Chapter Three: Densification
3.0 - Definition of densification and opening statement
Densification refers to a pattern of investment that occurs when capital investment in the built environment becomes more concentrated. Rising land values, higher rents, and increased redevelopment are the most obvious signs of this new regime of accumulation.
Because of rising property values densification raises the capacity of land to extract rents, thereby increasing its capacity to absorb capital. Eventually, this creates the conditions for more concentrated investment to take place. Physically, this finds expression in the creation of distinctive high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise landscapes. At some stage, this may lead to an overall increase in population density, but this is not always the case, as the gentrification of some neighbourhoods well illustrates. Therefore, densification is not necessarily tied to rising population densities although it is often associated with this phenomena. However, in most cases both processes usually overlap and complement one another. As will be shown, population changes are but one of three different material variables which come into play and mold as well as define the densification process. Besides changing demographics, of which increased population density is just one possible manifestation, the other two variables that shape the densification process have to do with shifts in the urban land market and the adoption of different strategies for the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure.
There is, as a consequence of this, an economic, demographic and technological or institutional dimension to the evolution and progression of the densification process. Their interaction and relative strength in relation to each other will play a key role in determining the range and intensity of the densification process in a particular locality during a specific building cycle.
The economic dimension of this transformation is most clearly expressed in the operation of the urban land market. Shifting rates of immigration, or increases or decreases in the rate of natural population growth, and overall life cycle changes in the general population makeup the main features of the demographic dimension of the densification process, as all these demographic factors affect the demand for sparsely or densely configured housing forms. Finally, the technological and institutional dimension of the densification process surfaces when the impact of new transportation and communications infrastructure on patterns of investment in the built environment is examined.
When these three elements are looked at in relation to each other, from 1945 into the present two patterns of accumulation appear. From 1945 until the middle of the 1970s these three elements were locked into a program for accumulation which supported land-extensive patterns of development across the country. At the economic level this became apparent in the reconfiguration of the urban land market. The deflation in property values that was triggered by the Great Depression is the starting point for the incubation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation. Over the next 40 years, property values fell in relation to income. As a result, favourable economic conditions existed for large increases in the per capita consumption of urban land.
Similarly, there was a significant increase in the natural rate of population growth and a resumption of large-scale immigration. This increased the demand for more space extensive urban development, as can be seen in the demand and consumption of single-detached dwelling units at this time. And last of all, but not on the scale which was present in the United States, there was a massive reallocation of resources into road infrastructure after the war. As Pitman has stated (1997), cities that became entirely auto oriented tend to consume two to three times more space than those that remained configured around multi-modal systems of transportation systems. While all Canadian cities, with the exception of Toronto, begun to dismantle their public transit systems and reduce investment in public transit, there was not the same massive infusion of resources into the construction of highway and freeway infrastructure that facilitated the suburbanization of the city.
By the end of the 1950s, with the sole exception of Toronto, every streetcar line in the country had been dismantled. With the dissolution of the streetcar the main form giver of the streetcar era disappeared, and the city became more amoebae-like as the public transportation infrastructure that had given a definable form to the city, even in the period of laissez-faire development, was now dismantled, removing the last significant barrier to the unencumbered advance of land-extensive development by the late 1950s.
Not until the middle and late 1960s did the material and institutional base for this pattern of development begin to unravel as new investment patterns, ones that were now land-intensive rather than land-extensive, started to appear for the first time. Since the mid-60s densification has been a significant influence in three building cycles. During each of these cycles the built environment has been reshaped by the densification process, and new layers of dense urban tissue added to the existing cityscape. The first building cycle lasted from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. This was an inflationary period marked by rapidly escalating property values. It was also a time when shifting demographics were favourable for densification to take place across the entire country. As a result, the demand for apartment units surged everywhere, fueling the first wave of densification, which washed over every major city in the country. Since high-rise development became the defining feature of the first wave of land-intensive investment, the urban fabric of every major city in the country was radically altered. The second cycle began in the mid 80s. Unlike the first cycle, the second wave was shorter in duration, and more localized and uneven in its progression. During this second building cycle medium-rise development became more prominent, especially in Vancouver. Furthermore, unlike the earlier wave of land-intensive investment, strata-title rather than rental units were built. Except for Vancouver, this second wave only lasted lasted for about five years, running from 1985 to about 1990. However, in Vancouver, this second wave of investment continued up until 1997.
Presently, we are now experiencing a third building cycle. Since 1996 a third wave of investment has been building momentum in places such as Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary. While this third investment cycle may not become as pervasive as the first one in the 1960s, it may become more widespread than the second investment cycle that occurred in the 1980s, when land-intensive development was then principally confined to Canada's largest urban centres, and then, within these centres, with the exception of Vancouver, to the urban core of each city rather than the periphery.
There are several reasons for speculating why densification in this third building cycle may be more influential this time around. One reason has to do with the fiscal crisis of municipal governments. The arrival and popularization of new and pre-existing planning ideologies that encourage the management of growth and the adoption of regulations that promote low-rise densification is another new development which did not exist in the mid 1980s to the extent that it does now. Then there are changing demographics which are expected to support the production of denser housing. So even if the effects of deflation water down the land market, and reduce the densification ratio, these other forces which promote densification, which relate to investment in infrastructure and demographics, are now present, which was not the case in the 1980s, and these are forces that are expected to come increasingly into play in the 1990s and beyond.
While demographic shifts should become more important in the medium term, of all the factors that have been mentioned, the increasing inability of government to subsidize land-extensive development may turn out to be the most important development since the mid 1980s. At the same time, there has been renewed interest in experimentation with low-rise rather than medium-rise or high-rise formats. With infill housing becoming more acceptable in the suburbs, and the rise of the new urbanist movement, low-rise formats have become more prominent in many greenfield developments over the past few years (Gabor and Lewinberg 1997). Particularly for Toronto this may become important over the next building cycle in the exurban parts of the region, as billions of dollars have already been committed to this form of low-rise densification.
Until the 1990s Toronto functioned as the lead city for densification in Canada. This changed at the end of the second wave of investment in denser construction, as Vancouver supplanted Toronto. Although Toronto initially led the way during the second wave of investment, between 1984 and 1989 a bi-modal pattern started to develop as land-extensive development experienced a resurgence in Toronto. As a result, although the densification of the core area of the Toronto region continued unabated, there was a resurgence in land-extensive development in the exurban parts of Toronto. In Vancouver, there was no such resurgence. Instead densification became more pervasive and intense. Still, it was only with the recession of 1989, that Vancouver clearly took over from Toronto as the lead city.
As said before, the first round of densification reflected the development pressures created by internal than external forces. For this reason the first wave of land-intensive investment was much broader in its geographic scope than the second. Consequently, denser urban environments were created in nearly every major city across the country between 1965 and 1975. This would change when the second densification cycle began in the mid 1980s. Unlike the first cycle, this time around capital investment would be much more dependent upon international flows of capital and labour. Consequently a more uneven and bifurcated pattern of urban development ensued.
This became most apparent in declining cities experiencing relative decline, such as Winnipeg and Montreal. Here the gradual detachment of each city from international flows of capital and labour depressed the local real estate market, suppressing much of the momentum for densification that had built up in the 1960s and 1970s because of the inflation of property values. As a result, by the 1980s land-development in Winnipeg and Montreal started to diverge from the pattern that could be observed in Vancouver or Toronto. For example, while core property values in the inner city of Toronto and Vancouver doubled or tripled, between the mid-80s and the mid 90s, property values in several core area markets of Winnipeg fell by more than fifty percent. This would find expression in the configuration of new housing investment in each city. While the production of new multiple-dwelling units surged upwards in Vancouver and Toronto, the production of new multi-unit dwelling units by private capital in Winnipeg underwent a precipitous decline. At the same time as the production of multiple-units declined in Winnipeg, the proportion of new single-detached residential units dramatically increased (Table Two). So not only did the densification process slow down in Winnipeg, it actually went into reverse.
In ascending cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, a different trajectory was taken. The attraction of international capital and labour to Toronto and Vancouver meant that the on going inflation in land values that had begun in the middle of the 1960s would continue into the 1990s. As a consequence of this, compared to Winnipeg or Montreal, property markets in Toronto and Vancouver started to move in the opposite directions when the next wave of densifcation gathered force in the middle of the 1980s. This can be illustrated by looking at the densification ratio (Table One), which measures the relationship between household income and the cost of housing. While the densification ratio began to fall in Winnipeg and Montreal, the opposite happened in Vancouver and Toronto, as the real estate market in the country began to polarize around the extremes of the continuum which these four markets represented.
What is also noteworthy about this second great wave of investment is the position of Vancouver and Toronto. Whereas Toronto was clearly the lead city with regard to the first national cycle of investment where densification had become significant; by the end of the second investment cycle, Vancouver would supplant Toronto as the lead city. During the first cycle of land-intensive investment the three material elements which shape and promote the densification process were configured much more favourably in Toronto. For example, while resistance to freeway construction was as strong in Vancouver as it was in Toronto, renewed investment in public transit in the 1950s and 1960s created a new template for development in Toronto which would not exist in Vancouver until the mid 1980s. The same applies to land prices. Until the 1990s, except for the speculative boom of 1980 when house prices in Vancouver briefly rose above those of Toronto, during most of the postwar period land values in Toronto were much higher than those of Vancouver. Thus the economic incentive to conserve land was much greater in Toronto than it was in Vancouver until the 1990s. Similarly, much stronger demographic forces supported densification in Toronto, as it had become the largest destination point for new immigrants in the country.
Toronto's relative advantage would begin to diminish in the 1980s. Once again, this can be illustrated by looking at the three elements that shape the densification process. While new investment in transit infrastructure slowed to a halt in Toronto, investment in transit infrastructure underwent a quantum leap in Vancouver. Although Toronto retained its place as most popular destination point for new immigrants, Vancouver overtook Montreal to become the second most popular destination point for new immigrants in the country during the 1990s. Finally, for the first time in its history, throughout the 1990s, house prices in Vancouver were consistently pitched above those of Toronto.
It is too early too make any definitive assessment about the third cycle that began to emerge in 1996 (but has yet failed to take shape in Vancouver because of the recession of the late 1990’s). Although the overall direction of the current wave of investment is still unknown, this cycle may turn out to be a benchmark period with regard to the densification of the Canadian city. While the first two investment cycles took place in an inflationary context this had not been the case for the new cycle that appears to be emerging. Rather than inflation, deflation has become much more important in the current cycle of investment. And whereas the energy crisis, the relatively easy availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, and rising interest rates coloured the first and second densification waves; this time around deflation, and the fiscal crisis of the state, and the limited availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, have emerged as powerful forces that will limit or further shape the progression of land-extensive or land-intensive development in the 1990s.
Because of the multitude of countervailing forces now in operation, the resurgence in land-extensive development that took place in the mid-80s may turn out to be just an aberration. Despite the current regulatory flux where there is a move toward de-regulation, but, at the same time, a countervailing move to limit development and impose greater costs upon new development because of fiscal retrenchment by government, it remains to be seen whether fiscal pressures will over-ride the support that de-regulation has given to the promotion of land-extensive development. That is why what happens in the next construction cycle (that began in 1996) should be revealing in terms of making projections about the future densification of the city.
Nowhere will this be more the case than in Ontario, where many of the infrastructure subsidies and favourable taxation regimes that previously encouraged land-extensive are being eliminated. Only time will tell how far the dissolution of modern regulation will progress. But soon it should be possible to see out the massive restructuring of local government compromises the ability of developers and home buyers to ally themselves to the land-extensive development, which gained a second wind in Ontario during the mid-1980s.
Furthermore, if CMHC's (1997i) assessment of future demand projections are correct, the years between 1996 and 2001 may turn out to be a demographic watershed as well. Over the next few years the growth in households which have the greatest propensity to purchase single-detached homes is expected to level off and begin to gradually decline. Thus a number of countervailing forces are actively working to mute the resurgence of land-extensive development that began in the mid-1980s. To a certain extent this is reflected in the growing importance of renovation, where there has been a dramatic increase in renovations, with these expenditures now often exceeding the value of new residential construction in the 1990s.
For all of these reasons, a better idea of the shape of things to come should become more apparent once the next cycle of residential building has run its course. Unlike the 1980s, in the 1990s builders and consumers will have to respond to shifting demographics and fiscal retrenchment that will be much less favourable to land-extensive development. That is why the new cycle of construction that began in 1996 (after housing production reached a 30 year low in 1995), should provide a clearer picture of the trajectory that the densification process is likely to follow. And from the patterns that appear it should be easier to make a more definitive assessment on how the changes which have been mentioned so far will affect the long-term behaviour of both the consumer and the builders with regard to the production of space.
Once the present building cycle has run its course it should then be possible to obtain a better idea about the permanence or the transitory nature of the densification process, and from this, determine whether the reversion back to land extensive patterns of development in the 1980s is an aberration or a permanent feature. Although the current building cycle has not yet run its course, it has become apparent that many of the conditions that allowed land-extensive development to surge forward in the mid-1980s are not now absent, and that many which are still present, are not as strong as they were in the mid-1990s. With billions of dollars worth of development projected to be spent on this type of low-rise densification over the next decade in Greater Toronto, this may have a significant impact upon the evolution of densification process in this region.
The increasing influence of low-rise forms of densification presents several empirical challenges. While the progression of high-rise and medium rise forms of densification are relatively easy to track by simply looking looking at the changing proportion of single-detached dwelling units, this is not the case for low-rise densification. Since low-rise densification often involves unrecorded renovations, or the reconfiguration of existing single-detached dwelling units, other indicators are needed, particularly if the densification fostered by the new urbanism is to be tracked. Instead of looking at shifts in the production of single-detached dwelling units, clues about the progression of this low-rise form of densification will have to sorted out by choosing indicators which measure changes in net residential densities , as changes in the proportion of single-detached housing units only give an accurate reading of densification when mid-rise and high-rise forms of densification predominate.
Finally, the other thing to look at in the current building cycle is the impact that containment strategies might have. Even though provincial governments such as Alberta, Ontario and Manitoba have loosened up regulations for suburban development, at the local level planners and politicians have tried to initiate containment strategies. For instance in order to increase suburban densities and to incorporate principles associated with the new urbanism into the production of new urban space, Calgary has begun to rejig the regulation of new sub-divisions. Meanwhile, in Ottawa a formal containment strategy has been adopted with the passage of a new regional plan. Again however, it will be in the implementation rather than adoption of formal plans that result, which will be significant. And on this point it is still too early to tell what will come out of these new regulatory measures. Still they are significant because they provide an institutional framework for the further dispersion of low-rise forms of densification.
What this brief overview of the evolution of the densification process in Canada reveals to us, is that this process of transformation is complex, and that it is buffeted by contradictory impulses which affect some cities in different ways. Moreover, since the first building cycle, the uneven development of this process of transformation has become more noticeable, as revealed by the partial regression back to land-extensive development in the 1980s. Lastly, as the densification of the Canadian city has progressed through each of these three distinctive periods of innovation in city building, distinct layers of urban tissue have been laid down which can be looked at like rings on a tree with regard to the evolution of the densification of the Canadian city: with the first cycle, that ran between between 1965 and 1975, marked by the predominance of high-rise buildings; the second, which ran between 1975 and 1990, marked by experimentation with medium-rise dwelling units; and the current phase, which began to take shape in the early 1990s -- but only began to pick up momentum in the mid-1990s -- was marked by experimentation with low-rise formats. Because of this progression, the repertory of denser built forms has expanded greatly since the 1960s. Furthermore, if the institutional framework which supports these developments are studied, what also becomes clear is that the regulatory apparatus that supports the production of these denser urban spaces has become much more powerful and sophisticated in the intervening years. With regard to regulation by the state, this has created an anomaly of sorts that deserves some scrutiny, as all this happened during a time when deregulation became the mantra for policy makers. And, as will be shown, no where is this more the case, than in Vancouver.
For example, looking at the first building cycle, high-rise rentals predominated. In the second cycle (which was rooted in development that took place in the mid-70s but did not come into full bloom until the mid-80s) medium-rise developments began to flourish -- with St. Lawrence Towne and False Creek becoming the prototypes for what was to follow. While there has been a resurgence of high-rise residential construction it is likely to be the emergence of low-rise densification that may turn out to be the distinguishing feature of the current building cycle. This can be seen in the proliferation of secondary suites, increased expenditures on renovations, more infill construction, as well as the application of new urbanist principles to new greenfield developments in the suburbs. Together, these are the developments that promise to change the profile of densification in the Canadian city .
To summarize what has been said so far, although this investigation of densification will show that it is one of the defining attributes of late-twentieth century urbanization, what will also come out of this study is how open-ended and variable the nature of this transformation process is across the country. Mixed signals are still being given off with regard to the direction and format that the densification process will take in the overall evolution of the Canadian city in the next millennium.
Among census metropolitan areas, for instance, currently densification only exerts a hegemonic sway over the production of urban space in Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, in Victoria. Moreover, if changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units can be used as an surrogate measurement for densification, construction statistics reveal that it has become important in many smaller urban centres elsewhere in British Columbia, outside Vancouver and Victoria. Consequently densification has become a major restructuring force in Abbotsford, and in communities located on the east side of Vancouver Island, such as Nanaimo, plus the Okanagan, where cities like Kelowna are being transformed by the densification process.
Outside British Columbia, among Canadian Census Metropolitan areas, another trajectory can be observed. Unlike Vancouver, where densification exerts a hegemonic influence over the entire region, in Ottawa and Toronto a different scenario has unfolded since the 1980s. In these urban regions densification functions as an ascendant force with regard to the overall restructuring of urban space. Rather than one pattern of development predominating, two distinct investment regimes are observable. In the core area of Toronto and Ottawa densification clearly predominates. However, in the exurban parts of each urban region, land-extensive development still tends to predominates.
Since the early 1980s another pattern has emerged in smaller or slower growing centres. In cities such as Winnipeg, investment in the built environment has regressed back to land-extensive forms that were common in the 1950s.
Finally, the inter-national profile of densification is important to keep in mind. Densification is a significant force in other countries as well. About this switch in investment The Economist recently noted: "Cities in industrialized countries have enjoyed a renaissance . . . (since) . . . The Populations of the West's largest cities, in long term decline for half a century, stopped falling during the 1980s and are now starting to rise again,"(p.3). As the previous quote suggests, densification has become one of the defining features of the urbanization process in other western countries.
In the United States, leftist academics like Neil Smith (1984; 1996) have tried to explain why this is now happening by referring to the existence of a rent gap. Meanwhile, more mainstream analysts have put less emphasis on the operation of the property market and have focused more on how the diffusion of new energy and transportation technologies have changed the way that the built environment is organized. Borchert (1991), for instance, frames the densification process in a much larger discussion about technological innovation and changing urban form when he wrote about the start of a new urban epoch which he calls the "electronic-jet propulsion age" (p.231). And in Europe, some academics have even tried to construct a simple descriptive model of the densification process. For example in the early 1980s, van den Berg developed a stage model of urban development in which densification becomes a defining attribute of the fourth stage in the evolution of the city (van den Berg 1982; Bourne 1996).
In Australia, densification has even been given official policy sanction by the government when the Building Better Cities Program was adopted (Stitwell 1993). There is also a densification strategy in the Netherlands (Smith 1996). And even in the United Kingdom (Jencks 1996; Breheny 1997), the state is rethinking policies that were adopted in the 1980s, which encouraged suburbanization, as planners and policy makers are increasingly becoming more interested in densification strategies. What all these initiatives reveal is that densification is an issue in other countries as well. So what is now happening in Vancouver, may be of interest to policy makers and analysts outside the country as well.
Finally, one final note needs to be made: because densification is closely associated with the creation of new centres and margins within the urban hierarchy of each country, the impact of globalization also has to be taken into account when looking at the evolution of the densification process (Cohen 1997,p.115). In Canada, as already mentioned, the impact of globalization on the densification process can be illustrated by comparing the different development profiles of Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and Montreal.
3.0.1 - Canadian Exceptionalism: The Impact that Globalization and the International Division of labour have had on investment regimes in Canada and the United States.
The relationship between globalization and the evolution of the densification process also has some bearing on the emergence of a distinctive form of urbanization within Canada. Although not recognized by this name, by the early 1970s. densification had become responsible for the creation of anomalous development patterns in Canada. With the great apartment boom of the 1960s, commonly held assumptions about the existence of one pattern of urban development in North America started to be challenged.
No where had this become more apparent than in Toronto. As mentioned earlier, by the early 1970s Toronto had emerged as a prototype for a new pattern of urban development in North America. Long before densification was formally recognized in planning discourse it had already become an empirically significant phenomenon in Toronto. As far back as the 1950s, what was to occur as a result of the reconfiguration of the property market, and changing demographics would be foreshadowed by the emergence of a significant amount of private investment in apartment construction in the inner city. This, along with favourable tax policies, combined with the implementation of a public investment strategy that encouraged development around newly-constructed rapid transit stations, is what established the conditions for the great apartment boom of the 1960s. And it was from this apartment boom that the first real evidence of the existence of a different spatial logic for the organization of residential and commercial investment in the modern North American city would become first visible in Toronto.
Although densification was becoming more noticeable in other Canadian cities during the 1960s, as high-rise precincts emerged in Vancouver's West End, Calgary's Beltline Area or the Fort Rouge area in Winnipeg, it was in Toronto that the most impressive development appeared. Here, more than anywhere else, the connection between densification and the re-alignment of the three material elements that promoted densification became the most visible. With the highest housing prices in the country, denser spaces were produced as land values started to increase rapidly in relation to incomes. Consequently the densification ratio, which measures the relation between income and housing costs, started a steep upward climb.
Besides the country's highest housing prices, Toronto had also become the country's largest receptacle for new immigrants. What also made Toronto stand out from other cities was the construction of Canada's first subway line. Until Montreal opened the country's second subway system in the mid 60s, no other city in the country could use this infrastruture to mold development. Like most other North American cities, no transit-oriented templates remained in Canada which could attract investment away from the more amorphous patterns of suburban development that was organized around highway and freeway systems.
Rather than thinning out and becoming more amorphous, like most North American cities were doing in the 1950s and early 1960s, Toronto was beginning to densify instead. A linear and mult-nodal development corridors emerged which was organized around transit lines. While some low-rise densification started to emerge in the United States with the growth of planned-unit developments (McKenzie 1994), this development paled beside the high-rise densification that took hold in the Canadian city during the 1960s.
