions that are applicable to other
cities and nations facing similar, but less extreme versions of this region’s
horrible problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment