Local Group Shows How To Fight City Hall

By Carol Volkart

Anyone who thinks you can’t fight City Hall needs to meet Smart Density Vancouver.

In the few short months since a group of Mackenzie Heights neighbours got together to fight the big, poorly designed multiplexes “uglifying” their neighbourhood, they’ve pulled off a couple of unprecedented feats.

First, they persuaded a city council gung-ho on the wonderfulness of multiplexes to agree to review them. Second, they helped galvanize a firestorm of public outrage against the Villages Plan so intense that councillors lined up first to denounce it, then to kill it.

Their secret?

Neighbours working together.

“It’s about community on a very deep level,” says Smart Density member Elaine Stevens. “We were organized and supportive of each other.  Everyone had skills they brought to the table. It’s not often you get that, with everyone pulling in the same direction and providing their very best skills.”

But Mackenzie Heights isn’t unique, she emphasized, and other groups can exert their muscle-power too. “This exists all over the city. All over the city we have these fabulous communities. Let’s make sure we don’t lose them.”

Smart Density came to the forefront on the Villages Plan because it had already done a “dry run” on the multiplex issue, said Stevens and Smart Density colleague Marisa Thomas.

“We started with multiplexes, which gave us credibility when it came to the Villages Plan,” said Thomas. “We became experts with the problems we were seeing in our own neighbourhoods – the outsize building, the loss of trees, the lack  of design guidelines.”

After group members met with councillors, and even took one on a tour to see the problem first-hand, city council approved a review of multiplexes. “We had a win and we had an identity.”

So when the surprise of the Villages Plan – “multiplexes on steroids” – came along, the group already had a track record. Once again, members did their due diligence, taking weeks to dig through the plan and find the fine print pointing to problems that councillors – overwhelmed by lengthy reports and all-day meetings – were unlikely to find for themselves.

“We knew the specifics of what was wrong and the overview that staff had given them was wrong,” said Thomas. “They knew we were right on multiplexes and they listened to us on the Villages Plan.”

Flyers and pop-ups gave residents hope

Just as they reached out to inform councillors, Smart Density did the same with residents, first in their own Mackenzie Heights-Dunbar neighbourhood, then expanding to others. “We provided support for people who didn’t know what to do, which allowed people to get engaged and informed,” said Stevens.

Once again, factual information was key. At their own expense, Smart Density members printed 6,000 lively graphic-oriented flyers highlighting the main points of the Villages Plan. The flyers emphasized the plan’s  impact on trees and the tree canopy, one of the group’s major concerns. The flyers were distributed widely, made available to anyone who wanted to pass them out in their areas or put them through neighbours’ mail slots.

Smart Density also held pop-up information booths in their own neighbourhood and helped residents in other areas do the same. The goal was both informing residents about the plan and encouraging them to speak up about it, so the booths offered various preprinted letters for people to sign and instructions about how to speak to council at the public hearing.

One of the areas where Smart Density played a role was Fraser and 33^rd, where Laura Pasut and her husband Mike Wadden live. They’d read a Vancouver Sun story in March about the Villages Plan, but didn’t understand its impact until they got a May 22 letter from the city announcing it would essentially freeze their property. They happened to own one of about 600 properties in planned retail areas where future development of properties would be restricted to four-to-six-storey apartment buildings with ground-floor retail.

Neighbours similarly alarmed about the letter got together, and eventually found their way to  Smart Density, which gave them flyers and helped them with the first of two pop-up booths to inform residents about the Villages Plan.

“Smart Density gave us the idea of running information booths but more importantly, the belief that we could take action to fight the city on the Villages Plan,” wrote Pasut in an email interview. “We felt that at least if we tried to fight, we’d feel better than just passively letting this plan pass.”

The Fraser Street group collected 60 letters, spoke to more than 200 people, knocked on two blocks of neighbours’ doors, directed many people to the city’s website, and had four neighbours speak at the public hearing, said Pasut. It was clear the information was needed, she said, noting that 95 percent of the 200-250 people they spoke to didn’t know about the Villages Plan.

She said the Mackenzie Heights group “was one important vehicle that was able to spur people into action. When we saw the letter taking away our property rights, we initially felt dismayed and thought the plan was a done deal. Smart Density encouraged us to have hope!”

