Night Music: La Carretera

Housing Policy — Same Horse, Different Jockey?

I am spending the afternoon watching the last gasps of the BC Liberals as the debate on their Throne Speech comes to a conclusion. The assumption is that, some time today, the question will be called and Clark’s government will fail to win the confidence of the House and be forced to resign.  The next step — as is our colonial wont — is up to the Lt. Governor, the Queen’s representative. She can ask the NDP’s John Horgan to form a government with his Green allies, or she can call another election.

As a Liberal Party donor and friend to the Premier, the Lt. Governor, I suspect, will do what Clark wants (but dare not say out loud) and dissolve the House, leaving Clark and her ministers to continue governing while we waste tens of millions of dollars on another exercise in faux democracy. Clark will then run her campaign on the Throne Speech policies which she stole wholesale from the NDP and could well win. I hope I am wrong because another term under the Liberals is hard to contemplate.

That being said, an article in the Mainlander today reminds us that both the Liberals and the NDP are neo-liberal capitalist parties and, on the key question of housing, are not very different:

“The [NDP] platform carries key planks over from previous campaigns, and like the BC Liberals, the 2017 NDP program refuses to tax the rich. Without a genuine source of tax funding and without a plan to intervene into the free market, the NDP-Greens are poised to offer BC a kind of Vision Vancouver 2.0. This means zero social housing targets and no meaningful commitment to rent control. Instead, limited tax dollars will be used to subsidize landlords, homeownership grants, and private developers … By merging market and non-market housing into a single vague policy, and by relying mainly on a strategy of “supply stimulus” and tax breaks (“incentives”) for the private development industry, the NDP has in effect adopted the same policy model as Vision Vancouver.”

It is frankly terrifying to hear Horgan claim that:

“Gregor [Robertson] is speaking up for renters” … So far, Vision’s program has transferred millions of dollars to developers (well over half a billion) without achieving any minimal level of affordability.”

The NDP supports Vision’s Rental100 program even though

“Increased supply has not created affordability, and for a simple reason: developers have used tax cuts to inflate their profits, not to bring down their unregulated housing prices. What we need in BC is not deeper tax cuts for a booming market, but instead new affordable supply and actual rent control.”

The Mainlander article concludes that:

“The NDP’s housing platform is guided by their commitment to property owners’ interests. This is reflected in its refusal to support a progressive taxation system for municipalities. Currently the province enforces a flat tax system for cities, but as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has pointed out, a progressive tax on high-value properties could raise up to $1.7 billion per year in Metro Vancouver alone … As monthly evictions become the norm and thousands of properties continue to sit empty, a change of government feels more like a regime change from one party of capital to another … the NDP-Green alliance means that the “rules of the game” remain the same, with power kept in the hands of those who already have it.”

This is a valuable corrective to the rah-rah rhetoric we have heard from BC’s “left” since the election. I still want to see the BC Liberals defeated — because they are corrupt and saturated by resource fantasies; but the Mainland article reminds us that paradise is not just around the corner even if John Horgan becomes Premier this week.

Image: Na Pali Coast

Night Music: So Much In Love

Commercial & Broadway: A First Review

Last night was the major unveiling of plans for the Safeway site at Commercial & Broadway, a signature piece of the Grandview-Woodland Community Plan over which we have sweated for four years or more.  We knew there would be towers — and boy, are there towers!

[Note that selecting any image will display a larger version]

First, let me say that the event was very well presented, taking over the large hall at the Croatian Cultural Centre, with several dozen display boards around the room explaining various aspects of the project and good-sized models in the centre. The event was generously catered.

The evening began with a 20-minute presentation by a member of the Bing Thom Architects  team who rattled through some interesting design choices and did not ignore the glaring problem of moving a 20,000 sq.ft public plaza from the developers’ site to public land over the Grandview Cut (see earlier discussions here and here).  The presentation made it clear that, because of Safeway’s requirements (see more below), it was impossible to include the plaza on site.

