In order to deal with the current unsustainable pattern of growth and development, the City of
Vancouver is advocating intensification as a means for developing more complete communities.
Promoting this strategy to the public may, however be problematic when there is little or no
empirical evidence documenting the outcome or experience of intensification. To better
understand the issues, challenges and opportunities associated with using intensification to create
complete communities, the City of Vancouver's experience with this strategy was analysed,
across a range of planning initiatives within which intensification policies were deployed.
Through the use of interviews and a case study comprising an analysis of several City policies
and initiatives, the benefits, costs, and barriers of intensification were documented. In total 18
people were interviewed which included City Staff, councillors, developers, and members of
planning organizations. This process revealed what the City has been able to achieve through
intensification, the lessons they have learned and the direction this strategy must take in the near
future in order to create more complete communities.
To date, the City has had the most success with intensification when it has been applied to
existing multi-family neighbourhoods or to the redevelopment of industrial lands. As a result,
the City has been able to create new neighbourhoods that have many of the characteristics of a
complete community. However, when this same process is taken to existing single family
neighbourhoods, it is met with opposition as a result of the public's resistance to change and the
conflicting views regarding intensified urban living.
Despite this failure, Vancouver's experience has provided a number of valuable lessons
regarding how intensification can be used to create more complete communities. For example,
there are a number of conditions that must exist in order for intensification to be promoted,
which relate to the planning, market, and political environment of an area. Once these conditions
are in place then, strategies should be developed to ensure that intensification is designed to be
responsive to a community's needs. Finally, Vancouver's experience with this strategy reveals
that the best way to understand what a community needs and what tradeoffs they are willing to
make in order to create more complete communities is through a political process that involves a
consensus approach to planning and public discussion.
The findings of this thesis indicate that the success of future intensification initiatives lies in the
City's ability of making intensified urban living fashionable. To do this it will be imperative to
establish a common understanding of its limits and benefits by learning from past experiences
and by building on the successful intensification initiatives that have occurred. Once this is
done, the City can then use the successful examples of intensification to educate the public about
how it can be used to create complete communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6438 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Galli, Luisa A. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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