Broadway renderings spark controversy
Opponents and supporters voice concerns about depictions of major 30-year plan for towers
As Vancouver council prepares to consider the Broadway plan this week, an unusual amount of talk has not been about the plan but about some visual depictions of it.
The 30-year plan, described as Vancouver's biggest city-planning decision in a generation, plots a course for almost 500 city blocks along the subway line under construction. Big density increases are planned for Mount Pleasant, Kitsilano and Fairview.
One thing that has riled both opponents and supporters is computer-generated architectural renderings showing big blocky towers shooting up in the corridor.
Stephen Bohus, who has a degree in landscape architecture and works in the visual effects industry, created the images with architect Brian Palmquist. Both are among the first members of the public expected to address council about the plan on Wednesday.
Bohus told Postmedia the images' blocks are “placeholders” representing the number of buildings and density in the plan, and “were never meant to be an accurate representation of what the actual buildings will look like.”
But other prominent voices presented the images differently.
Bill Tieleman, a lobbyist and Broadway plan critic, shared the renderings on Twitter, calling them a “dystopian architectural view” showing “EXACTLY what Vancouver Broadway Plan would do: create a concrete canyon!”
Some architects and planners have expressed concern.
Vancouver architect Marianne Amodio analyzed one of the renderings compared with the 493-page Broadway plan.
Amodio told Postmedia News the renderings seem to ignore plan requirements, such as setbacks (the minimum distance separating a building's edges and the property line), podiums (a building with larger lower floors and a more slender tower above), and floor-space ratio (the ratio of buildable floor space to the property size).
“The renderings ... demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the Broadway plan,” Amodio said.
Everyone in the city has the right to question and scrutinize the Broadway plan, she said, and “most colleagues and neighbours I know have legitimate questions about this significant change in our city's fabric. However, the public also has a right to base this inquiry on accurate information.”
“The massing forms in the renderings appear to be more than double of that which is indicated in the Broadway plan,” Amodio said.
Palmquist said he stands by his work with Bohus. The renderings' buildings do not exceed the plan's floor-space ratio, he said, and the densities are accurate. He acknowledged the illustrations did not include the required podiums, and he said any discrepancies on setbacks were negligible, amounting to a “rounding error.”
Palmquist, chairman of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver's affordable housing committee, is strongly opposed to the Broadway plan, which he believes could create too much expensive rental housing that could sit empty.
Amodio, who is not a member of a civic political party, has her own criticisms of the plan, but is believes council should approve it.
Some plan critics also shared concerns about the renderings. Michael Geller, a retired architect who opposes the plan, said he had not calculated whether the renderings' building dimensions were accurate, but said these kinds of “massing diagrams” can be useful in discussions. However, Geller said, “while architects and planners might understand what they're intended to be, they can be most misleading for the general public.”
Darryl Condon, a board member of the Architecture Foundation of B.C., said: “I can't speak for all architects, but I know in the conversations I've been having, there's concern that information is being used in an inaccurate way, and it doesn't reflect well on any of us involved in planning or architecture.”
During a TV interview last week about the Broadway plan, urban planner Brent Toderian stopped mid-sentence when Bohus and Palmquist's renderings appeared on screen to decry them as “patently false.”
Toderian, Vancouver's chief planner from 2006 to 2012, told Postmedia this is far from the first time he has been frustrated by renderings circulated widely by opponents of developments and plans, both in Vancouver and other cities.
It's an “effective tactic,” Toderian said, because these images are shared widely online and in the media, and can frighten people who are not architects or planning professionals.
Palmquist says he takes exception to city staffers and Mayor Kennedy Stewart who have “commented negatively” on the renderings “without any evidence to the contrary. I'll just keep saying: `If ours is wrong, show us what is right ... If my images are false, where are yours of the plan from those perspectives?'”
City staff have expressed concern about Bohus and Palmquist's renderings since they started circulating in April, but when Postmedia asked city hall last week and this week if they had illustrations from a similar perspective they believed were more accurate, nothing was available.
The plan document does include city staff's building illustrations from different perspectives.
Toderian, for one, believes the city could have done more to clearly illustrate the plan for the public. City hall used to have a stronger, faster communication strategy, Toderian said, “but now there's a real reluctance to even respond to misinformation. And that's problematic, because the public has to trust city hall.”