The presenter discussed the problems Bing Thom had with “Vancouverism” — the podium-mounted single point towers so beloved by Brent Toderian and his ilk that now dominate the downtown and are encroaching on the rest of our fair city. He compared a map of population densities extrapolated from the 2016 census in which the highest densities are downtown with a similarly sourced map showing the population density of children which are significantly higher away from downtown. Their idea is to make the Safeway towers more “family friendly.” There was talk of widening corridors in the towers, allowing more windows, terracing the levels, allowing more personalization of front doors etc., and substantial use of greenery throughout the towers. Conceptually, they said, they wanted to take Grandview’s well used residential streets and lanes and simply tip them up on end to create “a vertical village”.

They propose four residential towers ranging in height from 17 to 24 stories “above the retail plinth” which, I guess makes them in reality 20 to 27 stories in height. The proposed FSR is a high 5.7. They will surround a “courtyard” shown in the illustration above as a soccer field. The height was not mentioned during the presentation — I can’t imagine why not — but one of the boards contained the details.

The retail plinth, three or more stories of it, includes Safeway, of course, but in a new and vastly expanded version, along with smaller retail stores at grade along Broadway and the all-important Skytrain connection. It includes, they claim, a huge amount of public space. However, much of that space is a grand concrete staircase (bizarrely compared to Rome’s Spanish Steps!) and a children’s playground that will only be available when the proposed childcare facility (for tower residents) is closed.

 

While I thought the architects’ presentation was interesting, the ending of it threw up one of the issues many of us have with this kind of open house.  They decided that no questions would be asked or answered from the seated audience. Instead, it was noted that there were dozens of project staff in attendance who would be happy to discuss issues. This provoked an outburst from one of our veteran activists who wondered, loudly and quite rightly, why answers could not be shared with the entire audience.  As has become the norm in so many development/planning events, people are required to break up into isolated small groups, thus dramatically (and deliberately) restricting the flow of potentially negative information. I strongly suspect the hand of the expensive PR companies — Brook Pooni and Pottinger Bird — (“devils incarnate” as many now think of them) in this now-standard procedure.

I did take advantage of the attending “experts” to button hole an architect on a couple of matters that concern me. It was said in the presentation and on the boards that Safeway required (demanded?) 55,000 sq.ft on a single level, and that parking be no more than one level away from the store. It is these requirements that have driven much of the design and, in particular, have made it necessary to move the public plaza (a requirement of the Community Plan) away from the site. I asked whether the demands from Safeway were legal contractual requirements in their current lease or were simply what they wanted. After some hesitation, the architect agreed that their lease (which has another forty years to run) was only for the current 38,000 sq.ft. However, if they didn’t get what they wanted there could be no development and Vancouver wouldn’t get the density or the CAC’s they expected. He smiled when I suggested that might suit some residents quite well.

He and I also discussed the Plaza issue. We both agreed (he reluctantly) that, if Safeway stayed at 38,000 sq.ft, or if Safeway could accept a two-level store, than there was plenty enough space on the Safeway site to include the Plaza as written in the Community Plan. We also both agreed that there was no possible noise mitigation possible for the trains going overhead every 45 seconds or so (he suggested we would all “get used” to the noise).  He — in line with the presentation previously given — suggested it would be a great meeting space and useful for events and concerts (perhaps he forgot about the train noise); I suggested it would become a vast concrete empty desert of little value to anyone.

I suspect that, if one is a fan of this kind of huge development, then Bing Thom’s concepts will be welcomed and appreciated; there certainly seems to have been some imagination included in the project, and some serious thought given to moving away from Vancouverism.  However, leaving aside any other problems, 27 storeys is very close to the 30-storey proposal that the neighbourhood wholeheartedly rejected three years ago, a rejection which brought the entire Community Plan process to its knees for a while.

