What is Vancouverism? | With Ann McAfee
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
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Don't forget to turn on subtitles!
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Have you ever heard of the Vancouverism phenomenon? Well, Ann McAfee - former city planner of the city of Vancouver -, along with Larry Beasley, played a significant role in shaping the city's urban planning policies and practices that have come to be known as Vancouverism. The idea is to address high-density living while taking into account citizens' ideas, creating a city that truly works for its people and their needs. In this new UMX video, let's discover with Ann how this innovative approach blends stunning architecture 🏙️, vibrant public spaces 🌿, and multimodal transport 🚌. Don't miss this insider's look at Vancouver, a city that is considered a worldwide best practice in urban planning.
#Vancouverism #HighDensityLiving #Vancouver #UrbanPlanning #UMX
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This video was shot in February 2024.
Many thanks to Ann McAfee for kindly participating in this video, and for Balazs Horvath (Kimitisik) for his interest from the start in our work.
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Writing: Renata Szabo
Video: Balazs Horvath
Editing: Balazs Horvath
Production: Malaurie Chokoualé and Jana Cotillas
Executive Production: Martin Vendel and Gautam Rao
Subtitles: Alanah Reynor
Graphic and thumbnail design: FAVO Studio
This video was produced in collaboration with Kimitisik, one of EIT Urban Mobility's Partner.
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Urban Mobility Explained is powered by EIT Urban Mobility, a European initiative to create liveable urban spaces! This project is co-funded by the European Union. Learn more about EIT Urban Mobility: www.eiturbanmo...
While all of this is wonderful, if it's not accompanied by radical policies to reduce the pricing, the result is that the current average rent price for a 1-bedroom unfurnished apartment in Vancouver is $2300 per month. It's great to have walkable and nice cities, but if they outprice half the country from living there, what's even the point? We need a lot more public housing, and rent control
The great irony being: walkable cities are cheaper to construct and maintain. I also want more public and non-market housing, but the underlying problem is zoning. Thankfully the province finally overrode all the municipalities to allow duplexes on all Detached Single Family zoned property. It's not enough but it's a start.
@@sachamm The underlying problem to pricing isn't zoning, in European countries where zoning isn't that much of an issue, prices are still outrageous as you approach the metro area. How did we allow living in cities to become a luxury, especially when, as you say, the infrastructure and maintenance is much more efficient and cheaper per capita??
Pricing out the rest of the country is a feature, not a bug.
@@crescentworks6855 it's likely not a feature of the planning itself, it is a feature of for-profit housing compared to human-right housing
The problem in the entire GVRD is people need to stop moving here period. There are other smaller cities and towns with infrastructure already in place in BC or anywhere else that people need to go to, there is no room in the GVRD and the services cannot handle it.
In my little suburb in GVRD they are bulldozing old homes with all their mature 100 year old trees to put two homes on one lot at well over a million a piece and bulldozing parks to put up high rises at a million dollars per condo. None of this is affordable but the city gets to say they are "creating homes". They have literally bulldozed part of a park in front of a seniors apartment and put up a high rise.
What they are creating is more problems. The schools are over crowded, soon you won't get your kid into one, then what? No one can get a doctor and the hospital waiting times are astronomical, if you are actually ill or have a disease or are aging this is very serious. This is what "densification" gets you.
I used to be against the "NIMBYs" but I see now as the reality plays out before me that the alternative is an unlivable, overcrowded, underserviced dystopia.
Some good ideas in the video, but it's hard to talk about Vancouver in 2024 without talking about housing affordability. The region needs a ton more middle density housing in the model of Montréal to meet all the demand and to reduce rent prices.
Vancouverism absolutely fails at dealing with the #1 factor that limits its own growth and that's nimbys. It also doesn't consider missing middle housing wish has proven to be the model for affordability and one to create community, it's historically the housing that the middle class, mewcomers and young people had the ability to live in.
How did all that creativity, idealism, planning, and good will end up creating the most unaffordable and exclusive city in Canada? I’d like to see a documentary that does a deep dive into that.
Supply and demand lol
@@interspect_ this. PLus the "high density" isn't really that dense compared to large cities. The problem with building a good/great city is that everyone wants to move there. So for one generation it is affordable and fun but after that it is a little less and etc. Denver, CO and Charleston, SC are going thru that rn.
For decades BC was easily one of the most corrupt places in North America, where politicians openly took "second salary" bribes. That ended, but there were zero consequences.
Make a sh'tty city then you'll get dirt cheap housing.
The plan was great, and it worked on that time. But now, the city has grown to its limits yet the government is still playing catch up with the development of society. New or potential developments involves a lot of limitations that protects existing properties and its vicinities, and often empowering nimbies and even considering their complaints about possible shadows, etc.
Basically, boomers were able to snag cheap properties back then, but they want everything to stay the same the way they bought it 30 years ago which is absurd. Now they try everything to block new developments, stating that it might produce more traffic, population, etc. and their favorite defense about using the SEWERS! Pretending like they have even an inch of engineering knowledge to even use it as their defense. Of course, all of them are being considered! Everything was cheap back then and total world population is lesser, so just like everyone else, people will try to blame everything on immigration, which is largely untrue and uneducated.
