On Tuesday, July 22, Vancouver City Council will consider a referral report that would simplify the city’s building rules and lead to mass rezoning in both the Broadway Plan area and Cambie Plan Corridor. Warning: the report is not user friendly. It’s 447 pages long.

Some wonder why such a lengthy report is only now being brought forward  when it was completed on June 30. Neighbours may wish to write to Council and ask that it not approve any of the amendments immediately, but rather refer the report to a public hearing in the fall.

The name of the report is “Standardized Apartment Districts and City-initiated Zoning Changes to implement the Broadway Plan and Cambie Corridor Plan.” In it, a new set of standardized district schedules is based on built-form typologies, that is, only one district schedule each would be needed to build low-, medium-, and high-rise apartment buildings. It would include City-initiated rezoning of 4,294 parcels in the Broadway and Cambie Plan areas.

The time it takes to get buildings approved in Vancouver has long been the bane of developers. According to the Planning Department, this initiative will remove 12-15 months from the development process. But how does it benefit residents? If passed, surrounding neighbourhoods would no longer have any say in the type, look, or height of buildings or be unable to stop a hi-rise tower from being built next door.

To better understand this issue and learn what’s at stake, we urge you to read this column by Randy Helten of CityHallWatch.

In Vancouver, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The Council meeting begins at 9:30 am.

(Illustration showing building typologies in residential neighbourhoods, courtesy of the City of Vancouver).