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The Urbanist
Development priorities in Canadian cities and a year of co-operation in Cascadia
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- [00:12]
A
Hello and welcome to the Urbanist, Monocle's programme all about the built environment. I'm your host Andrew Tuck.
- [00:18]
B
Coming up, having a thriving downtown, typically for any Canadian city in North America or around the world, is emblematic of the health of a city.
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A
As Canadian cities continue to accelerate and evolve. With many metrics pointing to Toronto as the fastest growing metropolis in North America, we hear from its former chief planner about what the most important areas of focus are for Canadian urban development. Then we assess how a cross border mega region, which spans two U.S. states and a Canadian province, is faring in the current political climate of after a decade of formal partnership and shared development. All that ahead in the next 30 minutes right here on the Urbanist. With me, Andrew Tuck. Canadian cities are experiencing rapid change. Housing and affordability are large drivers towards creative infills and zoning changes across the country. But for both planners and developers, it's city infrastructure and climate concerns that are top of mind when thinking about how to give Canadian cities a facelift. Former City of Toronto chief planner Greg Clinton spoke with Monocle's contributing editor Sheen Roster about the changing shape of Canadian cities.
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B
What I would call the main street or the avenues of our cities where you would maybe want six, seven, eight story buildings lining those avenues. It's a very comfortable scale for the public realm. It allows access to sunlight onto the public realm, creates right balance of a sense of enclosure but also leaves room for street trees and other forms of mobility. I noticed one of the major east west bike lanes and streets that can become multi purpose streets. So they carry yes drivers, but people on bikes walking, they carry. It can be easily shut down for public markets. Just the utility of the public space is something that I saw being kept in mind not as an afterthought but actually as a essential part of understanding how the development was going to be conceived and how it's progressing. Like setting a building back, I think three or four meters for the public to enjoy a view of an historic church building. For for example, the benefit for the development there is creating a beautiful long public plaza in front of the building where retailers and animation can spill out onto the public street. People will think that, oh, you can't do that in Edmonton, it's too cold, yada yada yada. But I think Edmonton is proving that it's a full on four season experience. It's a very sunny city. Somebody told me it's Sunny more than 300 days a year and every time I come down I'm reminded how sunny it is. I think they should put that on the city's brand. So even if it's cold in the winter, people can still enjoy the outdoors because of the way that these spaces are being designed and conceived.
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C
How critical and vital is it to have a thriving downtown for any Canadian city?
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B
Well, having a thriving downtown, typically for any Canadian city in North America or around the world, is emblematic of the health of a city. It's your, your front porch, if you will. If you want to take it back to the curbside view that one would experience pulling up to a city, you're going to be looking at the downtown and the comparative game that gets played between cities, the suite of activities that downtowns are able to offer, the vibrancy, the livability that they're able to offer. And it's not that suburbs don't have a place to a role to play in cities, they absolutely do. And more of our growth in Canada takes place in the suburbs than it does in the centre of cities by far. But it's how we grow ultimately and bringing more people into livable, transit oriented downtowns where a mix of activity can take place. It's overall a much more sustainable pattern of growth in the long term. You can live your life without owning a car, which is a financial burden for many people, but it's also a way of experiencing more of a people focused world where you're going to be able to come and go with your daily life without the burden and the headache that so many of us experience getting in a vehicle. Edmonton and many cities in Canada are investing in transit and have invested in transit. I mean Edmonton, getting on the LRT here and seeing a plaque that said it was built in, when I saw it was 92 or something, they were ahead of the game, which I think is incredible. I'm not exactly sure what drove that decision, but more cities have to, like Winnipeg and other cities have to get in the game of focusing on the infrastructure and the bones, the bones of making a good city work. That's around transit, public transit, it's around community infrastructure, public space, making sure that public spaces are safe and secure, they're comfortable and they're enjoyable. So Edmonton offers up kind of a palette of, I think, a really hopeful place in leading Canadian urbanism. I mean, the social ills that one might witness in a city inevitably lead back to housing, inevitably lead back to housing. So being able to build supportive housing, housing that not only puts a roof over people's heads but deals with their economic and social challenges that they're grappling with and gives them the necessary supports. It's almost like program housing is term that I've heard of in the states where yeah, you get a place to lay your head but you also get the support and program that you need to turn your life around or create a new chapter in your life. So all that can't be done by a city. It's got to involve partners both in the community but also other levels of government to make that work. And I think a focus, like a real focus on affordable and programmed and supportive housing is something that Edmonton and Canadian cities have to advocate for right now because we're in a significant challenge with housing.
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C
You mentioned the Toronto condo market is dead. Dead. Can you elaborate?