 

And then, as always, there is the process.  While I am pleased that the developers have brought their ideas to the table as early as they have (though the cynic in me wonders how such carefully crafted concepts as those presented last night could simply be abandoned at this point) but the failure to have genuine community dialog last night with everyone listening to the debate foreshadows typical problems ahead.  More specifically, there has been no attempt whatsoever to understand that — regardless of what Vision buffaloed through as a so-called Community Plan — much of the community is opposed to large scale development in our neighbour, and that our viewpoint has to count for as much as Safeway’s.

We vote, they don’t.

 

 

Image: Double Cross

Reminder: Broadway & Commercial Peep Show Tonight

This is a reminder that the owners and developers of the Safeway site at Broadway & Commercial will be showing off their design concepts for tower(s) at that important intersection tonight.  The Open House is at Croatian Cultural Centre and kicks off with a “brief presentation” at 6:00pm. The event goes on until 8:30pm.

There is much to be potentially concerned about with these plans, and it will be interesting to see their take on the question of a public plaza — a design feature included in the Grandview-Woodland Community Plan but which the City has said the owners don’t want on their site.

Fran Lebowitz

A few weeks ago I caught Fran Lebowitz being interviewed on a late night talk show.  I had heard of her but never read any of her work.  She was quite interesting in the interview and I duly ordered a copy of The Fran Lebowitz Reader from the library. I guess others had seen her interview because I was third in line for the only copy. I finally got it last week and began to read.

The book is a series of short magazine-style pieces, reprints of her books Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, some  of which were first published as magazine articles in Interview, Mademoiselle, and British Vogue.  I enjoyed the first few pieces, and I can see why she was considered a sardonic wit, perhaps a new Dorothy Parker. Unfortunately, I quickly became bored with the style and the viewpoint; after a dozen or so pieces, you knew what was coming in the next chapter, and the writing seemed no longer witty but, rather, repetitious and small minded.

I suspect part of the problem is the fact that these were written in the 1970s and 1980s. Our television schedules these days are full of brash, outspoken commentary by highly intelligent women. Compared to them, Lebowitz in this collection comes across as little more powerful than a pre-sensimilla spliff. And, like a forty-year old roach, her writing hasn’t aged well.

That’s a shame because I was looking forward to it.

Night Music: Going To A Town

Happy Birthday Sam!

 

Today is my son’s 41st birthday. Unfortunately, he and I drifted apart some years ago. When I was 41 I was fully estranged from my parents but eventually the family came back together. I hope this will be the same for Sam and me.

Poem: Having

 

I have seen the best minds of my generation squander their extraordinary talents on the marketing of consumer goods and the maintenance of shareholder value.

I have seen them abandon all pretence of worker’s rights at the behest of foreign and domestic bankers, Friedmanites from Chicago and MIT.

I have seen them relegate the environment to the dustbin, a victim in the race for quarterly profits and analysts expectations.

I have seen them treat safety issues as public relations issues, and seen them lobby to lessen their liability.

They have shamed seniors into wearing diapers, taught children how to smoke, and taunted teens into starving themselves to death.

They have sold goods that have killed millions, children, pregnant women, families, clans, tribes and nations, here and around the world.

They have spiked the waters of the masses with a poison called greed.

They have swallowed our ethics and morals and spat them back in our faces as branded goods for which it is right and necessary that we pay to display their logos.

You have contributed to their victory with every discretionary purchase, every dollar saved or spent.

You have accepted their world view with every envious glance, every lottery ticket purchase, every time you have watched a TV program starring “celebrities” or giving away a million dollars.

You have bowed to the inevitable with each ring of the alarm clock, each punch of the work clock, each end-of-week celebration.

You have become your parents, your older sister, your Uncle Frank with his shiny pants, your parents once again.

I have purchased things I could have made myself.

I have allowed my city to become plastered with advertising slogans, from store signs to billboards to the names of buildings and arenas.

I have dressed my children in designer labels, given then Elmo dolls and Flintstone vitamins, and let them choose CocoPops and TV cartoons over papaya and reading for breakfast.