While some of the divergence which Toronto became emblematic of, can be explained by referring to the different demographic and technological and institutional forces that were molding the densification process in different ways in each country, as has been noted, some of this divergence was also rooted in larger macro-economic forces that have to do with globalization and shifts in the international division of labour. Although these forces are not the subject of this study they do require some acknowledgement. A brief detour is therefore required. For a brief while concerns about the impact of the urban land market, demographic shifts and the impact of investment in public infrastructure will be put aside, and some mention made of the larger processes that link the production of urban space to the operation of the broader economy.
In an abbreviated fashion, this can be done by looking at the differences in the international balance of trade and services. For, in addition to the divergence created by variations that can be observed in the urban land market, the demographic situation of each country and different investment strategies for the provision of communications infrastructure, there are differences in the balance of trade of services that have also affected the pattern of investment in the cities of both countries.
To illustrate this, the impact of variations in the size and configuration of the high-technology and tourism sectors can be used to how these larger macro forces have affected the settlement geography of each country. While the United States has a large surplus in both of these sectors, Canada has a deficit. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s the deficit in tourism rose from two to three billion dollars a year to over seven billion dollars in the early 1990s (Norcliffe 1996, p.35). Likewise, the deficit in the high-technology sector was even higher. For example, in just one segment of this sector, computers and office equipment, the trade deficit stood at 5.3 billion dollars in 1993 (Norcliffe 1996 p.32).
While it is not possible to make a direct link between the economic specialization of each country and patterning of urban space, it seems quite clearl that a relation exists. For example, in the United States the close relationship that exists between the expansion of several high-tech sectors and and the growth of exurban development has been documented (U.S. Congress 1995; Castells 1994). The relative size of these sectors therefore provides a partial explanation of the different scale of exurban development that can be observed in Canada and the United States. Hence, for Canada, it is possible to make some speculations about the connection that probably exist between the relatively small size of the high-technology sector and the absence of a large military-industrial complex, and the more limited extent of exurban development. While some distinctive exurban high-tech spaces have developed in the suburbs around some airports in Canada -- in places such as in Richmond in the case of Vancouver, Murray Industrial Park, in Winnipeg, or Saint Laurant near Dorval airport in the case of Montreal -- these high-technology landscapes pale beside the huge high-tech zones that exist in places like Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco, or Route 128 in Boston. Only in the exurban zone that surrounds Toronto has a high-tech exurban landscape come into existence that comes close to approximating the extensive high-tech landscapes that can be found on the periphery of the most dynamic urban centres in the United States.
Otherr nuances in the organization of space can be deduced from variations in the economic base. For example it may not be size but variations in the sector specialization ofthe high-technology sector in each country that may explain some of the political, cultural and spatial differences that colour the practices of the new middle class in each country. For example, Canada appears to have become more specialized in the production of information systems and media products rather than as a producer of high-tech hardware (Smith Vivian 1997; Enchin 1997; VS-290; VS-317). Since many of these media activities have an historic and functional relation to artistic modes of production the inner city rather than exurbia was viewed in a more favourable light by these high-tech sectors. Consequently, when compared to the United States, Canada's specialization in this high-tech media area has probably been a significant factor in anchoring certain fractions of middle class to the inner-city. The results can be seen in the expansion of important employment clusters in, film, video and the animation industries that have grown up in the core areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver since the mid 1980s.
In the consumer sphere, examining tourism also shows how the economic specialization of each country has affected the production of urban space. For reasons having to do with climate and the expertise that Americans have developed in the promotion of urban spectacles, (Huxtable 1997; Fryer 1997; Robinett and Camp 1997; Milner 1997) the economies of many urban regions in the United States have become highly specialized around tourism activities, as an extensive infrastructure devoted to mass tourism and retirement communities has arisen over the past 30 years, creating the demand for new kinds of space that tend to be located in the exurban parts of the urban region rather than in the core. While these landscapes are becoming more important in Canada, as with the high-technology sector,they are not yet found on the scale that is present in the United States. In Canada, just as there are no equivalents to Silicon Valley, with regard to tourism there are still no Canadian counterparts to places like Orlando, Las Vegas or Phoenix. Morevover, because much of the demand for these kind of spaces have been siphoned off to the United States, the market for these tourist and retirement landscapes has been further truncated in Canada (Clark 1997).
By contrast, while many Canadians flock to American retirement communities and exurban theme parks, there is also is an important counterflow of Americans and overseas visitors to the core areas of Canada's cities. Except for the West Edmonton Mall, and to a lesser extent Canada's Wonderland, most of the infrastructure of urban spectacle has been located in the core of the city or in the inner suburbs. For example the new theme park planned for the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver and the redevelopment of the Downsview lands into an entertainment centre are either located in core area of the urban region or the inner suburbs. (e.g.., Milner in The Globe and Mail, September 15,1997).
Differences can also be traced to the Canada's greater specialization in property and real estate. For example, the international specialization of Canadian capital in the property and development sector has played an important role in advancing the densification process in Canada (Naylor 1975). Since more intense forms of densification involve much more complex and sophisticated procedures for investment, the creation of powerful development corporations in Canada no doubt abetted the densification process. Here a pool of expertise, and access to capital has more easily allowed develpers to exploit new market opportunities created by the densification process. Not surprisingly, Canadian firms are now important players on the world stage, exporting much of their expertise in city-building to places like China, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany,and the United States (G/M 1997bw). This helps to explain why Architectural & Engineering services have become the fastest expanding service sector in the country, growing by 400 percent since 1990 despite the depression that began in 1989 (G/M 1997bv).
So while differences in the urban land market, demographics and the provisioning of urban transportation are the most important internal variables that shape and differentiate the densification process within the ambit of the local state in Canada, it is important to keep in mind the larger external factors that operate outside the sphere of the local state, as they also affect how the densification process will manifests itself in each city.
When this is done it then becomes possible to see how activities operating at one geographic scale are articulated and related to other process operating lower down or higher up. As the example of tourism and high-technology industries reveal, larger economic processes exist as a background context, and these forces set the macro-economic parameter for the operation of the three variables that shape the densification process within the confines of the local state, that will now be studied at greater length. Therefore the economic specialization of a city, or the division of labour in a particular locality cannot be ignored since they have an important but indirect effect on the shape that the densification process will assume in each place. For example, even within Canada, while the densification process only plays a dominant role in the restructuring of urban space in Vancouver, it only plays an ascendant role in the morphogensis of Toronto. Meanwhile except for Ottawa perhaps, in other cities the densification process operates at a much lower level of intensity.
And when comparisons are made with the United States current differences become even more striking. For instance if the production of single-detached dwelling units are used as an indicator for densification it soon becomes apparent that there are no equivalents to Vancouver at the present time in the United States. Since the proportion of single-detached units probably only falls below the fifty-five percent mark in one or two cities, few urban centres in the United States have even entered an ascendant phase with regard to the evolution of the densification process. Instead, in almost all cities in the United States densification is still only an emergent phenomenon (Gordon and Richardson 1997; Nowlan and Stewart 1991). As well, because low-rise densification is more common here, the densification manifests itself in the built environment in a different way. Unlike Canada where high-rise and medium-rise formats predominate. Moreover densification is more prevalent in exurban areas of the United States something that has been accentuated by the different scale of exurban development that is present in each country (Mckenzie 1995; Downs 1994). Thus, even if we look at cities which come closest to Vancouver and Toronto, such as San Francisco or Washington DC., in these places densification only appears as an emergent rather than dominant or ascendant force with regard to the restructuring of urban space (Bernick and Cervero 1997; Bruegman 1966).
3.1 - One: The Impact of the Urban Real Estate Market - Charting the shift from extensive to intensive regimes of accumulation
Having briefly surveyed the larger context that shapes the densification process, it is now the appropriate time to return to the sphere of the local state and look at the local conditions that have shaped the densification process in each locality. This variation can be studied by looking at how three material variables have broadly shaped the densification process in Canada. Property markets will be looked at first, then demographic influences. Finally, the impact that different investment strategies in the provisioning of transportation and communications will be looked at to see what impact they have had on the progression of the densification process. will be brought into the picture to show why the densification process has evolved so unevenly over time and space within a single urban region.
By constructing a densification ratio to chart the evolution of the urban real estate market the economic dimension of the movement away from a land-extensive mode of urban development to one that is more land-intensive can be traced over time and space. This can be done by looking at the ratio between house prices and income levels. Since housing represents the single largest land use in the city and normally absorbs more capital than any other land use, an increase in the price of land will usually lead to rent increases or land use changes that affect the production and consumption of urban space. Particularly as housing prices increase relative to income powerful economic constraints are put on the per capita consumption of space. Unless an individual is willing to forego other consumption in order to maintain the previous consumption of space or accept a decline in an existing standard of living, the consumption of space will have to decrease.
Although this densification ratio is only a crude indicator, it does provide a useful shorthand method for assessing the economic pressures that may either favour or impede the densification process. Moreover, it can act as a condenser of non economic forces, translating them into dollars and cents that will produce a specific market configuration for space.
If there are no countervailing forces in operation, when the densification ratio falls, the relative cost of land within the city in relation to income falls. Everything being equal, this should result in an increase in the per capita consumption of space. This, in turn, establishes the economic preconditions for an increase in the per capita consumption of land. Conversely, when the densification ratio rises, the opposite situation takes hold. Urban space becomes more expensive. When this happens, consumers will have to reduce their consumption of space or migrate to another location if some form of substitution is not undertaken. Usually, but not always, at some point this should produce higher population densities. Conversely, when the densification ratio is low or is declining, market impulses can be expected to work in the opposite direction, increasing the consumption of residential space, thereby lowering population densities if overcrowding does not take place.
By using the data on housing prices and income supplied by Statistics Canada from 1931 through to 1991, densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver were constructed to illustrate how these land extensive and land-intensive patterns of urban development have evolved over time in both cities (table one).
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Table One
Winnipeg Vancouver
1931 4.464 4.329
1941 2.218 2.196
1951 - - 2.940
1961 2.147 2.322
1971 1.779 2.503
1981 2.386 7.326
1986 1.990 3.772
1991 1.929 5.751
1996 2.000e 7.000 +
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While these ratios can be viewed as a snapshot of the economic parameters that govern the urban land market of these two cities the ratios only give us an abstract measurement of change. To show how these abstract numbers eventually result in the production of different urban landscapes, more concrete empirical statistics need to be used. Here statistics on housing forms, particularly the percentage of housing units made up of single detached dwelling units (table two) and changes in gross population density can provide the necessary historical texture that illustrates how changes in the densification ratio translate into the production of two quite different types of urban landscapes. Furthermore, the densification ratio and related changes in house type shed some additional light on the external factors that have conditioned the evolution of the real estate market in Vancouver and Winnipeg.
As well, if the historic relation between denser and less dense development still holds then densification ratios of 2 and 4 can be used as benchmarks for empirically verifying the presence or absence of specific economic impulses that either favour land-intensive or land-extensive development. At the same time the qualitative difference pointed to by the different densification ratio for Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 1990s can also be used as evidence to support the contention that two contrasting logics for the organization of urban space now exist in Canada. At one end of the spectrum there are cities like Winnipeg, that has a densification ratio that hovers around 2. Low readings like these indicate that the property market is still firmly anchored in land-extensive pattern of development. At the other end there are cities like Vancouver, Ottawa and to a lesser extent Toronto, which have densification ratios that hover around or above 4. When readings like this are found, if historic precedents still hold, market pressures in these cities will tend to favour more land-intensive patterns of development.
Finally, looking at differences in the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver also provide one means for charting the uneven and non linear aspects of the densification process in Canada. As the numbers in Table one show, the progression of the densification process in Vancouver has been quite different from Winnipeg's. While Vancouver permanently switched from a land-extensive mode of development of urban development to one that was land-intensive, the densification ratio for Winnipeg shows the city following a different route. Unlike Vancouver, the densification ratio in Winnipeg only rose briefly before returning to a downward trajectory that took it back to the benchmark ratio of two, something indicative of a well entrenched regime of land-extensive accumulation rather than a regime of land-intensive accumulation.
3.1.1 - A tale of two cities: Convergence and divergence in the production of urban spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver
If the densification ratios for both cities are tracked between 1931 and 1991 (table one), evidence of two distinct regimes of accumulation clearly emerges. Moreover, if we look at the uneven progression of the densification process the movement of the densification ratio over time sheds some light on how the property markets of both cities have been influenced by the shifting economic status of each city.
Thus, in 1931 the densification ratio for Winnipeg stood at 4.4, and Vancouver's at 4.3. With the densification ratios for both cities above four, the real estate market of both cities reflected the denser organization of urban space typical of the streetcar era of city building. The status of each city was also reflected in the price of housing and labour, with Winnipeg's dominance at this time expressed in higher incomes and housing prices. Thus the average income in Winnipeg was 18 percent higher than Vancouver's. Similarly housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent higher than in Vancouver. Consequently, Winnipeg's densification ratio was higher than Vancouver's at this time. Not surprisingly, this difference was reflected in the prewar urban morphology of each city as Winnipeg was then much denser than Vancouver. While gross population densities for Winnipeg were 7,800 people per square mile in 1941 they were only 5,100 in Vancouver. Consequently, gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than Vancouver's well into the 1940s. And even into the early 1960s densities in Winnipeg were still 25 percent above those of Vancouver.
This relation would change as the densification ratio declined more rapidly in Winnipeg. Thus by 1961 the densification ratio for Vancouver stood at 2.3 compared to 2.1 for Winnipeg. While the shift from 4 to around 2 signified that land-extensive development patterns had become firmly ingrained in both cities, the greater decline experienced by Winnipeg found its physical expression in the convergence of the population densities for both cities. Whereas densities in Winnipeg had been 50 percent higher than in Vancouver during the 1940s by the 1960s this gap had been cut in half. Although densities in both cities fell during the 1950's, the decline was steeper in Winnipeg. So by 1961, gross population densities in Winnipeg were 25 percent instead of 50 percent above those of Vancouver. As a result Winnipeg had 6,700 people per square mile in 1961, compared to 5,500 for Vancouver.
Between 1961 and 1971, this gap would disappear and then reverse itself as Vancouver now became the denser city. For while the densification ratio for Winnipeg continued to fall between 1961 and 1971, as it moved from 2.147 down to 1.779; for Vancouver, the densification ratio began to rise, climbing from 2.322 to 2.503. As a result, the 1960s was a watershed period for Vancouver. The property-market of the urban region was reset along a new trajectory, with the real estate market reconfigured to support a regime of land-intensive accumulation that has been maintained up to the present.
By the 1970s, these shifts would result in the production of very different physical spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver and this would show up in changes in the composition of the housing stock of each city. So not only would this shift from one regime to another show up in statistics on the gross density of each city, this divergence would also show up in changing proportion of single detached dwelling units in both Vancouver and Winnipeg. Just as gross population densities in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg during the 1960s, the proportion of less dense housing units in Vancouver converged with Winnipeg. However, after 1966 they would then begin to diverge, with the gap between each city steadily widening thereafter with each passing decade, as can be seen by comparing the proportion of single detached units and the number of strata title units in each city (tables two and three, pp. 49 and 61). During the 1950s relatively more single-detached dwelling units were constructed in Vancouver than in the nation as a whole; however, this ratio would be reversed in the 1960s for the first time. With upward shift in the densification ratio the production of single-detached units in Vancouver now fell below the national average.
For a brief while in the 1970s, the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose as well, climbing from 1.779 to 2.3 by 1981. But unlike Vancouver, this rise would be short lived. Nor was the shift strong enough to propel Winnipeg decisively away from the benchmark figure of 2 which signified the persistence of land extensive development patterns. Thus, after rising for a brief while between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio began a steady decline which has persisted into the 1990s. As a consequence the densification ratio for Winnipeg fell from 2.3, in 1981, to 1.99 in 1986, declining further to 1.92, in 1991, hovering around the benchmark figure of two up to the present.
Looking now at Vancouver, quite a different picture emerges. In the 1970s the densification ratio passes the historic benchmark reading of 4, as it spiked upwards from 2.5 in 1971 to 7.1 in 1981. Except for a brief dip between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio has plateaued well above historic readings indicative of a time of much denser urban development.
Because of the historical inertia created by built environment and independent existence of building cycles, these shifts in the densification ratio did not immediately result in the production of radically different environments. However, as the comparison of Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrates, if qualitative differences in the densification ratio are maintained over an extended period dramatic changes in the way that the built environment is organized will result. Indeed the contrast that can be seen in the evolution of built environment in Winnipeg and Vancouver provide powerful empirical evidence of this. If changes in the densification ratio of each city are correlated with changing population densities, and shifts in the composition of the housing stock, the materialization of the changes in the densification ratio in both cities becomes more apparent. As Vancouver shows, the maintenance of a high densification ratio over an extended time is correlated with rising gross population densities and dramatic changes in the city's housing stock, with denser house types replacing less dense house forms. As a result there has been a dramatic decline in the number of housing units in Vancouver made up of single detached units and a dramatic rise in strata title units. Conversely, as trends in Winnipeg reveal, the maintenance of lower densification ratios has done the opposite. Instead of rising, population densities have declined. Likewise, this is reflected in composition of the city's housing stock. As a result, since 1981 the proportion of single detached units has risen rather than fallen (table two). Similarly, Winnipeg has been the last major housing market in the country to accept strata title units. And even now, most units are simply recycled apartments rather than purpose-built condominiums (CMHC 1995, Manitoba, p.16; Condo Guide and New homes 1997).
Although there is not a one to one correspondence between changes in the densification ratio and shifts in a city's population density and alterations or the composition of its housing stock there is a loose but strong correspondence that can be observed over time. For example in 1931 when the densification ratio for Winnipeg was 10 percent higher than Vancouver's (4.464 versus 4.329) gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than in Vancouver. Later on, in the mid-1980s, when the densification ratio for Vancouver had been much higher than in Winnipeg for over a decade, this would be reflected in the diverging population densities of both cities. By 1986 densities in each city had reversed, moving in step with the different trajectory of the densification ratio for each city. With the densification ratio in Winnipeg only half that of Vancouver's (1.99 versus. 3.66) in 1986, gross population densities in Vancouver had risen thirty percent higher than Winnipeg -- with Winnipeg having 1330 people per square kilometer compared to 1720 for Vancouver.
Furthermore, as the densification ratio for Vancouver continued to rise during the late 1980's and Winnipeg's continued to fall, the gross population densities of each city diverged even more. By 1991 Vancouver had nearly 2000 people per square kilometer while gross population densities in Winnipeg had declined to 1076 people per square kilometer. Whereas Winnipeg had been 50 percent denser than Vancouver in 1941, by 1991 Vancouver was nearly twice as dense as Winnipeg.
This change shows up if national comparisons are made. For instance, in 1961 Vancouver was the third largest city in Canada but ranked seventh in terms of density. However, by 1991 Vancouver was the still the third largest city but had become the third densest city in the country. And into the future, unless densification in Toronto or Montreal intensifies, by 2001 Vancouver will still be Canada's third largest urban region but will likely become the densest city in the country. A momentous transformation in the urban morphology of Vancouver has therefore taken place in a relatively short span of time, a change that has transformed Vancouver first medium-density city in North America.
Furthermore, if the densification ratios for both Winnipeg and Vancouver are disaggregated, it is possible to see how changes in the place occupied by each city in the urban hierarchy have affected the built environment of both cities. If we disaggregate the densification ratio for 1931 we find that housing prices and wages were considerably higher in Winnipeg. Even though Vancouver had just surpassed Winnipeg in population to become Canada's third largest city in the 1930s, Winnipeg was still the leading decision-making centre in the West (Kerr 1965).
Thus, if income and housing prices for 1931 are compared with those for 1991 the relative shift that can be observed reflect the changing places occupied by each city in the national urban hierarchy. With an average wage of $1,120 in 1931 and average an average house price of $5,000 for Winnipeg compared to $947 and $4,100 for Vancouver, these differences were a sign of Winnipeg's economic dominance over the West during the first half of the twentieth century. But if the densification ratio for each city in 1991 is disaggregated, the steep decline that Winnipeg has undergone over the past 60 years becomes unmistakable if wages and house prices are compared to Vancouver. Unlike 1931, when wage levels in Winnipeg were 18 percent above those in Vancouver, in 1991 household incomes were 15 percent below those of Vancouver, with the average household income in Winnipeg standing at $49,000 compared to $57,000 for Vancouver. Even more significant are the differences in housing prices. Whereas housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent above Vancouver's in 1931, by 1991 the situation had become reversed: with housing prices in 1991 averaging $244,000 in Vancouver compared to $97,000 for Winnipeg. Thus, by 1991, housing prices in Vancouver were two-and-a-half times higher than in Winnipeg. And by 1996 this gap had widened further, with the average price of housing in Winnipeg dropping to $83,000 compared to an increase to over $300,000 for Vancouver (CMHC 1997e; Report on Business August 1997,p.38)
From this asymmetry in income and housing prices two quite different housing markets have evolved. This has also affected the social ecologies of both cities, producing stark contrasts in the settlement geography for each city. A scenario different from that proposed by Chicago school theorists has arisen in Winnipeg. In Winnipeg things have become unbalanced. Here disinvestment has come about because of unimpeded sprawl. As well, the migration of an urban underclass into the inner-city has created a dysfunctional version of the Chicago School's idealized representation of the modern city. Rather than function as a buffer, in Winnipeg the zone of discard has begun to engulf the entire downtown. At one time theorist's of the Chicago Schook did regard Winnipeg as Canada's equivalent to Chicago, but at present the city moves to a different trope, following the example of Detroit rather than Chicago. Rather than transforming itself into a postmodern city Winnipeg has mutated and regressed, becoming a dysfunctional modern city (Heron 1993; Whiteway 1992; G/M 1997dc). In Winnipeg and Detroit the growth of the zone of discard has become malignant. In Winnipeg and Detroit, not only has it created a habitat for a large urban underclass to live in; it has also engulfed areas of working-and-middle-class housing in the core and even overwhelmed parts of the downtown of each city -- places that are supposed to remain the epicenter of investment in the urban region, according to the model for the modern city first described by the Chicago School theorists.
