Calling all Urbanists in the City of Vancouver!  For the last three months, the BTA Studios has been the venue for the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning’s Planning 548V: Vancouver Planning Laboratory class.  Co-taught by Dr. Tom Hutton and Eileen Keenan and Andy Yan from BTAworks, SCARP students explored the scholarship and the business of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Design in Metro Vancouver and beyond.  Highlights of the course included a field trip focusing on the emerging elements of urbanism found in Surrey City Centre with a visit to the roof tops of Central City and the Surrey City Centre Library. 

To complete the course, students will give a short (6 minutes) presentation on their individual research projects at this latest edition of the @BTArchitects Tweetup.  Some student research topics include heritage and affordable housing, the future of industrial lands in the City of Vancouver, the Creative City in Hamilton, gentrification and art, affordable housing in multicultural cities, and the sustainable city. 

Details

Place: W2 Media Cafe, 111 W Hastings

Time: Thursday, April 5, 6:30 pm to 9 pm

Using the new 2012 BC Assessment data from the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue, BTAworks updated its 2011 One Million Dollar Line map of properties in the City’s Single Family Home districts. While this analysis follows a similar methodology, please note that it uses a slightly different dataset than our previous study. With nearly 50 percent of the City’s land area zoned in a form of a Single Family (SF) district, this brief examines some of the patterns of properties under and over this symbolic value of $1 million from 2011 to 2012.

Overall, the number of properties in the single family home districts of the City of Vancouver worth over $1,000,000 increased by nearly 10 percent. In 2011, 43 percent (29,161) of properties in SF districts were worth over $1 million. By 2012, 53 percent (35,793) were worth over $1 million. Over 6,600 properties in the Single Family Home districts in the City of Vancouver crossed the $1 million value threshold between 2011 to 2012.

All properties in single family dwelling districts in the City of Vancouver increased by a minimum of $55,000 from 2011 to 2012. 80 percent of properties grew more than $100,000 in this one single year. To place this amount in context, the median household income in the City of Vancouver (based on 2006 Canadian census information adjusted for inflation) was $53,000.

By geography, the distribution of $1 million properties have slowly diffused across Main Street especially in the Riley Park Local Area; the growth of $1 million properties in the southeast section of the City of Vancouver is particularly worth noting.  Victoria-Fraserview (1,226) saw the largest number of properties cross the $1 million mark followed by the Riley Park (987) and Killarney (815) local areas.

On the other end of housing value spectrum, the number of properties under $500,000 decreased by 80 percent from 71 properties in 2011 to 14 properties in 2012. Of these 14 properties or 0.2 percent of the study population, all were located on the East of Main and well over 20 years old.

Moving forward, a value spectrum and going beyond a geographic line may be the best way of studying and understanding property values in the Single Family districts of Vancouver.  Instead of a single (and simple) geographic line such as Main Street (or more specifically Ontario Street) neatly summarizing and segregating property values in the City of Vancouver, value clusters are emerging throughout the City and the complexities of how much housing costs in this City.  Moreover, when these value clusters are more finely broken down by $1 million increments, they show another level of housing value distribution in the City – both as an artifact of Vancouver’s real estate history and as a trend of current and future real estate consumption and investment.

This brief will not examine the reasons behind the distributions and patterns, but observations from our learned readers are welcomed.

Technical Notes:

This brief focused on properties in districts zoned as “One-Family Dwellings” also known as RS Districts. Not all single family homes in Vancouver are located in RS zonings as they are located throughout the City.  Hence, single family homes in districts such as Two-Family Dwelling Districts such as those found in neighborhoods such as Strathcona and special zoning districts like First Shaughnessy District were excluded. 

Unlike the previous 2011 analysis, the property values used in this 2012 analysis are derived from a modified properties database which excluded properties such as parks, schools, waterways, and right of ways as well as ones with null values through Geographic Information System software.  As a consequence, the total number of properties that were analyzed decreased from about 71,000 to 67,600 units.  However, like the previous 2011 analysis, total property values are derived from the sum of land and improvement values in the 2012 BC Assessment which themselves are valuations made in July 2011. For further details, please visit the BC Assessor’s website toward details of assessment valuation criteria.