I have enough of everything I need, and yet forever I need more; and

We have accepted all this bullshit, washed it down with the liquid lies of the liberal’s election hoax.

We have time and again made the wrong choice; time and again we have meekly accepted that the choices we are offered are the only choices possible.

We have been active participants in our own kidnapping, paying the ransom over and over again.

We have failed ourselves — and the bastards have won.  At least for now.

 

Snacks Tonight #4

 

Dinner tonight will be a shrimp and sausage paella, but the real treat (I hope) will be this cherry and blackcurrant clafouti.

[select image for a closer look]

Image: City Abstract #2

Night Music: Versace On The Floor

Image: Vancouver from the MOV

Speaking In Tongues

In 1969, I had the delightful experience of working on “Kelly’s Heroes“, a fun movie. We shot it in what was then Yugoslavia and, unlike many location shoots which often last just a week or two, the crew was there for many months. During that extended time, I got to know many local families and was privileged to visit their homes. One of the things that amused me greatly was watching television with them as many of the programs were American shows dubbed into Serbo-Croatian, and they seemed so strange with foreign dialogue.

Yesterday, watching the Throne Speech from Victoria, I experienced a similar disconnect — there was a right wing Socred/Liberal government trying to speak in NDP/Green. Knowing the players involved, little of it made sense, especially as they had been saying quite opposite only a month before, cursing the very policies they were now trying to tell us they supported.

Christy Clark and her clownish crew claim that their deathbed conversion (aka, wholesale flip-flop) is due to “listening to the people.”  This not unreasonably implies that they have not been listening for the last 16 years. The fact is Christy Clark and her people are so scared of losing power — and having their shenanigans exposed — that they are happy to say that black is white and hot is cold; forgetting, of course, that the BC public are just not as stupid as they are.

Clark was also caught openly saying that her entire plan for this session was to embarrass the NDP/Green into supporting them by stealing their policies. We are lucky that both Horgan and Weaver have more backbone than that.

Clark will now sink like a stone. The big-money capitalists that have financed her lavish lifestyle for so long don’t like losers; and that is exactly what she is: a deceitful, unprincipled, lying loser. And may she quickly be forgotten.

 

Night Music: Treat You Better

Today’s the Day

The Socred-Tory-Liberals will today bring forward a Throne Speech that will contain many of the best parts of the NDP and Green platforms (and which the Socreds ran against only two months ago).

The arch-pirate Christy Clark says the opposition will be “embarrassed” to vote against her proposals. But this is a bluff that will be called, and her right-wing regime will sink beneath the waves to the joy of most.

Where the real cynicism will be evident is when Horgan introduces legislation that Clark says she supports in the Queen’s Speech, but which she and her caucus will then vote against as they have so many times before.

This whole charade is nothing but politics, treating the people of BC as if they were dumb. They are not, and they can see through the self-serving meanness of Clark’s wholesale dishonesty.

 

Dates For The Calendar

Here are a few more dates of interesting events/debates at Britannia:

 

• Thursday 22nd June, 6:00pm to 9:00pm, in Gym D

A discussion about the Arts & Culture spaces in the future Britannia. Snacks and refreshments available.

 

• Monday 26th June, 10:00am to 6:00pm, Carving Pavilion (behind the rink)

An all day event to celebrate the naming of the Carving Pavilion. The Naming Ceremony is 10:00am to noon; noon to 1:00pm, community lunch; 1:00pm-6:00pm Open house discussion; 6:00pm Community Feast.

 

• Tuesday 27th June, 5:30pm to 8:00pm, Carving Pavilion

An Indigenous Visioning Workshop to develop ideas for better serving our indigenous population at Britannia. This will lead to a design charrette in the fall.

 

• Wednesday 28th June, 6:00pm to 8:00pm, Ice Rink Mezzanine

What would make the new Britannia a welcoming place for LGBTQ2S folks.

Image: Fog At Sunset