In Vancouver precisely the opposite happened. Instead of the zone of discard expanding to take up the entire core area of the region, it has been erased, producing a distinctive postmodern settlement space in the core of the city where marginalized urban spaces only exist as receding enclaves in the middle class sea that has been created (figure eight, chapter five, p. 482). This becomes apparent when the location of new residential investment in Vancouver and Winnipeg is compared. For instance, unlike Winnipeg, in Vancouver during the first seven months of 1997, nearly 20 percent of the region's new housing stock was constructed on the downtown peninsula of the City of Vancouver, more than in Surrey, the region's largest suburb. By contrast, in Winnipeg, during 1996, for the first time in the city's history, more housing was built outside the perimeter than inside. In absolute terms this meant that exurban sprawl had now exceeded suburban expansion in the city. Realizing the threat that this poses to the assessment base, city council has put generous subsidies in place to subsidize suburban expansion within the city's boundaries. But this will only compound the problem of disinvestment in the core, since money that could be used as incentives for people to resettle in the core or to refurbish residential units will now be spent on dispersing capital further out into the suburbs, further hastening the decline of the core. So not only has the physical environment been altered, an entirely new social geography for each city has been created in each city.
For example, if Winnipeg is Canada's closest equivalent to Detroit in terms of the emergence of an urban underclass then Vancouver is Canada's closest version of San Francisco, where gentrification rather than the emergence of an urban underclass has acted as a magnet for capital, transforming both cities from polyglot urban centres into enclaves dominated by middle class residents. Instead of capital dispersing it has concentrated in the central city producing a very intense form of densification, which has brought with it displacement and affordability problems that even afflict the middle class. Again, this stands in contrast to Winnipeg, where there is little densification, and what investment that there is, goes to the periphery rather than to the core of the city. That is why the fundamental problem in the inner city is one of housing abandonment and the cannibalization of existing housing stock. The real estate market in Winnipeg's core is simply too weak to support significant reinvestment in the zone of working class homes such as the city's West End. That is why in Winnipeg, unlike Vancouver, it is the threat of capital disinvestment or abandonment rather than the displacement arising from house inflation and gentrification that define the context for the production and destruction of urban space in the core.
Having seen how changes in the densification ratio have affected the local property market and how, in turn, this has created two contrasting regimes of accumulation in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the affect that this has had on the population density and the composition of housing in each city can be examined to provide more texture. Since gross population density can encorporate a great deal undeveloped residential land, industrial and park uses, this measurement, by itself, can only provide a loose approximation of any changes in density. That is why changes in the composition of a city's housing can be used as an indicator of some changes in density, as any shift would relate directly to only residential land.
More pariticularly, since single-detached dwellings units are the most space consuming housing form that is produced (CMHC N.D.,p.26), one way of tracking the expansion or retreat of land-extensive and land-intensive development is to look at changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. Particularly when statistics on net residential densities are not readily available, this measure can serve as a useful surrogate indicator of land-intensive or land-extensive development . Except in cases where low-rise densification predominates, any change in the proportion of single-detached units shouldl reveal whether or not a city is becoming more or less dense over time.
As will later be shown, the construction of new single-detached dwelling units can even be used to gauge the intensity of land-intensive or land-extensive development at any point in time. For example in places where single-detached dwelling units make up more than 55 percent of all newly constructed units, the overall proportion of an urban region's housing stock made up of single-detached units will generally rise. Whenever this investment pattern prevails, densification only operates as a secondary and emergent phenomenon. Fifty-five percent is used as an approximate cut off line since between three to six percent of all new housing units are simply replacement housing. That is why more than fifty percent of all new housing units have to be made up of single-detached units if the overall composition of sparser house type is to be maintained. If this logic is accepted it is then possible to make some extrapolations, and state that any time the production of single detached units goes consistently above 55 percent a regime of land-extensive regime of accumulation will to be the dominant force shaping residential investment in the city. As previously mentioned, the only time this might not be the case would be when low-rise densification predominates. For unlike high-rise or medium-rise densification, the advance of low-rise densification may not be reflected by a corresponding shift in the composition of the housing stock. Again that is why the new urbanism deserves special attention in this regard.
To continue on, whenever the the production of single-detached units consistently falls below 55 percent the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units will start to fall. When this happens densification becomes an ascendant force. Lastly, if the production of single-detached dwellings falls consistently below 35 percent denser housing forms become predominant. When this happens densification becomes become a dominant force.
Looking at table two, with densification ratios ranging between 2 and 2.5, in 1961, the proportion of the housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units was very high in both Vancouver and Winnipeg,. Despite the differences between each city, what these figures reveal is that each city was securely locked into land-extensive regime of accumulation. With 70 percent of all dwelling units in Winnipeg made up single-detached dwelling, and 71 percent in Vancouver, the proportion of single detached units in both cities was well then above the national average are far above those of Toronto and Montreal. For example, in Toronto only 56 percent of the housing stock was made up of single detached units. And in Montreal, as late as 1961, only 19 percent of all dwelling units were made of of single-detached homes.
Thus, as late as 1961, with the percentage of single detached dwelling units in Winnipeg and Vancouver nearly ten percent above the national average, these percentages reveal that among the largest urban centres in the country, both Winnipeg and Vancouver were the sparest settled centres in the country at this time.
This makes the changes which have taken place since 1961 even more noteworthy. While Vancouver still the third largest city in the country, it will soon become the densest urban region in the nation. For Winnipeg just the opposite has happened. In 1961 it was the fourth largest city in the counrty. Since that time the city has fallen to eighth place. Even though Winnipeg was less dense than Toronto or Montreal, in 1961 it was still the densest city in the West. Now, however, among the larger cities in Western Canada it is now probably the least dense urban region.
Between 1961 and 1971 the percentage of dwelling units made up of single detached units fell faster in Winnipeg and Vancouver than for the nation as a whole. As the figures in table two show, the proportion of single detached units fell by nearly six percent across the nation but during this first surge in densification, it fell by nine percent in Vancouver and seven percent in Winnipeg. This indicated that the first wave of densification affected these two cities more than the nation as a whole, as the percentage of single-detached units declined from 71 to 62 percent, in the case of Vancouver, while it fell from 70 to 63 percent in Winnipeg. Since the first densification wave affected Vancouver more than Winnipeg residential densities gradually surpassed Winnipeg. In this regard 1966 is a watershed year as the number of single detached units in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg then fell below it. Since that time each city has moved further apart. While Winnipeg's population has thinned out, the opposite has happened in Vancouver.
What these numbers show is that both cities were strongly influenced by the first densification wave; however with the proportion of single detached units falling by ten percent in Toronto, the greatest impact of this first wave was no doubt felt in Toronto, where the proportion of single-detached units fell from 56 percent to 46 percent of the regions housing stock between 1961 and 1971.
If these steep declines are correlated with changes in the densification ratio, what also becomes obvious is that more than economic influences were at work in shaping the first wave of densification. While the densification ratio started to rise in the 1960s, it still was falling in Winnipeg at a time when the proportion of single detached dwelling units were rapidly declining. And even in Vancouver, although property values were rising quickly, the densification ratio only stood at 2.5. Even though densification was taking place -- the densification ratio was still a considerable distance away from the historic benchmark figure of four- - that historical precedent suggested was the level at which denser spaces started to be produced on a significant scale. As the next section will show, there is an explanation for this that has to do with demographics rather than the reconfiguration of the urban real estate market. For demographics, as much as changes in the urban land market, played an important role in shaping the first densification wave.
As with the densification ratio, the convergence of house types in Winnipeg and Vancouver would be fleeting. This would become more obvious in the 1970s. For example, between 1971 and 1981 the densification ratio for Vancouver rose from 2.5 to over 7, passing well beyond a ratio of four, which has been used as a benchmark figure for a market configuration denoting the presence of market forces favouring densification. Although the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose from about 1.8 to 2.3, this was not enough to establish a regime of accumulation where densification would become a permanet transformative feature (table one, p. 49). Because of these diverging ratios, by 1981 it became apparent that each city occupied two qualitatively different universes with regard to the operation of market forces. And this would find direct expression in the built environment, as can be seen in the growing divergence in the proportion of percentage of single-detached dwelling units located in each city. Still, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by four percent in Winnipeg and five percent in Vancouver. What was significant for Vancouver was that for the first time the proportion of single detached units in Vancouver fell in line with the national average, while in Winnipeg they continued to hover above this average. However, even in Winnipeg, the gap was almost closed, as the percentage of single-detached dwelling units came within two percentage points of the national average in 1981, before moving upwards during the rest of the 1980s.
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Table Two
V WPG T M Canada
1931 79% 73% 34% 5% 76%
1941 75% 66% 39% 7% 72%
1951 75% 67% 52% 11% 66.4%
1961 71% 70% 56% 19% 65.3%
1971 62% 63% 46% 26% 59.4%
1981 57% 59% 40% 27% 57.0%
1991 50% 61% 45% 31% 56.9%
1996(e) 45% 62% 46% 32% 53.2%
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From 1981 and 1991, the impact of two quite different urban land markets would become more apparent in production of new housing. While the proportion of single-detached units declined in Vancouver, this proportion rose in Winnipeg. As densification accelerated in Vancouver so too, did the decline in the proportion of single-detached units. Conversely, as declines in the densification ratio for Winnipeg reveal, as the densification process decelerated and even reversed itself, the proportion of single-detached began to rise rather than fall after 1980. The figures in Table Two show this, as the number of single-detached units in Winnipeg rose from 59 percent in 1981 to 61 percent in 1991.
Just the opposite occurred in Vancouver. As the densification ratio rose, the decline in the proportion of dwelling units made up of single-detached units accelerated -- falling from from 57 percent of the region's housing inventory in 1981, to 50 percent in 1991, a decline of seven percent. What make this decline even more remarkable, was that it occurred at a time when the advancement of the densification process had almost come to a halt across the nation. As table two shows, for the nation as a whole the proportion of single-detached units only fell by one-tenth of a percentage point in the 1980s, compared to 6 percent in the 1960s and two-point-five percent in the 1970s. And in some cities such as Winnipeg and Toronto there was even a reversal.
Estimates for 1996 (table two, p.61) show that since 1991 the densification process has accelerated again. Mostly because of what was happening in British Columbia, the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the nation fell by 3.5 percent. In the 1980s, one of the main reasons for the slow progression of the densification process was the striking reversal in the production of single-detached units that took place in the exurban part of Greater Toronto. In Toronto a bi-modal or split pattern of development emerged. In core of the region (centred within the boundaries of the old Metropolitan Corporation of Toronto) densification still remained a powerful force. However, in the exurban parts of the region a powerful counter tendency built up steam. As this was the fastest growing part of the region, resurgent land-extensive development that took place here overwhelmed what was happening in the core. This would show up in the composition of the housing stock. For instance, between 1986 and 1985 the proportion of single-detached units fell from 34 to 32.6 percent in the core, a drop of 1.4 percent. At the same time, the proportion of single-detached units rose from 62 to 63 percent in exurban Toronto.
Because exurban Toronto was then also the largest and most dynamic housing market in the country, this naturally skewed the national average, bringing to a halt the steady decline in the number of single-detached dwellings making up the country's housing stock, which had fallen at an accelerated rate since the early 60s. Even in Vancouver, deflationary pressures were at work in the early 80s. As a result of the bursting of the speculative housing bubble in 1980 and 81, the densification ratio fell below the benchmark level of four, when it momentarily sank to 3.8 in 1986 before beginning a decade long ascent (table one, p. 49).
Between 1991 and 1996, the resurgence of land-extensive development would be tamed somewhat. Although weaker than the 1960s and 70s, densification gained strength in the 1990s, as the proportion of single-detached dwelling units making up the nations housing inventory started to decline in a significant way once more, after almost coming to a halt between 1986 and 1991. This time, however, Vancouver rather than Toronto would become the lead city. Still, even in Toronto, densification gained some new momentum. As a result, there was a dramatic slowdown in the production of single-detached units within Greater Toronto between 1991 and 1995. Unlike the period between 1981 and 1991, when the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the region rose by 5 percent, between 1991 and 1996 this advance almost came to a halt, as the proportion of single-detached units only rose by 1 percent. Thus by 1996 single-detached units made up approximately 46 percent of the regions housing stock, a rise of six percent from 1981, when single-detached dwellings made up of 40 percent of the region's housing inventory.
With Densification ratio for Vancouver moving past seven in the 1990s, densification advanced much faster than in the nation, as a whole. Between 1991 and 1996 (in table two, p. 61) the proportion of single-detached units in Greater Vancouver fell by five percent, moving from 50 percent to about 45 percent. If present trends continue, within the decade, Vancouver will undoubtedly become the densiest city in the country, and perhaps the continent, as no other major urban centre in either the United States or Canada is experiencing such a dramatic. If the proportion of single-detached units can be taken as an accurate reflection of residential densities than only Montreal and Greater New York presently have a lower proportion of their housing stock made up of single-detached dwellings. With the eclipse of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver currently proceeding at faster rate than in Toronto during the 1960s -- when a ten percent drop in the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units made it the lead city for the densification process with the first wave of reinvestment -- it the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver may sink below 35 percent in less than ten years. If this occurs the rate of decline experienced in Vancouver will match or even exceed the ten percent drop experienced by Toronto in the 1960s. And if this does occur, Vancouver will hold the distinction of becoming the only major North American city that will be denser in the year 2001 than it was in 1931, when the era of the streetcar suburb came to an end.
With the proportion of single-detached dwelling in Winnipeg rising from 61 percent in 1991 to 62 percent in 1996, an entirely different urban configuration is unfolding. This is reflected in the densification ratios for each city. While the densification ratio for Vancouver's has moved well past the benchmark line of four, which suggests that densification has become a dominant force, in Winnipeg it has hovered around the benchmark figure of two, which suggests that land-extensive development will likely remain the dominant regime of accumulation for this city into the next century. From these diverging densification ratios dramatically different investment profiles for each city have resulted. Construction figures show this. For example, if housing starts for the first half of 1997, single-detached units accounted for 68 percent of all housing starts in Winnipeg. By contrast, in Vancouver single-detached units only made up 31 percent of all housing starts (SC-35).
As these figures indicate, each city is situated at opposite ends of the continuum. This can be shown by looking at the changes in the makeup of the housing stock for each city, and by comparing them to the national average. For Winnipeg, in 1981 the proportion of single-detached units was two percent above the national average. However by 1991 the gap had widened to nine percentage points (table two). Just the opposite happened in Vancouver. In 1981, the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver equalled the national average. However, since that time the gap has grown by 10 percentage points, but in the opposite direction from Winnipeg. For most of the postwar period the proportion of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver had stood well above the national average. Now, however, the proportion of single-detached units is well below the national average.
For the rest of the country, as the next construction cycle proceeds, it remains to be seen what will happen. Although Winnipeg will probably maintain its current trajectory, it is in the exurban areas of Toronto, which now make up the largest market for new housing in the country, that some new developments might unfold. Particularly since no other place in the country will likely be affected by the removal of hidden subsidies. With federal and provincial downloading, existing subsidies are now being openly challenged and debated. While some of the subsidies that support single-detached dwelling units are likely to remain in place many others may disappear. Even though planning regulations have been loosened up to allow more land-extensive development, cutbacks in infrastructure financing, tax pooling, and added development cost levies, may cancel this out.
Once the next construction cycle has run its course it will be easier to assess the impact of these changes.Will the bi-polar pattern of investment that has characterized the densification of Toronto since the 1980s become more entrenched? Moreover, since this same pattern can now be found in Montreal and Ottawa, will this pattern, rather than the one in Vancouver, define the future for the densification of the Canadian city ?
3.1.2 - The Great Deflation: 1930 to 1945
As the previous comparisons illustrate, there is not a direct-one-to-one correspondence between the movement of the densification ratio, changes in population density, and shifts in the housing composition of each city. As already stated, the time lag created by historical inertia accounts for much of the divergence that can be observed. Time lags and distortions do result because building cycles may not correspond exactly to the time in which shifts take place in the densification ratio. Finally, since the urban land market is just one facet of densification and densification itself, in turn, is just one aspect of a mode of urban development, there is an important institutional angle that needs to be considered when looking at the evolution of the densification process. This becomes easier to see if the time lag created by the incubation of two contrasting modes of urban development that have shaped the Canadian city in the late twentieth century are more closely examined.
Although this chapter is primarily concerned with regimes of accumulation rather than modes of regulation -- and so the material rather than social and political variables which shape the production of urban space --at some point these two spheres cross over and affect each other. There is no iron clad law which says that this has to happen. The only link is that of contingency and historical circumstance. Although a regime of accumulation and mode of regulation may have autonomous origins, when they start to interact with each other, each begins to affect the others course of evolution. From this this beginning of an institutional nexus can be sketched out and the emergence of a mode of urban development tracked. the articulation of material and institutional forces that creates a mode or model of urban development is far from seamless or pre-ordained. If the articulation of circumstances and background conditions which to a the creation of land-extensive regime of accumulation governed by modern norms are studied, we find a considerable time lag between shifts in the densification ratio and the inculcation of new spatial norms which resulted in the mass production of different kind of urban space that came with the suburbanization of the North American city after World War Two. Far from being pre-ordained or inevitable, for this new institutional configuration to become significant market signals created by a decline in the densification ratio had to be absorbed by the institutions of the local state in order for a reproducible pattern of accumulation to be established. What this reveals is that it is necessary to study the interaction between the housing market and local institutions when looking at the emergence of a distinctive mode of urban development. The economic forces which shape the city are always mediated by the institutions which regularize and transform material impulses and background conditions into regulatory programs that become the basis for the re-organization of urban space.
What such a perspective underlines is the importance of institutions. Because of this, far from being a seamless progression, or an inevitable trajectory, the process of change in the city quite open-ended, even when there are powerful economic, demographic, or technological forces at play. As will now be shown, all these material impulses are by the institutional matrix created by the local state. In the case of densification, for instance, it is possible to show how the progression of the densification process can be slowed down or accelerated by the institutional configuration of the local state in a particular locality .
Although a great deal of discussion about globalization fills the literature on urban change and transformation, the the influence of bureaucracy and the political culture of the local state has often been ignored. Even though the evolution of land-extensive and land-intensive regimes in Canada may appear inevitable and preordained facts when they are viewed in retrospect, if the role played by the local state is recognized and the historical record is examined, the contingent nature of the evolution of the city in the twentieth century becomes much more cleary laid out. For without the two incubation periods that created the institutional foundations that supported and guided these two regimes of accumulation, the changes unleashed by the economy -- which impacted the urban land markets -- new demographic influences, and changing technologies, would probably have produced outcomes different from the ones we can now observe: both in terms of the massive suburbanization that took place after 1945, and the densification that emerged as a major force for the first time in the mid 1960s.
For example, although the reconfiguration of the urban property market during the 1930s lowered the densification ratios of most cities, without legislation like the National Housing Act, or the other programs initiated by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation the potential for land-extensive development that was created by this decline in the densification ratio would not have been exploited as fully as it was. Without the support provided by these policies Canada's cities might well have developed more like British rather than American cities after the war.
The same can be said about the densification process as well. Without the large and powerful group development corporations that had been created in the modern period the high-rise and medium-rise densication which became so prominent in Canada would not have unfolded in the way that it did (Bellan 1977; Bettinson 1975) As well, it the state had not introduced new tenure forms, such as strata title ownership densification would have probably followed a much different course than it has taken so far (only introduced in the U.S. in 1961 and in B.C., in 1966).
Indeed, if a finer-grain analysis of the local state is made, in part, it is possible to show how two different institutional complexes set the context for the progression of land-extensive and land-intensive development, with variations in the institutional evolution of the city accounting for much of the uneveness that can be observed in the progression of land-intensive development in Canada. This becomes more obvious when a comparing the institutional supports for land-extensive and land intensive development. Unlike the current regime of land-intensive regime of accumulation, the previous land-extensive regime had a much more uniform and standardized regulatory framework because of the dominance of the federal government. By contrast, the regulatory framework for densification was much more uneven because of the receding influence of the federal government and the rising power of the provinces. This combined with the rising anarchist tendencies that were triggered by the growing influence of the market and anti-war sentiments, provided a much more chaotic framework since all centralized forms of bureaucratic rule were challenged -- whether it be a large corporation or the central state. While the ascent of beaucratic rule during the modern era made it possible tot for land-extensive development to take a regimented and standardizaed form, this would not be possible in the postmodern era and so, as a consequence, the regulation of the densification process.
This is important because the Depression and the war had greatly increased the influence and power of the federal government. Because of its wealth and influence, the federal government was able to set the agenda that would leed to the adoption of a uniform and standardized set of spatial norms which would be used to govern and promote the suburbanization of the city across the entire country. However, with the rising influence of the provinces in the 1960s, and later, the retreat of the federal government in the late 70s and 80s, this uniform institutional framework began to breakdown. This happened whn postmodern norms for the regulation of land-intensive regimes of accumulation developed. This one factor alone, established a regulatory context that was quite different from the modern era, one that was defined by the advance of bureaucratic rule -- in the case of modernism -- and the other by market rule -- as was more the cse in the postmodern era. So not only did more polarized flows of capital and labour made the progression of densification more uneven across the country, different institutional contexts for the incubation of modern and postmodern regulation. As a result two quite different institutional context governed the regulation of land-extensive and lend-intensive development. In part this explains why land-extensive development evolved in such a uniform and consistent manner during the modern period between 1945 and 1973. As well, this partially explains the contrasting unevenness of the model of urban development that came about when an insitutional nexus between densification and postmodern norms was established after 1973.
The presence of these two contrasting institutional frameworks explains why the supports that prop up the postmodern city are much more fragmented than the ones that supported land-intensive development. The fiscal crisis of the state has further compounded this situation. As already mentioned, fiscal retrenchment and the assertativeness of the provinces have reduced the ability of the federal government to set uniform standards and expectations for the organization of the city as it had done in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly since the 1980s, compared to the unambiguous unfolding of land-extensive development after 1945 this had been the case. This shows up in the polarized densification ratios, as regional rather than national trends become pronounsed in the diverging proportion of single detached dwellings that can be observed in the country's largest cities. From 1945 until the mid 60s, when a period of transition appeared, the densification ratio of every large city generally followed the same trajectory, producing spaces that were quite similar across the country as the densification ratio fell in every city and the proportion of single detached dwelling units occupied by the nuclear family unit increased rather than decreased. All this would change in the postmodern period, as the previous comparison between Winnipeg and Vancouver and the emergence of a bi-polar pattern of densification in Toronto so clearly show.
Looking more closely at these two transition periods, beginning with the changes that were brought about by the application of modern norms to the regulation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation that became the defining pattern of residential investment after 1945, the incubation for this regime of accumulation lasted approximately from 1925 to 1945, or about twenty years. As a result, 15 to 20 years elapsed before the full effect of decline of the decline in the densification ratio that occurred in the early 30s was translated into a regulatory language and set of practices which allowed the economic and social conditions for land-extensive development to be realized in the production of urban space on a mass scale. To illustrate this point we need only look at Winnipeg and Vancouver again to see how long the lag was between the fall in the densification ratio and resultant changes in the population density and housing stock of each city.
