It seems like you’ve landed in paradise when you arrive in Whistler. The road winds along a coastline of staggering beauty with mountain peaks draped like snow capped cathedrals in every direction. I kept wanting to rub my eyes like a child, expecting to wake up in the familiar, calmer landscape of the Ottawa valley. I’ve skied for a long time but never in mountains with the variety of pitches and landscapes as Whistler.
We skied off the mountain top down into Blackcomb glacier where no photograph could capture the magnitude of those towering rock faces and great fields of glistening snow. To be there was as unforgettable, as was the skiing. I was told by a resident that it was the best skiing he’d seen in 41 years – white powder from every peak to valley floor. You could let your skis run for more than four kilometers without stopping on one of the longest runs in the world. After four days of non-stop skiing, I began to wonder if it was possible to be snow drunk so unending, so white and encompassing was the landscape.
Happily, I had a good excuse to stop and I did to meet with Whistler’s Mayor, Ken Melamed. He very kindly took the time to explain to me what it’s like being Mayor of Canada’s largest resort municipality. It’s a unique town and Ken is a different kind of Mayor. He has been a ski patroller for 28 years and still volunteers one day a week.
“On the mountain, there’s no ideology, there’s just people brought together through a common love of skiing and nature,’ said Ken. It makes taking off his Mayor’s cap easier and helps him keep in touch with how the municipality’s greatest employment centre (3,500) is doing.
We often hear about the European Nordic cities as great examples of sustainable urban policies but Whistler is a fine Canadian example. The Mayor explained that the town centre has been built on a pedestrian model. Most of the hotels and apartment buildings are within 200 meters of the town square and the ski lifts. This has paid off – 50 per cent of Whistler’s winter visitors arriving in Vancouver by air come without cars.
The town has put a moratorium on more hotels; only residential growth is permitted. It has also signed on to a strong town and regional urban growth line to limit sprawl. The reason is economic as much as environmental, for the more land that is developed the less that remains for people to enjoy hiking, cycling and skiing. So the council has made protecting that resource a priority.
Whistler also has its own Housing Authority which requires that a certain percentage of new housing include units are built on a cost-of-living basis. This requires no subsidy from the municipality, and purchase is restricted to service workers. Qualified people can buy the cost of living units from the developer at cost. The sale value is not permitted to rise more than cost of living each year. The municipality is part of the title and there is a 100 per cent compliance.
As a result 75% of the town’s service workers can afford to live in this high-end municipality. This also cuts down on sprawl. Whistler’s competitors, places like Vail and Aspen, have close to zero capacity to house service sector workers. They almost all commute – not so in Whistler.
If all cities did this, they could increase their quality of life and reduce sprawl whether it was in Ottawa, Halifax or Toronto. All it takes is a willingness to try something different, but that takes political courage as well as imagination. Ken’s council recently introduced paid parking in the town. This was quite a shock to residents who are used to parking for free, but the municipality needs the revenue to cover the operating costs and to help fund transit. It receives no sales taxes or income tax on all the economic activity, no share of the lift tickets and like every other municipality it has to pay its bills.
The argument for sustainability is most often made in ‘damage to the environment’ terms. The polar ice cap is melting and climate change pressure on species such as the polar bear. I’ve been long convinced that the only way the sustainability argument can win sufficient votes from the electorate is to make it in economic terms such as as the Mayor of Whistler does.
The municipality of Squamish is about an hour down the road from Whistler, and is built along conventional modern lines. Six lane arterial main street, strip mall parking lots at road side, and big box franchise outlets next to the parking lots. Whistler is a long way from being sustainable and there’s still much to do to make it so, but the difference between Squamish and Whistler is stark. One municipality seems oblivious to the problem, the other is working hard at solutions.
photo by Emmanuel Mendes dos Santos/coastphoto.com
9 comments
I remember spending time in both towns back in the early ’80s. I met some Italian tourists in Whistler who told me they were desperate for just a glimpse of a grizzly bear; meanwhile down in Squamish they actually were having some bear sightings, so of course some of the locals were agitating to have it shot.
Clive,
A couple things.
Almost all lower (and even middle) income employees in Whistler (lifties, servers, bartenders, janitors, hotel staff, retailers) live in cramped housing conditions. Essentially, they are squatters. An apartment that would be suitable for 3 people in Ottawa holds 12 in Whistler. That’s the only way they can afford it. The average price of a Whistler home is well over a million dollars.
Also, it’s highly unusual to hear somebody lauding Whistler’s housing authority when instead, maybe you should consider asking (your usual) questions about development related issues. For instance, why is the average price of a home in Whistler over a million dollars and how might that impact people choosing to call Whistler home? What about Whistler’s education system? What about it’s hospital and health-care system? How do these affect growth in Whistler (or the lack thereof)?
Perhaps Whistler hasn’t “sprawled” because there is no mechanism for it to do so… there is no impetus. How many people can afford live there and raise a family when faced with one of the most expensive lifestyles in the Country.
The point is: it’s pretty hard to be poor in whistler and “make it” – unless of course you’re 24 years old from Brisbane or Edinburgh and you’re there for a good time, not a long time. It’s easy to make it in Whistler when your investments are apres-ski shots at the Longhorn.
Whistler needs young families to help create the fabric of a healthy environment alongside vibrant communities. This, Clive, is something I am sure you would agree with.
So while you’re there, enjoying the mountain and the best snow in decades, take an afternoon to ponder this thought: How livable is Whistler to the locals and how does their lifestyle compare and contrast with that of the international tourists, the day visitors from Vancouver and the mid-twenties soul searchers having the time of their lives (unless of course they get a mean STI…of which Whistler has plenty).
Oh, and if you are still there…and you do happen to read this…get a map or ask a local about a run called “Spanky’s Ladder” – You’re welcome.