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B
Well, I mean I'm an observer like everybody else of the Toronto condo market, but we've had quite a boom of condominium construction over couple of decades and the numbers right now on the sale of new condominium units are at a decades long low. I think in counting in the hundreds, which for a region of 7 million people is pretty close to dead. A lot of new market rental housing is being built, which is fabulous. We've got a lot of condos coming off of construction into completion as well, which is creating a real bubble of new freshly built housing but with no new cranes going in. Lots of approvals, but not construction. You're going to start seeing the cranes coming down, those units getting absorbed and occupied but nothing new coming in behind it. So if it's a challenge now, it's going to be pretty scary in 2027 and 2028. Market rental will help. It will help. And I think we have to continue with experimenting with zoning change and new typologies like new kinds of housing to fill some of the gaps that aren't being met by the end of the condo boom.
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C
The social change of not having that single family, white picket fence home, how long does that take to change? Like does Gen Z have to accept that they're going to raise a family in a townhouse? How long does that take to change mentality? Is it partly environmental? Is it partly social? Is it partly how generations think? Is it financial?
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B
I would say it's all of the above. You know, I don't think it's the role of planners to tell you how to live. I do believe it's the role of planners to put more choice and enable more opportunity in front of you though. And by opening up zoning, for example, the possibilities now of doing something with a housing option are there when they weren't there. 10 years ago. I often say, you know, more opportunity for more people in more places. It's kind of a simple little piece of jargon, but it's not more complicated than that. And if you choose to land in a 1500 square foot or a 1200 square foot three bedroom in a ground related multiplex inside, you know, the central part of Edmonton, whether you own or rent it, your kids can go, they can walk to school, or there might be a local community center, there might be local shopping. If you choose, you can choose to live your life and raise a family in an area that you previously may not have had access to because you couldn't afford to get into the market. You can still go and get a house in the suburbs too, and that's perfectly fine. But I think this is equipped Edmontonians and future residents of the city with more choice and more opportunity maybe to make more financially considered choices. You can choose to own one car maybe or two. You know, the built environment imposes certain things upon you, financially and environmentally. So if you're able and lucky enough to find yourself in a new housing unit inside the city that is close to transit and close to some of the facilities that I've already spoken about, you've given yourself more options. Simply when we changed the zoning in Toronto, we call it expanding housing options in neighborhoods. It's kind of simple idea of giving people more choice and more options where they didn't have them previously. And in the long, long term, you know, you look back decades in 1950s and 60s when the suburbs were built, was that the only and ever way that the suburbs are going to look? I don't think so. They're going to continue to evolve as well. You're going to get plaza and mall development, redevelopment happening in suburbs. You're going to have LRT lines going to the suburbs. You're going to have more choice and options in the suburbs as well, which is, I think, only a good thing.
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A
Greg Linton there in conversation with Monocle's Sheena Rossiter. We've all heard of mega cities, but what about mega regions? Geographers have long looked at how large cities located near one another form political and economic relationships. More recently, the mega regional concept has spread from the ivory tower to boardrooms and city halls as business and political leaders seek to collaborate and not just compete with their neighbours. That's very much the case in the Cascadia region, where the constellation of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver recently completed a decade of their formal relationship. Known as the Cascadia Innovation Corridor. Monocle's Seattle correspondent, Gregory Scroggs, tracked down several luminaries across the three cities to take the region's temperature and filed this report.
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D
On clear days in the Pacific Northwest, the view from downtown Vancouver, Seattle and Portland all share a similar vista. The snow capped Cascade Mountains topography defines this region and has also given it a name, Cascadia, in recognition that, in defiance of national borders, natural geography can foster a common cultural identity. So when any of the city's teams play each other in Major League Soccer, the match has long been known as the Cascadia Cup. And in the stadium, you'll likely spot the Doug flag, designed in 1994 as the unofficial symbol of the Cascadia bioregion, with a Douglas fir tree imposed on horizontal stripes of blue, white and green. Sporting rivalries and idealistic secessionist fantasies aside, Cascadia is populated and prosperous. Nearly 10 million people live in the region, a 30% increase since the year 2000. And another 3 to 4 million residents are expected by 2050. Home to multiple Fortune 500 companies and World leaders in high tech, Cascadia has generated tremendous wealth. So how can a region spanning two U.S. states and and one Canadian province manage that kind of growth? To answer that question, I turned to the architect of the Cascadia region's 10 year experiment in working across borders.
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E
I'm Chris Gregoire. I'm the former governor of the state of Washington. I'm currently the CEO of Challenge Seattle and the chair of the Cascadia Corridor.
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F
What exactly is the Cascadia Innovation Corridor? For the uninitiated?
