Frances Bula Vancouver Sun
"It's a confirmation of the fact that the new urbanism is working and it's working because there's a product there that customers want.
"It shows that if you build good housing in the downtown area, people will come and live there," demographer David Baxter said.
Vancouver is about five to 10 years ahead of other Canadian cities and even U.S. cities in developing its downtown, partly because its industrial lands emptied sooner than those in other cities.
But Baxter and others say it's also because Vancouver put some good work into planning for its population turnaround. While other North American cities have seen the first stages of gentrification -- young professionals who move into neighbourhoods and fix up old houses -- Vancouver planners took that trend and ran with it.
"The developers now are building on the foundation of that gentrification," says University of B.C. geographer David Ley. They realized that people didn't just want more space and suburban safety.
"They saw that people were prepared to give up some private space for public space," he said.
He and Baxter say Calgary and Toronto are only beginning to aggressively repopulate their downtowns the way Vancouver has for a decade now.
Vancouver city planner Larry Beasley said the census numbers are already fairly out of date for downtown.
He said the city's own estimates indicate the total downtown population is now 77,000, an increase of 37,000 from 10 years ago.
"This is our Living First strategy made manifest," he said. "That strategy was developed more than a decade ago and envisioned creating a new downtown by permitting much more residential development, through shifting office space and opening up industrial land.
"That strategy is what we're seeing and it's a powerful market reaction."
One of the disturbing trends, however, was the loss of population in the city's inner-city Strathcona neighbourhood. It has the highest decrease of any neighbourhood in Vancouver, with 402 fewer people than in 1996.
The Vancouver metropolitan area showed much slower growth than it did between 1991 and 1996, increasing by only 4.9 per cent from 1996 to 2001. Although that was higher than the national average of four per cent, it was down considerably from the 13.5 per-cent growth of the first half of the '90s.
But inside those numbers the interesting trends for the region were the way the biggest centres -- downtown Vancouver and the edge cities -- kept drawing population, pulling people away from smaller suburbs.
For regional planners, there was some heartening news in the numbers that appear to show that population has increased in some areas adjacent to SkyTrain lines. Areas close to the Joyce Station, Metrotown, New Westminster, and downtown have all grown by 20 per cent and more.
But it was discouraging, too, for them to see the amount of growth in areas where growth can only mean sprawl.
"There's been enormous growth in Surrey and a lot of that is spread across the municipality. That is a challenge," said Hugh Kellas, the administrator for regional development with the Greater Vancouver regional district.
Surrey's general manager for planning and development, Murray Dinwoodie, acknowledged the census statistics showed that Surrey's biggest boom areas were in the southeast sector, rather than in the north Surrey area where the SkyTrain and theoretical town centre are.
But, he said, that's just one five-year piece of a long history.
"The pattern is something different than what the long-term pattern is hoped to be."
On the other hand, some parts of the district's Livable Region strategy seems to be working. Residential growth has appeared along SkyTrain lines and around some of the designated town centres, Kellas said.
That is encouraging, since the region's plan to have more office space concentrated in those town centres has not worked out as well, with an overwhelming number of businesses choosing to go to business parks instead.
"In other cities, like Toronto, the subway stops attracted residential development first and then the office development came in."
He also noted that the census statistics showed 64 per cent of the new development in the last five years was in the "growth concentration area" the district wants it to go.
That's an improvement over the 60-per-cent figure from the last five years.
© Copyright 2002 Vancouver Sun
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