Migration and immigration changing Vancouver into “city of strangers” – by Jenny Uechi, Vancouver Observer

Lonely Town – by Kate Zimmerman, Calgary Herald

For the benefit of our readers, when one uses the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator to adjust values to 2011 dollars, the map scales would be $117,000 for a house worth $40,000 in 1979 and $876,000 for a house worth $300,000 in 1979.  Incidentally, a house valued at $80,000 in 1979 would be worth $234,000 in 2011 dollars.

This post also includes Raynor’s observations and analysis which accompanied the map and was published in a City of Vancouver Quarterly Review in July 1979.  Interestingly, as Raynor ends his piece with the observation that improvements on the average (largely defined as buildings on a property) accounted for 46 percent of total values in 1979, this percentage dwindles to less than 20 percent by 2011.

After some post processing which excluded properties that were either parks, right of ways, railways, side yards or boulevard medians as well as SPLOT properties (Spaces Planners Left Over Time), this posting will highlight some of the specific features from the recently published map of property values of single family home districts in the City of Vancouver. 

We were able to isolate and find properties in the City’s RS Districts for less than $500,000 – all 182 of them which, out of the 71,000 study properties, which equates to about 0.3 percent of the study base.  To respect the privacy of individual homeowners, we won’t publish a map on their specific locations, but highlight the characteristics of this population. The characteristics include:

• All properties were east of Main
• Being built between 1905 and 1996
• Generally along major arterials or next to mass transit right of ways like the Expo line.
• Valuations for land value far exceeded “improvement” values which is term that refers to buildings well beyond the overall patterns for the overall SFH population

Other details in this map include:

Overall Patterns

42 percent of overall properties in the study population were over $1 million; however, as earlier, identified; this pattern is highly geographically uneven with Main Street (and specifically Ontario Street) being the principal dividing line with value shifts depending where a property falls either west or east of Ontario Street.  In one sample block with similar housing stock on either side, properties west of Ontario were worth between $100,000 to $300,000 more than their counterparts east of it.

East of Main Patterns

7 percent of our study parcels east of Main were equal or more than $1 million in the 2011 BC Assessment or conversely, 93 percent of our study parcels were under $1 million.

West of Main Patterns

89 percent of our study parcels west of Main were equal or more than $1 million in the 2011 BC Assessment or conversely, 11 percent of parcels were under $1 million.

This Study in the News 

An interesting web dialogue has occured with the publication of this map and two subsequent analysis are of particular note: one written by Pete McMartin in the Vancouver Sun and another by Gordon Price on his blog: Price Tags.  Thank you, Pete and Gordon for sharing your insights on these patterns.

Land zoned for single family housing represents about half of the overall land mass of the City of Vancouver.  As Vancouver strives to become the Greenest City on Earth, this land and activities on it will invariably have a role in determining this outcome.  In turn, its value will help influence what can and cannot occur on it and, perhaps, just as importantly, who can and cannot afford to own it.

Using data from Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue, this map illustrates the property values of single family districts in the City of Vancouver and its distribution.  For purposes of this map, single family homes are defined as all properties that are within the City’s “RS” zoning.  Interestingly, historic neighbourhoods with large amount of single family homes like Strathcona and Shaughnessy do not have a “RS” zoning, but rather a RT-3 and First Shaughnessy District which were established to preserve the architectural heritage in each respective neighborhood. Another key note is that with the approval of laneway housing and the legalization of secondary basement suites, the traditional notion of a “single family homes” in Vancouver is changing.

The property values in this map are derived by the combination of land and “improvement” assessed values for 2011 released by BC Assessment which, in turn, were the market value of each element assessed as of July, 2010.  Through the usage of the ArcGIS Geographic Information Systems platform, this map was produced.

