What does the future hold for Vancouver's 1 & 2 family zoned neighbourhoods?
Since 2005, the Dynamic Cities Project has been an ever-evolving forum for discussing issues critical to our understanding of the past, present and future of our cities.
The DCP's current focus is a conversation about the future of Vancouver's 1&2 family neighbourhoods.
The DCP is a not-for-profit community-based initiative created by Vancouver residents (who also happen to be design, planning and architecture professionals) aiming to create a vibrant and dynamic city.
Character home retrofit in an RT duplex zone. Photo by Bryn Davidson
Vancouver's first 'Passive House' - an ultra-low-energy consuming home. Photo by Lucio Picciano via sabmagazine.com
Why the focus on 1 & 2 family neighbourhoods?
Vancouver's 'Single Family' RS zones and duplex RT zones.
Source: http://vancouver.ca/your-government/vanmap.aspx
The 'Comprehensive Development' CD-1 zones; these zones are typically high density developments whose form is negotiated on a case by case basis. Given the negotiated nature of these site's rezoning process, the CD-1 lots have been the focus of the discussion about how the City of Vancouver should urbanize.
The evolution and densification of Vancouver typically happens either by:
- rezoning applications for individual development projects
- neighbourhood centre and community plans (including new zones and rezoned districts)
- updates to the zoning bylaw that allows for incrementally higher density (see the RS updates for basements and laneway houses)
- city-wide policies (for example, Rental 100) that permit rezoning applications to be considered
With the exception of the RS updates, the city's efforts have tended to focus on commercial corridors, centres, and large sites while the majority of the city's land base (the 1 & 2 family zones) have been largely exempted from a broader discussion about how the city might (or should) evolve in the future.
This forum has been created as a way to start that conversation.
Mission, Goals and Values
(V.1.2 November 2016)
Vision:
A dynamic city; a city that is sustainable, collaborative, resilient, healthy, equitable, interesting and fun.
Mission:
Our current mission is to examine the future of Vancouver's 1 and 2 family neighbourhoods in the context of the ecological, cultural and economic imperatives that are currently driving rapid change.
Values:
- Valuing awareness of global ecological imperatives, including the need for rapid reductions in GHG emissions, along with improvements to local ecological concerns
- Valuing affordability
- Valuing diversity in urban forms, surprise, delight, and fine-grained urbanism (both old and new)
- Valuing the living aspects of 'intangible heritage', beyond a focus simply on 'character' aesthetics
- Valuing social diversity, including racial, gender, economic, and cultural diversity
- Valuing diverse forms of tenure and security of tenure
- Valuing resiliency in the face of transient environmental and economic shocks
- Valuing creative exploration, experimentation and the vibrancy that arises from those efforts