Downtown 2020 residential housing report
The Downtown Victoria 2020 goup has released a report on their vision of living in Downtown. Took me long enough to realize it. The 2020 group seems to have some heavy hitters supporting it, so it will be a force in creating a vision for Victoria's future. My first concern on reading it was the listing of the participants:
- Mark Hornell (Chair) CRD Regional Planning Services
- Bill Taylor YM/YWCA of Greater Victoria
- Deborah Curran West Coast Environmental Law Association
- Gregory Damant D’Ambrosio Architecture and Urbanism
- Rob Hunter Devon Properties Ltd.
- Lee King Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- Tom Moore Victoria Cool Aid Society
- Pamela Madoff City of Victoria
- Max Tomaszewski Amadon Group
- Tony James Warner James Architects
- Henry Kamphof Capital Region Housing Corporation
Not one single small business owner. That concerns me. My second concern followed shortly after that when I read the objectives:
- A downtown area resident population of 30,000
- Enough families to support community facilities
- A population profile that reflects the region
- Residential and mixed use conversion of vacant space in heritage buildings
- Affordable housing for people living on low incomes and the homeless
Looking at that I realize the second thing that bothers me. Quite obviously there aren't any people that live downtown. News flash. Families don't live downtown. Singles and young couples live downtown, but very few families. We aren't going to get a population that reflects the region. No more would I live in the suburbs will suburbanites live downtown. We have different priorities. What we need to do is create a more vibrant downtown, not make the downtown into the suburbs.
The third thing that is bothering me about this report is how much they've expanded the definition of the downtown core. Knowing that there is a movement to recreate the BIA that we killed not too long ago. Have a look see:
The whole document disappointed me. All they are doing is setting very laudable goals, without coming up with anything truly relevant to downtown store owners or residents.
posted by Unknown | 10:23 PM
1 Comments:
Honestly, each jurisdiction has the charter obligation and responsibility to provide complete communities, and neglecting the provision of residential land use zones in order to accommodate that focus has resulted in Victoria's employers forced hiring from outside of their community.
Over 75% of all jobs in the CRD are in Victoria, because Victoria concentrated on commercial redevelopment and has not provided it's share of residential accommodations for many decades.
This CRD fact sheds light on why transportation issues are chronic and provided solutions are short lived.
This housing report decision is a step in the right direction, and now Victoria land use planning department staff must correct the imbalance of past decisions and shift to family orientated developments 7 to 15 times the size of the 200 sq.ft. condominiums which Victoria's Planning Department have been embracing in the past.
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