Deborah Curran
Sun
The Agricultural Land Reserve and housing affordability have generated significant discussion in 2006.
Most recently, on Nov. 29 in The Vancouver Sun, Philip Hochstein decried the lack of affordable housing in Greater Vancouver. No one can argue with his characterization of the problem and the need for more affordable housing.
However, beyond his statement of need, Hochstein’s proposed solution regrettably resembles a 1950s style of urban development.
He suggests that one of the answers to creating more housing supply is to build on the ALR and Green Zone in the Lower Mainland. As modern cities the world over are discovering, sprawl — which is what Hochstein is advocating — is not the answer. Smart growth and density are.
Greater Vancouver still has a large amount of underused urban space, which presents an opportunity to densify to create more affordable housing.
Indeed, this vision for compact, complete communities that includes significant regional farmlands has been affirmed by the public time and again over the past decade. It is clear that Greater Vancouverites have said No to following the inefficient, low-density example of Los Angeles-style sprawl.
Starting with the Livable Regions Strategic Plan, and being affirmed with the CityPlus process and myriad public opinion polls, residents understand that more compact development is a more efficient way to improve housing affordability and quality of life.
For example, in 1997 a Viewpoints Research public opinion survey reported that 72 per cent of British Columbians believe it should be difficult to remove land from the ALR and 90 per cent believe that government should protect farmers and farmland by limiting urban development.
Hochstein’s suggestion to build on natural green space and agricultural lands as a strategy to combat affordable housing is short-sighted.
Starting with the ALR, the agricultural community in B.C. produces the most blueberries, cranberries and raspberries of any province in the country. The ALR is a non-renewable resource that generates more than $2.3 billion in gross annual farm gate receipts, pays $405 million in wages and has a $2.11-billion impact on B.C.’s gross domestic product.
In the past 30 years, 36,000 hectares of agricultural land in B.C. have been converted to urban uses, and at present we produce only 50 per cent of our food needs in the province.
The ALR, a mere five per cent of the land base in the province, is our working landscape for food security in this era of rising oil costs. When compared with affordable housing, food security and feeding a growing population are equally important long-term needs, or slices of the quality-of-life pie.
From a supply and demand perspective, research from the United States over the past decade has shown that rising land prices are more closely tied to population increases (meaning emigration and immigration) and construction costs, not to constraints in the supply of land.
Prices rise equally quickly and reach thresholds of non-affordability in places with few or no growth controls (e.g. Seattle, Calgary, Toronto, Houston, Denver.)
This research has also shown that those places with limited land supply, such as Portland and Boulder, have the most successful housing affordability strategies that reflect the smart-growth principle of being able to live in the same neighbourhood through all stages of one’s life.
Finally, one cannot ignore the simple fact that land cost per residential unit decreases as density increases.
The citizens of Greater Vancouver and the rest of the province have a new vision for moving forward — not backward.
The era of paving over undeveloped land and sprawling across every metre of agricultural land is over. Sprawl is not the answer and the ALR is no longer an urban reserve.
Our solutions lie in developing smart, compact, well-designed communities that include green space and local food production.
Deborah Curran is a land use lawyer and founding member of Smart Growth BC, a provincial non-governmental organization that supports the development of compact, complete communities.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