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E
So we have mega regions all over the world. We have about 2811 in the United States. Cascadia is one of them. They were identified years ago as kind of the economic engine of the world. And so we were among them, and we still are. We're a little different than the others because we cross an international border and a state border. So we go from Portland, Oregon to Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia. We're also different because, yes, we want economic development, but we also want quality of life. So we've dedicated ourselves to making sure that, that we are partnering on all kinds of issues, whether it's cancer research or transportation issues. So that, yes, we're about economic development, but we're really about much, much more.
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F
Your latest report, your latest research is.
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D
Flashing a few warning lights that there.
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F
Are some headwinds facing a part of the world that until recently was quite a darling in terms of economic growth, jobs, attractiveness for quality of life. What is not quite going the right direction in Cascadia at the moment.
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E
We've been very fortunate over the last 10 years because we have been at the forefront of economic development. But now trying to see where the next 10 years take us, we see some real threats. One of them really fundamentally is talent. Are we going to be able to maintain the level of talent that we have in the region because we have some of the best in the world. The other one is affordable housing. People care desperately about that. And the third one is energy, which we've always had an advantage. We're now threatened about whether that advantage is lost because of the demands that have been put on, particularly our electric system. And lastly our business environment regulations and taxes have really put it so that it's very difficult now for businesses to thrive. So we want to address all four of those and, and make sure that we're getting ready for a prosperous next 10 years.
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F
Much of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor work has been centered around the high tech economy. Seattle very much a global hub, and Vancouver and Portland growing in stature. We're at an inflection point, perhaps certainly an uncertain time for the tech industry. As we're talking, there have been waves of layoffs at companies like Microsoft and most recently Amazon. So insofar as attracting and retaining talent is one of the priorities or concerns of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, what are your signals suggesting if those jobs actually aren't even there to necessarily need to attract the talent?
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E
So I don't think the problem is really the companies and restructuring and rethinking how they want to move forward. It really is about us understanding we're sitting on a golden opportunity and are we going to avail ourselves of it or not? Quantum computing is being led by British Columbia. Chip manufacturing is being led by Oregon. AI is being led by Washington State. We have the second highest number of AI talent because of Amazon and Microsoft in the country. So let's seize that moment. It's a formula for success. Let's become a global AI hub, but let's do it responsibly. Let's do it right. Let's engage everybody, let's upskill those who figure out feel that they need to have that upskilling. And let's move forward with a golden opportunity by addressing the foundational issues that we talked about.
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D
Last month. The elected leaders of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon made good on that call to move forward by signing a memorandum of reaffirmation, agreeing to work together on advancing the innovation economy, environmental stewardship and cross border connectivity for at least the Next five years. Crucially, all three players have new executives in office since the last joint agreement was signed in 2018, a signal that Cascadia has institutional buy in beyond any one political figure. The new pledge also formally includes Oregon for the first time, where a vision of a connected Cascadia helped propel the recent election of of Mayor Keith Wilson, who I spoke to next.
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G
Portland is part of the mega region, and so it is by nature of its geography, very much a part of it. And when you look at Vancouver, BC, Seattle and then Portland, that mega region represents about 10 million people, about $662 billion, which is, on its own, the 25th largest economy in the world, on par with Switzerland. To allow that capital and people and innovation to really transfer smoothly, you need a transformative transportation system. High speed rail is that new main street that we have to have to draw our communities together and closer to compete not just locally, but globally.
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F
You're bringing up high speed rail. Is connectivity, Is transportation one of the major obstacles to a more cohesive sense of regional identity and regional economy?
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G
Yes. So we are clear in the problems we're experiencing. We have overloaded runways, we have overloaded roadways. The delay is causing us frustration, loss of profits, loss of GDP. Vancouver, BC, Seattle and Portland, the three cities are in the top 10 most congested in North America. Building roads we've tried for 50, 60 years. And we can't get our economy to move faster, better at a lower cost. If we keep trying to do the same things like we've done last century, this is a new century. We need an opportunity of a transportation network that'll allow exponential growth, and that's what high speed rail will bring.
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F
Building a high speed rail network in Cascadia is both an expensive and politically fraught proposition. From where you sit in Portland City hall, what role can you play in helping to deliver such an ambitious infrastructure project?
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G
We need a champion. And in Oregon, we haven't had that person who really is ready to just focus the passion and build the grass tops and bring the grassroots together. That's what the mayor of Portland has an opportunity to do, because the terminus is going to be right in the center part of the city. So here's what I learned over this past year. As I was campaigning to become our mayor, I focused on three key priorities. A lot of it had to do with livability, public safety and revitalizing our economy. But at the end of all of my speeches, conversations, house parties, I would always say end. We're going to lead with high speed rail in our nation. Surprisingly, that passion drew outsized applause and excitement from every room, every conference, every stage. And so what I saw from that and what I experienced last year, there is a groundswell of support.
