Residential housing buildings with ground level commercial units on East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver on June 13.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
From strategic points, tourists and residents have had the carefully protected ability to see the sweeping vista of Quebec City’s historic skyline, Toronto’s iconic city hall, the Citadel in Halifax, the bucolic Mont-Royal in Montreal or the grandeur of Vancouver’s North Shore mountains.
But those city-defining views are being fought over more than ever as planners and politicians struggle to make room for new housing, office space, bridges and more into their rapidly transforming urban areas.
Formerly sacrosanct protected views are now being re-evaluated or simply ignored as cities and provinces make moves to allow much more density in their central areas, said professor emeritus Christina Cameron, the former Canada Research Chair on Built Heritage at the Université de Montreal.
“It’s very hard in the period we’re in,” she said.
It’s emerging as an issue in Quebec City, where the premier’s insistence on a third new bridge across the St. Lawrence River risks intruding in the viewscape of the old city for those looking across the river.
Because Old Quebec is designated as a World Heritage site by the United Nations, UNESCO “invites” governments to let the agency know about new construction “which may affect the outstanding universal value of the property.” Germany’s Dresden Elbe Valley was removed from the UNESCO list in 2009 after the country built a four-lane bridge.
In Vancouver earlier this month, a majority of councillors agreed to some of the most significant alterations to that city’s view-protection rules since they were created in 1989.
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The proposal for change to what are called the city’s “view cones” included eliminating 14 from the list of 38 protected views, some of them because trees or bushes have grown up in front, and amending 11 others, sometimes by reducing the width of the view.
The alterations set off a highly polarized debate between one group saying Vancouver needs to adapt to new needs and another saying short-sighted politicians are selling out to property developers.
To those with a historical perspective on the issue, that kind of black-and-white approach doesn’t help.
“I think as the crises our cities face – a housing crisis, a climate crisis – we have to be willing to re-assess our values,” said Brent Toderian, the former Vancouver city-planning director who initiated a public conversation in 2010 about potential changes to the view cones.
“But we have to recognize that public views have a value, even in a housing crisis.”
Making a change to something so symbolic in the city should come with a conversation that allows for a careful analysis of which of Vancouver’s previously established 38 views are meaningful and which ones provide a very small benefit in comparison to the loss of housing or workspace it costs, he said.
That didn’t happen this time, Mr. Toderian said.
“I can’t think of another example of a policy so significant, so long-standing, so important in its original vision, that was changed so quickly.”
The Vancouver change was signalled early when Mayor Ken Sim said, shortly after being elected: “Vancouver does not have a view-cone crisis. In Vancouver, we have a housing crisis.”
Those alterations to the protected views will mean that hundreds of properties throughout the downtown and central Broadway area are able to be redeveloped higher or wider than previously allowed. That could potentially produce as much 20-million extra square metres of development over the next 100 years, the staff report said.
The changes will affect major sites like Northeast False Creek, the Downtown Eastside, the St. Paul’s Hospital site now owned by Concord Pacific, the Main Street SkyTrain station and Broadway Plan zone.
About half of the 30-some speakers who appeared at city hall argued against the changes, saying council was taking away a valued public benefit.
“I feel lucky to have grown up in a city that protects public views. This will simply allow the developer to pad their profits,” Russell Chiong said. Others, such as former city councillor Colleen Hardwick and Chinatown activist Melody Ma, echoed that idea, adding that all the new space would provide very few benefits, like affordable housing, for Vancouverites.
But many speakers, including several from the development industry, said that the city has changed a lot since the first view-cone policy was adopted three decades ago and it needed modifications to allow for more housing, job space and hotels.
One advocate from the pro-housing community group Vancouver Area Neighbours Association, Bobo Eyrich, also argued that there are hidden downsides to sticking to a rigid view policy, mentioning a social-housing building downtown that had to be seriously reduced in capacity to comply.
“That is just one example of the public cost of these view cones.”
But Mr. Toderian and Professor Cameron said a city’s important views are valuable to residence, but that value – beyond political posturing and crisis urgency – doesn’t get captured by technical calculations of view “cones.”
“It’s very emotional how we anchor ourselves in place,” Prof. Cameron said.
“The cone perspective is such a limited thing. People walk through space and views are important from multiple perspectives. You can’t put that in a box. The better approach is to establish what the multiple perspectives are and then dialogue.”
Mr. Toderian noted views aren’t something to be changed lightly because, as many speakers pointed out to council, once a view is gone, there’s no way to get it back.
“Views contribute to your mental map of the city so you’re not nowhere,” he said.
“There’s a competitive business case to be made for beauty.”