Category Archives: Planning and Development

Tri-Cities towers: built on promises

October 20, 2011 By in Planning and Development, Transit, Skytrain, LRT, Tricities Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Of all the Metro Vancouver suburbs, Port Moody has worked most diligently in the past 15 years to manufacture city-like environments, based on the expectation that rapid transit was coming soon.  Thousands of people are waiting for that first train.

NewPort Village, a pedestrian-oriented ring of retail shops and condos protected from through traffic (some might call it “Whistler-style development”) opened about 1997.  It’s been almost freakishly successful, attracting a cluster of residential towers.

More recently, development jumped to the west side of Ioco Road, where a kind of mini-Yaletown has sprouted up.  In 2009, however, Mayor Joe Trasolini imposed a moratorium on high-density development in Port Moody.  “The population in the last 15 years has doubled . . . we’re being criticized for growing too much without infrastructure in place.” Continue reading →

A regional strategy for Metro Vancouver

August 24, 2011 By in Metro Vancouver, Planning and Development Tags: , Leave a comment

On July 29, 2011, the Metro Vancouver regional authority adopted a strategy to promote a greener, cleaner, neater, sweeter future for the region’s 2.1 million inhabitants.  (Abbotsford and its population of 123,864 is part of Metro for the purposes of regional parks, but not part of this plan.)

The unanimous adoption of the Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy, replacing the “Livable Region” strategy of the mid-1990s, was a big achievement for Metro, with its 22 diverse municipalities. The plan, predictably, is inoffensive in its intentions, and  it has generated little controversy, outside of a procedural wrangle among municipalities over the review formula.

There have been some critics, even passionate critics.  A Vancouver group set up a well-stocked site called MetroVanWatch, although by the time it appeared the municipalities were already in the process of approving the plan.  This site is persuasive in arguing that the Metro authority effectively excluded the general public from influencing the plan after a round of public meetings in 2010.   Continue reading →