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D
Now Oregonians may look rosily upon Cascadia High Speed Rail, a proposal from the early days of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, which, to be clear, remains very much in the planning stages, with no right of way secured and no funding attached to the estimated 24 to 42 billion dollars price tag. And if it comes to fruition, the northern terminus would be in Vancouver. But the vision of regional integration has become much cloudier over the U.S. canada border this year. British Columbia Premier David Eby has been among the most vociferous critics of the trade war launched by US President Donald Trump and has held fast to a travel boycott, avoiding multiple Pacific Northwest leadership forums held in Washington state this year to which he was invited. Travel is also down with daily downtown to downtown seaplane service between Seattle and Vancouver, something the Cascadia Innovation corridor fostered in 2018, now suspended in the winter months. One British Columbian who has remained loyal to the Cascadia vision is greater Vancouver Board of Trade President and CEO Brigitte Anderson. She has led multiple delegations south of the border this year to to nurture a once steadfast, now troubled relationship. And on one of her recent swings through Seattle, I asked her why national politics have, pardon the pun, trumped regional identity.
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H
I think two things can be true at the same time. Canadians have found a national identity and pride due to the trade war that's happening unlike anything I've ever seen before. I think what is also true is that British Columbians feel more affinity to Seattle, or at least Vancouverites to Seattle than Vancouverites to Toronto. There is shared values, shared culture, shared west coast perspective that applies to people in Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. That is different. You know, Canada is such a large country and it is very diverse and vast and you know, from the Rocky Mountains eastward it becomes very different. And I have lived across Canada and I have seen that, that there is a regional culture and I think a regional flavor to each part of Canada. Whereas the Pacific Northwest, the CA region, much of it is the same. Because of that, there is a closeness here. So I would say the relationship matters more than ever because we are going to get through the next few years and politics will change. What doesn't change is the shared values, the shared culture. We share friends and family. There is so much that brings us together and we see opportunities to work together and to also address some of the same challenges we have, whether it's homelessness or affordability, challenges around housing. And then there's, you know, we look at similarities around innovation. There's a lot that is the same. So yes, this is going on and the trade tensions that will continue. But we need to double down and figure out how to get past that to make our region stronger.
- [23:14]
F
Although you're indicating that Vancouverites do have this affinity with their regional neighbors, the Cascadia Innovation Corridor commissioned a study 10 years ago charting professional relationships and found there were fairly poor weak ties between professionals in Seattle and Vancouver. And 10 years later still finding that.
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D
To be the case.
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F
So why hasn't, even prior to the current trade tensions and political tensions, why hasn't there been a tighter interconnectivity between the Seattle and Vancouver professional class business community? And how, if at all, could that improve given the current state of affairs?
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H
I think the movement of people and goods across the border is challenging and there are significant policy changes that would need to be made to make that easier. You see it certainly in some sectors, technology, you see more movement of people. Microsoft, Amazon, both have very big presence here in Seattle, big presence in Vancouver. But beyond that, really that border does become more difficult to come and do business. And so I think that is one thing that I would love to see from a mega region perspective. It's not just moving people, whether we're talking about high speed rail, it is the actual way, the logistics of doing that and doing business, it is harder because they're two separate countries and there.
- [24:29]
F
Are different rules that apply these metro regions. At least the folks who participate in the Cascadia Innovation Corridor are professing a kind of collaborative spirit. But there is also economic competition. I mean, thinking about the ports, for example, the ports in Vancouver and British Columbia are competing for cargo that might be heading, say to the Port of Seattle. So what are the benefits? What is the rationale for collaborating, as it were, with those who are also in some sense your economic competitors?
- [24:56]
H
Well, if you think about it from a global perspective, investors aren't necessarily thinking about putting their money in a small specific jurisdiction, but they might be more apt to put their dollars in a larger region where they can see that collaboration. So I think that is the business case for it. Especially if what our vision in the Cascadia Innovation Corridor is to be this hub of innovation. And now if that is what we are on the map for, then we might be able to attract more dollars globally as a region. Yes, there's going to be competition. And the ports is a great example. But there's also ways for ports to collaborate, whether that is sharing of knowledge. I mean, also positioning the two ports as, you know, the cleanest ports on clean energy, most sustainable ports, and also that we are part of the Asia port Pacific gateway. We're closest to Asia. That makes a big difference, I think, to a lot of investors. So, yes, there's going to be natural competition. Whether it was two cities in the same country, there is competition, but we're talking about two different cities in two different countries. So there is going to be natural competition, but there is much more opportunity to work together that would benefit the whole region.
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D
From Monocle, in the heart of Cascadia, I'm Gregory Scruggs.
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A
That's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism, too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by Carlos Rebelo and by David Stevens, who also edits the show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City lovers.