highrises -- general

[John Zeger]

Architect and urbanist Constantine Doxiades commented on highrises:

"My greatest crime was the construction of high-rise buildings. The most successful cities of the past were those where people and buildings were in a certain balance with nature. But high-rise buildings work against nature, or, in modern terms, against the environment. High-rise buildings work against man himself, because they isolate him from others, and this isolation is an important factor in the rising crime rate. Children suffer even more because they lose their direct contacts with nature, and with other children. High-rise buildings work against society because they prevent the units of social importance -- the family ... the neighborhood, etc. -- from functioning as naturally and as normally as before. High-rise buildings work against networks of transportation, communication, and of utilities, since they lead to higher densities, to overloaded roads, to more extensive water supply systems -- and, more importantly, because they form vertical networks which create many additional problems -- crime being just one of them."

[Rick Shea]

I see that many of the people posting at Castanet, and many people in Kelowna, are in favor of highrises as a "solution" to our population pressures. I note as well that a small majority in the unscientific poll at Castanet are opposed to limits to highrise heights.

In keeping with that spirit, I therefore have a proposal that will resolve the issue of land shortage as well:

The recently-approved 26-storey highrise will accommodate approximately 470 people, so, to accommodate the doubling of Kelowna's population over the next 24 years, why not construct one highrise that is six thousand and eighty-five storeys high (110000/470*26). Think of the green space this will preserve!

See, simple mathematics and simple thinking have a solution for every problem.

[John Zeger]

Actually, when I worked at the Edmonton Regional Planning Commission as a member of the Edmonton Region Growth Study team, they fed some data into a computer using a "smart growth" model of how to distribute population growth. The computer's chosen solution was for one highrise structure of infinite height to be located in the central core of Edmonton. The recommendations of the Edmonton Region Growth Study are now collecting dust on a shelf somewhere and the Edmonton Regional Planning Commission has been disbanded and no longer exists. Could this be poetic justice?

[Rick Shea]

Well, this just gets better and better.

With a highrise of infinite height, we could house everyone on this planet as well as all future growth. We could turn the rest of the world into parks and greenspace (okay, maybe a golf course or two as well).

Now, that's real progress. Who says that "smart growth" can't solve our problems?

[westman]

You guys are being sarcastic right. Because Highrises do leave alot of green space alon and if we encourage people to bike ,walk or public transportize we're good.

[Rick Shea]

westman said:

You guys are being sarcastic right. Because Highrises do leave alot of green space alon and if we encourage people to bike ,walk or public transportize we're good.

I certainly agree with that last statement, which is why I often cycle or walk the 8 kilometers to work. It's healthy in so many different ways.

The experience from other areas is that highrises do not in fact stop the destruction of green space, although they may delay it a bit. After we build a highrise, then what?

The property for the newly-approved complex at the old CN station could have been converted into a lovely park and green space, rather than paved over and loaded with concrete. Now, that's saving green space.

If the objective really is to preserve green space, then there really is only one permanent solution. Clearly, that objective is only a secondary one here in Kelowna, as it is in so many other places in the world. If sustainability truly means being able to do what we're doing indefinitely, and with no negative impact on future generations, I think we have to begin looking at other ways of doing things, and soon.

[John Zeger]

Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, Ph. D. (architect and planner) on highrises:

"The architectural scale and proportions of the facade design of surrounding buildings, their overall height, vertical and horizontal dimensions must be scaled to human proportions and human use. Windows and balcony details must be designed to facilitate social interaction between inside and outside.... The possibility of interaction between inside and outside is extended also to upper floors by the provision of balconies on the second, third and even fourth floors. But beyond the fifth or sixth floor the distance makes it impossible to conduct a conversation, call to a friend, or even recognize an acquaintance. For this reason five or six storeys is the limit of a human scale building." -- Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, Livable Cities

[Rick Shea]

I find it revealing that, in characterizing Kelowna as an adolescent city on the cusp of adulthood (“City nears adulthood”, The Daily Courier, April 4, 2007), Gordon Price is not quoted even once as using the word “community.”

Price comments with regard to highrises that “height is irrelevant.” Price apparently doesn’t know that more height means longer shadows and more views blocked in a hillside community. Price apparently doesn’t realize that more people means more cars, more demands for transit, more crowding and congestion, more noise, more crime, more pollution, more disputes over scarce resources, and so on. By his logic, we could just go ahead and build a 6000 storey highrise in downtown Kelowna and be done with it.

As a former Vancouver city councillor and director of the City Program as SFU, Price must certainly be aware of the Canadian Policy Research Network’s 2006 report “Social Sustainability in Vancouver.” Despite all the highrises in Vancouver, despite efforts to create mixed use neighbourhoods, despite the availability of some low cost housing, the report states that Vancouver “has recently been identified as having one of the least affordable housing markets in the western world,” and as having one of the highest poverty rates in Canada.