The importance of a providing hope was also mentioned by a Cedar Cottage-area resident who preferred to remain anonymous. She said Smart Density’s “upbeat energy” made a big difference, especially for neighbourhood groups worn down by constantly fighting rezoning battles with City Hall. “We felt reassured knowing others shared our concerns about the Villages Plan; we weren’t fighting it alone.”

Thousands of residents spoke out

It would be impossible to track how many of the nearly 3,000 pieces of correspondence and more than 300 speakers – mostly opposed – at the Villages Plan public hearing were Smart-Density inspired. But those both inside and outside the group were convinced it had made a difference.

“It’s hard to know what influence we had,” said Smart Density’s Stevens. “But we definitely had a big impact.”

“Smart Density gave a voice to thousands and thousands of residents,” said Thomas. “We gave them accurate information and we were able to rally them when it was time to speak up. It’s really powerful when you get people calling and standing up to speak to council. Their voices were heard.”

Kitsilano resident Barbara May, who helped distribute flyers to a large chunk of her neighbourhood inside a village area, said she thinks Smart Density “made a really big difference” to the voting outcome.  Their flyers, colourful and effective, got people talking and alerted many of them to the fact that the Villages Plan even existed, she said.

Pasut credits Smart Density with a “significant role” in the plan’s defeat, thanks to its own eloquent speakers plus its encouragement of people in her area to get involved.

A wake-up call for residents

Will the Villages Plan controversy prompt residents to pay more attention to civic issues, and maybe even vote in the Oct. 17 civic election? (The turnout for the 2022 election was 36 percent.)

Cedar Cottage’s Peter Finch, who talked to people about the Villages Plan at the Commercial Drive street party, said simple, factual information –accurate bullet points with links – may help to get people voting.

“My experience tells me that there is a genuine interest in being involved in civic politics, but an understandable unwillingness to be overwhelmed.  That’s where a lot of young parents are at: they already have their hands full, so they need simple, factual information.”

He said that from his experience, there’s lots of education to be done, especially with young people, about the importance of democratic representation. “For instance, if I criticize top-down decision-making, it isn’t until I point out how anti-democratic the council’s actions have been that there is recognition of something wrong.”

Cylia T. Wong, also from the Cedar Cottage area, said she too has noticed an erosion of community engagement in Vancouver. “Community involvement is needed as a fundamental concept of democracy and I am thankful for local groups that are ‘watchdogs’ to city politics.”

Pasut said she can’t say whether the community at large is more likely to get involved as a result of the Villages Plan, but she thinks those like her, whose properties were frozen, definitely will. “We believe  there’s a need for further local community engagement around the topic of community development to really build awareness.”

The plan has shown the couple that of the three branches of government, “municipal politics is the one that can have the greatest effect on our day to day living,” she said. “So going forward, we will definitely start with being more aware, and getting involved where necessary.”

‘Now the hard work begins’

Now that the Villages Plan has been defeated, what’s next for Smart Density?

It will certainly be keeping a watchful eye on the multiplex review, which Thomas said is being “slow-walked” by staff into 2027. And it has no illusions that the Villages Plan, which is part of the city’s newly adopted Official Development Plan, is gone for good. “We need the Villages Plan not just dead but buried,” Thomas said.

With a civic election coming on Oct. 17, Smart Density will be talking to candidates about their positions on those and other issues and publicizing the results.

“We plan to share the facts with Vancouverites heading to the polls in October,” said Thomas. “What’s been clear through this process is that the Villages Plan will come back in some form in October if OneCity, COPE or Greens are elected. They’ve all said they want apartments everywhere. And [OneCity’s] Lucy Maloney actually voted for this plan which would have given developers a windfall at the expense of Vancouverites and our tree canopy.”

Stevens said it will be important to elect councillors “who believe in smart density, not dumb density,” and her group hopes to play a role in that.

Speaking the day after the July 28 defeat of the Villages Plan – which she celebrated with neighbours at a nearby park – Stevens said:

“The truth is that most people aren’t interested in civic politics, so part of the next job is to get people interested.

“Yesterday was a celebration. Now the hard work begins.”