a new debate on highrises

[CRCP]

Member's posts follow:

[John Zeger]

Council's decision on the 26 storey highrise has sparked a new debate on the appropriateness of highrises for this community and if there should be a height limit on them. CRCP has always maintained that highrises are not appropriate for this community as they violate our sense of place, our identification with our natural surroundings such as the mountains and lake, and that they aggravate traffic congestion by sharply increasing local densities while also having negative social impacts by encouraging isolated lifestyles with few community connections. These are among many other objections CRCP has with highrises.
For a more complete listing go to www.saveparadise.com and click on the Highrises page.

On the day after the council decision on the 26 storey highrise in the North End, Castanet conducted a revealing interview with Mayor Sharon Shepherd and City Manager Ron Mattiussi on the subject of highrises. When asked if we want highrises here in Kelowna Shepherd seemed to want to sweep the subject under the carpet saying "The highrises are here. They have occurred. ... It's too late to debate whether we should have highrises."

Personally, I disagree. I think that because a few highrises have been constructed in the city, it doesn't mean that we should continued to build these ugly, anti-social monstrosities. I know that Mayor Shepherd wishes that this issue would go away, but it's not going to go away and there seems to be more opposition every time a new one goes up as locals who appreciate the beauty of our surroundings are having a hard time watching these structures which interfere with our natural landscape go up.

Commenting on highrises along the waterfront, Shepherd said that if you can have more green space around the bases of the highrises, allow enough space between the highrises so that some sightlines remain, and if the highrises are interesting (I don't know what her idea of an interesting highrise is?) then they are o.k. Our mayor seems to be seriously out of touch with public sentiment on this one as the Kelowna Citizens Survey (2006) revealed that 80% of the public did not feel that highrises are appropriate on the lakefront.

When asked if there should be a limit to the height of highrises, Shepherd responded that their limit depends on engineering ability and she didn't offer any suggested limit indicating that any height is fine with her as long as they are safe. Gadzooks! Is Shepherd suggesting that if engineers could design a 50 storey highrise for the city that that notion would be fine with her? Having heard all of her comments during the Castanet interview, I for one am looking for somewhere else to park my vote for mayor in 2008.

[Rick Shea]

News Flash! Late-breaking news on this project.

Kelowna's Mayor Shepherd and Councilor Robert Hobson have just announced that Kelowna needs another 234 26-storey highrises in the downtown area in less than 24 years.

Shepherd and Hobson's insistence that new growth be directed to densifying the downtown core prompted them to do the mathematics. At the current growth rate of about 3.4%, Kelowna's current population of 110000 will double in less than 24 years. To accommodate the additional 110000 people, given that the currently proposed highrise's 191 units will accommodate approximately 470 people, the conclusion that we need another 234 highrises is inescapable.

Shepherd's comment on the conclusion was that, as long as it can be engineered, we should just go ahead and do it. Hobson simply continued to chant "density, density, density."

[Rick Shea]

Sent to the Courier today. Yes, this does repeat something posted in another thread, but it's worth saying again.

Dear Sir:

In his November 16th editorial, Tom Wilson repeats the “smart growth” mantra that we should grow “up, not out,” and comments that “a densely populated downtown leads to healthy businesses, safer streets and a vibrancy that befits one of the province’s biggest cities.” I would like to refer Mr. Wilson to a recent analysis of the province’s biggest city, where density is increasing significantly. That analysis states the following:

Housing costs have spiralled beyond the reach of middle-income individuals and families,
non-market housing for Vancouver’s most marginalized residents has been evaporating, and
homelessness has more than doubled in recent years. Housing affordability issues are also
forcing low-income families to congregate in neighbourhoods that, at best, lack the features
and amenities that benefit and support children and parents and, at worst, place children at
risk on many dimensions.

And that analysis points out that the resulting economic growth has led to even further disparities:

The benefits of economic growth in Vancouver have not been shared by all citizens. Rises in
income have been increasingly concentrated among the wealthiest echelons of Vancouverites, escalating the disparity of incomes between rich and poor. Between 1991 and 2001, only the wealthiest 5% of families enjoyed any increase in real income; the remaining 95% experienced a decrease, and over half of individuals and families experienced a decrease of at least 20%. In addition, the income gap for families grew from 7.8 to 12.8, an increase more than double that in Canada as a whole. The richest 10% of families had incomes of $127,000 compared to $9,900 for the poorest 10% of families. Among unattached individuals, the income gap grew by 100% over the 10-year period, as compared with an average of 33% among other large cities.

(“Social Sustainability in Vancouver,” The Canadian Policy Research Network)

In Kelowna, the current rate of population growth is a bit over 3%. At that rate, Kelowna’s population will double in about 24 years. To accommodate the additional 110000 people, we would need about 234 highrises similar to the 26-storey one just approved -- that’s about 10 per year. Even at a more modest 2% growth rate, we would need those highrises over about a 35 year period, or around 7 per year.

Mr. Wilson clearly favors a “concentration of architecturally appealing highrises downtown.” Two hundred and thirty-four such highrises is quite a concentration, but that’s not even the main issue. The most important issue is the one already being faced by other cities which have implemented “smart growth” policies: after building as much dense development as possible, where do we put even more people after that? The experience shows that green space still disappears, traffic congestion and pollution continue to worsen, and the supposed benefits of “smart growth” simply vanish under the bulldozer.

The most important question to ask anyone who proposes “growing up” is “Then what? What do we do when, in a very short time, we have grown up as much as possible?”

After that, we might consider questions such as “Can we continue this forever? When must it stop? Could it stop while we still have some semblance of quality of life, and still have some surplus capacity in our resources? Why do we continue to do this at all, when it is clearly not benefiting most people?”

Sincerely,
Rick Shea

[John Zeger]

I suspect that the reason that Shepherd is saying "it's too late to debate whether we should have highrises" is because she doesn't want public opposition to highrises in the next areas in the City where they are being proposed, namely, the KSS site and the Capri area.