Transportation arterials, jobs, greenways and urban habitat lead us to imagining a variety of housing forms interacting in relation to a neighbourhood’s unique characteristics. The Connected City: A Home for Everyone, invites you to conceptualize new affordable housing opportunities based on forward, outside-the-box thinking.

1. The Connected City: A Home For Everyone

2. The Connected City and You:
Re:THINK HOUSING
The Connected City is a starting place for
rethinking affordable housing within a wider
context.
Transportation arterials, jobs, greenways and
urban habitat lead us to imagining a variety of
housing forms interacting in relation to a
neighbourhood’s unique characteristics.
The Connected City: A Home for Everyone,
invites you to conceptualize new affordable
housing opportunities based on forward,
outside-the-box thinking – thinking that remains
connected to uniqueness of place, relevant to
Vancouver’s collection of neighbourhoods, and
interconnected by a synthesis of arterials.

3. Affordable Housing: Making the Connection
“Vancouver’s economy depends on
attracting and retaining talent.
Affordable housing of all types,
including market rentals, is
essential to the City’s current and
future competitiveness.”
John Tylee, Director of Policy and Research
Vancouver Economic Development Commission

4. The Connected City: The City Players
Elected Officials may mandate innovation of Civil Servants and Departmental
1 best housing affordability practices, as well as 6
regulatory efficiencies/responsiveness while creatively Administrators who can substantively influence
utilizing civic landholdings/assets. application for approvals through the interpretation of
prevailing regulations and policies. Responsible for
reconciling market driven initiative with local aspirations
2 Development Industry may collectively reflected in Council approved policy in a way that reinforces
influence the volume of "residential product" available at the identity of respective neighbourhoods and city overall.
any point in time, the cost of land with respect to supply
and demand, acceptable soft costs including marketing
Construction Industry are well positioned to
and commissions, the responsiveness of product to
demographic trends and ethnicity, the quality of exterior
7 inform the market generally about building systems,
building systems, the quality of interior fixturing and product quality and longevity, locally available products and
integrated private amenities, and most importantly systems, and certain economies that might be helpful
whether the market is interested in taking the short or towards housing costs.
long view with respect to affordability challenges.
Financial Industry can collectively influence
Design Professionals, when given creative 8
3 lending practices for large and small, development
initiatives while also setting profitability thresholds/
opportunities, can produce innovative projects that
reflect their ability to reconcile varying, and competing, expectations for return on investment.
design and technical constraints.
Academics are uniquely positioned to challenge the
Real Estate Marketing Industry is the 9 design of cities and can be responsive and informed with
4 intermediary between the risk takers (Development respect to relevant precedents and achievements that may
Industry/Design Professionals/Financial Industry) and influence local outcomes.
The Market.
Local Community knows the most about local The Market prefers certainty over innovation and is
5 context, urban pattern, history, what been lost and is 10 conflicted with respect to its focus on the creation of
missing, and opportunities for placemaking reflective of investment vehicles vs creating more personal attachment
distinct neighbourhood identity. to “homes” in neighbourhoods for the longer term.

5. The Connected City: Arterials
Concept 1
Interconnected Places:
Use the framework of our arterials
to both connect and distinguish
urban places
Vancouver’s existing urban structure,
based on the original streetcar city
pattern, is a gift. This rational grid
provides an armature for connectivity,
proximity and immediacy. While simple in
its orientation and spacing, the grid
allows for distinctive opportunities for
compact living across the city. The grid
framework can accommodate a doubling
of people and jobs, while enhancing the
“signature of place” in our city. In this
way, life in the city becomes more
convenient as it becomes more
sustainable - everything is much closer at
hand within much more diverse and
complete neighbourhoods. As Vancouver
adds population and jobs it creates a “city
of connected yet distinct
neighbourhoods”.

6. The Connected City: Jobs
Concept 2
Strategic Green Jobs:
Locate and integrate thousands
of new green jobs.
Our prevailing urban industrial lands
enjoy immediate access to water
andrail services. Like the urban grid
structure, these lands are a gift.
Vancouver’s pattern of large,
contiguous employment areas
connected to the arterial grid and
interwoven with dramatic natural
features, will strategically position our
city for green economy
competitiveness. This plan celebrates
this opportunity and also introduces
new “smart jobs zones” in proximity to
the airport and the University of British
Columbia. This concept brings green
jobs ‘close to home’ for Vancouverites.