With the densification ratio for Winnipeg falling from 4.64 to 2.196 and Vancouver's falling from 4.329 to 2.196 between 1931 and 1951 (table one, p. 49) this time was clearly a watershed period for the property markets of both cities. Yet, in spite of the dramatic shift from a land-intensive to land-extensive regime, the absence of an institutional mechanism to support this new regime, along with the retardation of the building cycle that came with the depression and the war, the new economic signals given off by the reconfiguration of the property market were muffled for nearly twenty years. Not until the 1950s would changes in the configuration of the property market result in the actual production of considerably less dense urban space. For this to happen, the housing industry, which had largely ceased to exist because of the depression and the war, had to be reconstituted. New financial tools for the purchase of homes would have to be created. And of great importance, modern city planning would have to be re-instituted so that suburban development could be rationalized and the government's liability for the mass market it created in mortgages financing protected (Bettinson 1975; Harris 1996). Only after this economic and institutional framework was put in place did the suburbanization of the city -- sparked by the fall in the densification ratio -- move full speed ahead. For even into the late 1940s, as Miron has noted, materials shortages severally restricted the amount of new housing that could be undertaken (Miron 1988,p.168-9).
In the Labour Gazette (May 1951) for example, statistics compiled on housing expenditures showed a modest increase in housing expenditures occurring as the Great Depression was beginning to dissipate in the late 1930s, with 15.7 percent of total capital expenditures in 1939 devoted to housing. But even this modest level of expenditure evaporated as the level of housing expenditure decreased from 15.7 percent, in 1939 to 1.28 percent of all capital investment made in 1942. As a result, not until 1945 -- 15 years after the market had been reconfigured -- did the mass production of less dense suburban environments become the norm. And it wasn't until 1949 that the full impact of land-extensive development was felt, since it took this long for prewar levels of investment in housing to be reached, as investment in housing during the modern period rose to 18.2 percent of all capital investment (Labour Gazette May 1951). Thereafter, the rate of investment in housing would rise further, and plateau around 25 percent of all fixed investment (Miron 1988,p.194).
So while the great deflation initially led to the decline in the densification ratio, a long incubation period was required for the construction of the necessary institutional supports that were needed for the sustained mass production of housing. Thus, between 1931 and 1936 the average price of a house in Canada fell by 24 percent, but it wasn't until 1946 that housing prices would recover to their 1931 level, and housing production would begin to rise significantly (Historical Statistics of Canada 1983, Table S323-325). The deflation which took place was extensive and deep enough to take every city in the country down at the same time. However, there was some variation: in cities in decline, such as Winnipeg, prices deflated more than in ascendant cities like Vancouver. Whereas house prices fell by 45 percent in Winnipeg between 1931 and 1941, in Vancouver they only declined by 32 percent.
Besides the great deflation there were other factors that also set the stage for the great take off in housing production after the war. On the supply side, as we have seen, deflation had reduced the cost of land. However changes on the demand side would also play a role in what was to happen. Here two important factors would come into play. First there was the effect of the war. Because of rising employment and enforced savings that came with the war economy a huge pool of savings was created. Moreover, the unrest that came with the previous demobilization after World War One worried the government. This, combined with the concerns about unemployment and that the housing shortage, which had become a trigger for returning veterans-- who protested the shortage by occupying buildings like the Hotel Vancouver (Wade 1994) -- led the government to use housing as a shock absorber and anchor to keep unrest in line, since a population paying mortgages would have less time or energy to foment trouble. So not only did the federal government's postwar housing strategy address the critical housing shortage that resulted from 20 years of underinvestment, as well it also dealt with the increased demand for housing that came from the urbanization that was induced by the war. Moreover, it was also one way to discipline the population and a useful way for tapping into the huge pool of savings that had been built up during the war. By this means, the production of housing became a favoured counter-cyclical tool for the management of the economy. Besides these reasons, a huge demand for more land-extensive development was given an unexpected boost by the anomalous situation created by the great post-war baby boom. For the first time since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was a dramatic and sustained surge in the natural fertility rate.
This would be reflected in labour force participation figures. In spite of a booming economy, women were expected to leave the workforce and devote most of their energies to child-rearing. As a result, the percentage of the population involved in the workplace declined rather than increased until the early 1960s, with the percentage of the population in the labour force steadily falling from 40 percent between 1941 and 1945 to a low of around 35 percent in the early 1960s, before it began to rise during the transition period between the modern and postmodern periods, reaching 52 percent in 1989, as women became integrated into the labour force once again (The Globe and Mail 1997R).
Everything from realigning gender roles in the work place, to a massive increase in the birth rate (hat was related to this realignment) would support the great suburban housing boom which the great deflation had provided the initial impetus for by reducing the cost of land. The opportunities established by these material conditions might not have been realized without the creation of a supporting mode of regulation. From the mid 40s into the early 50s, most of the formal aspects of this mode of regulation were put in place through the enactment of National Housing Act in 1944 (Bettinson 1975), and the establishment of Canada Mortgage and Housing in 1945. This transformed the regulation and production of space from a laissez-faire mode to one that was corporatist in orientation. All of this was done deliberately to build up and rationalize the building industry so that the mass production of housing could go on without too much fear of devaluation or default by the consumer. With this accomplished, housing could also be used as a counter cyclical device to even out the oscillation of investment and therefore regulate unemployment to a certain extent. Consequently, modern city planning was revived as well to facilitate these various related goals. Together, all these changes created conditions with for the production of urban space that closely matched Fordist models for the organization of production. Largely because of this, in the modern era urban government closely mirrored the dominant corporated model. As a result, in more ways than one, Ford and General Motors were shaping the physical and institutional spaces of the modern city.
Thus, by the early 1950s the basic foundations for a new mode of urban development -- characterized by a land-extensive regime of accumulation and modernist regulatory norms -- was brought into existence. While property values had recovered to their 1931 levels by 1946, except for a brief inflationary surge around 1950 (as declining densification ratios show) until the early and mid 1960s this era would primarily be defined as a period of land extensive development since shelter costs generally lagged behind wage increases.
The articulation of this new regime of accumulation with a complementary mode of regulation would be accomplished by the late 1940s, and would herald the production of one of the most standardized and homogeneous built environments ever constructed. Thus, from a low point of 11,827 units in 1946, housing production rose to 135,000 units in 1956, then to 160,000 units in 1966 and to over 230,000 by 1976.
But even as the affordability of this space-extensive form of urban development was steadily improving, signs of change were beginning to loom on the horizon. As far back as 1952, portents of what was to follow appeared when shelter costs started to move dramatically above the consumer price index for the first time. While it would be over a decade before these rising price increases would outstrip wage increases this can be seen as a portend of the reconfiguration of the property market that was to come with the great inflation that would create the material basis for a new regime of accumulation, which was land-intensive rather than land-extensive.
3.1.2 - The Great Inflation: 1965 to 1975
Around 1965, the supply-and-demand factors that had been responsible for keeping the densification ratio around the benchmark figure of two started to reverse direction as rising inflation eventually led to the institution of wage and price controls in 1974 and rent controls around the same time. As well, soaring land prices and escalating interest rates undermined the material basis for the unproblematic extension of land-extensive development. After a long period of stasis and gradual decline, the densification ratio began to rise precipitously. One symptom of the crisis would be declining home ownership. After home ownership peaked in 1961 when the level of home ownership rose to 66 percent of all households, by 1971 the ownership rate had dropped to 60 percent (Miron 1988). Since 1971 there has been some modest recovery in the level of home ownership, with the percentage rising to 62 percent in 1981; however this is still below 1961 peak. Furthermore, especially in places like Vancouver, this modest increase has only occurred because of a change in tenure form and the move into denser housing units, since 20 percent of all housing in Vancouver is now strata title units which would indicate that nearly half of all ownership units in Vancouver are not single-detached dwelling units and that nearly half are not held in fee simple ownership -- the dominant tenure form during the modern era (table three, p.81). Accordingly the movement from fee simple to strata title forms of tenure can be seen as the one of the most important regulatory features of the postmodern era, since this insertion innovation would play a key role in eliminate the bottleneck to further densification by making it possible to experiment with new housing forms as well provide legitimacy to denser housing because it could now be owned rather than rented. Here a very close link between postmodern regulation and densification developed.
This would even be reflected in zoning regulations, particularly in Vancouver, where Comprehensive District zoning made it easier to institute denser mixed use developments spread from out from the City of Vancouver to the entire region with changes to the Municipal act by the provincial government in the mid 1990s (Ito 1997).
As with the formulation and application of modern norms, this did not happen without certain setbacks and considerable resistance. The permanent shift from land-extensive to land-intensive development in Vancouver that was triggered by the great inflation also provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification in Vancouver as well as across the country. Particularly, in those cities where the property market had been changed the most, initially this change provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification that flowed over the country's cities. Although much of this had to do with problems of afforability, equally significant in the reaction to densification was the aesthetic reaction to built environment that was being created. Here the flaws of modern formats for accommodating denser environments rose to the surface.
As a result, modernism lost much of its allure. On a variety of levels its legitimacy was called into question, because it was unable to create suitable environments for the denser spaces that were produced when the pattern of residential and commercial investment shifted and started to concentrate rather than disperse further out into the suburbs. Rather than greenfield sites, the redevelopment of existing built-up areas became the focal points for a great of new investment. This, combined with affordability problems, created a massive upheaval that prompted both mainstream (Bourne 1967; Lithwick 1970) and radical academics in Canada (Drache and Clement 1985, Chapter 25; Roussopoulos 1982; Pickvance 1976) to pay a great deal of attention to the city. This happened across a wide variety of disciplines and led to the creation of a distinctive urban discourse on the city in Canada, as academics tried to make sense of the densification process that was now unfolding. For example, in High Rise and Super Profits the authors caught the reigning sentiment when they remarked that:
Housing in Canada absorbs about 40% of a working person's wage. With land prices skyrocketing as it becomes more and more scarce, the price of housing has become the single most inflationary item of the consumers budget (as a result) . . .the logic of urban scarcity make it economically necessary to build up rather than out. That way, a greater number of people can be more profitably housed on less land. In fact, in metropolitan centres between 1968 and 1970, three times as many apartment units have been built as have single family dwellings. (Barker et el. 1973, p.3)
As already stated, the shift from land-intensive development was further complicated by the inability of modern regulation to deal with the turbulence and new formats that were required to made denser environments more acceptable to the middle class which once again moved out of its dormancy to become an active political force within the local state. While modern norms proved to be ideal for the regulation of land-extensive development this was less so when development shifted from a land extensive to land-intensive regime of accumulation - particularly when redevelopment took place on sites occupied by the new middle class or on land in which it had developed an interest. The situation was further aggravated by the limited aesthetic repertory of modern built forms. Since modernism in Canada relied on either the single detached dwelling units for land-extensive development, or the construction of high-rise development for the land-intensive development that took place in the 1960s, modernism did not have the capacity to adequately respond to the challenge posed by densification.
Many people were alienated from the environments that were created because of the strong set of associations between low-rise suburban environments and the good life and, conversely, the opposite association that existed between pathology and density that existed in both the popular and academic mind during the modern period, something that was further exacerbated by the negative symbolism that all high rise development would take on during the counterculture.
On several fronts, the weaknesses of modern philosophic, social and aesthetic practices for the regulation of space were brought out and exposed by the densification process. The sudden eruption of high-rise apartments across the country therefore provoked resistance to the entire framework that been responsible for the social and physical organization of space that had been in force since 1945, as the proportion of new housing stock made up of apartments rose from around 20 percent in the early 1960s to about 40 percent in the mid sixties, (1965) and then over 50 percent by the late 60s, when the first wave of densification crested. As this happened, so too did the resistance of the middle class to all forms of modern regulation.
The reaction that rose against the further spread of high-rise office buildings and apartment was not entirely negative. Their appearance also sparked the first experiments in postmodern planning, as alternative formats for accommodating density began to be explored. Similarly, the other key material artifact of the modern city -- the automobile -- was also challenged for the first time. As a result of this, there was a slowdown in freeway construction and an increase in the resources devoted to the provision of more transit infrastructure.
Also, a search for new house types was begun. Housing forms located between the extremes represented by the single detached home and the high-rise apartment buildings were experimented with. Long before the current popularization of neo-traditional planning or the new urbanism, architects in Canada such as Barton Myers and Jack Diamond had began to explore how denser housing could be accommodated through infill construction and medium rather than high-rise formats that were organized around the street rather than the highway and which also paid more attention to the existing urban fabric, putting the campus format -- best exemplified in the new university campuses that were constructed in the 1960s, such as York University, The University of Waterloo and the University of Regina or publicly sponsored urban renewal such as the Raymour complex in Vancouver, the Jeanne Mance project in Montreal or Regent Park in Toronto (Hodge 1986, p.101), or private redevelopment, the most famous of which was St. James Town in Toronto -- into disrepute.
Instead of this format alternative, postmodern format that involved mixed-use and medium-rise buildings aligned to existing urban streets were experimented with. Unlike modern formats, this new aesthetic order gave priority to the street rather than the highway, defining one of the key aesthetic principles for the postmodern organization of urban space that attempted to revive a form of urban space associated with 19th-century modernism, which typified the streetcar city and the laissez-faire period of development in the history of the North American city.
As well as this aesthetic shift, the modern regulation of space was challenged at the philosophic and social level also. Questions about the nature of urban space were raised. When land-extensive development predominated, most new housing construction took place on place on greenfield sites and it was possible for planners to view space as some blank slate or abstraction that they could manipulate at will, molding it to fit into a technocratic notion of efficiency and uniformity, as standardized spaces formatted around the mass production of single detached dwelling units or high-rise apartment units and the automobile became mirror images and symbols of Fordism. However, this became much more difficult to do so when real estate investment shifted to already developed sites -- especially when these sites were occupied by a new middle class, whose opposition to redevelopment was further reinforced by aesthetic considerations, as it rebelled against the format taken by this development. There was also a philosophic dimension to this as well, as the new middle class reacted strongly to its exclusion from the decision-making process that created the program to be used to redevelop an existing space.
Not surprisingly, sharp cultural clashes arose as the first wave of densification lead to the intrusion of apartments into already built-up areas, setting the stage for the legitimization crisis that modern planning was to experience between the late 1960s and the present, as the middle class rebelled against the modern city at every level of its regulation, but most stridently at the aesthetic level, where high-rises became a lightning rod for a broader reaction that took shape against all forms of twentieth-century modernism, particularly bureaucratic rule and the corporate control of the economy. On the philosophic plane, for instance, this entailed a strong challenge to bureaucratic rule in both the public and private sectors. On the social level, this resulted in the deconstruction of modern notion of deviance and normalcy. (Gutstein 1975; Ley 1974; Vancouver Urban Research group 1972; Lorimer 1972; Granastein 1971; Clarkson 1972; Caufield 1972; Sewell 1970; Lorimer 1970; Roussoupolos 1982).
In addition, the great inflation and the pressure for densification created by this set in motion a number of institutional adaptations and responses that would become important for sustaining densification in Canada. Just as the National Housing Act and Canada Mortgage and Housing had established the institutional supports for the suburbanization of the city after 1945, in a similar way two institutional innovations heralded the beginning of postmodern regime for the regulation of urban space. The first change had to do with amendments that were made to the National Housing Act in 1973. In turn these amendments provided the funding and rules for the creation of a vibrant non-profit and co-operative sector from 1973 until 1993 that became central features of the livable city program for the postmodern transformation of the city. The second important innovation had to do with the introduction of strata title legislation in the middle of the 1960s. It would not become significant in the first phase of the postmodern transformation of the city during the 1970s, but would become pivotal to the densification process in the 1980s (during the era of the urban spectacle).
In Vancouver, the link between these pieces of legislation and the production of urban space would be far-reaching, their relative dominance denoting the existence of two quite different phases in the postmodern transformation of the city. As table three (p. 81) shows, the diffusion of strata title units has been highly uneven -- not only within the country but even with in a single urban region, such as Vancouver. If national comparisons are made, the divergence between Vancouver and the nation becomes striking. Whereas only about 4 percent of all dwelling units in Canada were made up of strata title units in Greater Vancouver they made up 20 percent of all units. The divergence becomes even greater where densification in the region has been the most intense or where middle class resettlement has become extensive.
In the Core area of Greater Vancouver (figure three, chapter five, p. 403) where densification was the most intense, the proportion of strata title was over 30 percent (table three, p. 81), nearly nine times the national average. And within the core, in local areas such as the Downtown and Fairview, where densification and the middle class colonization of urban space have been even more intense, the proportion of strata title units have approached 50 percent of all dwelling units, or twelve times the national average. Not surprisingly Vancouver has the highest level of strata ownership in the country (Lo 1989). Thus, in 1996 condominiums accounted for over 55 percent (CMHC 1996) of all new housing units in the region and up to 62 percent of all new housing units constructed within the City of Vancouver (VS-351).
Canada Mortgage and Housing (1994, p. 31) projections on housing starts show that this extremely uneven diffusion of strata title units has continued into the 1990s. In the projections that were made cities and even provinces experiencing the most intense form of densification, such as Vancouver and British Columbia, the production of strata title units between 1993 and 1995 was projected to be around 48,883 or about 56 percent of all new strata title units constructed in the nation (even though the province only accounted for about 13 percent of the country's population). The same applies to Vancouver. With 28,000 strata title units projected over this time period, Vancouver was expected to account for 33 percent of the national total, even though it only had 7 percent of the nation's population.
At the other end of the continuum there are cities such as Winnipeg that have a densification ratio that is below two, so land-extensive patterns of development are much more deeply entrenched here. In places like this, the level of new condominium construction has been very low. As the figures for Manitoba reveal, CMHC forecasts only 454 new strata title units for the province between 1993 and 1995. Since most of these units would be constructed in Winnipeg, from this one can infer that less than one half of one per cent of the national total of new strata title units projected be built in Canada would appear in Winnipeg, a city with a third of Vancouver's population and around two percent of the nation's population. While the proportion of strata title units in Vancouver was nearly over-represented by a factor of five; Winnipeg was under-represented by a factor of 40.
With densification ratio hovers around or above 2.5, cities such Calgary and Edmonton, occupy an intermediate position between the extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver. This shows up in the construction of strata title units for the province of Alberta where, as in Winnipeg, the vast majority of strata title units are located in either Edmonton or Calgary. Here the same CMHC projection forecast that between 1993 and 1995 7,550 new strata title units would be built in Alberta, or approximately 9 percent of the national total. When the sizes of Edmonton and Calgary are factored into this projection both cities lie reasonably close to the national average of 4 percent.
Although the fact that strata title legislation provided the legal and institutional mechanism for densification to proceed since the mid 1980s in Toronto and Vancouver, it is surprising to note how little recognition has been given to the impact that this tenure form has had on the production of space. Unlike the first wave, in which the production of rental units surfaced as the most important manifestation of the densification process, when the second wave emerged it would be strata title tenure house forms rather than rental units that would become the preferred tenure format for the production of denser housing.
While the great inflation reversed the trajectory of the densification ratio in most large cities, changing demographics and renewed interest in public transit also set off changes that also could impede or facilitate the extension of the densification process. Moreover, as this brief outline of the two waves of densification and the possible beginning of a third wave in places like Toronto may show, the shift from one regime to another can be a long and drawn out affair, and may work itself out in idiosyncratic ways in different cities. Moreover, as table one and two reveal, it is a process that does not just go on in a linear fashion. Even where it is most strongly expressed, such as in Vancouver and Toronto, there is an ebb and flow to the progression of the densification process that is tied into the independent movement of the building cycle. Moreover, as Winnipeg the densification process can even be permanently reversed. Likewise, where it is not dominant, the examples of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa reveal that land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation can co-exist within a single urban region.
As the history of modern city planning has shown, the incubation of a new mode of urban development can be a long and drawn out affair. That is why it is not yet possible to make a definitive statement about the evolution of the current mode of urban development. Nevertheless, a simple comparison of what was absent in the previous mode of urban development, but now present in the current one, does reveal that some distinguishing patterns have emerged which set the urbanization that took place in the mid-twentieth century apart from what is now taking place in the late-twentieth century. While densification may not be dominant in every city, it appears as either an emergent or localized phenomenon in most large cities or as an ascendant force in the reshaping of urban space because of the that demographics have upon the shaping of the densification process and the role that the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure can have on the concentration of dispersion of investment capital. Likewise, the spread of postmodern spatial norms can be viewed as another sign of the emergence of a new age with regard to the production of urban space. Still, it is not clear what final shape the current mode of urban development will take across the country. Keeping this in mind, the impact that population and demographics, and later, the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure have had on the evolution of densification process can now be looked at.
--------------------------- TABLE THREE --------------------------------------
Strata Title Units As A Proportion Of Total Housing Stock
Canada Metro C. of Van Outer City Core Area CBD Fairview
1981 1% 8% 6% 2.5% 9.3% - 16%
1991 3% 15% 12% 4.5% 21% 6% 35%
1996 4%(e) 19%(e) 19.5% (e) 8.6%(e) 31%(e) 48%(e) 41%(e)
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3.2 - Two: The Impact of Population and Demographics on densification
Even though economic influences are viewed as the single most important variable that shapes the densification process, the fact that the densification process in Vancouver was actually first triggered by demographic rather than economic factors indicates that the densification process is a complex process, where other forces intervene. This explains why the has not evolved in a unilinear direction, as other forces are at work in shaping it. As will now be illustrated, the interplay of non-economic factors are important too. While changes in the property market absorb and reflect changing demographic patterns, as well different strategies for the provisioning of transportation infrastructure, it is still necessary to look at these other two key material variables separately.
Demographic influences can be broken up into three different categories. One influence is the result of changes in population growth. The second has to do with immigration. And the third has to do with life cycle changes in the general population. With the exception of immigration, unlike economic changes, or shifts in transportation and communications technology, it is possible to project some demographic patterns accurately into the future. Moreover, as already mentioned, over time demographic influences work themselves out more in a cyclical rather than linear fashion. Because many of these movements are long-term and predictable, this has led some analysts to link demographic information too closely with other phenomena, or to assume too much stability in the way demographic tendencies unfold. In some cases this has led to a form of demographic determinism, which mimicks the economic and technological determinism that so often has surfaced in interpretation of urban transformation.