Certain data artifacts were kept and left unedited in this map by purpose. There are some data point in Stanley Park, along Beach Avenue near Sunset Beach, the Kitsilano waterfront and Jericho Beach that fall into an RS-1 zoning.  The designation of these properties are likely spurious or erroneous zoning and property data that need to be updated or edited within the Open data Dataset rather than development potential and highlight some of the data editing that is required in the usage of some datasets in the Catalogue.

Before discussing values, this first observation of this map begins with the distribution of RS zoning as it largely corresponds with the pre-consolidation 1929 boundaries of the municipalities of Point Grey and South Vancouver.  Prior to 1929, Vancouver consisted of three separate municipalities: Point Grey, South Vancouver, and Vancouver.  With the exception of a section of Vancouver east of Victoria Drive, there is little to no RS zoning within the boundaries of pre-1929 Vancouver.  Instead, RS zoning dominates the former pre-1929 municipalities of Point Grey and South Vancouver.

Within the distribution of property values, a few patterns emerge.  In the 2011 assessment, there were no single family homes in Vancouver that were worth less than $500,000.  At the same time, the overwhelming majority of homes west of Main were worth over a million dollars. (Admittedly, this line is Ontario Street, but Main Street is the closest arterial).  With some very small pockets of sub-$1,000,000 homes in Marpole and minute isolated cases, any single family home west of Main Street was worth over a million dollars.

Conversely, homes east of Main Street were largely under $1,000,000.  While there were homes over $1,000,000 of which were concentrated in the far southeast corner of the City, there was a much more diverse collection of homes under $1,000,000 in areas east of Main Street.  In all likelihood, there will be more homes worth a million dollars in the 2012 Assessment east of Main, but one of the surprising patterns in this map is the how strong Main Street remains as delineation between million dollar and non-million dollar homes in Vancouver.

(Additional observations and details on this map are now avaliable in this later posting.)

For most of the City of Vancouver’s history in the 20^th Century, Main Street was a social, cultural, and political dividing line of wealth, social status, and political affiliations. The power of this line can still be observed in single family home values both east and west of Main, but is it a line that is increasingly permeable? In the most recent 2011 Vancouver municipal elections, home values and, of greater interest, density had a strong correlation with how voters voted than one’s location east or west of Main.  The geographic shorthand of East/West of Main being on the Left/Right could become less reliable to describe the electoral politics in the City. As prices for single family homes continue to rise and million dollar single family homes in the City of Vancouver becomes a likely norm west and east of Main, there lie even  greater changes, shifts, and complexity for its social, cultural, and political geography.

As an experiment in social media, crowd mapping and urban metrics, BTAworks decided to conduct a survey of Trick or Treating Hotspots around the City of Vancouver through the over 1,800 Twitter followers and the 600 plus Facebook fans of Bing Thom Architects.  We wanted to explore the question: Could the number of trick or treaters be used as a proxy measure towards illustrating the social cohesion, fabric, and capital of a neighborhood?  In a series of tweets and posts between November 1 and 2, we requested respondents send us the number of trick or treaters that visited their households and the nearest street intersection to their homes.  From the 16 responses, we processed these replies in Excel and used Google Fusion to produce this map.

While the results can hardly be said to be scientific nor comprehensive, there is promise and perils to this type of technology where citizens can help gather and share information about their environment.  We were able to rapidly develop and deploy this data acquisition and analysis system in less than two hours with very little resources.  In spite of its representative and severe statistic limitations, the map results follow a popular observation that the best trick or treating areas in the City of Vancouver are, for the most part, in the ground oriented, family sized housing neighborhoods surrounding Downtown Vancouver. With reported number of 200 plus tricker or treaters on its streets, the neighborhood of Strathcona seems to be an epicenter of Halloween spirit.