7. The Connected City: Greenways
Concept 3
A Green Grid:
An environmental network equal
to the transportation network.
Building on the achievement of
Vancouver’s distinctive greenways, this
plan concept expands the idea by
interconnecting all parks, schools,
natural features and local food
opportunities through a system of
“green streets”. This simple, and easily
implementable strategy, is actually not
new. The original streetcar city
anticipated this idea when schools and
parks were initially assigned locations
generally equidistant within the hearts of
residential districts. It will require
strategically located streets be re
purposed for green and social functions.
Creating green streets will help build
social capital through participatory
involvement at the block scale while at
the same time creating continuity
throughout the city.

8. The Connected City: Habitat
Concept 4
Continuous Habitat:
A major new system of accessible
natural areas and parks in
underserved districts.
We are a city in nature with continuous
water adjacency on three sides. Given this
gift, we have a responsibility to
demonstrate best practices for the creation
of new habitat towards the enhancement
of biodiversity in an urban setting. Our plan
declares that this can be done! Our
concept highlights zones of latent
opportunity where connected networks of
natural areas and parks could be restored,
expanded, and linked. We recommend the
commissioning of required technical work
to more clearly identify and implement
these critical locations involving additional
stream daylighting, augmented by more
practical green streets centered on
continuous bioswales. The result of this
initiative will be the creation of a world
class network of new, revived, and
expanded green amenity features in
underserved neighbourhoods.

9. The Connected City: Synthesis
Synthesis. Vancouver 2050:
A Convenience Truth
The synthesis of these four simple ideas is an elegant
and complex, yet clearly implementable plan
framework. It will accommodate a doubling of our
population while achieving an 80% reduction in GHG
production. We have anticipated an aging population
in our work and have accommodated this shift
through providing thousands of age-appropriate units
in highly accessible and convenient locations. We
have exploited latent opportunities for ecological
restoration to create a new interconnected green
framework “signature” for under-served parts of the
city. We have more evenly distributed work places so
they will be closer to homes and synergize with other
uses. The tens of billions of dollars of new investment
represented here provides the leverage to insure
affordability goals are met and that enough capital is
generated to fund new public amenities in measure
with population growth and demographic change. In
short, the plan shows a way to save the planet by
making our city more convenient; a more convenient
city within which to move, to shop, to work, and to
raise a family - all the while reducing our
environmental footprint. The Greenest City truly is the
Convenient City.

10. Evolving: History of Vancouver Form
Changes to one area of the city do not happen in
isolation of space and time. By looking at the
history of the city, it is clear that population
characteristics influence city development. It is
also clear that the character of Vancouver’s
diverse neighborhoods is strong. As we turn
towards the future, it is imperative that we
consider the legacy of Vancouver’s history and
the character of it’s neighbourhoods.

11. Evolving: New Vancouver Neighbourhoods

12. Evolving: New Vancouver Neighbourhoods

13. Connected City Housing Form:
On Arterial Focused
“While simple in its orientation and spacing, the grid
allows for distinctive opportunities for compact living
across the city. The grid can accommodate a
doubling of people and jobs, while enhancing the
“signature of place” in our city.” (A Convenience Truth)

14. Connected City Housing Form:
On Arterial Focused

15. Connected City Housing Form:
Off Arterial Focused
The Spaces In Between
New, small-scale housing types for areas just off arterials seek to
reflect single family attributes, affordability and developability, and
neighbourliness. (Patricia St. Michel)
Source: Patricia St. Michel

16. Connected City Housing Form:
Off Arterial Focused
The Spaces In Between

17. The Connected City and You:
re: THINK Design Competition
GO TO:
vancouver.ca/rethink to submit your ideas on how
to Connect the City with new Affordable Housing
re:THINK Resources:
An Exploration of Housing Types:
http://dev.vancouver.ca/housing/rethink/pdf/NewHousingTypes2003.pdf
A Convenience Truth:
http://www.urbanstudio.sala.ubc.ca/2010/book%20templates.html
Elements db: http://elementsdb.sala.ubc.ca/