With particular regard to highrises and density, the report makes the following points:

$ Residents of multi-family, compared with single-family homes (...) report greater marital and parent-child conflict, and high-rise housing has been associated with less socially supportive relationships with neighbours.
$ Elevated noise levels, typically from transportation, other people, and music, have been associated with children’s reading problems and intellectual deficiencies, long-term memory problems, elevated blood pressure, and motivation.
$ Households on streets with higher traffic volume interact less with their neighbours relative to those residing on less congested streets.
$ Close proximity to street traffic, in addition to raising the risk of pediatric injuries, is correlated with restrictions in outdoor play among 5-year-olds, smaller social networks for these children, and diminished social and motor skills.

This noise and crowding, the paradoxical lack of interaction with neighbours, and the associated social ills, are apparently what Price refers to as “vibrancy.” No wonder that, despite Vancouver’s efforts to develop mixed use neighbourhoods in the downtown, families tend to avoid living in those areas.

Developers are not “selling lifestyle with nature and all the urban amenities to both the people who will buy their homes and the existing neighbourhood,” as Price claims in a fit of propagandic fervor. Developers are pocketing profits, and even more profits with higher densities, as they cover over nature, tear apart neighbourhoods, making housing even more unaffordable, and driving away the very people who built our community, because they can no longer afford to live here, or because they can no longer stand the carnage.

Highrises stand as headstones for our neighbourhoods and our community.

[John Zeger]

Price calls Kelowna "an adolescent city on the cusp of adulthood" and the implicit suggestion is that Vancouver has achieved adulthood and already is where Kelowna should be heading. I agree that because of the policiies of Kelowna city planners and politicians that our city is moving towards becoming a Vancouver on lake, but I think that would be a mistake and personally don't want to see it going there.

It seems that Vancouver planners are a haughty lot continually beating their chests and telling everyone how wonderful the city planning there is and how every other city in the world should emulate them. The Vancouver downtown is characterized by very high densities achieved by erecting tall and narrow highrises. The densities in Vancouver are so high that they have exceeded those of Manhattan. This combination of high density through tall, thin highrises has been termed "the Vancouver model" or "Vancouverism" and has created some problems for that city.

Among the problems is the creation of a uniformly upper-income downtown of expensive condominiums thereby pushing middle and lower income residents and families with children to other parts of the city. The architecture has become very uniform as well with one critic calling it "a sterile row of glassy towers." The downtown has become ripe for speculation which pushes real estate values even higher with another observer estimating that fifty percent of condominium properties there are purchased for speculation. As it is more profitable to develop the land for these luxury condos, the proliferation of those units has even pushed commercial uses out of the downtown thus violating one of the cardinal rules of the "smart growth" philosophy namely, that development be of mixed use.

It is sad that our leaders in Kelowna are moving the city towards becoming another Vancouver using the latter as a model for how things should be done. Kelowna is thereby losing its unique identity and setting itself up for all the problems that Vancouver has as a result of creating a very high density downtown.

www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature177.htm
www.vancouverreview.com/past-vancouverism.html

[John Zeger]

Although this project wasn't accepted in San Diego (where they do have some standards, after all) I think it probably would fly in Vancouver or even here in Kelowna as an outstanding example of "the Vancouver model." www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070707-9999-1m7tower.html

[John Zeger]

Is the answer to the lack of developable land in Kelowna building a lot of highrises? Maybe some of the bright lights at city hall should look into building "strat houses" here. In fact, perhaps one would make a good location for a new city hall. www.weeklyworldnews.com/top_story/34

[John Zeger]

A recent article (March 1, 2007) in the journal Architectural Science Review on the impacts of highrises on residents concludes:

A full account of architectural science must include empirical findings about the social and psychological influences that buildings have on their occupants. Tall residential buildings can have a myriad of such effects. This review summarizes the results of research on the influences of high-rise buildings on residents' experiences of the building, satisfaction, preferences, social behavior, crime and fear of crime, children, mental health and suicide. Most conclusions are tempered by moderating factors, including residential socioeconomic status, neighborhood quality, parenting, gender, stage of life, indoor density, and the ability to choose a housing form. However, moderators aside, the literature suggests that high-rises are less satisfactory than other housing forms for most people, that they are not optimal for children, that social relations are more impersonal and helping behavior is less than in other housing forms, that crime and fear of crime are greater, and that they may independently account for some suicides. (author: Robert Gifford, Department of Psychology and School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria)

[John Zeger]

I have created a new networking website extolling the benefits of human scale architecture and development and bringing awareness to the numerous problems caused by high-rises. It can be found at www.humanscale.ning.com.