Condos key to containing sprawl
Whenever I think about urban sprawl it reminds me of a song Arcade Fire wrote, describing the suburbs as a place where “dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains / and there’s no end in sight.”
I feel fortunate to live OffIsland, near the suburban edge, beyond all those shopping malls. But the Montreal area is growing, and even semi-rural communities like mine will have to allow new developments to accommodate that growth. The question is how to manage that growth and contain development in a way that preserves and, hopefully, improves quality of life.
If West Island and Off-Island communities must increase housing density (and according to regional planning documents, we do), I hope it’s in the style of the best of Vancouver’s suburban condo projects.
Montreal may be an island, but its limits are easily overcome with bridges. In Vancouver, development is hemmed in by three nonnegotiables: the mountains, the ocean and the U.S. border.
Because it is so confined by geography, Metro Vancouver planners decided long ago that the only way to grow was up. Since the late 1990s, regional planners have encouraged densification as a way to preserve green space and combat urban sprawl.
In many suburban bedroom communities, like Port Moody, where I grew up, people worried adding condos would ruin the lifestyle we loved. We didn’t know
it, but a new wave of place making was about to sweep Vancouver that, in many cases, would successfully densify development while actually transforming neighbourhoods for the better.
Condo developers conjured new, walkable community hubs in otherwise car-dependent areas of Vancouver. They created spaces for restaurants, fishmongers, boutiques, produce stores, parks, public spaces and cafés, along with residential apartments on top. The tax revenues generated from these developments allowed towns to invest in preserving and improving parks and natural areas.
A case study from the University of British Columbia on mixed-use condo projects in lower density neighbourhoods
found many benefits to this style of densification. Access to green spaces improved. The number of trips taken by car was reduced because daily errands like picking up milk could be done on foot. City infrastructure costs such as road maintenance were lower. The number of local jobs increased, as well as the number of affordable housing units.
As a former Vancouverite I’m the first to say that Vancouver doesn’t always get it right on housing. But we can learn a lot from both its failures and its successes. When done well, densification can improve the sustainability of our neighbourhoods, as well as allow us to preserve more natural green spaces.