Therefore, some care has to be taken when using population projections to predict other occurrences -- not only because there are two other variables which affect the densification process that need to be considered, but also because of the different way that these variables affect each other when they become articulated with one another. As will be shown, economic influences which affect the property market and demographic influences that affect the demand for sparser or denser housing forms do not necessarily move in sync with each other. Contradictory impulses can be a work at the same time. The densification process does not simply progress in a linear fashion, it is also shaped by counter cyclical forces as well. As a consequence, in certain articulations, demographic forces, amplify or counter act existing economic impulses that and even over ride them in some instances, either supporting land-extensive or land-intensive patterns of development.
Demographic influences have even acted as a trigger for the densification process in some conjunctures. At other times, they have acted as breaks, modifying or, mediating changes created by shifts in the densification ration -- amplifying or muffling existing economic tendencies in land development. For instance, in Winnipeg, this can be shown by looking at the great surge in apartment construction that took place between 1961 and 1971. Although the densification ratio (table one, p. 49) was still dropping in Winnipeg between 1961 and 1971, the large drop in the proportion of the housing stock made up single detached units during this time (table two, p.61) indicates that demographic influences played a very important part in triggering the first wave of densification in this city. As well, demographic rather than economic impulses appeared to have functioned as the initial triggers for the densification process in Vancouver. This can be illustrated by looking at the West End, where the first large boom in postwar apartment construction took place at time when the densification ratio was falling, but a surge in the number of seniors into the neighbourhood counteracted this general fall. Interestingly enough, this neighbourhood became the birthplace for the first wave of densification in Greater Vancouver. Not surprisingly there is a link between the first mini boom in apartment construction and the fact that the West End was rapidly aging because of the migration of seniors into the neighbourhood. This created a regional anomaly in the 1950s, since the proportion of seniors living in the West End was rising steeply at a time when the general population of the region was getting younger.
For Vancouver as a whole, the influence of demographics can best be outlined by looking at the work of David Baxter (1994; 1997). His work provides the most comprehensive and complete analysis of the relation that exists between demographics and the demand for different types of housing in the region. From his analysis of housing it is possible to distill the correlations that exist between life cycle shifts in the general population and the demand created for denser or sparser forms of housing .
Except for a brief inflationary surge in 1949 and 1950, because densification ratios in Vancouver were falling until the mid 1960s, the general trend was for housing prices to fall relative to income. Furthermore, since single-detached dwelling units were the most desired housing form it is hardly surprising to see that the demand for this type of low-density accommodation increased significantly when the densification was falling. This shows up clearly in rising home ownership rates between 1941 and 1961. As a result, the percentage of households in Canada owning their own housing increased from 57 percent to 66 percent in this twenty year time span. Naturally this was also reflected in an increase in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. For instance, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached units rose from 52 percent of the entire housing stock in 1941 to 55.9 percent in 1961, peaking at this level before a rising densification ratio began to reverse this trend in the mid 60s.
However, as the example of the West End shows, there were periods when this correlation was counteracted by opposing demographic influences. Although the densification ratio in Vancouver continued to fall after 1954, the production of apartments started to increase. While some modest increases in land and shelter prices did take place during the 1950s and early 1960s, wages generally stayed one step ahead of this price rise. Therefore, changes in the property market, by themselves, were not sufficient to explain the upward swing in apartment construction. Similary the same can be said about Toronto and even Winnipeg. However, if we look at the West End example and correlate the national surge in apartment construction with the movement of the key age cohorts most likely to live in apartments (those 65 years and older and those you are between the ages of 15 and 24 years), a demographic rather than economic explanation of the first surge in apartment construction can be made.
For this reason, it is possible to link the first postwar surge in apartment construction to the sequential expansion and contraction of these two age cohorts. Consequently, the first postwar apartment boom corresponds quite closely to the expansion of the seniors population that took place in the early to middle 1950s. Soon after, a much larger and longer lasting surge in apartment construction took place from the early and middle 1960s that continued into the early 1970s. But this time the demand for denser accommodation was created by the dramatic rise in the 15-to-24 year old age cohort rather than the seniors cohort. Because densification ratios were generally falling until the mid 1960s, demographic rather than economic factors were clearly the initial trigger for the beginning of the densification process until the late 1960s -- at which time escalating land prices started to kick in, lifting densification ratios upward across the nation and not just in Vancouver.
Life cycle changes therefore became the first important trigger for the densification process. The impact this had can be assessed by looking at the size of each age cohort and a measurement known as the household maintainer rate. The household maintainer rate shows what the likelihood is of an individual forming a household in a particular age cohort. It also can be used to examine the demand structure for sparser single-detached units and denser multiple dwellings units that are generated by each age cohort.
In his research on the housing market in the Greater Vancouver area, Baxter has shown that the two age cohorts most likely to maintain apartment households stand at opposite ends of the age continuum. As already mentioned, one group is made up of the 15-to-24 year old age cohort and the other, the seniors age group 65 . For example, using 1961 figures, Baxter found that the 15-to-24 age group had the highest probability of maintaining an apartment unit, with 50 percent of all households in this age cohort housed in apartment households. The next highest take up of apartment units was accounted for by the 65-plus cohort, with 36 percent of all households in this age group made up of apartment dwellers in 1961. The movement of these two age cohorts can therefore be used to chart the one of ebb and flow of one of demographic influence on the densification process.
Looking in more detail at the movement of these two age cohorts the contention that demographic rather economic influences were likely the most important initial triggers for the densification process can be shown by looking at what happened to the 65-year-old and over age group between 1951 and 1956. Statistics show that the number of seniors grew at a faster rate than the adult population as a whole at this time. While the adult population grew by 2.6 percent a year during this time in Vancouver, the 65 plus age cohort grew by 3.6 percent. However, after 1956 the rate of increase in the seniors population began to trail the growth in the adult population. In a period which has been stereotyped as the baby boom era where the level of family formation was high, it is important to recognize that important countertrends were also present, and that this had an important effect on the production of denser housing units due to the brief surge in non family households made up of seniors at a time when housing was still becoming relatively more inexpensive.
While this growing seniors population may have triggered the densification process this age cohort was not large enough to maintain the momentum for the continued production of denser housing units. The slack created by the slow down in the growth of the seniors population in the late 50s was soon taken up by the 15-to-24 age cohort, that now started to grow much more rapidly than the 65 plus age cohort in the early 1960s. With this age cohort becoming the fastest growing segment of the adult population during the 1960s, it grew by 6 percent a year compared to 3 to 3.5 percent for the adult population as a whole.
Since Vancouver's West End was the crucible for these changes. this showed up in the high levels of apartment construction. As growth in the seniors population levelled off, and the number of young adults increased, the proportion of larger apartment units constructed declined, while the number of studio and one bedroom units grew dramatically as a percentage of the total housing stock. Moreover, the much larger size of this young adult population produced the largest and most sustained apartment boom in the city's history, with the construction of new units exceeding 3,000 units a year in the late 1960s.
Thus, if the densification ratio and demographic movements are compared, it becomes clear that demographic and economic cycles can ran counter to each other. This happened from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. While declines in the densification ratio would have encouraged the production of sparser single detached dwelling units, in part this was counteracts by a growth spurt in the number of seniors and then later, the growth of young adults. Conversely, when demographic and economic influences moved in sync with each other -- as was the case in the mid-1960s -- they amplify each other. When this happened, not surprisingly, record levels of apartment construction were recorded in the West End, and elsewhere in Greater Vancouver, and across Canada in the late 1960s.
In the 1970s, these economic and demographic influences would diverge once again. However, unlike the 1960s, this time demographics would act as a drag rather than as an amplifier with regard to the densification process. This happened because the age cohorts that grew the fastest in the 1970s were those located between the 15-to-24 and 65-years-and-above age groups. Growing much fastest than either of these groups this mature adult population was situated in the key family-formation period of the life cycle where the demand was greatest for single detached dwelling units.
Unlike the 1950s, in the late 60s and 1970s the densification ratio was rising rather than falling. Now the situation was the reverse of the late 50s. This time internal demographic shifts were counteracting the rise of the densification ratio rather than its fall. In turn, the effect of this demographic profile was further amplified by the introduction of additional government subsidies .
Table two shows this (p.61). In the 1970s the rising densification ratio should have led to a sharp decline in the the production of single-detached units. But the opposide occurred. In the 1970s more single-detached units were constructed than in the 1960s. Whereas the proportion of single-detached units across the nation declined by around six percent in the 1960s, during the 1970s the rate of decline was halved. Rather than falling by six percent, as it had done in the 1960s, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by less than three percent (table two).
So even though the densification ratio within Vancouver continued to rise during the 1970s, there was not an identical decline in new single-detached dwellings. On the contrary, for the two reasons just cited, the dramatic rise in the densification ratio did not significantly curtail the production of new single detached units. In relative and absolute terms, more single-detached units were produced during the 1970s than in the 1960s. This explains why the largest number of single-detached dwellings ever produced in Greater Vancouver occurred during the 1970s, rather than the 1950s or the 1960s -- the time periods most often associated with the unimpeded expansion of the modern postwar suburb. What this strongly suggests is that the first densification wave was set off by demographic rather than economic triggers. As this example shows, when demographics are brought into the picture the relationship between the densification ratio and the production of denser housing is not necessarily linear. That is why the largest number of single-detached units ever produced in Vancouver occurred in the 1970s -- when the densification ratio was rapidly climbing rather than falling.
However, just as the market for denser accommodation that was generated by younger adults began to flatten out in the 1970s, the growth rate for the 65-plus-age cohort began to turn around again, after declining throughout the 1960s. In the future, unlike the first densification wave, this segment of the population (and not young adults) will become increasingly influential over the evolution of the densification process. For unlike the 1960s, when young adults provided the demographic fuel for the growing market for denser accommodation, in the future (SC-8b) it will be mature adults and seniors, as well as a growing singles population that will increasingly sustain the demand for more for denser housing units.
Another important difference that sets the second wave of densification apart from the first in Vancouver is the presence of postmodern rather than modern norms. Also this time around the land market was influenced by an absolute rather than relative shortage of developable land. This, along with a lower birth rate, growing immigration, and changes in its composition, created a different background context for the the second wave of densification to proceed within, as compared to the first wave of densification that took place in the 1960s.
So, in addition to shifts in the life cycle of the population, changing immigration patterns have had a profound impact on the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver. For not only has the overall impact of immigration increased due to the decline in the natural birth rate, the impact of immigration on the production of housing has also changed because of the origins of most immigrants has changed since changes were made to the immigration act in 1967. For Vancouver this resulted in the flow of immigration becoming Asia rather than Euro-centric. Furthermore, when the federal government created a new business class of immigrant in 1986 the social status of immigrants became much higher (Lapointe and Murdie 1996). One result was that the local residential real estate market became articulated with global markets for the first time in a significant way.
These factors, and the fact that Vancouver has attracted a disproportionate share of well-to-do Asian immigrants, has led to the creation of a the Zone Of Asian Resettlement (figures four and five, pp.404 and 410; table eight, p.465 ). While suburban enclaves have formed in other urban regions, nowhere is it as extensive as in Vancouver. As a result of this, part of the core housing market and the property market in some inner suburbs of Vancouver are now being shaped by international rather than local forces. From abroad capital has been funneled into selected suburban neighbourhood in the City of Vancouver as well as the inner suburbs, and this has resulted in a silent but massive displacement of the indigenous middle-class and working-class population that once occupied this space.
What this review of demographic variables reveals, is that process of transformation involved with the densification process is not a mono-causal one. Demographic as well as economic factors can play an important part in the evolution of the densification process. The difficulty here is determining the exact effect that these related (but autonomous) economic and demographic impulses have in fueling and shaping the densification process. Because the economic and demographic aspects of the densification process are often so intertwined, it is not always easy to disentangle and separate them, particularly when they camouflage each other, which often happens when they move in sync with one another.
It is more easy to see the separate impact that each variable has when market and demographic forces are out of sync with each other -- as was the case in the 1950s and early 1960s. When this occurs it is easier to see how demographic influences washed out or blunted the impact of lower densification ratios. However, when demographic and economic variables moved in sync with each other during the mid-to-late 60s, producing the first wave of densification that swept across the country, it is much more difficult to see the impact that each variable has in shaping the densification process since existing trends are only amplified.
Lastly, another difference has to do with the different rhythms and geographic range of each impulse. For example the movement of the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver show that market impulses vacillate more in a linear up-and-down fashion compared to demographic shifts, which are more stable. Compared with the evolution of the property market, as the convergence of birth rates across the country indicates, with the exception of immigration and population migration, demographic are more uniform across space and time. For this reason, demographic patterns can be projected into the future with some degree of accuracy, and that is why predictions about urban form based upon demographic changes have become so popular in some academic circles, but more especially with real estate interests, which crave certainty and are looking for a means to exploit knowledge about the future.
3.3 - Three: The impact of communications technology and the provision of transportation infrastructure on the densification process
Up to this point, this investigation of densification has been mostly looked at how changing economic and demographic circumstances have affected the evolution of the densification process. However, when we look at the impact that the provision of new communications (The Globe and Mail 1997b, p. C2; Rogue 1996) and transportation infrastructure have on the densification process, there is a change in emphasis. Instead of primarily looking at demand factors, the emphasis moves to the supply side of the ledger, since the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure has on the demand for denser or sparser house types is not as straight forward as the two other variables, since the construction of infrastructure serves to redistribute rather than create a demand for denser or sparser housing in a particular locality.
This can work in both directions. On the one hand, the provision of more transportation infrastructure can bring more land within the range of development -- indirectly lowering the cost of land and, by doing so, encouraging more land-extensive patterns of development. Conversely, on the other hand, if this infrastructure increases the accessibility certain parts of the region, investment may start to concentrated in these areas, creating grooves for capital to flow into which focus rather than disperse development. Sometimes, but only under special circumstances, the provision of urban transit infrastructure can act as an important trigger for densification, but this usually only happens when favourable supporting economic and demographic conditions are present.
Because the provision of infrastructure may or may not generate the investment profile sought after, investment in highways or public transit can generate wicked or un-intended effects. As a consequence, using rapid transit to induce densification can be a hit or miss proposition if the numerous other factors are not in sync with its the aims of its provision. Past investment in transit infrastructure in Canadian and American cities suggest that only when the densification ratio for a city is increasing ,or when it is positioned at a high level, does the provision of public transit infrastructure become an influential structural element in the densification process (US. Congress 1977).
This works in the opposite direction as well. If freeways rather than public transit systems are built in a fast growing city, more room for land extensive-development will be because of the additional land made available for development. But even here there are limits. If land and housing become too expensive, and congestion and pollution become too severe, as it has in freeway oriented cities such as Los Angeles, land-extensive development will be constrained even if more freeways are added. L.A. therefore shows the limits of infrastructure investment in one direction. Not surprisingly, to correct the unbalanced transportation system that has been created from this, one of the most ambitious public transit projects in North America has been initiated in L.A. (VS-340).
In Canada the impact of investment in transportation infrastructure can be shown by looking at how investment in transit infrastructure has affected urban development in cities with different densification ratios and different transportation investment strategies. Although there is not a perfect one to one correspondence between these two elements, it is possible to observe different effects in cities which have low (with readings between 2 or 2.5 or below), intermediate (between 2.5 and 3.5) and high (4.0 and above) densification ratios. According to how high or low the densification ratio is in each city, different land use patterns appear to emerge from the addition of new transit and freeway infrastructure.
For example, in cities with low or medium densification ratios, the impact of new investment in new transit has muted. The best example of this would no doubt be Montreal. Since the 1960s probably more money has been spent on Montreal's subway system than on any other in Canada. Yet this investment has generated very little development outside the city's downtown. A flagging economy and slow population growth has put downward pressure on the densification ratio for the city, cancelling out the economic opportunities created for densification by this massive investment in transit.
The adoption of contradictory transportation strategies for Montreal may have also been a factor. For example, unlike Toronto where a complete halt on all new major freeway construction resulted from the shift to public transit in the early 1970s; in Montreal road building and subway building were carried out simultaneously. And this probably served to cancel out much of the potential that investment in public transit had to shape densification in Montreal.
On a less significant scale this happened in smaller centres, as well. In smaller cities with low to medium densification ratios, such as Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa, hundreds of millions, instead of billions of dollars ,were spent on new transit infrastructure. Like Montreal, the impact on investment has been slight so far. Since the late 1970s Ottawa has spent $450 million on a 31 kilometer busway system. And Calgary and Edmonton have each spent about $500-million on light rapid transit systems. Despite this investment only slight or modest amounts of capital have been attracted to the transit zones that have been created. For example, ambitious plans were made in Edmonton to create several regional town centres in Clairview to the North East, and in Mill Woods to the South East. However these plans fell by the wayside when the real estate market collapsed, with the end of the oil boom in the early 1980s. Calgary did the same. As with Edmonton, ambitious plans for concentrating development along its LRT lines were formulated but then abandoned. However, with further expansion of transit and rising densification ratios, interest in these transit corridors has been rekindled in Calgary.
However, if we now look at cities which have high densification ratios, such as Toronto and Vancouver, investment in transit has proven to be more significant. In both cities transit corridors have dramatically altered the morphology of each region. Although the real estate market in Toronto has weakened considerably since the late 1980s, substantial residential development continues to take place near the city's subway corridors, with billions of dollars of transit oriented investment expected to occur along a new subway line which is presently under construction along Sheppard Avenue in the former Toronto suburb of North York.
For example, in the case of the Sheppard line, over seven billion dollars worth of new investment by 2011 has been projected. 94,000 employment positions are expected to be created in this transit corridor, and enough residential development to house 67,000 people. Furthermore, between 250 to 400-million dollars a year in new property taxes are expected to be generated according to former North York Mayor, Mel Lastman. Even though these figures are probably overly optimistic, they do, nevertheless, give an idea of the amount of investment that can be triggered by investment in public transit infrastructure under the right circumstances.
How transit investment will affect the densification process as a possible third investment wave for denser development begins to gather force in the late 1990s remains to be seen, as the real estate market recovers from the deep recession of the early 1990s. Until recently, Toronto provided the best example of transit oriented development in North America. But as Pearl and Pucher (1995; 1998) have noted, governments in Canada have withdrawn more support from transit than the United States since the mid 1980s even though ridership levels and investment opportunities were better realized in Canada. And nowhere is this retreat more obvious than in Toronto where riders are covering eighty percent of the cost of transit -- a level far above any other system in a developed country (Toronto Star 1997h).
For Ontario, in particular, this will be critical. As the current building cycle build momentum, opportunities for transit to reshape urban development are being lost. The opportunity created by a rising densification ratio and renewed population growth may not be fully realized, particularly since provincial off loading had encumbered the ability of Toronto to invest in rapid transit. While Ottawa has retained its commitment to extending fixed transit infrastructure, the commitment has grown more tenuous in the face of cutbacks by the provincial government. Consequently it remains to be seen whether the regional district's approval of a $130-million expansion of the transit way will take place.
Except for Vancouver, in the immediate short term, Calgary may be the only other urban region in Canada where a significant amount of new investment in public transit might take place. Having repositioned itself as the undisputed headquarters centre for Western Canada over the past ten years, and with the adoption of GOPlan, in Contrast to Edmonton, Calgary has clearly adopted a pro-transit strategy for new public investment. Consequently, many of the supporting conditions for the creation of a transit oriented development corridor have appeared in the 1990w, which were not present in the 1980s.
However, just as with Ontario, whether this potential is realized or not will largely depend upon the provincial government (VS-319; VS-330; VS-344). However, unlike Ontario, the chance of something happening here is much greater because the Government of Alberta is no longer limited by deficit constraints (Laghi 1997).
While Toronto and Vancouver best reveal how investment in public transit can shape the densification process; Winnipeg shows the opposite. Led by the engineering department, the local bureaucracy in Winnipeg has been able to implement a freeway strategy for the city, even though it was formally abandoned by city council in the 1960s. With the assistance of the province, massive additions to the road system have been made outside and inside the city limits. Meanwhile, modest attempts to jump start a long sought-after transit system have come to nought. While about $50-million has been allocated to further expansion of the road system, the light rapid transit corridor has been completely stricken form the 1997-2001 capital budget, and only about $2M has been allocated to new initiatives in transit (City of Winnipeg 1996). The same bias can be seen in "TransPlan, the new master plan for transportation that was released in 1998. While hundreds of millions of dollars are proposed for new roadways, bus shelters are the only fixed capital expenditures explicitly referred to in the plan (City of Winnipeg 1998). At the same time, an elaborate discussion is given over to how this deficit plagued city could create an institutional mechanism to establish dedicated funding for the $260-million freeway that is proposed in the new transportation master plan. If the estimates of the Manitoba Infrastructure Council are correct, this expenditure would take place at the same time that the city already has a $500-million deficit with regard to the maintenance and repair of the existing road system.
Other cities such as Edmonton have recently formulated strategies similar to Winnipeg's; however, nowhere else is the commitment to land-extensive investment as extreme, or as deeply entrenched as it is in Winnipeg. This is made all the more ironic by the fact that until recently Winnipeg residents were one of the country's highest per capita users of transit. Yet, expensive investment in freeway grade infrastructure, like the new Main Street bridge, continue to move forward even, as up to 20 percent of the city's revenues is being absorbed by debt servicing resulting from investment like this.
What is also interesting to note about the slow progression of densification in Winnipeg is how this can be tied to the persistence of modern norms. While most other major cities have moved away from a modernist framework for the regulation and production of urban space, Winnipeg's bureaucracy remains firmly entrenched in this system. This lag not only manifests itself in planning -- as revealed by the subordination of planning to engineering -- but can be seem in other civic departments within Winnipeg as well, such as the police department. Here the incredible resistance to neighbourhood policing by rank and file officers, and the attraction of more technocratic and automobile centred methods, illustrates how tenacious the hold of bureaucratic practices from the modern era still are in this city.
From this general comparison of bureaucracies, and the more particular comparison of transportation strategies in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the important role that local institutions play in the progression of the densification process can be grasped. As a corollary to this, the significance of culture is also revealed. For learned behaviour, or culture, affects how space is used and perceived. This, in turn, affects how institutions behave. More specifically, as will be later shown, postmodern modes of consumption, and the adoption of postmodern regulatory norms, became important parts of the institutional scaffolding that supported the densification process. Because this scaffolding was less developed in Winnipeg, market and institutional barriers to densification remained more entrenched here.
The impact of these different investment strategies would show up in a variety of other ways. Changes in ridership levels would be one example. In the early 1960s transit use in Vancouver was almost twenty-five percent below the national average. At the same time, per capita use of transit was 20 percent above the national average in Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would be reversed. Because of steep declines in transit patronage during the 1990s ridership levels in Winnipeg probably went below the national average for the first time. Meanwhile the opposite has happened in Vancouver. In the late 1990s ridership levels have either approached, or now may even exceed the national average.
