‘Vancouverism’ needs redefinition

Duplexes, triplexes and stacked townhomes among missing middle ground of options

Aterm I had never heard of came up recently in a discussion on Twitter among a group of Vancouver urbanists. The term was “townhouse sprawl.” My first reaction was similar to another Twitter follower, who responded with “sounds like one of those good problems.”

The discussion arose when someone asked whether it was legitimate for a planner to criticize a development proposal for lacking in density and label it with a term that has a negative connotation.

This townhouse sprawl term was being applied to a development proposal for a site where the zoning permits the proposed townhouses, but also permits apartments in buildings up to six storeys. Some apartments have already been built on another part of the site and now the developer wants to respond to what he perceives is stronger market demand for townhouses and build these in the next phase of the development.

The townhouses proposed would yield about 26 homes per acre, with many fairly small and relatively affordable groundoriented homes. I would guess six- storey apartments would likely yield about double the number of units per acre. At the same time, a density of 26 units per acre is about three or four times more dense than large single-family homes. I think it is a real stretch to label such a townhouse development in suburban Richmond as “sprawl.”

Apart from satisfying the housing needs of the market, there are arguments for both townhouses and higher density multi-family on the particular site.

This discussion reveals two interesting trends that are emerging in Metro Vancouver as we try to manage rapid population growth and urban change. The first is that some planners have become rigid in their characterization of the principles of good urbanism, especially as they relate to some mythic notion of a particular Vancouver brand of urban design. The second is that the discussion points to a missing middle housing — a gap in housing type that seems to be growing larger as we regenerate urban areas and end up with neighbourhoods that are highly dense at one end of the scale with highrises or not nearly dense enough with single-family sprawl.

There were two waves of development that set the course for urban intensification in Metro Vancouver, both of them originating in — or close to — Vancouver’s downtown. The first was the redevelopment of industrial land around the south shore of False Creek that started in the last half of the 1970s. The form of development in this area consisted mainly of townhouses, stacked townhouses and lowrise apartment buildings clustered with open space along False Creek’s shoreline. This form of development began to set the standard and the expectation for generous open space and highly developed public realm in the redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites.

The second wave came with the redevelopment in the late 1980s of the former Expo site on the north shore of False Creek and in the adjoining Yaletown industrial lands. Given the location close to the central business district and somewhat distant from Vancouver’s firstring suburbs on the other side of False Creek, highrise density made sense. But the existing lot pattern and street grid in the downtown demanded a pattern of development that needed to be different from what had been the first Vancouver highrise development in the city’s West End 25 years earlier.

Some rigid guidelines were developed for a slender tower design that allowed close spacing of towers on the relatively shallow downtown lots, while preserving view corridors, privacy and sunlight penetration. The “tower and podium” design was crafted, with townhouses wrapping the base of slender towers so that a street wall framed important downtown streets and a sense of pedestrian scale provided a comfortable public realm fronting sidewalks. This form of tower development was coined “Vancouverism.”

It has worked well to define a highly livable environment in Vancouver’s small downtown peninsula, where job space and living space coexist. But over the years, the brand, like many brands, has taken on a life of its own, one that is often more rooted in mythology and the rigid terminology of branding than in the reality of good urbanism.

Take, for example, that slender tower form that makes perfect sense for the historic lot pattern and development spacing in Vancouver’s downtown core. Most of the towers are no more than 575 to 595 square metres per floor. That is a tower dimension that works in the downtown Vancouver core. Its rationale originates from that particular context. It is not gospel for all residential tower design across the globe, nor should it be.

But somehow, it has become gospel for all residential tower design in Vancouver. The almost religious adherence to this design specification inhibits efficient and practical design solutions on other sites in Vancouver outside the downtown core.

Toronto has recently adopted new guidelines for tall building design. For many of the same reasons Vancouver cites, in terms of livability and building performance, Toronto allows a maximum tower floor plate size up to 750 square metres. That extra 155 square metres makes a big difference in terms of land-use efficiency.

This talk about “townhouse sprawl” also highlights the lack of awareness about the missing middle housing we need today. With the aging baby boom generation that is now starting to downsize from ground-oriented single-family homes, we need to be providing more housing options. Some of those options should be permitted in existing single-family neighbourhoods. They include duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units, mansion houses with multiple units, narrow row houses with no yards, cottage courtyard housing and stacked townhouses.

All of these forms of housing work well in terms of not altering to a great degree the character of single-family neighbourhoods. Six-storey apartments and higher don’t work well in the middle of single-family neighbourhoods. They are appropriate forms of development to transition from highrise development that should exist adjacent to all rapid transit stations.

We need less adherence to rigid concepts of density and building form and more creative approaches to providing diverse types of housing from which the public can choose when they are looking for a home.

Some planners have become rigid in their characterization of the principles of good urbanism, especially as theyre late to some mythic notion of a particular Vancouver brand of urban design.