As someone who works in a firm that designs apartments (not even high-rises!), it is very frustrating attending public hearings and hearing dozens of 60 yrs old or more property owners complaining about potential shadows and effects in their 'sewage' and traffic for a 6-storey, 140 unit apartment building! To the point that the developer was even questioning the validity of the project that takes at least 2 years to get approved (its already fast! some are even 5 years or more!). But in reality they are only concerned about how it would affect their property prices, and the potential change in demographics. Like they always say they want to solve the housing crisis, as long as its not within their area! Like okay.
Living in Vancouver for a while now and here are my observations,
- The "Outdoors" are not in Vancouver. They are car-drive away. Same as "Vancouver is beautiful" but anything that is beautiful is NOT in Vancouver.
- Housing prices are like that because of rich investors. As a result, there's nothing to do there. False Creek is dead after the sunset. You can walk on the Seawall and "greenways", sure. But is that "fun"? The fun in Vancouver is banned in the name of quiet neighbourhoods suitable to generate value. The owners only care the value to go up. For example, a bar on the Seawall might "ruin" that value. Reason why people call Vancouver as a not fun city.
- No highway in Vancouver is just a result of the rich not wanting noise. Reason why all the wider roads are in lower-income East Vancouver.
Unfortunately, this video gives only a fraction of information. Historically sound ideas ended up abused and made living for an average person almost impossible.
I wonder if she is aware she and people like her are a part of why housing is so expensive here. Restrictive zoning, high development fees.
But how is *she* part of the problem? I'm sure she'd advocate for transit and density outside of downtown. It's the NIMBYs to blame.
Not really. Restrictive zoning or development fees aren't the issue, regulations are very different all over the western world, and in most big cities housing is terribly expensive. The problem is treating housing as a good for profit, not as a human right.
@@rojirrim7298 housing is not just one solution, for decades prior to the failed post war American suburbia came to Canada, missing middle housing was the type of model middle class and newcomers in Canada could be able to obtain a property. Outdated zoning not only limits the ability of alternative forms of housing from be built, it's meant to ensure that housing becomes profitable since it limits the ability of a area from diversify. Mind you affordable housing projects that are not profit driven are always rejected by nimbys because more housing and demand means lower cost and ironically lower property values. Suburbia ironically has tax implications and cost for city services since their maintenance cost more.
@@MrAlen6e I'm not here to defend suburbia, I'm here to defend public housing and housing price limits. Nimbyism should be ignored, the right to housing for everyone takes preference over "my home's gonna devalue"
@@rojirrim7298 but that's precisely the issue suburbia IS a profit driven model, it prevents affordable forms of housing from been built, it incentivizes a car centric culture, it historically segregated neighborhoods and its classist because any affordable housing it's considered " out of the neighborhood character " meaning we don't want poor people or newcomers in out community. If you truly are for " housing for everyone " first thing that needs to happen is to removed outdated zoning bylaws in 90% of Canadian neighborhoods. Singapore has over 90% home ownership and its affordable because additionally the government also got back in building.
Only truth in this video is that Vancouver doesn't have a highway running through it.
Except the very small core part of the city, it is jsut another north american city with single family housing.
1-2 % of apartments in Vancouver have 3 or more bedrooms, so all this stuff about families is BS too. Walk around Vancouver and you rarely see any kids.
Vancouver has a bigger downtown than almost all North American cities
This is just blatantly untrue. Many sky train stations have high rise clusters around them well into the suburbs, and there are other dense centers such as New Westminster connected by the network.
@@TalwinderDhillonTravels you are the one originally comparing Vancouver to American cities 🤣
Thanks Geogre for making another useful video! Many people like the city Vancouver!
Thank you so much for watching! This video was actually produced by another collaborator: Kimitisik! Written by Renata Szabo and shot/edited by Balazs Horvath 🤩
This video is too full of inaccuracies and lacking in detail to do anything other than paint a rosy picture of a good plan that went off the rails. The city that Phillips and council envisioned in 1973 is dead, as dead as Chinatown is today. There may have been no freeway but the black community and its place in Vancouver was obliterated nonetheless. False Creek South was the last multi-use truly liveable community built in Vancouver and to see what Vancouver is really about today and will be for the future I encourage every person in Vancouver to go and look at the Oakridge development and then ask themselves if they ever saw advertising for the sale of condos in that development. You wont because at least one of the towers was NEVER listed for sale in Vancouver. The former Oakridge transit centre has been vacant now for years and is being held by the city for multi-use housing for mixed incomes. Has anyone noticed that nothing is going on at that site? Look at any city in Asia and you may notice it looks familiar. Of course it does. It’s Vancouver.
There’s low job-availability here. People from other parts of the country, don’t come here. You’re gonna get depressed.
I love how 'the city' council gets all the credit for these Vancouverism ideas. What a biased take.
StoryTelling is Also a Great Part of Their Vancouverism
Except for these facts:
#1 Worst Traffic and commute times in North America.
