Vancouver EcoDensity hearing draws noisy turnout

Hundreds of people turned out for a public hearing at Vancouver City Hall Tuesday night to have their say on Mayor Sam Sullivan's proposal to transform the city with hisEcoDensity plan.

Even before the meeting began, the council chambers and foyer at city hall were packed with people waiting their turn to speak. Meanwhile outside, many opponents of the plan staged a noisy protest on the front steps.

The idea behindthe plan, announced in June 2006, is to spread Vancouver's rapid population growth more evenly across the whole city, rather than having it concentrated in the downtown core. A major part of the plan is to move away from single-family homes, and densifying all of Vancouver.

But, so far there is little public consensus on the plan, with some saying it's a disguise for developers to build as much as they wish, and others calling it the leading edge of an environmentally friendly vision of the future.

The long list of 144 speakers scheduled to address the council over several nights included former mayor and premier Mike Harcourt, several former councillors, prominent developers and architects.

The first speaker was longtime community activist Dr. Peter Oberlander, considered to be the dean of urban planning in Canada, and creditedwith leading the fight to stop a proposed highway through Vancouver 40 years ago.

"Increased density without appropriate increased amenities is neither useful nor acceptable," warned Oberlander, before endorsing the EcoDensity plan.

"Full speed ahead on your proposal under a Non-Partisan leadership to ensure Vancouver's progressive densification," Oberlander told the council.

But community activist Mel Lehan of Neighbourhoods fora Sustainable Vancouver criticized the plan as development in disguise.

"This document doesn't do it. All it does is create excuses to build towers," Lehan told the council.

And James Burton from Heritage Vancouver worried that older buildings will be forgotten in the rush to increase density.

"We did not want incentives for green design to trump incentives for maintaining the existing buildings that are in perfectly good condition or just need a little bit of repair," he said.

But Vancouver Coun. Suzanne Anton defended the program.

"I actually fundamentally believe that we all want the same thing. We want to do growth right in the city."

The city has conducted public research and found one of EcoDensity's first problems is its name.

City planner Brent Toderian said many are open to the idea of EcoDensity, but are "worried about the politicization of the term."

That may be because opposition councillors rarely say "EcoDensity" without also mentioning that Sullivan tried totrademark the term.