The transformation of the urban morphology of each city would be another example of the changes that resulted. For instance, during the 1950s the layout of Vancouver was much more amorphous than Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would change. As the urban skeleton of Winnipeg was gradually erased by the construction of a system of suburban beltways, just the opposite happened in Vancouver. With transit infrastructure rather than freeway construction increasingly guiding the location of new development several clearly defined urban spines appeared.
Looking in more detail at Winnipeg. even into the early 1960s, the pattern of development that was established in the streetcar era still remained etched into the organization and production of space. During the mini boom that preceded the first national wave of apartment construction in the late 1950s new apartment construction still followed the land use template left over from the streetcar era.
Although this older wheel-spoke patterns persisted into the 1950s, signs of dispersion and suburbanization were evident. Unlike Vancouver, where the West End acted as the point of origin, and the epicentre for the then nascent beginning of the densification process; in Winnipeg there was no equivalent to the West End. While some apartment construction took place downtown and in Fort Rouge, from the late 1950s to the mid-60s most upscale apartment construction occurred in the suburb of St James, rather than in the inner city. Even so, what is interesting to note about this development, was even though it was located in the suburbs, this new construction was located mostly along Portage Avenue. Consequently, the distinctive spoke and wheel pattern of the streetcar era was maintained. However, since that time this linear pattern has almost been erased.
What has happened to both cities can be seen by looking at diverging property values, and the symbolic resonance of each of these inner cities. While property values in the West End have steadily risen in the inner city of Winnipeg they have remained stagnant, or have declined. While the cachet of the West End has been enhanced, in Winnipeg the middle class have increasingly bypassed the region's core for the outer suburbs, and the exurban parts of the region. This contrasting attraction and repulsion to the core surfaces when we look at vacancies rates for apartments in both cities. Generally speaking, the West End, and most other inner apartment districts in the City of Vancouver, have the lowest vacancies in the region. The opposite holds for Winnipeg. Unlike Vancouver, vacancies in Winnipeg are generally much higher in the core than in the suburbs. For example, the outer suburbs such as Surrey, in Greater Vancouver, often have some of the highest vacancies in the region; in Winnipeg it is the outer suburban areas, such as Assinaboia, which generally have the lowest vacancies.
While Winnipeg's distinctive spoke and wheel configuration has steadily been eroded since the 1980s, in Vancouver the opposite has occurred. Here investment in public transit rather than roadways has increasingly channelled private investment into transit corridors. So far four distinct transit oriented development corridors have emerged in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Similarly, on a smaller scale in the City of Vancouver, several arterials, such as West Fourth Ave. and West Broadway, have begun to develop into transit and pedestrian friendly commercial corridors (figure one).
In Vancouver, the amorphous and diffuse pattern of urban development predicted for the future by commentators such Garreau (1991) and Lessinger (1991) has not come to pass. Like Toronto in the 1960s, in the 1990s favourable conditions for transit oriented development during has made Vancouver stand out among North America cities, as an alternative model for urban development. And this has become most obvious with the recent emergence of several transit oriented urban spines (figures one; seven; eight B).
The most important spine begins in the City of North Vancouver (City of North Vancouver 1992) and runs along Lonsdale Avenue down to Burrard Inlet, where a ferry system called Seabus connects this corridor to downtown Vancouver, and to Skytrain, which runs along an old streetcar right of way into Burnaby, where the most intensive development (other than the downtown) is taking place around Metrotown (Ito 1995; VS-406c). Skytrain then continues into New Westminister, ending in Surrey. Although development has been lackluster so far in Surrey, planners expect that Surrey will be able to eventually become the region's second downtown.
In addition to this, there are three secondary spines that are also beginning to emerge (diagram Two). One starts along the South Shore of Burrard Inlet and then continues along the North Shore of the Fraser River, following the route of the West Coast commuter train that began service in 1995. With plans a foot for the creation of a new town centre at the terminus of the line in Mission (65 kilometers east of downtown Vancouver), recent developments in Port Moody and Coquitlam, along with the recent designation of Haney as a regional town centre, the beginning transit oriented investment spine can be seen. (Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows June 25,1997).
With plans for an LRT line terminating in the eastern suburb of Coquitlam, another development spine may soon emerge along Broadway and the Lougheed Highway (diagram One). Here as well a plan is beginning to be prepared for the creation of another high-density development corridor, with the City of Burnaby preparing a redevelopment strategy for the industrial land which lies along the proposed transit line.
Lastly, if a transit line is extended south from the City of Vancouver to Richmond another development corridor will emerge. Like the first line, this spine would emerge along a previous spine that had largely been erased in the 1950s and 1960 (closely following the old streetcar line that once ran to the fishing port of Steveston, in Richmond).
To conclude, a high densification ratio, favourable demographics, and heavy investment in public transit are the forces that have combined together to make densification such a powerful force here. These condition have been responsible for one of the most successful reintroductions of a spoke and wheel pattern of urban development in North America, If the province of B.C. maintains its commitment to transit, Vancouver may well end up becoming what Stockholm has to Europe (Cervero 1996). If this happens Vancouver has the potential to become the most transit oriented city on the continent.
At the other end of the continuum there are cities like Winnipeg. Here low, or declining densification ratios, slow population growth, net out migration, and a freeway oriented strategy for public investment, have pushed the development of the city in an entirely different direction from Vancouver.
A stunning role reversal has occurred because of this. In 1961 Winnipeg was the densest city in Western Canada. Vancouver then had one of the lowest densities. Now Vancouver is the densest city in the west. Meanwhile, Winnipeg has been transformed into one of the most sprawled out and amorphous urban region's in the country.
While Winnipeg's transit system languishes, one of the most dynamic transit oriented investment corridors in North America has appeared in Vancouver. This is one reason why Vancouver rather than Toronto now stands at the forefront of transit led urban development in North America. Unless the cutbacks initiated by province of Ontario are ended, and a renewed commitment to transit in Toronto is made, Vancouver's role as a lead city is unlikely to be challenged. (VS-168).
Figure One
3.4 - Densification at the local level
Having examined the broad economic, demographic and technological variables that shape the densification process closer inspection of the different physical formats taken by the this process within a single urban region can now be looked at in more detail. For instance, in Greater Vancouver three distinctive rings of development have emerged over the past thirty years. In the core, the construction of high-rise dwellings has become the dominant format taken by the densification process. In the transitional area, medium-rise structures predominate, Farther out, in the suburban parts of the region densification manifests itself in the creation of low-rise structures. How these three forms have evolved in the region can be read from what has happened in the City of Vancouver. In each case the City of Vancouver became the incubation ground and regulatory standard bearer for the creaton of the new institutional mechanisms that were required to regulate the high-rise, medium-rise and low rise forms of densification that first took root in the city before spreading out to the rest of the region.
Furthermore, what is particularly interesting to note about the City of Vancouver, is how the the diffusion of the densification process from out of its epicentre, in the West End, corresponded to the creation of three new distinctive settlement zones. Not only did a new social ecology come into existence as a result of this, in each case as well, a new regulatory culture was created, one which set the tone for what would later happen in the rest of the region as the densification process spread out from the city into the suburbs. Consequently, it is to these three settlement zones in the City of Vancouver that we must turn to and look at if we are to understand the institutional history of densification process, as it is in these three settlement zones that the most sophisticated regulatory responses to high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise densification in the region can be found. That is why it is possible to view the first three settlement zones as a microcosm for each of the three formats that the densification would take on as it spread out to engulf and reshape the entire region (figures nine B; thirteen A to D).
The link that exists between the production of these spaces and the new social spaces that accompanied them is also worth taking note of. The most obvious example of this would be the downtown peninsula. Here the most visible manifestation of the densification process was connected to one of the most dramatic social transformations that took place in the region (VS-351; VS-314; Fabish 1996; Building Canada 1997a). This happened because the high-rises that were constructed created a the physical habitat that allowed a variety of singles-oriented sub-cultures to emerge. In turn, this led to the creation of a population base that would later be able support the creation of an economy organized around the urban spectacle, out of which a "collage city" would be created in the core. Particularly for Vancouver's West End, but not the rest of the downtown peninsula, this was an incremental process of transfomration that took place over several decades. For only after twenty years of change did a distinctly postmodern culture begin to flower in the cure during the late 1970s and 1980s. Hence, over a forty year period, the West End was transformed from a single-detached neighbourhood into the region's largest cluster of apartments.
In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that much of would happen here also had to do with the tenure form taken by the high-rise units that were constructed. Had not rental units been constructed in an incremental fashion by a variety of small small scale builders, the fluid social spaces that now typify the West End would not likely have developed as they did.
In the next zone out from the downtown peninsula, a ring of medium-rise development arose. Although high-rises became the most visible expression of the densification in the region, medium-rise structures actually became the defining format for the densification of the region as a whole. Particularly in the 1970s, the transitional area that surrounds the downtown peninsula became the epicentre, as well as incubation ground for this type of development in the region, as experimentation in medium-rise housing was carried out in direct opposition to the high-rise construction that had dominated the densification process during the 1960s, when the West End was the focal point for densification in the city. In part the switch from high-rise to medium-rises had to do with a change in sensibility. For one of the defining aspects of the shift from modernism to postmodernism in the 1970s would be the move away from high-rise to medium-rise buildings, and a move away from urban renewal to one more focused on the conservation of the existing urban fabric.
Along with changes in the tax act, the emphasis on conservation and infill -- which the shift to a postmodern sensibility, and experimentation with medium-rise structures supported -- the movement away from high-rise to medium-rise development signified an important stage in the evolution of the densification proces, as new norms and institutional mechanisms were coming into existence to support the densification of the city. As already mentioned, one example of this would be the emergence of new tenure forms. Until this time, most households in the country were either rentals or ownerhip units, held in Fee Simple. However with the experimentation in medium-rise dwellings strata title and co-op units became much more popular. Particulary with regard to the densification of the region, and the progression of the gentrification process in the City of Vancouver, the emergence of strata-title tenure forms became a critical instituional support to the advancement of this process.
Just as the high-rise zone that emerged in the downtown peninsula established the physical base for the creation of a collage city in the 1960s, so too did the shift to a medium-rise format create yet another settlement zone Instead of a collage city, a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement emerged in the 1970s. Because of the gentrification induced by strata title development a much more homogeneous landscape was created. And just as the downtown peninsula became the incubation ground and epicentre for high-rise densification in the region; in a similar fashion, this Zone of Middle Class Resettlement became the most sophisticaded expression of medium-rise densification in the region, if not the country (table three).
Finally, low-rise densification has helped to create a third distinctive settlement ring. This happened mostly in an area zoned predominantly for single-detached rather than high or medium-rise dwellings. As with the two other zones, the City of Vancouver became the focal point for this form of densification. Like the Core area and the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, the suburban areas of the city became the extensive examples of low-rise densification in the region. And like the two other settlements, the most sophisticated procedures to control low-rise densification in the region developed here as wellin the region. Like the other two settlement zones in the City of Vancouver densification of this third zone was also accompanied by the social transformation of this areas. If high-rise densification produced a habitat that would provid a space for the sub-cultures of the collage city in the core to flourish, and medium-rise densification created the physical backdrop for the createion of a Zone of Asian Resettlement, in a similar fashion, low-rise densification became associated with the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement within the City of Vancouver and the inner suburbs, which would take in Richmond, Burnaby as well as parts of the North Shore. While the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement was the most dramatic social feature of this densification, smaller pockets of development oriented towards seniors was another feature of this densification process (figures eleven A and B; CVCO-48). This can be seen in the profusion of gated communities in the outer suburbs, and in the marketing of adult communities, where children were discouraged, something that must be considered a radical departure from the settlement pattern that defined the suburbs in the modern period.
While low-rise densification has not yet brought about a major switch in tenure form, as has happened in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, when co-op, non profit and strata title units weree produced as the area was redeveloped, or what is now taking place in the Core, with the production of strata title rather than rental units, nontheless, some changes have occurred. In areas settled by the Asian middle class fee simple tenure has remained dominant. However, major changes have taken place further out in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Here the construction of adult communities for older Caucasians moving away from the inner suburbs has dramatically increased the number of strata title units. Because of this migration from the Zone of Asian Resettlement, a large number of strata title units are now being produced for mature adults and seniors in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Unlike their middle class counterprts in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, or the Core area, this group favours attached bungalows or townhouses.
What is also interesting to observe about this lower-rise densification, is the significant number of rental units that have been created. Unlike the fee simple and strata title tenure forms that have been mentioned so far, many of these rental units exist outside the formal housing market. Even though these secondary suites make up an ever growing part of the region's rental stock they have only recieved limited legal or institutional recognition so far.
Like all the other social and physical changes that have come about because of the densification of Greater Vancouver, the City of Vancouver stands out in this regard as well, as the city probably has more secondary suities than any other jurisdiction in the region. For this reason, and like the other manifestations of the densification process, the City of Vancouver is also the place where the most elaborate regulatory mechanism have been developed to deal with the problems created by the profusion of these suites. For example, it has been estimated that there at least 25,000 such units in the city. And of these 25,000 units, only about 3,000 units have received legal certification.
Finally, there are other manifestations of low-rise densification that need to be mentioned. One form of low-rise densification occurrs when large lots are sub-divided into smaller lots. In Vancouver this has produced thousands of new single-detached units (figure 10-C). Then there is infill housing. Low-rise densification also proceeds by the demolition of smaller and older single-detached units, and their replacement by new units that have much larger site coverage. Moreover, many of the units have been designed so that they can easily be turned into miniature apartment blocks to raise revenue by an absentee owner. As earlier pointed out, because the most sophisticated and varied formats for this kind of densification are to be found in the City of Vancouver where there has been the most controversey. Not surprisingly, as stated before, this low-rise densification set the stage for the development of the most complex zoning regimes that can be found for zoning in single family areas (McAfee 1987; Ho 1989; Petite 1991; VS-170; VS-173AA; VS-256; VS-328a).
The different geographic configuration of each form of densification shows up in annual construction figures for the region. For example, if data from 1997 is used, and new housing starts are sub-divided into high, medium and low rise dwellings, we find that the largest number of starts in the region consisted of medium-rise dwellings, followed by low-rise units, with high-rise dwellings trailing behind in third place. Thus medium-rise units accounted for about 48 percent of all starts, followed by low-rise units, which made up about 30 percent of all starts. In third place, accounting for around 21 percent of all housing starts, were high-rise units. As the figures indicate, overall, medium-rise densification predominates. However, if break down the figures and look at various sub-regions different formats clearly exist.
In the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, for instance, medium-rise densification still stands out when regional comparisons are made. While the difference is not as much as it used to be, the fact that the number of medium-rise starts is higher than the regional average suggests that this area still remains the cradle and epicentre for medium-rise development in the region (figures nine-B and thirteen-C, chapter five). With over 50 percent of all starts is this zone made up medium-rise structures we see that this area still remains a specialized settlement zone for medium-rise dwellings in relation to the region as a whole. Likewise, within the City of Vancouver, the Core and the Zone of Asian Resettlement have retained their status as specialized localities for high-rise and low-rise densification. Thus, in 1997 nearly all units begun in the Core were made up of high-rise units. Conversely, in the same time period low-rise units predominated in the Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Moving outside the City of Vancouver, these three patterns are repeated elsewhere in the region. For instance, Uptown and Downtown New Westminister, and the City of North Vancouver can be viewed as suburban examples of the high-rise densifiction found in Downtown Vancouver (VS-291; VS-174); VS-112b). Other suburban example of high-rise densification would be Ambleside, in West Vancouver; and Metrotown (Ito 1995), and the Edmonds Station area in Burnaby. Unlike low-rise or medium-rise precincts, most recent residential high-rise construction in the region is quited localized. For the most part, this kind of development is confined to the high-rise nodes that were previously mentioned, remaining close to the region's transit corridors or on former industrial land (VS-406).
While the most varied and elaborate medium-rise dwellings are located in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement (figure seven A), such as can be seen by the wide variety of co-operatives, lofts, and other medium-rise luxury strata title units (table three). Upper and lower-middle class counterparts to this settlement zone can be found in the rest of the region. The redevelopment of Maillardville in the suburb of Coquitlam would be one example. Downtown Port Coquitlam, Steveston (VS-137; DaSilva 1997; 1997c), in Richmond, and the medium-rise transformation of the cities of Langley and White Rock would be other examples.
Unlike high and medium-rise dwellings, suburban examples of low-rise densification are more dispersed. One of the most common variants would no doublt be building enclaves that are oriented to adults and senior. Here the most obvious example would be the profusion of gated-communities in the outer suburbs (DaSilva 1997b; Brady 1997). However the most extensive suburban concentration of this type of densification outside the City of Vancouver remains the outer ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, which is situated outside the City of Vancouver, but takes in the inner suburbs of Burnaby and Richmond, as well as parts of the District of North Vancouver and parts of Surrey. Thus Burnaby and Richmond have undergone very extensive low-rise densification in areas zoned for single-detached dwelling units. This also applies to secondary suites, where Burnaby has always had a high concentration of units because of Simon Fraser University. However it is Surrey, which now probably rivals the City of Vancouver in terms of the number of secondary suites, as over 12,000 secondary suites have already been identified by the municipality (Surrey/North Delta 1997)). With the creation of new provincial legislation (GBC-3 1994) to accommodate secondary suites, and the apperance of new zoning schedules to control and discipline their production, the decay of one of the most prominent features of modern regulation is revealed in the dissolution of RS-1 Zoning for single families. In this, and other ways, one of the most powerful and prominent regulatory feature of the modern era that was associated with land-extensive development has been radically amended and significantly undermined: something, once again, which is most apparent in the City of Vancouver, in the inner precinct of the Zone of Asian Resettlement which makes up the suburban areas of the city.
To see this it is only necessary to track how the area covered by the original RS-1 zone schedule, which most clearly embraced the social and design aspirations of the modern era, has steadily shrunk in size. For example a zoning map from 1973 would show that nearly 100 percent of the area regulated by RS-1 was covered by regulations set out in the early 1950s. Up to the the early 1970s about seventy percent of the city was shaded white to represent areas that were expected to abide by the single family housing code. (CVPD-30a). However the zoning maps of the late 1990s would show quite a different picture (CVPD-135a; CVPD-83). Presently half of the area that was once white is now shaded gray. This gray area designates RS-1 areas where secondary suites are now legally allowed. Furthermore, at least another thirty percent of the areas that was once RS-1 has been rezoned to RS-5 and 6 schedules. Located mostly on the west side of the city, this was done in order to control site coverage and address design problems that arose because of the diffusion of low- rise densification into the more afluent west side suburban parts of the city during the 1980s and 1990s. As a reaction of the profusion of large homes and the denuding of the existing landscape elborate zoning controls were put in place to control the densification of the single family areas that had largely escaped the densification process (CVC0-48; CV-27; VS-113; VS-143a). With housing prices so high, and incomes remaining stagnant the pressure to densify areas zoned for single family dwellings has moved beyond the outer and inner ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, and has now become a concern that is affecting nearly every municipality in Greater Vancouver (VS-206; VS-87abc; VS-80).
In one way or another, all three formats have been shaped by the interplay of the local property market, modified by demographic forces that involve changing immigration patterns as well as the emergence of a new middle class. Finally, all of these formats have been shaped by the provision of transportation infrastructure. The specialization of the densification process into one of three different formats in Vancouver shows that there can be considerable variation within a single region. and not just between cities. Furthermore, the important background context provided by pre=existing zoning schedules also comes out, as the three types of densification that have been described correspond to a specific type of zoning. For example, high-rise densification in Vancouver developed in areas zoned for high density dwellings, or on discarded industrial land - most of which was originally located in the core area of the region. By contrast, medium-rise formats originated in the transitional zone, which later became the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement. Here an RT Zoning schedule governed land use, creating a special transitional zoning that provided a cushion between areas zoning for high-rise and single family dwellings. Similary, low-rise formats were incubated in the RS-1 areas of the City of Vancouver. Like the transitional areas, which became a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, with low-rise densification, this area has since been transformed into the inner ring of a Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Even when similar market forces are shaping the real estate market in each city, different zoning regimes, contrasting immigration patterns, and variations in the configuration of the property market explain why the densification process may not develop uniformily in a single region. When looking at how densification unfolds in different urban regions this is even more the case. Even if the same marcro trends were at work in Toronto, Montreal or Winnipeg pre-existing zoning, and the configuration of demand and supply forces in each city create considerable room for variation. The presence of three distinctive kinds of densification in Vancouver, and the uneven distribution of low-rise, medium-rise, and high-rise densification, illustrates how much variation is possible.
That is why it is always important to take local institutions and impact of local regulation into account, particularly the regulatory cultures that shape and modify the economic, demographic and transportation and communications strategies for investment, that broadly shape the densification process. While demographics provide the necessary raw material for the densification process, and ultimately provide the bedrock for the evolution of the densification process, these influences are tempered by market forces which, in turn, are shaped by local zoning regulations Similarly, the same goes for the provision of transportation infrastructure. For example, zoning for higher densities around transit stations will affect how investment in transportation infrastructure will translate into the production of denser environments.
Furthermore, this will vary over time as well as space. Depending upon how these three broad modifying forces interact with each other in a specific time and place, and how they are modified by local insitutions, together this will determine how distinctive layers of denser urban space are laid out in a particular place. The operation of countervailing tendencies stands as a caution for those trying to set out the evolution of the densifiction process along a linear pathway. The interaction of the property market and demographics in the modern era shows how complex and variable the progression of the densification process can be. To see this it is only necessary to look at one dimension of the process revealed by the interaction of the property market and shifting demographics. Whereas young adults were the most important age cohort when the first wave of densification swept over Vancouver in the 1960s; from the mid-1980s onwards mature adults (i.e., families with children no longer at home) and a growing population of affluent seniors have become an increasingly important marketfor denser units.
This change will be significant when looking at the futher evolution of the densification process. Even in cities, such as Winnipeg, where densification is highly localized, it has been these seniors that has provided the market for the small but limited construction of new condominium units in the city and the only signs of densification in a city otherwise totally affected by land-extensive pattern of development (CMHC 1994B; 1995). In this regard the transformation of the City of White Rock exhibit how influential this fast growing market has become, something that is now widely acknowledged in regional and national studies that attempt to project future housing demand (Baxter 1989; Foot 1996; CMHC 1997i). Here the presence of the most concentrated number of seniors in the region, where the number of seniors now exceed the metropolitan average by three hundred percent, is strongly linked to the densification that has taken place here, as it can be for a great deal of the production of denser housing in the City of Langley and Abbotsford.
