Note: The Following Op-Ed was recently submitted to The Oregonian in response to this article.
Michael Mehaffy and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard's recent Op-Ed, "The Struggle of Portland Planners With Tower Envy", made several references to my city of Vancouver, British Columbia, in its efforts to dissuade readers from the appropriateness of towers in Portland. Three erroneous claims were made about Vancouver in particular and tower construction in general; these demand a rebuttal.
Claim One: Tower construction in Vancouver is financed largely by wealthy Chinese part-time expatriates, contributing to making Vancouver one of the least affordable cities in the world. According to a recent article in The Globe and Mail, the best available data from our local real estate board suggests that just 1 to 4 percent of real estate sales in the Vancouver region involve foreign investors *from any country.* Another reputable source cited in this article estimated that just 0.2% of local home purchases were made by buyers living outside of Canada. These figures make it obvious that tower construction is not "financed largely by wealthy Chinese part-time expatriates", as claimed; in fact, the overwhelming majority of Chinese people who move to Vancouver are settling permanently.
Although real estate in Vancouver can be expensive, simple economics suggests that the large supply of condos in towers has probably kept housing prices lower than they otherwise would be for this section of the market since demand is more easily satisfied and a situation of scarcity has been prevented. Single-detached houses, particularly within city limits, are far more expensive than condominiums, a fact that can be partially attributed to the lack of new detached house supply in a city that is fully urbanized. As of September, Vancouver West- the portion of the city that contains the both the downtown peninsula with its condo towers and several established single family residential neighbourhoods- saw a benchmark condo sale price of approximately $475,000 while single detached houses had a benchmark sales price of approximately $2,100,000. On a per-square-foot basis, condo prices in newer low-rise and mid-rise buildings- especially if constructed with concrete- are often higher than similar units in towers.
Affordability issues can't be blamed on towers, which are built in response to demand for housing in a geographically-constrained city experiencing a high rate of population growth.
Claim Two: Towers experience livability issues and residents struggle with social isolation. Livability, while somewhat subjective, varies widely across *all* housing forms: there are highly livable towers and undesirable towers, and the same variation applies to townhouses and detached houses as well. Many towers in Manhattan offer residents a strong sense of community, but certain low-income housing towers for seniors are not designed for optimal resident interactions. In Portland, single-family neighbourhoods in the southeast section of the city encourage walking and social interaction at a higher rate than new communities near the fringe of the urban growth boundary.
Several towers in Vancouver offer amenities that encourage community interaction. Basement bowling alleys are popular in some towers, particularly those built by local developer Concord Pacific. Other buildings feature well-appointed community rooms with amenities like pool tables and libraries, and nearly every tower features nicely-appointed lobbies with seating areas as well as exercise facilities. I once resided in a tower in nearby Victoria that offered its residents a table tennis club, a "Saturday Night" club that met in the lobby and walked to various local restaurants, and various social events ranging from viewing parties for special televised events to outdoor barbecues.
From a development perspective, the cost of providing community-building amenities is much more feasible in high-rise developments: the construction costs of these amenities can be spread across more units than would be possible in a low-rise development. Once a tower is occupied, the cost of operating community amenities is absorbed by a large pool of owners via monthly maintenance fees. Home builders know that the cost of operating and maintaining a bowling alley or residential movie theatre would place an undue financial burden on the condo owners of a 4-storey building, so low-rises are typically built without such features.
Claim Three: Condo towers, especially those of a certain height, are not environmentally sustainable. Condominium towers can be built in a sustainable way, and in Vancouver, that is the norm: towers that require a rezoning (typically to allow more height or density) must be built to LEED Gold standard, and many other local towers achieve LEED silver, gold, or platinum ratings. All new Vancouver buildings- including high-rises- built after 2020 will be required to be carbon neutral. Energy efficient floor-to-ceiling windows can actually reduce electricity usage by allowing more natural light, an important consideration in an often cloudy and rainy city like Vancouver; obviously, towers in cities like Miami and San Diego should likely minimize the incorporation of this feature. But towers have other environmental advantages that can be easy to overlook, such as the fact that the provision of energy-efficient green roofs can be easier to achieve in a high-rise building due to the roof requiring much less- and flatter- surface area than a low-rise building containing a similar number of units.
In the extremely important realm of carbon emissions, cities with a large number of tall buildings can outperform metropolitan areas that are predominately low-rise. Vancouver's per-capita carbon emissions, at 4.6 tonnes per person, are the lowest in North America. In the United States, residents of New York City - which has the world's biggest skyline- produce fewer carbon emissions than residents of any other American city (6.4 tonnes per person vs. the US average of about 17 tonnes per capita). Although other factors contribute to the environmental performance of Vancouver and New York, such as Vancouver's near-total reliance on renewable energy for buildings, the high density associated with towers contributes to increased ridership on public transit. Over the last decade, as condo tower construction has boomed in Vancouver, transit ridership has increased by 84% to 1.19 million rides per day; by comparison, Portland's Tri-Met- which operates a rapid transit system similar in length to Vancouver's and serves a metropolitan region with a similar population- served just 322,000 riders per day in the most recent quarter. Not surprisingly, Vancouver's condo tower boom has allowed the city to achieve the third-highest population density in North America (13,600 per square mile vs. 4,400 per square mile in Portland), a factor correlated with Vancouver's high rate of transit ridership.
The author contends that a livable form of high urban density can also be achieved by following the Paris model, which is generally understood to be comprised of apartment buildings of up to 6 storeys with no setbacks and minimal spacing between buildings. While I love Paris, its urban form negatively impacts sustainability in one important way: the land area required to achieve high density while avoiding tower constructions means that there is little room left for a significant urban tree canopy. Although Paris is the most heavily wooded European capital, its tree count of 478,000 is equivalent to 1/3 of the estimated number of trees in Vancouver (1.5 million). Put another way,,Paris is only able to offer one tree per every 22 residents whereas Vancouver has almost 2 1/2 trees for every man, woman, and child. The tower form, which can achieve high density while requiring less land than low rise buildings, leaves more room for trees.
Conclusion
I feel an affinity for Portland and my travels there have left me with the sense that many Portlanders love Vancouver. The two cities share more in common with each other than they do with Seattle: Portland and Vancouver each boast economies dominated by small businesses, neighbourhoods actively engaged in civic planning, decisions against urban freeway development in the 1970s, geographic citing along heavily industrialized rivers, rapid transit systems launched in the mid-1980s, and regional populations that are similar in size. Vancouver has learned much from Portland, as evidenced by our growing number of local food carts and increasing infrastructure for bicyclists. In return, Vancouver can be a model for Portland in terms of incorporating sustainable high-rise residential development into its urban mix to compliment Portland's existing houses, townhouses, and low-rise/mid-rise apartments.
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