Making view cones less restrictive
Plus: shadows are more important than housing
Agenda for standing committee on policies and strategic priorities, July 10, 2024.
One of the items on the agenda is a review of the view-cone policy, which says that specific views from 18 points in the city must not be blocked by buildings. For example, in the photo above, it looks like there’s a missing tooth in the downtown skyline, because there’s a view cone allowing you to see the Lions in the distance. (They look tiny.)
My general view is that because housing in Metro Vancouver is so scarce and expensive, allowing more housing should be at the top of the priority list. I think we should allow small apartment buildings everywhere (Burnaby is allowing four floors and 50% site coverage). That said, I also think that if a project is building a high-rise, it makes sense to allow it to be somewhat higher, to spread fixed costs (like land) over more floor space.
In deciding on regulations, you always need to weigh costs and benefits. Looking at the photo, the benefits of this particular view cone don’t seem very large, while the opportunity cost of not allowing building across a swath of the downtown peninsula seems pretty high. At the same time, my impression from Reddit is that people really do value the views of the mountains as a public amenity.
Where are the viewpoints?
There’s been articles with headlines saying things like “Vancouver may end ‘view cones.’” This is a bit misleading: it makes it sounds like the proposal is to eliminate all view cones, when in fact the proposal is to keep almost all of them.
Currently, there's a total of 18 viewpoints. The proposal is to remove two of the viewpoints, Laurel Landbridge and Choklit Park, where trees have been blocking the views for years, and to modify a number of the other viewpoints to make them less restrictive.
Details from the staff report.
South side of False Creek, east to west:
Laurel Landbridge - to be removed
Choklit Park - to be removed
Bridges and streets, west to east:
Large scope:
Plus there's a view from Drake Street south to City Hall.
What are the views like?
On Saturday I went to False Creek to take a look at the viewpoints there. I was surprised to find that from that perspective, the mountains aren’t really that impressive - what you notice is the downtown skyline and the water.
From Creekside Park:
From Olympic Village:
From Heather Bay. Again, there’s a gap in the skyline where you can see the Lions..
Shadows are more important than housing
The staff report also includes a proposal to prohibit shadows on parks, public and independent schools, and shopping-area sidewalks between 10 am and 4 pm, at the spring and fall equinoxes. This restricts the height of buildings to the south of these spaces. This applies to all land outside downtown - there’ll be a separate effort to look at downtown.
I don’t see any attempt to estimate the total opportunity cost. Maybe it’s because we’re at the start of an intense heat wave, but I’m skeptical of the benefits of prohibiting shadows. If shade from trees is good, why are shadows from buildings bad? The sun moves, which means that shadows move.
Kenneth Chan has an opinion piece from July 2020: Vancouver’s repressive tower height policies to limit shadows running amok. He quotes Jon Stovell.
“What has been happening with shadows is they kind of have gone from something that needs to be considered and thought about as part of design to this outright prohibition on any shadowing, which in many cases is not supported by current city council policies,” said Stovell.
According to Stovell, the development community is now used to working around view cones, but the new rigour and inflexibility from city staff on shadowing has become incredibly problematic.
They used to consider shadows for the spring and summer solstices between 11 am and 2 pm. Now they are being requested to perform shadow studies for 4 pm and 5 pm, when the shadows are far longer.
More
Previously: review of view-cone policies, priorities, Vancouver as an increasingly fancy country club.
Joseph Heath, Cost-benefit analysis as an expression of liberal neutrality. See Section 2, Provision of a public good. What’s the benefit of providing a public good (in this case, public views), versus the opportunity cost (in this case, restricting the use of scarce land)?
Proposed Vancouver view cone policy relaxations could enable up to 215 million sq ft of additional building floor area for housing and job space. Kenneth Chan, Daily Hive.
Vancouver to vote on relaxing view cone policies to increase housing. Tiffany Crawford, Vancouver Sun.
Vancouver unveils plan to change view protections, unlock housing. Chad Pawson, CBC News.
Curtains for protected views? Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing. Darrian Matassa-Fung and Alex Fuster, Global News.
Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing. Kier Junos, CityNews.
Opposition: Save Our Skyline YVR (Melody Ma), CityHallWatch.