Finally, as already mentioned in the previous section, densification has flowed into the investment grooves established by the construction of new transit corridors in Vancouver. If past trends are any indication of future investment possibilities the provision of additional transit infrastructure is likely to play an even more important role in shaping the configuration the investment geography of Vancouver over the next decade. Since Skytrain opened in 1986, on a per capita basis, more investment has probably been poured into this transit corridor than anywhere else in North America. With two other transit corridors planned and a third possibly going to Richmond, up to four transit corridors may emerge Vancouver. If this happens, the transit orientation of additional investment in the production of urban space will climb far above the high levels of investment that already exist. Accordingly, if these transit oriented investment spines emerge, a 21st century version of the streetcar city will come into existence within the next twenty years (diagram one). As said before, if this happens, Vancouver will move into a league of its own, surpassing Toronto to become North America's interpretation of the rail centred city of which Stockholm would be its closest equivalent in Europe (Cervero 1996).
So what is noteworthy about the historical evolution of Vancouver is how each of the three material elements that shape the densification process kicks in to produce different types of environments. Far from being a linear or uniform progression the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver shows itself to be quite variegated over time and space, particularly if its outward diffusion form its place of origin in the West End of Vancouver is examined .
Having briefly described the geography of densification in Greater Vancouver it is now the appropriate time to review its history. Because no other neighbourhood has been affected by this process as long as the West End (or so profoundly transformed by it), a short history of the West End can be used to encapsulate the stages of development that can be used to describe the evolution of the densification process for the region as a whole (figures six A and B). At present about 40,000 people occupy nearly one square mile that make up the West End, which lies adjacent to Vancouver's downtown. Although the beginning of the postwar transformation of the West End began in the early 1950s, prewar traces of this process of transformation go as far back as 70 years ago, to the 1920s , when the first great surge in apartment construction took place. In part, it was fears about density, social decay, and falling property values (believed to accompany the invasion of apartments into single family districts) that thrust Vancouver out of its laissez-faire period of development into the modern era, when RS-1 zoning was created in the late 1920s, to make the areas of single detached units inviolate from the invasion of denser types of land use. So for Vancouver at least, there is an ironic twist to what happened. With the West End turned into the only high density residential area of the city, it had to be cordoned off from the rest of the city by a number of protective zones that were meant to cushion areas zoned for single family dwellings from salubrious influences of high density, thereby preventing the further degradation of property as well as the moral fiber of the community. It would not be until the early 1980s that this association was completely laid to rest by planners and the more informed public. Regardless of the motivation, the designation of the West End as the only area in the region zoned for high density residential development established the regulatory parameters for the total transformation of the West End in the 1950s into the densest residential neighbourhood in the region - since even into the middle of the 1950s the physical makeup of the West End was still predominately defined by single detached dwelling units. However, by 1997, this once common house type had become an endangered artifact of the Victorian city. Presently about one-hundred houses remain from the thousands that existed here in the 1950s now remain, or about point-zero-five percent of the entire neighbourhood's housing stock (compare this figure to table two). At present, of the 100 or so blocks that make up the West End, only one block, now known as Mole Hill (Petrie 1995) survives as the only intact block of single -detached dwellings units. As such it remains the last redoubt of the suburban neighbourhood that once existed here, and the only place which hasnot yet succumbed to the high-rise densification that enveloped the entire West End between 1957 and 1970 (McAfee 1967; 1972).
Over the next forty years this predominantly low rise neighbourhood of single-detached dwelling units would be transformed into Canada's most famous high-rise precinct. Furthermore, what also made the West End unique was that unlike most other contemporary high-rise apartment areas, no subsidies had to be given to feul the massive private redevelopment that took place here (Gaylor 1971). From the ultimate bourgeois suburb (Gibson 1972; Robertson 1977), it was, for some, transformed into its symbolic opposite, as the West End becme identified with the jet set and glamorous high-rise living (Forbes 1970; VP-18). In retrospect, as early as the 1950s the West End would stand out as a precurssor of the urban spectacle that would later grip the entire core of the city in the 1980s, when the postmodern regulation mutated into its current market and entertainment driven form. Thus, even in the 1950s the quest for beauty and leisure and not utility, or the concerns of child rearing and work, would become one of the defining aspects of the regulation of the West End. Thus, even in the 1950s the West End would foreshadow much of what would follow in the 1990s, as the quest for beauty and leisure, not the responsibilities and burdens of child-rearing, began to influence the evolution of zoning protocols (CVPD-1).
Thus not only has the West End been affected by the densification process longer than anywhere else in the region. As a result no other neighbourhood has been more radically transformed by the densification process than the West End. In turn, this explains why the West End was regarded as such an anomaly in the modern era. The sociological transformation of urban space that accompanied its physical transformation was problematic for modern planners since density was closely associated with deviance and urban pathology. Therefore, how planners attempted to cope with the densification of this neighbourhood reveals a great deal about the limitation of modern regulation. That is why the West End is both a symbolic marker and a regulatory touchstone that can be used to explore the relation that exists between densification, modernism and the postmodern regulation of space. For what happened here in the 50s and 60s would foreshadow what would later happen in the rest of the region during the 70s and 80s.
From a regulatory perspective, the modernist bias against density and the early postmodern aesthetic reaction to high-rise living produced a great deal of ambivalence about the West End in the public's mind, as well within professional planning discourse (VP-16a; VS-33). Although at times the West End was portrayed in a glamorous light, more often than not, it was regarded with unease and suspicion by planners and citizens. Particularly for the new middle class, which first came into existence as an identifiable social group in the late 1960s, the West End became an object of derision and ridicule. Functioning as a lightning rod for the postmodern reaction to the way that the modernist accommodation to the first densification wave, the West End provoked the search for an alternative format for the production of denser spaces. Albeit in a negative way, the West End nevertheless acted as a catalyst for much of the experimentation in medium-rise densification take was to develop in reaction to the high-rise form of densification which the West End stood for. In this way, paradoxically, the West End helped give birth to its antithesis, as middle-class activists saw the construction of medium-rise landscapes as an antidote to what was happening in the West End. Indeed, for most of the first phase of the postmodern transformation of Vancouver the West End was held in low regard by planners and citizens alike. Only in the 1980s, with the revision of the postmodern aesthetic and the creation of a new economic base for the core area of the region did this change. Rather than being reviled in postmodern discourse, as it was in the 1970s, in the 1980s, but more so in the 1990s (Durning 1996), it has become a symbol for the livable and sustainable city rather than its antithesis -- even receiving the seal of approval from the doyenne of postmodernism herself -- Jane Jacobs.
Last of all, because no other neighourhood in Vancouver has gone through every phase of development in the evolution of the densification process it is possible to regard the West End as an end point that can be used to establish a series of benchmarks for calibrating the different stages in the transformation of the built environment brought about by the densification process. This can be done by looking at the changes in the composition of the housing stock in the West End. Whereas at one time nearly one-hundred percent of the housing stock was made up of single-detached dwelling, at present they only number point zero five percent of all dwelling units. Using the movement from one extreme to the other as markers of the evolution of the densification process four distinct stages in the physical transformation of the built environment of the West End can be identified and then used to chart out the progression of the densification process elsewhere in the region.
The first stage can be described as one of emergence. This began in the second decade of the twentieth century and continued into the 1920s and 1930s when purpose built apartments became a noticeable but subsidiary part of the built environment in the West End. The ascendant stage began in 1940s and 1950s. This happened when the construction of purpose built multiple dwelling units began to consistently replace the existing stock of single-detached units. Simultaneously, a weaker form of densification was also taking place in the West End, as large houses were being converted into boarding houses. Nonetheless, as the ascendant stage progressed single-detached units were gradually replaced by apartments, preparing the way for the next stage. The third stage that followed can be described as one of dominance. As the word suggests, this stage began in the West End when apartments became the dominant house type. With regard to high-rise and medium-rise densification, this occurs when less than fifty percent of the housing stock is made up of single detached units. For the West End this stage began in the 1950s and lasted into the early 1970s.
There is the fourth and final stage. It can be described as one of maturation. This stage comes into existence when denser housing accommodation clearly becomes overwhelmingly predominant. From here on in changes in house form are incremental. Usually there is no further rapid change in the built environment. For the West End this happened in the early 1970s. For example, during 1973 new zoning introduced which slowed down the rate of change (CVPD-35). As a result, over the past 25 years there has been little alteration to the existing morphology of the West End. Since that time change has been been modest and gradual, something which was further emphasized in the most recent zoning amendments that were put in place in 1989 (CVPD-77; CVPD-89).
While these markers are only of limited value when tracking low-rise forms of densification, they do allow the advance of densification process to be measured fairly accurately during the modern era since the production of denser housing forms generally appeared as high-rise or medium-rise apartments.
Applying these markers to the City of Vancouver, 1954 marks the beginning of the ascendant phase. Largely because of the redevelopment of the West End the number of new apartment units surpassed the production of single-detached dwellings for the first time in the city. Just as with the West End, a stage of dominance was achieved in the city in 1971, when the proportion of single-detached units making up the city's housing stock fell below fifty percent for the first time.
---------------------------------Figure Two----------------------------------------
With the exception of Kerrisdale, South Granville Street and the Marpole area (until the late 1960s), at this time the majority of new apartment construction in the City of Vancouver was confined to The West End. However, by the early 1970s, apartment construction was beginning to filter into the transitional - and mixed use neighbourhoods that surrounded Downtown Vancouver. By the middle of the 1960s apartment construction had even leap-frogged across the zone of single-detached homes that made up the suburban (or non core) area of the City of Vancouver as high-rise apartments became a characteristic feature of the the inner suburbs as well(City of Burnaby 1969).
When moving from the city to the region, 1962 becomes a watershed year for the progression of the densification process. In the early 1960s apartment construction in the suburbs takes the densification process into its emergent phase. This happened when the number of apartments constructed in the suburbs doubled, as apartment starts climbed from 628 units in 1961 to 1147 units in 1962. Forty years after this had happened in the West End, and nearly ten years after this stage was reached for the City of Vancouver, this would happen for the region as a whole in 1962. From this moment onwards, the densification process would speed up. Barely five years the region had entered the emergent phase, it began to move into the next stage. Consequently, during the mid-1960s densification had entered into its ascendant stage.
By the late 1960s four large suburban satellite zones for apartments had come into existence outside the City of Vancouver: two on the North Shore, one by Ambleside beach in the City of West Vancouver and the other across the harbour from downtown Vancouver, in the City of North Vancouver. The other two remaining satellites were located to the east, in the Midtown section of New Westminister and the Central Park precinct in Burnaby.
By 1971, not only was high-rise densification physically altering the City of Vancouver, it was also now transforming the physical morphology of the inner suburbs. By 1991, twenty years after densification had become dominant within the City of Vancouver, this next stage in the densification process would be reached by the region as a whole, as the percentage of the housing units made up of single-detached units fell to fifty percent for the region as a whole. Since 1991, the process has accelerated. In 1996 the number of single-detached units had fallen to 45 percent (See table two). And within the core of the region, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of dwelling units made up of single-detached units had fallen to about 27 percent.
At present, only the Montreal urban region has a larger percentage of denser housing units. And if present trends continue, Vancouver may soon exceed Montreal in this regard. What this rapid densification reveals is that Vancouver is so far the only large urban region in North America to unequivocally switch over from a land-extensive pattern of development to one which is land-intensive. Unlike most other North American cities, where densification appears as a secondary influence with regard to the production of space, in Vancouver densification has become a dominant force in this regard. In fact, densification has become so intense in Vancouver that it has now begun to spill out past the commuter zone. Unlike the exurban fringe of Toronto or Montreal, where a bimodal pattern exists -- which is why the porportion of single-detached units making up the housing stock of these exurban areas often range somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of all starts-- in the exurban fringes of Vancouver this percentage is much lower. With the proportion of single-detached usually resting below 50 percent in most exurban areas of Vancouver, the gap between the the core and exurbia is not as great as in other cities. Instead, housing projections suggest that the rift between the core and the periphery may diminish over time rather than widen, as is now the case in Toronto and Montreal.
Densification therefore casts a much longer shadow over Vancouver's hinterland. For example in Abbotsford, which is the largest exurban hinterland community in Greater Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached dwellings fell from 61 percent in 1991 to 58 percent in 1996. Furthermore, in the future the porportion of single-detached units in Abbotsford is forecast to fall below 50 percent shortly after the year 2000, with the percentage of single-detached units expected to drop to around 45 percent by the year 2021. The same trend line can be seen in Squamish or even Kelowna, which is a five hour drive away from Vancouver.
The intensity of the densification process in Greater Vancouver can be gauged by looking at population figures as well as housing statistics. Using population figures from the 1996 Census (SC-18), comparisons within and between urban regions reveal how strong this transformation has become in Vancouver. Even though densification now dominates all parts of Greater Vancouver, the most recent population figures for the City of Vancouver show that the city still remains the epicenter for this process. Although population increases in the city were below the regional average, nontheless, in light of the fact the City of Vancouver was completely developed, the increase in population was quite substantial. What is remarkable is that although the City of Vancouver did not grow as fast as the region, the city still grew faster than the metropolitan average for all Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada between 1991 and 1996.
Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the population of the City of Vancouver grew by eight-point-nine percent, or about sixty-two percent of the metropolitan growth rate, which was fourteen point-three percent. This rate of growth was 50 percent above the average for all metropolitan areas in Canada. Still, the impressive growth of the city was overshadowed by the even stronger growth rate of the region. It is only when comparisons are made between the core area of different urban regions that the intensity of the densification process in the City of Vancouver can be fully appreciated. Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the City of Vancouver grew nearly three times faster than its closest core rivals. While the population of the City of Vancouver nearly increased by nine percent, the old City of Toronto only grew by two-point-nine percent. At the same time the City of Montreal declined by point-zero-one percent. Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa only grew by about three percent.
More detailed examination of the latest population figures also reveal something about the densification of the the inner suburbs of Vancouver, particularly Burnaby and New Westminister. Burnaby, which, like Vancouver, is almost completely developed, grew by twelve-point-eight percent between 1991 and 1996; and in New Westminister, which is completely developed as well (functioning more as a satellite city rather than a suburb), the population grew by thirteen-point-two percent. Like Vancouver, what is particularly noteworthy about New Westminister is that such a high rate of growth is occurring where the land base is already completely developed. Consequently all growth in New Westminister involved some form of densification. What is also interesting about the growth of New Westminister (and some other suburban communities) is that current populations levels have already exceed the 2021 projections set out by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (July 1996).
In New Westminister, for example, currently approved or proposed developments are expected to take the city's population up to 84,000 -- or 5,600 above the GVRD (July 1996) assignment of 78,783. What is just as intriguing about this is that the realization of this level of development will take urban densities in New Westminister past those that exist in the City of Vancouver for the first time. At present urban densities in New Westminister are only 71 percent of those in the City of Vancouver, but if all the predicted development that is forecast for New Westminister takes place, urban densities will exceed those in the City of Vancouver by a slight margin. Meanwhile, if Burnaby simply complies with GVRD allocations urban densities will approach those of the City of Vancouver in 1996.
Just as intriguing, are the population projections for White Rock, the City of North Vancouver and the City of Langley. None of these cities are in the area designated by the region for more compact growth, yet they are growing faster than regional projections. It is important to note that this growth is land-intensive rather than land-extensive, and that it is occurring on the fringes of the region rather than in the core. For example the GVRD projected that the population of the City of White Rock would grow to 17,997 by 2021; however by 1996 the population has already reached 17,210. Similar densification is taking place in the City of North Vancouver. In this case projections for 2021 set earlier in the 1990s by the Greater Vancouver Regional Governemnt may exceeded by several thousand. What is more interesting is that while some municipalities are resisting the goals set by the region for densification, other suburban localities, like Richmond, are demanding more densification than they were allocated in the regional plan (VS-203a). All this can be taken as further evidence of the generalized nature of the densification process in Greater Vancouver ,and a sign of its intensity, with the core areas, the suburbs and the exurban areas participating in this restructuring.
3:5 - Variations on a theme: How densification in Vancouver corresponds to what is transpiring in other North American cities - looking at variations in the real estate markets of Edmonton, Winnipeg and Seattle and San Francisco in relation to Vancouver.
If the variation of property values that exist within a single region are further studied differences between the centre and periphery of the region can reveal something about the intensity and configuration of the densification process if comparisons are made with other cities. Except for some examples of gentrification, in which the middle class is able to take advantage of the existence of a rent gap to increase its consumption of space (Smith 1984), there appears appear to be a correlation between rising rather than falling property values and the reconcentration or dispersion of investment capital. When higher values are registered in the core areas of the region the necessary market preconditions for the initiation of a land-intensive regime are generally realized. Coversely, when property values in the core area fall in relation to the perhiphery, not only will more land-extensive pattern of investment become more significant, as well, it appears that low-rise forms of densification become more important. How steep the price gradient between the core and the periphery is may also tell us something about the intensity of the densification process. When Property values in the periphery are higher than the core, and the price gradient between the core and periphery is relatively flat, powerful centrifugal market forces are likely to be operating, indicating that residential capital is probably dispersing to the periphery of an urban region rather than concentrating in its core. Similarly, an inverse relation applies when core values are higher, and the gradient between the core and periphery is steeper.
Consequently, when core residential property values soar above the metropolitan average densification can be expected to be more entrenched because of the operation of these market forces. Conversely, when core residential property values fall below the regional average land-extensive rather than land-intensive patterns of investment are more likely to predominate. Also, in urban regions such as Toronto, where there are high values in both the core and the exurban periphery, the price variations that can be observed show how the configuration of the urban land market may lead to the creation of a bi-modal pattern of investment: where land-intensive and land-extensive patterns of development co-exist with each other in the same region, but where no one pattern necessarily dominates.
These price gradients are also useful to look at because they can be used as indicators which can tell us something about how intense or dispersed the pressure for densification will be in a city, and where in a specific urban region the pressure for redevelopment is likely to be the strongest. These gradients are also useful guideposts when looking at differences between Canadian and American cities, particularly when differences in the price gap that exists between the suburban, exurban and core areas of the city are compared (Goldberg and Mercer 1986).
Again, regarding Canada's largest cities, the only exceptions that really stand out are Edmonton and Winnipeg, with the gap much more in evidence in Winnipeg than it is in Edmonton, if differences between core, suburban and exurban housing prices are compared. For example in a Summer survey of housing prices by ReMax the average value of a home sold in the core area of Edmonton was approximately $104,000, or about 7% below the region wide average, while the average selling price of a home in one of the region's largest exurban communities, Sherwood Park, was $145,000. Not surprisingly the dispersion of residential construction is much more pronounced in Edmonton than it is in Calgary, where property values are much higher in the core area (Edmonton Journal 1997b).
However, as stated before, the most obvious exception to the core periphery gap is Winnipeg. If there is a twenty-nine percent difference between the core and the periphery of Edmonton, the gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg is much greater. While the average selling price of a MLS listing for Winnipeg in 1996 was approximately $90,000 and the median value of a new home in the suburban part of the city was about $135,000, for vast areas of the core house prices averaged around $30,000, with the average for some inner city neighbourhoods nearly falling to $20,000. Instead of a difference of twenty-nine percent, which was the one that was observed in Edmonton, the price gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg was over four-hundred percent. Indeed, in a walk through the West Broadway Neighbourhood a house was spotted that was selling for as low as $14,900. While the price gap in Edmonton indicated that investment was dispersing, the relatively small gap between the core and the regional average meant that the inner city was still a viable place for capital investment. In contrast to this, the chasm that exists between core and suburban values in Winnipeg discloses a market that can neither support any new construction nor even any major renovations of the existing housing stock. With housing values falling by 30 percent in two large inner city neighbourhoods (the West End and Point Douglas) between 1991 and 1996 while the average price in the city rose by five percent, this combined with systemic red lining (PI-56) indicate that the real estate market in much of the inner city has gone wild and is now so weak that regular institutions that normally stabilize and protect property values have abandoned much of the inner city. Not only has this undermined the exchange value of much of the inner city housing stock, but also its use value as well, since the only rational action for an owner not living in a unit is to milk a housing unit for as much rent as possible without engaging in any maintenance or repairs. What can only follow from this is rapid decay and obsolescence of the existing of the housing stock and its eventual abandonment. Signs of this are already appearing in the inner city as some sites are reverting to prairie.
Nowhere else in Canada are such conditions found. Even if there was no red-lining, which would mean that at least a property could be insured, the fact that prices are so low means that the market actually serves to repel new investment. Even with a below market construction costs of $60 a square foot, any new construction in much of the core would immediately be penalized and discounted by at least fifty percent, if not more, as soon as the investment were made. What is also disturbing is how closely Winnipeg's inner city parallels Detroit's. Perhaps no where else in the United States has a large urban centre been so severely affected by capital abandonment and dispersion. With floor prices in some of the worst neighbourhoods in Detroit -- such as the Martin Luther Area -- going for about $15,000 Canadian, the property markets of both cities seem to mirror each other (Refer to SNC, Vol.2, Chpt. 3, Note 168). And as already pointed out, there are even some houses on the market in Winnipeg which actually fall below this floor. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that what denser accommodation is being built in Winnipeg follows the American pattern. Thus most investment in denser housing is now located in the periphery rather than the core of Winnipeg, since this is where most of the very limited condominium construction in the city is taking place.
Although Winnipeg is an extreme case in point, some of the core area markets in Edmonton and Montreal are problematic as well. However, here land-extensive development has not yet produced the level of regional dysfunction that is now so apparent in Winnipeg.
Because of their long touted commonalties, comparing Vancouver with Seattle provides another vantage point to look at the unique situation of Vancouver. Except for New York City, Chicago, San Francisco or Miami Beach -- where significant high-rise densification is taking place in the core of the urban region, in most other American cities densification is low-rise, and it more likely to be found in the periphery rather than in the core of each region. In this regard, Seattle appears to occupy a middle position. Some high-rise residential construction is taking place. Similarly, construction figures, and housing prices for various parts of the region indicate that a bi-modal pattern of investment is emerging. Although there are some similarities with the pattern that can be seen in Toronto's, it is much weaker than Toronto in terms of the amount of investment that is taking place in the core. This is even more the case when residential investment in the core area of Seattle is compared with Vancouver.
Still, if the three internal variables that shape the densification process are examined for Seattle, despite some reconcentration of capital in the core, housing starts, property values and investment patterns show that the region remains influenced more by land-extensive development. Although some densification is taking place, it plays a secondary role in the shaping of the urban morphology of this region.
