A great article in the Tyee by Katie Hyslop about the challenges and opportunities in declining enrollment and closing schools in the City of Vancouver with comments by Michael Heeney from Bing Thom Architects and Andy Yan from BTAworks.
Data Desk, Media, Observations, Research Papers March 31, 2010
Climate Change and the City of Vancouver
The Georgia Straight recently published on cover article on BTAworks’ upcoming atlas and toolkit on the Neighborhood Effects of Global Climate Change. Click here to read the article. Watch this blog for Part One of the publication!
Data Desk, Observations December 15, 2009
The Long Road Back to the Downtown Vancouver of the 1940s
While Vancouver’s lack of Inner City Freeways is often cited as one of the “nine decisions that saved paradise”, it did not necessarily stop sprawl, but severely impeded. More importantly, it set the stage for the re-urbanization of Vancouver’s downtown core in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Even so, despite its recent history of residential condominium construction, when viewed through the lens of history and as a proportion of overall City population, Downtown Vancouver is only now recovering to levels that were last seen in 1941.
Based on a historical census survey of Downtown census tracts and the rest of the City population from 1941 to 2006, growth outside the Downtown core has consistently been more the rule than the exception. From a high of 16 percent of the total City population living in the Downtown Peninsula (including the West End) in 1941, this proportion plummeted to 9 percent by 1961, but stabilized at 10 percent for most of the middle 20th Century. Only since 1991 and the rediscovery of Downtown living, has this proportion slowly inched back to its World War Two levels.
The significance of Downtown Vancouver’s Urban U-Turn should not be understated. In the short space of 20 years (1986 to 2006), the population of Downtown Vancouver has more than doubled from 42,960 to 87,973. At the same time, this growth builds on a preexisting DNA of dense urban living engrained in Vancouver as the Downtown population has never dipped below 40,000 people since 1966.
As density grows outside the downtown core, it will be curious to see if the proportion of the City population living in Downtown Vancouver will stabilize or even perhaps decrease. Now, instead of sprawl decimating the Downtown core, the development of neighborhood centres and nodes could transform Vancouver from a one centre city to a multi-centre metropolis.
Special Thanks to Paul Raynor at the City of Vancouver’s Housing Centre for the statistics.
Data Desk, Research Papers September 28, 2009
Where Have All the Children Gone?
VANCOUVER – Research reveals that since 2004, enrollment in public elementary schools in the City of Vancouver has declined by more than 13 percent (over 2,600 students) — a continuation of a steady enrollment decline since 2000.
“While our overall City population has grown, it is surprising to discover that public elementary school enrollment has actually been on the decline by so much and for such a long time”, observed Andrew Yan, a BTAworks researcher and Urban Planner who wrote the brief. “Almost 20 percent of all Vancouver public elementary schools lost more than 20 percent of their students over the last 5 school years”.
BTAworks, the research and development division of Bing Thom Architects examined enrollment data from the Ministry of Education as part of their ongoing series focused on the health and sustainability of Vancouver neighborhoods and the overall city.
Yan notes that enrollment decline was very geographically uneven, with schools in the Northeast section of the City facing the largest losses while school enrollment on the City’s west side remained largely stable and, in certain cases, increased.
Elementary schools in the Northeast of the city, such as Lord Nelson, Walter Moberly, and Queen Alexandra lost about 25 percent of their enrollment, with William McDonald losing 50 percent of its student enrollment over the 5 most recent school years while Kerrisdale and Lord Tennyson saw 20 percent increases over the same period.
While some have suggested that an exodus of students to the independent school system accounts for this loss of students, Yan notes that growth in the private system in the same time frame only accounts for a partial number of missing elementary students.
“There is no single reason behind this decline in public elementary school enrollment, but the perfect storm created by factors such as an aging city and shrinking family sizes, combined with an open boundaries policy for all City of Vancouver schools and an outflow of independent schools who all have a role. This is compounded by a lack of affordable housing that is suitable for young families with children”, Yan suggests.
“If we cannot create a city where families want to send their children to the school down the block, what chances do we have of creating the greenest city in the world?”, said Michael Heeney, a principal at Bing Thom Architects, “This brief highlights one of the most basic sustainability challenges we have in the City of Vancouver.”
Heeney concludes, “Schools are only one example of millions of dollars of existing child supportive infrastructure in this city that runs the risk of being wasted. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the decline in elementary school enrollment may also mean that families will start to disappear from Vancouver as well.”
The full data brief is available at www.btaworks.com.
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BTAworks Elementary School Enrollment Media Release (PDF)
BTAworks Elementary School Enrollment Data Brief (PDF)
BTAworks Elementary School Enrollment Map (PDF)
Media Contact
Andrew Yan
Researcher/Urban Planner
ayan@btaworks.com
(604) 682-1881
Data Desk, Research Papers August 19, 2009
Who might the next 120,000 Vancouverites be?
For most of the City of Vancouver’s history, population growth has symbolized the vitality and the desirability of the City and its region. In its first 25 years, Vancouver grew by 700 percent. Since the end of the Second World War, the City has grown steadily by 15 percent every 10 years with the exception of a downturn in the early 1980s. Projecting into 2021, Vancouver is set to grow another 15 percent by 2011 and 6 percent by 2021. If these projections are true, a major planning dilemma for the City will be where to put the next 120,000 new Vancouverites in the next 12 years.
Growth by itself does not necessarily shape cities. Questions of “how many?” need to be tempered by inquiries into “Who they are?” The answers between these two questions have deep implications in shaping the economic, social, and cultural life of any city. In this next series of entries, we’ll explore some of the characteristics, distribution, and consequences of recent population growth in the City of Vancouver – all of which perhaps provides a glimpse into the City’s future.