These observations being said, there are a few challenges and limitations towards the representativeness of crowdsourced/crowdmapped data.  Clearly, many more data points need to be gathered before this map could ever be suggested to be statistically representative.  One needs motivated crowds to report – a post sugar haze may not be one of them.  Within this data, the issue of respondent bias occurs where the data may reflect who the respondent is as much as the desired phenomenon that is being measure. The maps created through crowdmapping are only as good as the crowd who are doing the mapping. 

These maps may reflect more those who have access or desire to use social media than the actual measured phenomenon itself as the method defines the responses. As an example, does Strathcona have the most trick or treaters? Or does Strathcona have the most BTA social media subscribers who live in the neighborhood and are generous enough to share information about the trick or treaters? While using new technologies like social media and online mapping resources, this experiment also reflects age old and ongoing challenges and limitation in data gathering and interpretation.

From an urban metrics level, high density tower districts do not seem to be not very friendly towards trick or treaters.  At the same time, the neighborhoods that are often identified as the most affluent in the city did not necessarily see many Trick or Treaters.  Neighborhoods that saw the most Trick or Treaters tended to be in the older inner ring/street care suburbs of Vancouver who often share a pedestrian friendly scale and block structure compared to other parts of the region. Both in the number of responses and location of responses from Strathcona as well as number of trick or treaters, this perhaps reflects the remarkable social and physical fabric and richness of that neighborhood.

On a much more serious note, organizations like Ushahidi are doing trail blazing work in the field of information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping via the web and mobile phones.  Meaning “testimony” in Swahili, the website was originally developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout in 2008.  Since then, its software has been used to document and share data on such events like the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, and 2011 “Snowmageddon” in the Northeastern United States. Ushahidi has also set up Crowdmap to monitor elections, curate local resources, and map crisis information which allow technological neophytes to create their own crowdmapping platforms — and, in the off chance, also document a zombie invasion.

Special thanks for the BTA Twitter and Facebook respondents for making this experiment possible!

Click image for slideshow (in Flash)

BTAworks, the research and development division of Bing Thom Architects, has published a new community toolkit exploring the effects and costs of sea level rise in the City of Vancouver. Inspired by similar projects in San Francisco, New York City, and the Netherlands, the Local Effects of Global Climate Change in the City of Vancouver toolkit provides a sobering local view of the City’s coastline.

“We wanted to inform a civic conversation on sea level rise which takes it from a global to a neighborhood level” says Eileen Keenan, a BTAworks researcher. “Instead of a far off example like the Maldives, we wanted to illustrate how the City of Vancouver and beloved local landmarks like Granville Island might be affected by various sea level rise scenarios.”

Using data from the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue and through a series of maps, the toolkit illustrates a number of sea level rise scenarios from a 1 metre to a 6 metres which could severely affect 3 to 13 percent of the City’s landmass. The toolkit also charts how various types of land uses such agricultural, industrial, and residential might be affected.

“Not all land uses in the City would be equally affected by sea level change.” observes Keenan, “As a legacy of our city roots as a port, and location at the mouth of the Fraser River delta, land with industrial and agricultural uses would be the most vulnerable to rising sea levels”.

The toolkit also examined some of the financial implications of sea level rise. Using a recently published provincial paper on sea dikes as a technical reference and its estimate of a 1 metre sea level rise for the coast line of British Columbia by 2100, the toolkit was able to generate estimates on some of the financial implications of sea level rise.

“If we expect key infrastructure and public investments like sewage plants and parks to last over 100 years, this provincial paper provides some major scientific and engineering insights into what and where we can build”, Keenan mentions. “This report represents the best and most current thought on how the BC coastline might change in the face of sea level rise and a framework through which we developed our toolkit estimates”.

While a 1 metre sea level rise seems conservative, its implications are dramatic when various coastal engineering criteria such as high tides and storm surges are accounted for. According to the provincial report, 5.6 metres could become the new flood construction elevation level in the Vancouver harbour for the year 2100 once these are factored in.

