BCBusiness

19 B C B U S I N E S S . C A S E P T E M B E R 2 0 24 White, Calgary's co-chief planner and director of region- al and city planning for the last two years, came to Vancouver fresh from one of the most contentious public hearings his home city has ever seen. Almost 750 people showed up over five weeks to oppose or support the plan to introduce "missing middle" forms of housing throughout the city. (It passed.) So he's got experience dealing with a riled-up public and a council anxious to do the right thing without committing political suicide. But, more interestingly, White has a different kind of background. Many have noted that he has worked as a plan- ner for private-sector compa- nies and they're encouraged by that. Vancouver develop- ment consultant Tegan Smith checked in with local builders who said they were encour- aged by what they've heard about his history. "His efforts in Calgary to bridge relation- ships with industry players and tighten up the approvals process have been commend- ed, signalling hope for similar improvements in Vancouver," she wrote in a recent post. But there's more. White, while he was working for a private company in Toronto, decided to donate volunteer time to a neophyte mayoral candidate in Calgary who he thought could bring a fresh approach—Naheed Nenshi. He ended up contributing four of the 12 "better ideas" for Cal- gary that Nenshi campaigned on in 2010. Then he got hired as a strategic advisor in Nen- shi's office for five years, before going back to the private sector and then back again to the city as a planner. White also worked on the campaigns of two more Cal- gary councillors in the politi- cal/private-sector years: Druh Farrell, who served six terms on council then quit to run as an NDP candidate in the 2023 provincial election (she lost), and Jyoti Gondek, who went on to become the city's current mayor. All of that shows the signs of someone who knows a lot not just about planning but also about the political strate- gies and pragmatic calculations needed to get things done. Throughout his first weeks on the job in May, he was do- ing all the right things. Using Mobi bikes to cycle around Vancouver and check out its different neighbourhoods. Meeting with movers and shak- ers in the community. Figuring out who's who. Assessing where he and his family (his spouse is also a planner and they have two elementary- school-aged children) will want to live. When I speak with him, Olympic Village has been win- ning over the kids. He adheres to a pretty progressive line: more hous- ing is the key priority and it should be everyone's because it's something that helps the environment, social equity, the economy. B.C. is the best place to be working on that in Canada these days, because the province is making such precedent-setting moves. More cycling infrastruc- ture is a necessity: "Cars are very space-intensive. If we're going to move people around in any kind of functional way, we have to lean on transit and walking and biking to move people efficiently and sustain- ably." (He notes that he's been impressed by how much of the city he can get across by bike on "quiet-street" routes.) On the Broadway Plan, Vancouver's very aggressive effort to add 30,000 new homes and 50,000 people to a 500-block area—a historic transformation that is generat- ing increasingly noticeable levels of anxiety about how it's working out not just among the usual NIMBY-aligned resi- dent groups but also among tenants, tenant advocates and former city planners—he's treading a careful line. Of course there has to be more density along a billion- dollar transit line, he says firmly. But, he adds, at the two-year mark "we're trying to understand what's working and not working so we can make adjustments because that's what planning should be, not a static exercise." On the other hand, he doesn't believe, as some are arguing, that more density means good urban design has to be thrown out the window. "We can be much more assertive about achieving housing outcomes but at the same time be really thoughtful, building on the 35 or 40 years of excellence in urban design in Vancou- ver," he says. "There's a lot of muscle memory about how to create good, potentially sensi- tive buildings." He either doesn't know or doesn't want to say publicly that, in fact, the focus that Vancouver used to have on good urban design has been weakened, something that former planners who set the bar high in the '90s and early '00s, like Larry Beasley, Trish French, Scot Hein and others, have pointed out frequently. The city no longer has an urban-design studio, and it currently seems more focused on unit-count production and adhering to basic building- code requirements than on ensuring that the new density comes with an equal focus on everything else needed to make it work: parks, com- munity services, a variety of housing types, an inviting street environment, a sense of neighbourhood connection. "Not sure Josh has any knowledge/context of how far we have fallen," says Hein. And it's not clear how fast he can move on slowing down development if it threatens to produce a wave of tenant displacement in spite of the city's measures to prevent that—something that a group of those former planners say needs to be put in place now. White will be getting the message, for sure, from Van- couver's always-vocal planning critics. What everyone will be looking for: whether he simply carries out directions from above or has the ability (one that good strategic planners have) to gently steer the politi- cians and public toward new strategies that can provide a clear road through the pitched ideological battles and fixed ideas that often dominate when it comes to trying to fig- ure out Vancouver's future. CRACKS IN THE SYSTEM The housing crisis is a complicated problem to solve in Vancouver, where building projects face delays at every stage

• Cover