To most users of the urban landscape, cities are cacophonous and chaotic entities that somehow manage to hold their daily lives together in a relatively ordered way. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Cities are highly ordered and regulated organisms founded on several clearly conceived intentions – some bad, some good, most somewhere in between. It’s the convergence of these many intentions – manifested physically – that give cities their messiness and excitement.
Since the rise of the first urban centre, people have sought to control these complex creatures through various means, with mixed results. Our current method – through legal regulations, bylaws and policies – represents humanity’s most sophisticated attempt to-date. To the point that nothing about the modern city can truly be said to be chaotic in any typical sense of the word.
Through these regulations, beliefs are institutionalize and consequently fossilized through architecture, built form and other means, such as lot sizes and the distribution of open spaces. As we’ve recently come to realize, this doesn’t mean that modern cities are necessarily any “better” than its predecessors, but just controlled differently.
There is an irony inherent to this method of city building, however. Given that urban landscapes take long periods of time to build and mature, the effects of regulations that we put into place only become visible many years after they are first implemented. At such, the beliefs that underlie the policies are often outdated by the time they find their mature manifestation.
Making things more complicated, the initial framework created by early practices generate unpredictable patterns, taking on “lives” of their own as inhabitants adapt to them.
No city is better to see this process in action than Vancouver. Being a relatively new city that has grown drastically over recent decades and is entrenched in modern planning practices, we can clearly see and experience “beliefs made physical” and its effects. These can be felt at all levels of the built environment – from the location and style of individual buildings (such as City Hall) to large-scale urban patterns.
This graphic speaks to the latter, compiling several census-based maps, graphs, and tables to explicitly show the direct ties between specific policies, neighbourhood densities and population distribution. Regular readers of Cartographically Speaking will recognize some of the images, but these are supplemented by other key information to unmistakable show the direct relationship between regulations and urban form.
For several reasons, Vancouver has been divided in three segments – Westside, Downtown, and Eastside. Not only does this simplify the information, but also, it clearly shows a number of interesting pattern: the most evident being how different zoning decisions made over the past few decades have served to differentiate these segments in many ways.
The east-west division of density and population (and wealth) in the city, is particularly obvious along with the beliefs that created For example, the creation of the First Shaughnessy Official Development Plan by the Shaughnessy Heights Property Owners was explicitly intended to protect the their land from being densified through subdivision and conversions. This allowed Shaughnessy inhabitants to maintain their large lot sizes under population growth pressures.
As any real estate agent will tell you, lot sizes are directly related to land values. Thus, as time has passed and land values increased, this spatial and economic divide (as is relates to the ability to purchase land) has deepened. The creation of other bylaws, such as RS-5, have expanded the area of this phenomenon and continue to do so to this day, despite minor amendments to the regulations.
By contrast, the Eastside was chosen – via bylaws such as RS-1S – to take the brunt of growth in Vancouver’s population. Conversions and densification were allowed more readily, eroding lot sizes and making things more affordable.
Of course, the above description is an over-simplifiction of complex forces at play. However, the resulting pattern is blatantly clear in the extruded density map at the bottom of the graphic: with lower densities focused in Vancouver’s Westside.
There are a number of smaller narratives in the graphic that are quite fascinating, as well. One of the most interesting, lies in the population growth patterns of Mount Pleasant and Grandview Woodlands. Between 2001 and 2006, the graphic shows that they are the only two neighbourhoods in the city that surprisingly lost population.
One would never guessed this by visiting these vibrant areas. Most would believe the opposite, given how popular they are. Yet, upon reflection, the pattern make sense.
Both Grandview Woodlands and Mount Pleasant have recently seen an influx of new, wealthier inhabitants moving into the area, to take advantage of the wonderful amenities these neighbourhoods have to offer. This new population consists of smaller households – displacing the original larger households.
My personal experience is a case in point. When my partner and I moved to the area around Commercial Drive, our small duplex amazingly had six people living in it – most of which were renting single rooms. We have since had a couple of Little Ones, but even after that, the original household was still 33% larger. Since moving here, we have seen the same transformation in and around the neighborhood – resulting in the net loss of population associated with conventional gentrification.
As with all dense graphics, one is left with more questions than answers (and this is a good thing!). To me, some of the more significant ones focus on validity of current urban planning processes. For example, given that beliefs change much more rapidly than the built environment that they shape and that legal policies and bylaws are founded in belief systems, is it smart to institutionalize them within a legal framework that is so cumbersome and difficult to change? Shaughnessy, is arguably a blatant contrast to current definition of a sustainable neighbourhood. Yet, in form, it remains largely the same as it did when it was first created – and is bound to stay this way for many years to come despite being founded on the beliefs of a bygone era.
Perhaps, a broader question is even more relevant: can Vancouver truly be considered a “modern city” – let alone a sustainable one – when is its built form physically reflects the outdated ideas of decades ago?
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