When combined with the 2011 land assessment values, the BTAworks toolkit estimates that over $25 billion worth of Vancouver real estate could be negatively affected by sea level rise. Additionally, the researchers caution that this does not reflect the value of existing physical and utilities infrastructure such as roads, sewers, and electrical facilities on these lands. When this is accounted for, the final costs of sea level rise are much higher.

The toolkit goes into further detail with the costs of defending Vancouver shoreline. Depending on the type of coastal defense, from earth dike to seawall, it could cost $255 to $510 million; however, Keenan notes that this estimate does not include any land acquisition for these dikes which could go into the billions.

“This is a cursory look at the potential costs and effects of sea level rise to City, but we felt that some kind of dollar estimate can illustrate what is at stake for Vancouver and, indeed, when it comes to sea level rise. Much more research and collaboration needs to be done to fine tune it.”

The toolkit concludes with the three recommendations. Firstly it concludes that the tool kit is a first step towards understanding the impact of sea level rise, but that a Metro Vancouver wide study is badly needed as a piecemeal municipality by municipality study is not enough. It points to the need for data for all municipalities to be readily available to facilitate this work. Secondly, it highlights the need for public and policy discussions around developing a Sea Level Rise Planning Area for those portions of the coastline that would be the most heavily affected by rising sea levels. This type of zoning would help us to place major land use and infrastructure changes in the context of a changing coastline. Thirdly, a need for a popular education program to educate citizens about the challenges to both the city and the region caused by sea rise and suggest what they might be able to do about it.

“This toolkit emphasizes the importance and value of long term urban planning and public education. We are very proud to help bring this critical issue forward for public discussion and study.” says Michael Heeney, a partner at Bing Thom Architects. “While these scenarios only offer a peek of the world at the end of this century, we owe it to future generations to begin preparing for this future today”.

To download the project news release and toolkit, click:

The Local Effects of Global Climate Change in the City of Vancouver: A Community Toolkit and Atlas News Release (PDF)

The Local Effects of Global Climate Change in the City of Vancouver: A Community Toolkit and Atlas (PDF)

 The Local Effects of Global Climate Change in the City of Vancouver: An Atlas (PDF)

Media Contact

Eileen Keenan
BTAworks Researcher
ekeenan@btaworks.com
(604) 682-1881

These images are part of the newly digitized City of Vancouver Archives Harland Bartholomew Collection and are from the Archives’ Flickr Photostream.

A special advance thank you to the wonderful student volunteers from the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) who are helping at the Harland Bartholomew Event on April 26:

Thien Phan, SCARP ’11
Metha Brown, SCARP ’11
Yazmin Banuelas, SCARP ’12
Lindsay Neufeld, SCARP ’12
Jaime Yee, SALA ’12

As the proposed closure of five public schools in the City of Vancouver in 2010 has been averted, a view from 1928 provides an important and interesting historical context and perspective. In A Plan for the City of Vancouver British Columbia including Point Grey and South Vancouver and a General Plan of the Region, Harland Bartholomew and Associates developed the urban and physical skeleton for Vancouver through the first (and only) attempt to create a complete master plan for the entire City. Hidden within the plan, there was also the issue of which elementary and secondary schools should be “abandoned”.

This map illustrates Bartholomew’s “studies of present and future population and the effect of abandonment or the provision of new facilities”. Based upon a number of planning principles, it showed a vision for the location of primary and secondary schools throughout the city as he prepared for a possible Metro Vancouver population of 1,000,000 people by 1955 – an optimistic projection as Metro Vancouver’s population would not reach 1,000,000 until 1971.

Children in the City were of critical importance for Bartholomew. In the outline of the Recreation Plan, Bartholomew emphasizes the importance of (in order) small children, children of school age, youth (defined by those attending high school or college) and then finally adults. Pragmatically, he saw parks as “a form of insurance against a decline of neighborhood value and attractiveness” and that “these areas themselves rarely ever lose value and they tend to keep property nearby from dropping in value”.

