Review of view-cone policies

"You can't live in a view"

Peter Meiszner, an ABC councillor, is putting forward a motion today for city staff to review Vancouver’s policies on view cones (“View Protection Guidelines”), with an update before the end of the year and a full report before June 2024. Because ABC has a majority on council, the motion should pass easily.

The view-cone policy basically says that at specific points in the city (about 30 of them), new buildings cannot obstruct the view of the mountains. This sets a height limit on buildings north of those points.

Whenever there’s two benefits that need to be weighed against each other - in this case, being able to build taller buildings (especially in central areas where demand is highest), and views of the mountains - we can think of it as cost-benefit analysis. A view which is only visible to a small number of people, and which cuts off a lot of potential buildings, provides a small benefit at great cost. For a view which is valued by many people and which has little impact on building heights, the benefit would be larger and the cost would be smaller.

Kenneth Chan has often written about the restrictiveness of view cones in the Daily Hive. A 2017 article: Arbitrary view cone height restrictions are strangling Vancouver's potential.

The municipal government’s approval last year of a short seven-storey commercial building replacing the two-storey Original Joe’s restaurant building at the southwest corner of the intersection of West Broadway and Cambie Street – the interchange junction of two SkyTrain lines, the Canada Line and the future Broadway Extension, representing nearly $5 billion worth of transit investments – is a testament to what is simply poor planning with little emphasis on sound economics.

The height of this corner site is restricted by the view cones from Vancouver City Hall and Queen Elizabeth Park. In Burnaby, Coquitlam, or Surrey, a site like this would at least be several times taller, and without any drama and theatrics.

He quotes James Cheng, an architect:

“The first batch of view cones was for major public spaces to look at The Lions’ twin peaks on the North Shore and other mountain landmark peaks. I think those were very good view cones,” he said.

“But after that, people started tinkering with that and added more and more view cones, and this has resulted in redundant view cones or superfluous view cones.”

He cites the example of view cones from the middle of the decks of the Cambie Street Bridge and Granville Street Bridge as being completely pointless.

“That to me is a useless view cone because you can imagine a person walking or a car driving, that’s only a short moment in time. And you’ve got views all the way around to the east and you see all the other mountains,” said Cheng. “The view cones that are transitory or transitional are not right because with those changes, you only get a few seconds of it.”

More

Articles by Kenneth Chan on view cones:

• Vancouver City Council to review the impact of protected mountain view cones on new housing, January 2023

• Central Broadway's job growth potential blocked by mountain view cones, February 2021

• Vancouver's repressive tower height policies to limit shadows running amok, July 2020

Media coverage of the upcoming motion:

• Some of Vancouver's protected views could soon be blocked by new housing. Chad Pawson, CBC.

• Vancouver's scenic views could eventually be lost in favour of new housing. Sarah Grochowski, Vancouver Sun.

• Some Vancouver ‘view cones’ could be scrapped under proposed review. Simon Little, Global News.

The opposition view. I expect a lot of opposition speakers when the actual policy change comes to a vote, towards the middle of next year.

• Protected View Cones ARE Who We Are, Vancouver Protected Views Should Not Be For Sale by City Council to Developers. Sandy James, Viewpoint Vancouver, July 2018.

I like to use Reddit as a sounding board. Some of the popular comments on this post say that allowing more multifamily housing in residential neighbourhoods (e.g. small apartment buildings) should be a higher priority, suggesting that ABC will need to tread carefully: even on Reddit, which tends to heap scorn on “neighbourhood defenders,” people really do see mountain views as a public amenity.

Or we could allow 3-5 story buildings in the vast tracts of detached homes.