-Will
You being a bit hard on Squamish…Squamish supports Whistler…Where would Whistler be without Squamish?
Also, Will is right…You paint a rosey picture, but Whistler (like any where else) has deeper issues…Hope your enjoying you’re holiday.
Clive,
The observations about Squamish are bang on, if a bit frank. They are very sensitive about it and we can’t blame them for finding reasons to be proud of their town. I have never heard of a grizzly bear in Squamish. There are 60 bears in Whistler and we see them frequently in summer. Unfortunately Squamish has developed an anti whistler sentiment and they get tired of hearing about how well we do things.
The comment from Wil is off base. The reality is that we have been fighting back developers for 15 years. We sent one packing last night (see attached staff report). The mechanisms for sprawl are the same here as elsewhere. We must process rezoning applications as they are submitted. The difference is that we have an OCP which may have the strongest growth management guidelines in Canada. There is no lack of demand for new product, and it is also true that the demand – supply equation in a world class destination is not the same as say, Hamilton. It is my view, based on visits to Aspen and Vail, that additional supply will not result in the kind of price reductions which make recreation second home properties affordable.
The fact that market homes are so expensive is exactly why we created the WHA and the 6000 bed inventory. There will likely always be workers who cannot be accommodated in this inventory and will make the choice to cram into a unit to save money or simply to have the chance to spend a winter in Whistler.
Mayor Ken Melamed
Office- 604-935-8101
The mayor is right in pointing out that you can’t on one hand say that there is no more demand for more development and then talk about how expensive it is on the other. It is expensive because demand exceeds supply.
However the suggestion that Whistler is a model for good urban development is questionable. It is a one-industry town which takes its form largely due to its topography. And no doubt that the town has made efforts to supply affordable housing for its service workers, but the reality is that it just isn’t a viable option for middle and lower class families. Affordability of accommodation is a real problem and one that merits attention. The real challenge in effecting smart growth is ensuring that these walkable, well-serviced areas are not enclaves of those who have money. Currently, in most big Canadian cities, that is exactly what they become in the long run.
While Whistler is a good model for a tourist-fuelled mountain village (likely influenced by if not modelled on European mountain villages), Whistler specifically cannot be replicated in the larger world. Squamish, unlike Whistler, doesn’t happen to be an international tourist destination. The municipality of Whistler (much like Hawai’i or Dubai) can afford to make expensive people-friendly decisions as it always has this magic source of revenue. The municipality of Whistler feeds tourists, while Squamish feeds residents.
Obviously, this model cannot be used in any way to help planning in a major city– that would be planning apples from oranges, or mountains from molehills. However, the concept of pedestrian-friendly European villages (not only in mountainous regions, and certainly not fuelled by tourism) is one that should be followed in urban planning in North America, though that’s an essay in itself (hint hint).
Hrumpf. Whistler a utopial of environmentally sensitive development? The best I can come up with it that it could be a lot worse, but that shouldn’t have us paper over the fact that the resort has repeatedly encroached on a provincial park, runs heli-ski operations into said park, has the majority of its worker base unable to afford unshared / uncramped rental accommodation, let alone buy (the ‘cost-controlled’ housing for residents remains extremely expensive and is subject to years-long waiting lists), and off-loads many of its potential issues to satellite commuter towns of Pemberton and, yes, Squamish. This includes (sort of) affordable housing for hundreds of ‘locals’ who drive 30 – 40km each way every day, and the big box stores that serve Whistler residents who will regularly drive there. Sprawl-free?The pressure Whistler has placed on its satellite commuter towns is huge. No commute? A quality hour spent crawling the first 4km out of Whistler on a Sunday afternoon will quickly disabuse you of that notion.
I’m not about to defend Squamish’s short-sighted embrace of unplanned overdevelopment (clear cuts to overbuilt exurb in less than 10 years!), but there’s something a bit tiresome about the smugness of a ultra high end resort village which exists on the premise of hundreds of thousands flying in from across two oceans claiming to be a sustainable model. The best they can come up with is that they aren’t as bad as Vail? Really?
In the two years that I’ve commuted to Whistler I’ve discovered that you have to look very hard to find the small town under all the glitz and glamour. It is there though. It’s a hard place to call home though. There are way too many people living in steerage. For escape there is alcohol and cocaine. To get beyond the town limits you need a car. While there are grocery and liquor stores, if you want anything else other than tourist trinkets you need a car. To get a Social Insurance Card, you go to Squamish. To get a TV, you go to Squamish. Squamish alone is not large enough to support Wal-Mart, London Drugs, Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Rona. To get to them from Whistler you need a car. We are struggling to maintain 4 transit trips each day between Whistler and Squamish for commuters and shoppers but, Whistler has withdrawn its portion of the funding. When you look at a map of Whistler Village you see that the largest identifiable features are the parking lots. Yes, Whistler is an amazing place. So is Disneyland. Neither is the kind of place that many would want to call home.
I quite agree with Murray, Whistler is the Disneyland of skiing, but you must understand the perspective from which I wrote up the interview with the Mayor of Whistler. It was from the perspective of a fellow city councillor. Right now, we’re strip mining the Canadian landscape for tract housing, warehouse districts (called malls) and parking lots. It’s happening everywhere – Halifax, St. John’s, Montreal, Ottawa, all of sw Ontario and in the west everywhere but Vancouver. It’s unrelenting and it’s ruthless. In the the last city of Ottawa election virtually every councillor who was prepared to stand up to the strip mining – lost. So when I meet a Mayor like ken who’s prepared to try and limit the damage in his town and that’s all you can hope to do – limit the damage – celebrate him. There are very few men or women who are prepared to put their political careers on the line to do something as simple as charge for parking or say no to a big box developer. Ken is one of them.