This section also highlights a fundamental belief in the importance of neighborhood schools. For any “square mile of residential territory (8,000-12,000 persons)”, Bartholomew recommended, with input by “qualified educational authorities”, that public elementary schools serve an enrollment between 850 and 1,300 students. “Except as influenced by topographical conditions, it would have been desirable economically and otherwise for the schools to be spaced one mile apart”. Furthermore, “a modern elementary school of this size is incomplete without an adequate playground, serving all the recreational needs of the children of the district”.

School siting and design parameters for this “modern school” included items such as a site of “at least five acres with provision for at least 100 square feet of unobstructed play space per child and no other interest should occupy space in the same block”. Schools should not be located near major streets. Indeed, Bartholomew lamented:

It is unfortunate that so many sites have been located on what are, or what are planned to be major streets. Theoretically, the school might be located in the centre of the rectangle formed by the intersection of major streets. It should be borne in mind for future locations that major streets are not desirable neighborhood for school sites.

In 1928, seven schools- five elementary– Aberdeen, Central, Dawson, Kitsilano, and MacDonald with three high schools – Britannia Annex, Fairview and King George, were slated for “abandonment”. Some of the parameters for closure included: inadequate playground area and location on an arterial and/or business district. Aberdeen Elementary was cited as “located on a major thoroughfare on which commercial development may be expected in the immediate future”. Not on the list, but cited in the paper and located on the corner of Granville and Broadway and ultimately closed, Commercial High School was seen as “retarding desirable business development”.

Based on a brief history of Vancouver schools by Val Hamilton, the final fates of the eight schools slated for abandonment in 1928 were as follows (For a view of how the school sites look like today, click the intersection link for a Google Street View in each entry) :

• Aberdeen Elementary located at Burrard and Barclay was closed in 1942;
• Central Elementary located at Pender and Hamilton was closed in 1946, but redeveloped as the Vancouver Vocational Institute also known as the Vancouver Community College – Downtown Campus;
• Dawson Elementary located at Burrard and Helmcken was closed in 1972;
• Fairview located at Broadway and Granville was closed in 1927, but would be redeveloped as the offices of the Vancouver School Board);
• The Britannia Annex located at East 1^st Avenue and Park Drive would close in 1928, but eventually be relocated and evolve into the Britannia Community School, perhaps one of the best examples of integrated community programming and multi-user facilities in the City and region;
• Kitsilano School located at West 4^th Avenue and Yew was closed in 1932 and
• Interestingly, MacDonald Elementary located at Hastings and Victoria which survived this 1928 original cut is now (and again) one of the five school candidates slated for closure in 2010.

School closures in the City of Vancouver are not without precedence as both elementary and secondary schools have closed, relocated, and reopened throughout its 125 year history. However, closing schools can have long reaching intended and unintended consequences. Bartholomew reflected an era of planning when downtown was intended to be a citadel of commerce fed by a collection of residential districts. These land uses were meant to be isolated and separate and this, in part, led to the closure of Downtown elementary schools.

More than 80 years later, the current state of elementary schools in Downtown Vancouver lives with the consequences of this decision. Elsie Roy Elementary which opened in 2003 in Downtown Vancouver struggles to meet the overwhelming demands of a thriving population of urban families with children, and yet schools in the inner suburbs of the City of Vancouver, particularly on the East side, face declining enrollment and possible closure.  The patterns discovered in previous BTAworks’ inquiries in public elementary school enrollments in the City of Vancouver and regional public and independent school enrollment patterns are as much cumulative products of land use and policy decisions made decades ago as the immediate school choices of parents for their children.

Closing schools is not only about meeting annual budget gaps or declining enrollments. It’s a societal expression of economic and social priorities and visions for our City at a particular time. Like their predecessors before them, the trustees of the Vancouver School Board have the Solomoneque task of balancing the demands of the present with the needs of the future as cities are built not only in the offices of City Hall, but on the play fields of our elementary schools.