#2 Poverty on an epic scale.
#3 Sold to offshore investors resulting in every single home regardless of actual value costs over 1 million dollars to buy.
#4 Drugs everywhere.
#5 Crime everywhere.
#6 Paranoid unfriendly locals hooked on social media and out of date trends.
#7 Completely unaffordable.
Great job Ann, you really crushed it!
Narrow point towers and automated rapid transit are what Vancouver does best and I am glad these concepts have slowly made their way around the world including Dubai which of course hired plenty of Canadians to design its Marina District and Automated Metro systems!
Dubai is an absolutely dystopian city, I don't know what you're on about. It's the opposite of sustainability, and literally only there because of big oil.
Ms McAfee is delusional if she thinks "Vancouverism" is pro-family. Outside of certain experiments like False Creek and southside co-ops, it is virtually impossible to find housing suitable for families. Private developers have absolutely no interest in building anything beyond one and two bedroom investment boxes. Downtown Vancouver has one small secondary, and it has remained that way for decades. If anything, the City of Vancouver bears a great deal of responsibility for BCs suburban sprawl. Families have had to move elsewhere because Vancouver has no real interest in families.
wow, this video really has top-knotch editing, loved it!
Thank you, as always, for your support! Glad you liked it.
This video doesn’t cover the most important part of Vancouverism where all the government employees/authorities/citizens turned a blind eye to foreign money launderers because all their properties values were going to the friggin moon. Vancouver sold It’s soul to become a world class retirement home.
Earlier today (August 1, 2024), I attended the grand opening of an Aritzia store at Legacy West in Plano, TX. One of the people who came to help with opening the store worked for Aritzia's headquarters in Vancouver. We had a nice, pleasant conversation about fashion, although as a person also interested in urbanism, our conversation did extend into the subject of Vancouverism. I feel as if there is some degree of minimalism in the architecture used in Vancouver; Aritzia's fashion is also minimalist, seemingly embodying a "Vancouverist" aesthetic in their fashion (with their designers working in Vancouver, it makes sense).
I cannot help but think of the stark differences in the urban planning used here in DFW, versus those in Vancouver and its surrounding metro area. DFW is very sprawl-heavy and automobile-centric in its planning; we are also geographically-unconstrained, with no mountains, large bodies of water, or political boundaries of significance to physically constrain suburban sprawl. Although Legacy West is part of a fairly-dense suburban hub with its own skyline, it lacks good mass transit connections to other parts of the metro area. If I had been in suburb of Vancouver instead, I'm pretty sure there would be good mass transit connections to downtown Vancouver.
Compared to downtown Dallas, which is surrounded by freeways on all sides (although a deck park on the north end helps connect downtown to Uptown), I find downtown Fort Worth to feel more livable, as there are only freeways on two sides. The core of Fort Worth, from downtown over towards the West 7th district and the art museums west of there, all feels quite walkable. There is also a fairly-extensive park system along the river between downtown Fort Worth and the West 7th district. The Panther Island project, in the early stages of development, has even cited Vancouver in some of its plans. Problem is, there are parking lots and garages reserved for specific developments that encourage more car trips than what is ideal for these denser urban areas. If you actually live in the area, it can be quite walkable, but for those coming in from outside, finding an unrestricted place to park can be challenging. Mass transit in Fort Worth's urban core is also lacking. What I say about Fort Worth only applies to its immediate urban core; outside this, Fort Worth is an highly-automobile-dependent city with a development strategy that relies heavily on developers building in initially-unincorporated areas and then annexing those developments into the city limits.
Vancouver is the most liveable yet most un-liveable city at the same time, how ironic.
Love it from Vancouver
Thanks for watching!
show the part 2 blocks from the downtown core where there is nothing but single family homes in over 80% of the city causing an affordability disaster
"Vancouverism" its by no means is a bad concept. however I cant understand the false narrative that ignores that this is basically a limited concept because of nimbys . Over 82 of Vancouver is nothing but suburbia, the bast majority of Vancouver residents let along 90% of British Columbians will never be able to live around such environment. Vancouverism should had been implemented not just all over the city of Vancouver but the province could also benefit as well. At what point does a urbanism concept thats supposed to be for residents become an idealistic dream that has turn the city into a theme park. Vancouverism completely fails to also consider missing middle housing as an affordable alternative.
Having known an FBI type or two earlier in my life, this documentary is closer to reality than you know, J.
I remember the protests and heated confrontations of the day and am happy our leaders chose the paths they did.
Important to note that dogs are banned on all forms of public transit in Vancouver.
Aaah! The origin of Nymbyism! Thank you!
Very informative! I'm a proud Vancouverite that loves the way my city has evolved in the last 40 years.
Any chance you could remove the forced closed captioning? UA-cam offers CC if needed
Thank you for your comment! We enable subtitles for all our videos, which is especially useful for our non-English content. However, you're right: it isn't necessary to enforce closed captioning for videos where the speakers are speaking English. Noted!
Than why the city isn't doing it at same way?
Typical comments section from the negative pejorative bot people - don’t watch or listen; just paste your clipboard rhetoric as usual.