First things first: “Coffee?” asks Gordon Price and, puttering around his kitchen, he produces a fancy coffee-shop-worthy latte.
The 66-year-old former city councillor is still recovering from a gruelling 12-hour surgery in early December to treat cancer of the appendix, but, in characteristic fashion, the outspoken transit advocate uses the opportunity to extol the benefits of a car-free life.
“I went into this and I’m coming out of it in good physical state because I’ve led an active lifestyle,” Price said. “[Vancouver] is designed for activity: I live two and a half kilometres from work, between the West End and Harbour Centre. It’s perfect cycling distance.”
Since 2005, Price has been director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, a continuing education program for planners and municipal staff on urban planning issues. But while on leave he has handed over the reins to Andy Yan, a planner with Bing Thom Architects and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia.
Yan, 40, has become known for his data-driven work examining the issues of vacant condominiums and the rise in homes over the million-dollar mark, but he’s also explored the social cohesion of the city through exercises like mapping voter turnout, the number of trick-or-treaters in Vancouver neighbourhoods and where young people are living.
Price, a Vancouver city councillor from 1986 to 2002, was a vocal proponent of the Yes side in the recent transit funding plebiscite – and has been an opponent of the provincial government’s decision to replace the Massey tunnel with a 10-lane bridge.
Yan and Price agree that transportation and housing are the biggest challenges Metro Vancouver faces now.
Price said, “Whether you look at the transit referendum, the [proposed] Massey bridge, the pressure on the Agricultural Land Reserve, just the sheer pressure of wealth coming into this city and the region, and the ripple effects, it’s one of those moments you know the decisions that are made will be generationally consequential.”
From Price’s point of view, the “livable region” planning decisions that were undertaken in the 1990s and supported by politicians like Gordon Campbell and Mike Harcourt are now being undermined by policy-makers who seem to be more inspired by the highway-building ethos of the 1960s Phil Gaglardi era.
Meanwhile, Yan has been pointing out for years that the meteoric rise in home prices has become completely disconnected from local incomes, a trend that poses an economic and social risk to Metro Vancouver.
Yan and Price both have deep roots in Vancouver and have lived in their respective neighbourhoods for decades. Price has lived in the West End since moving to Vancouver from Victoria in 1978. It was an era when density equalled social decay in most people’s minds. But Price didn’t see things that way.
“I got fascinated by these cities, places like the West End, New York and San Francisco, right into the heart of these cities because … that’s where the gay culture was,” Price said. “You could meet people and you could stay with them, and they tended to have places in the heart of these cities that were going through tumultuous change.”
Rob Kruyt
Truth and consequences
Yan is a third-generation Vancouverite who grew up and still lives in the East Vancouver neighbourhood of Hastings-Sunrise. His father briefly owned a restaurant in Chinatown and then worked for Canada Post; his mother worked in a bakery on Annacis Island.
“It shows you the possibilities of having a good, stable blue-collar job in Vancouver,” Yan said. “And it allowed my dad to raise three children and have a house and send them all to university.”
Yan is concerned that the “invisible” social fabric of the city that made that upward mobility possible is now under considerable pressure.
“Whether it’s ranging from disinvestment to not being appreciated,” he said, listing schools, community centres and parks as examples, “it’s taken as an entitlement as opposed to something we need to support and build together.”
Yan’s work has at times caused discomfort. An analysis he did last year, showing that most of the multimillion-dollar houses for sale in Vancouver’s Dunbar neighbourhood were being purchased by buyers from mainland China, was criticized by Vancouver’s mayor as having “racist tones.” Yan stands by the study, which he says is methodologically sound.
“I like to think that one of my roles in the City Program is to show truth and consequences,” Yan said. “What is the data telling us? And what are some of the consequences of these decisions for our community and our leaders?”
On both the transit funding and housing affordability issues, Yan and Price say there has been little leadership from the provincial government. The transit funding plebiscite required by the province failed, leaving the region in transit limbo with falling service levels.
When it comes to housing speculation, the B.C. government has been reluctant to do anything other than encourage first-time homebuyers through tax credits, while Vancouver’s municipal leaders have also had little to offer, Price said.
“We’ve been overtaken, though, by the speed and the nature of the global economy,” Price said. “It has accelerated the pressure on us. You can feel this tangible sense of loss that’s being translated into anger, some real forces below the surface that are very disturbing.”
That’s where Yan hopes the City Program can help, by engaging planning professionals and the public in informed conversations.
“There’s a lot of noise these days but not too much signal, and I’d like to think the City Program is one of those signals,” Yan said.
@jenstden