Hence, unlike Vancouver (with the exception of West Vancouver -- which is a much smaller market in regional terms), the City of Seattle ($192,952) does not yet have the highest property values in the region. While the urban core of Seattle has the second highest values, it still trails far behind the East Shore, where values hover around $270,593 in the mid 90s.
If Seattle does move towards a more land-intensive regime, it will be starting from a position occuppied by Vancouver forty years ago, when reinvestment was just beginning to take place in Vancouver's West End. So there is a considerable lag between each region, which will take a long time time to diminish.
Up to the 1960s, the West End stood out as an isolated island of land-intensive development in a sea of land-extensive development. As with Seattle at the present time, most investment was geared towards the expansion of the suburbs rather than the reconcentration of residential capital into the core. Just as rising property assessments for the West End during the 1950s served as a harbinger of the densification that would later affect the entire region, so too for Seattle, the recent inflation in property values within the City of Seattle, and the increased residential investment that has accompanied this price rise, may serve as sign that an important watershed may have been passed in Seattle, and that densification could now become an important feature in the development of this region. But again, this remains to be seen.
Even if densification advances in Seattle, it is not likely to evolve in eactly the same fashion that it has in Vancouver. For instance if we look at the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver, we see that during the late 1950s and early 1960s the West End was the only large built up area of the city where assessment values were rising dramatically rather than remaining stable or declining. Although core values in Seattle are now rising, other areas in the region, such as Belluvue, are experiencing significant re-investment. And although more high-rise residential towers are being built in neighbourhoods such as Belltown, there is still no equivalent to the West End in Seattle, and there may well never be.
Although a Zone Of Middle Class Resettlement has emerged in Seattle, this zone is not as developed as Vancouver's. Although recent price rises may change this, for most of the 1990s, the price differential between the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement in Vancouver was much greater than its counterpart in Seattle. Unlike Seattle, except for a few small pockets, property values in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, are generally well above the metropolitan average for Vancouver. This is less so in Seattle.
The difference between both cities makes it possible to speculate that property markets in Seattle support a far less intense form of densification, densification which may also be less focussed upon the core of the region. While many exurban markets in Seattle approach or exceed the core (ie. the City of Seattle), in Vancouver the opposite holds true. In most exurban localities within Greater Vancouver, the price of a single-detached unit (for instance in places such as the District of Langley, Surrey or Maple Ridge) are only a third or half of the average price that can be found in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement.
However, since this section was written the real estate market has exploded because of the high-tech boom. If a great deal of the price increase in Vancouver can be related the movement of wealthy immigrants into the city, in Seattle’s case this has to do with the migration of this high-tech new middle class into the city. Now, just as with Vancouver, displacement has beome an important issue. Also, with rising property values high-rise residential in the Core has become visible for the first time. Although at present, the scale of development was where the West End was in the late 50’s.
Since this neighbourhood once had some of the lowest property values in the region, what has happened to Strathcona over the past forty years reveal how powerful densification has become in Vancouver. In the 1950s this area was slated for urban renewal because of weak property values. However, by the 1990s the average value of a home in Strathcona stood eleven percent above the metropolitan average and approximately thirty percent above average values that were present in peripheral areas in the region, such as Maple Ridge and Surrey. Because of zoning, and the location of this neighbourhood in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, densification has not taken the high-rise format that predominates in the downtown peninsula. Instead incremental gentrification has been the vector followed by the densification process here. Although densification in Strathcona has not brought about a dramatic increase in the population, it has resulted in substantial reinvestment in the existing building stock, as well as rising property values.
To conclude, even though densification has been far more influential in Canada, it would be inaccurate to say that densification in North America is primarily a Canadian phenomenon. Again, comparing densification ratios helps to point this out. In some American cities, such as Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC, the existence higher densification ratios reveals that market pressure for the production of denser built environments is building up. Favourable markets, along with the alignment of other factors that support densification, could create a background context for the production of denser environments in the United States which is similar to Canada'a. If a densification ratio of three is used as a signpost to mark a space of transition between land-extensive and land-intensive development, there are some American cities which fall into this orbit. However, as national averages indicate, overall, market forces favour densification more in Canada than in the United States. For example, if we look at house prices for 1997, the densification ratio in Canada (3.1) stands just slightly above this benchmark figure, while the densification ratio for the United States (2.7) rests slightly below this figure (Rhodes 1997). What these numbers suggest is that Canada has advanced further down the road towards urban densification. Likewise, a densification ratio of 2.7 suggests that densification may soon be entering a watershed in the United States, but that land-extensive development is still clearly dominant.
These ratios appear less abstract and arbitrary if they are linked to the production of housing. This can be seen in the production of single-detached units for each country. While the percentage of new housing starts in Canada hovered aroun 55 percent for most of the 1990s, in the United States single-detached units acounted for a much larger percentage of housing starts, with about 80 percent of all starts made up of single-detached units.
Although there is no one-to-one correspondence between the rise and fall of this ratio and the type of housing starts that result, if a comparison is made with the United States, there seems to be a correlation between higher densification ratios in Canada and the production of a lower number of single-detached units. Recent data on housing supports this claim. For example, in the third quarter of 1997 single-detached units in the United States (G/M 1997zl) accounted for about eighty percent of all housing starts, compared to about sixty percent for Canada (G/M 1997zq). What these figures suggest is that densification in the United States is till only an emergent phenomenon. By contrast, in Canada, the same figues suggest that densification has become an ascendant force in the reshaping of the city. At pesent, not only is densification considerably weaker in the United States than it is in Canada, it also configured differently, with a differentphysical and geographic format that is only partially revealed by comparing densification ratios but which becomes more apparent when looking at the production of different house forms and where they are located. For example, it appears that investment in new strata title units in the United States are much likely to be found along the exurban fringe rather than in the core, as is more the case for Canada -- Winnipeg being one notable exception to this (Mckenzie 1994).
These national differences come into clear relief if Vancouver is compared to San Francisco rather than Seattle, since this is the city where the property market, the provision of transportation and demographics have created the most favourable configuration for densification in the United States. Even though the City of San Francisco has a densification ratio of four-point-five, and is now the most expensive housing market in the United States, densification in San Francisco still remains muted in comparison to Vancouver. While the densification ratio for the City of San Francisco indicates that densification exerts a dominant influence upon the restructuring of urban space, this does not yet apply to the entire region, where housing starts and estimates of the densification ratio for the rest of the Bay Area suggest that densification is only ascendant or emergent. This stands in marked contrast to Vancouver, where densification is dominant throughout the entire region.
Until recently, at least, further comparisons show that the densification ratio for the core area of San Francisco was probably below that of Vancouver. Making a rough estimate, in the mid-90s the densification ratio for a single-detached home in the City of Vancouver may have peaked as high as fifteen on the west side of the city and probably hovered between seven and eight on the east side. For the city as a whole, a high-rise condominium (with two bedrooms) probably rose to about eight. Even the cheapest accommodation available -- a low-rise two bedroom condominium -- would have only taken the densification ratio down to about four. By comparison, for the City of San Franscisco, the overall average for single-detached dwelling units was about four-point-five, a ratio that was only then equivalent to the low, rather than than high end of the market, in the City of Vancouver (CMHC 1997a).
Moreover, if we look at housing figures for greater San Francisco, and not just the city proper (except for the Silicon Valley), the densification ratio drops dramatically in the adjacent counties that surround the city. For example, across the bay, in the City of Oakland, the densification ratio falls to three, and then falls as low as two-point-nine in the Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa area, in the North East quadrant of the region. Again, this may be one reason why so little development has taken place around BART. Even though it has been in operation for nearly 30 years, until quite recently hardly any suburban development has occurred. Contrast this with Vancouver, where development has mushroomed along Vancouver's Skytrain line, although the system has only been in operation for ten years.
Thus, Vancouver is not alone. But with the highest densification ratio on the continent, and the continent most active transit corridors, no other major city is being so rapidly reconfigured into a late twentieth century version of the early twentieth century street car city. For this reason, it is misleading to view Vancouver as a satellite of Portland and Seattle. Naive notions about a larger regional entity called Cascadia -- an entity based upon propinquity and climate -- can only distract attention away from the forces that are transforming Vancouver into a singularly unique urban region. Although there are some signs of densification in Seattle and Portland, their movement in this direction is of an entirely different order. And while there are some philosophic similarities between the type of postmodern regulation which govern these three cities, quite different demographic and economic influences are at work which make each city distinctive and separate. Indeed even the attempt to establish some equivalence between Portland and Seattle may be overplayed. Still, whatever the similarities between Portland and Seattle, it is clear that Vancouver is travelling in a direction that is quite different from these other two cities (Reid 1992, Summer/Fall pp. 14-17; VS-318).
In fact, if the social ecology and the economic base of each city are looked at more closely, Vancouver probably has a closer affinity to Miami than either Portland or Seattle. Similarly, when looking at the densification process, Vancouver has more in common with Toronto and San Francisco or Washington DC. than it does with either Portland or Seattle.
If comparisions are to be made, besides Miami, Vancouver is closer to San Francisco or Washington D.C. than to either Seattle or Portland. Regardless of the comparisons that are made, Vancouver presently stands apart from all other North American cities because both its core and the periphery are being reshaped by densification. Unlike other urban regions, densification has become a dominant feature of the this region, something which sets Vancouver apart from all other cities for the time being.
3: 6 - Concluding remarks and observations
In closing, two contrasting patterns of capital investment have shaped the development of the Canadain city since 1945. Furthermore, each of these investment regimes were also connected to a corresponding regularoy regime, one which set the political, social and cultural contexts for the reproduction of land-extensive (suburbanization) and land-intensive (densification) development. One important difference that was noted in the evolution of each regime was the uneven progression of the land-intensive patterns of development in comparison to the land-entensive pattern which preceded it.
Other factors which shaped each regime were also duly noted. For example, the link that exists between the advance of bureaucratic rule, the rise of modern regulation, and the reproduction of land-extensive development patterns of development was drawn out. In Canada this was most clearly embodied in the actions of a triumphant and all powerful federal state, since it played the central role in midwiving land-extensive development. The rules for suburban development, and the standards for land-extensive development that it set up, established a remarkably uniform pattern of development across the country. This would stand in contrast to the land-intensive development that followed atterwards, when the provinces would exert more control over urban development. The creation of a credit market for the purchase of new homes was probably the most significant action taken by the federal governent As a whole array of stiuplations followed from access to this credit, the production of housing was linked to the policies and programs initiated by the federal governemtnt. In this way a mass market for single-detached dwelling units was created, one which became the central feature of land-extensive development.
In true fordist fashion, the production of space was largely shaped by one central agency which, in this case, was CMHC. n the context of advancing bureaucratic rule, urban development was standardized This would change in the postmodern era as provincial governments and market forces would free themselves from the bureaucratic structures that had been created by the federal government. In part this change would even be encapsulated in the name change of CMHC in the postmodern era, as Central Mortgage and Housing was renamed the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In the modern era the provinces were too underdeveloped to challenge the Federal Government's de facto management of urban development. Lacking fiscal and human resources to challenge to federal agencies like CMHC, bureaucratic norms increasingly influenced the way that space was organized in the city. This changed in the postmodern era, as the influence of the federal government receded and that of the provinces expanded. This along with the fragmentation of the urban system that came with globalization and free trade, produced a much more polarized pattern of development (Little 1997k, 1997l; G/M 1997zb VS-361).
Along with the configuration created by the re-articulation of the three material variables that shape the densification process, an uneven and polarized development pattern emerged that became a defining feature of the postmodern era.
These changed affected the geographic alignment of classes within the region in several ways. Particularly so for the new middle class. During the modern era this class did not even exist. However, in the postmodern era it would become a significant force for change in the in the inner city and exurban parts of the region. Indeed, across the country this new middle class would play a critical role in the densification of the core areas of most Canadian cities. Still, because of the centralization of decision making functions and the concentration of knowledge workers into only a few select cities, the impact of this class would be quite uneven. Most noticeable in Toronto and Vancouver, but far less so in places such as Winnipeg, the uneven development of this class reflects the more polarized development that currently defines the restructuring of the postmodern city. This would surface in a variety of ways. For example, in the diffusion of postmodern tenure form. Here, for instance, there is a correlation that can be drawn out between the production of strata title units in general and more specifically, their concentration in the inner-city, and the prominence of the new middle class in a particular city. What can be shown from this, is that there is a close correlation between the spread of strata title units in the inner city and the reconcentration of the middle class into the core of the city.
A comparison between tables two and three also reveals something about the polarized development that has taken place in the postmodern era. With the exception of Montreal, for instance, the variations in single-detached units during the modern era were not as nearly as large as the one that can now be observed for the production of strata title units. This gap here is quite revealing, as it provides further corroboration of the differences that exist between these two models of urban development, and the different investment geographies that have been created For example, in the middle of the 1990s the Winnipeg market only absorbed 10 new strata title units per month, and most of these units were located in low-rise developments situated in the outer suburbs (CMHC 1994b). In Calgary the supply and demand structure is quite different. By 1998 the production of strata title units moved up to at least 250 per month (Calgary Herald 1997M). Furthermore, unlike Winnipeg a large proportion of these units were being constructed in the inner city. Lastly there is Vancouver. Here, the production of of strata title units are the norm rather than the exception. Although a disproportionate number are constructed in the region's core, strata title units make up the majority of housing units throughout the region. Not surprisingly, the production of strata title units often exceeds 1000 units a month (CMHC 1997). While the proportion of new single-detached units produced in Vancouver and Winnipeg may have diverged by ten or twenty percent in the modern era, this variations pales besides the variation that can now be observed with regard to the production of strata title units in each city. Rather than citing a difference of ten or twenty percent when comparing the production of strata title units in each the difference can only now be measured by a factor of two, or a difference of nearly 1000 percent.
Finally the uniformity of the first mode of urban development and the polarization that is present in the second emerges more clearly when looking at the demographics of the Canadian city in the postmodern era VS-361). Again Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrate the range of variation that exists. During the modern era, the baby boom provided a fairly uniform demographic base to support the production of land-extensive housing forms in child-centered suburbs across the country. Even though immigration rose to new highs during modern period, most population growth was generated internally because of the unprecedented, but temporary reverasal, in the fall of the birth rate.
Particulary in the mid 1980s this changed. As the birth rate declined to new lows, even in years which had high unemployment levels, the level of immigration remained high. Presently immigration rather than natural increase account for most of the population growth that is taking place in Canada. Unlike the modern era, when a rising birth rate created a more uniform rate of population growth, in the postmodern era this changed as immigration became more crucial to the continued growth of the population. With the overwhelmingly majority of immigrants going to a few select cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, population growth has become much more polarized (VS-361). Changes made to the immigration act since 1986 have further amplified this polarization. With the introduction of a federal program to attract immigrants with capital an even greater number of immigrants have moved to places like Vancouver. This, in turn, has had a direct impact on the configuration of local real estate markets. Especially in the case of Vancouver, parts of the city have become articulated to some of the most expensive residential markets in the world. The emergence of a Zone of Asian Resettlement has been one result of this. In turn, as with the country as a whole, this has produced a considerable amount of internal polarization in the region, with displacement becominge generalized over much of the core area of Vancouver in the past ten years.
In Winnipeg, by contrast, the opposite is more the case. Although Winnipeg has not attracted very many investor class immigrants, until the beginning of the 1990s it was able to attract enough blue- and-pink collar immigrants into the core area of the city to maintain a floor with regard to property values. But since this time, these immigrants have declined in number. While immigrants in Vancouver were flooding into the core area of the region the opposite was happening to Winnipeg, with the impact further accentuated by the fact that overall immigration was declining at the same time. Consequently, rather than inflationary pressures being set off, deflationary forces were activated. Not surprisingly, property values in some inner city areas of Winnipeg which used to take many of these new immigrants expereinced declines of fifty percent. While there were other causes for the collapse of the real estate market in much of the inner city of Winnipeg during the 1990s, declining levels of immigration no doubt played a role in what happened. Although this decline may have bottomed out as the level of immigration has started to rise once more Winnipeg, while immigration levels have fallen in Vancouver, nontheless, the contrast impact and size of immigration in both Winnipeg and Vancouver reamins a key factor in polarized development patterns that can be observed in each city.
To conclude, changes in the urban land market -- as reflected in shifting densification rations -- changing demographics, and different patterns of infrastructure investment, have affected the organization of space. As shown in tables one and two, between 1981 and 1996, falling densification ratios have generally translated into increased demand for single-detached units. However, as the review of demographics and infrastructure investment have also shown, other forces can intervene to modify this trajectory.
The resurgence in land-extensive development that occured since the mid 80s suggests that other factors were at play as well, as does it diminution in the 1990s, as shown by the decline in the proportion of housing units made up of single-detached units, which accelerated in the 1990s, after almost coming to a halt in the 1980s. Although national figures are skewed by the intense densification experienced by Vancouver between 1991 and 1996, estimates for Toronto show that after a significant resurgence in land-extensive development in the 1980s, densification picked up some of its momentum while land-extensive development lost much of its steam (Peck 1995; CHMC 1997g).
What this flux also reveals is the polarization of development patterns. While most urban centres followed the same trajectory in the modern era, beginning in the late 70s and early 1980s, much more polarized patterns started to emerge. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by looking at increasing divergence between Winnipeg and Vancouver. While the densification ratio for Winnipeg remained around two -- which was the benchmark figure denoting land-extensive development -- in Vancouver the densification ratio soared above the historic benchmark figure of four -- which has been used as an historic guidepost to land-intensive development. As shifts in the production of new housing illustrate, these ratios are not abstractions, but useful indicators that tell us something about the configuration of the local real estate market and the impact this can have on the production of space.
Just as the densification ratios for Vancouver and Winnipeg became polarized, so too did the actual production of housing. For example, between 1991 and 1996 the densification ratio for Vancouver soared further upwards, past the benchmark reading of four; however, in Winnipeg's case the densification ratio remained stationary, hovering around the benchmark level of two. Not surprisingly, these diverging economic signals have translated into the production of two quite different built environments. Whereas the decline in single-detached units accelerated in Vancouver over this period, the opposite happened in Winnipeg. Here the proportion of single-detached units in increased rather than decreased.
Finally, between the two extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver, there exists a third pattern , one that has emerged since the 1980s. In Toronto and Ottawa most particularly and, to a lesser extent in Montreal, a bi-polar pattern of urban development has emerged. Here land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation have nearly equal weight in the organization of space. But here as well important differences can be detected. For example, even with the resurgence of land-extensive development in Toronto, compared to Montreal, development in Toronto is still weighted more towards more land-intensive development. While development in the core of the Toronto region acts as a powerful countervailing force, this is less the case for Montreal, where residential development in the core makes up a much smaller percentage of all new residential development in the region.
Elsewhere in the country, while land-extensive development strongly reasserted itself in Calgary and Edmonton during the early 1990s, rising housing prices in the late 1990s may mute this resurgence or turn it around. While the proportion of new single-detached units in Calgary and Edmonton exceeded Winnipeg for most of 1990s, this shift back to land-extensive development may be temporary. While housing prices in Winnipeg have continued to languish near the bottom since the late 70s, even as late as the early 1980s Calgary had the second highest housing prices in the country for a short while (Won 1997). With housing prices in Calgary becoming the fourth most expensive in the country in 1998, the effect of rising housing prices on new construction can be seen in the declining proportion of housing starts made up of single-detached units.
For example, many times in the 1990s the proportion of single-detached units constructed in Calgary exceeded 80 percent, but there are signs that this is beginning to drop. Even though CHMC is predicting that the highest number of single detached units ever produced in Calgary will be started in 1998, they will only make up 75 percent of the new housing stock, down over 10 percent from the relative peak experienced a few years earlier, when the percentage of new housing starts made up of single-detached dwellings approached 90 percent.
So far it appears that Winnipeg and Montreal are the only large urban areas (with over 500,000 in population) where a more land-extensive pattern development has become firmly entrenched.
Despite the dispersion of investment and the relative underinvestment in the core, even Edmonton shows some signs of a turnaround. For example, evidence of a slight resurgance in land-intensive development is suggested in the guidelines for increasing density in new sub-divisions and new measuring being considered for the densification of the city's mature suburbs. Here, as in the City of Vancouver's Zone of Asian Resetttlement, low-rise densification is becoming more noticeable. Just as with the suburban zone of the City of Vancouver, the adoption of postmodern zoning regimes to control site density, height and design features of infill and replacement housing in suburban areas of Edmonton provides evidence of this (Edmonton Journal 1997c). Furthermore, if ambitious plans for resettling downtown Edmonton are realized, further impetus will be given to high-rise and medium-rise densification in city. If this happens, it is possible that a bi-modal pattern of investment, that resembles what can now be seem in Ottawa and Toronto, might evolve here as well (City of Edmonton 1997).
Elsewhere on the Prairies, even in smaller centres like Saskatoon -- rising housing prices may limit the progression of land-extensive development, as housing prices Saskatoon have soared past Winnipeg's. Meanwhile, Regina is likely to move more in step with Winnipeg than Saskatoon or Calgary. With housing prices in Regina even lower than Winnipeg, and with up to thirty percent of all new residential development taking place outside the city limits the amount of dispersed development rivals what is taking place in Winnipeg (Regina Leader Post 1997a). As well, like Winnipeg, there is also a large and growing Native underclass in Regina, As with Winnipeg this hasprobably contributed to the exodus of middle-class residents from the core area of the city (Winnipeg Free Press 1997zc). Even so, although Regina appears to be a smaller scale version of Winnipeg, there are some differences. For instance institutional subsidies for land-extensive development appear to be less evident here. Indeed, some important differences in the institutional culture of each city suggest that more effort is being taken to arrest the flight of capital from the inner city in Regina. For example, with current subsidies adding up to as much as $9,000 dollars for the construction of new suburban homes in Winnipeg, there is a stronger institutional bias for dispersed development in Winnipeg than in Regina (Winnipeg Real Estate Board 1997).
Winnipeg is probably an anomaly in this regard. Unlike most other large urban centres, where developers and consumers increasingly have to contend with development cost charges on every new unit of housing ,in Winnipeg the opposite situation applies. Even though the city is reputed to have the highest property taxes in the country and one of the largest municipal debts, rather than levies being applied to shoulder some of the costs of new suburban development an array of subsidies are being provided by the city instead. With additional road infrastructure being built in the suburbs backlog on maintenance rises this pattern of growth has not only become inequitable, it has also become dysfunctional, as large parts of the housing stock in the core faces cannibalization and capital abandonment. The province has further aggravated this situation. Along with an inequitable tax structure for the region which penalizes the city while encouraging exurban development,subsidies given to highway construction, sewer and water utilities in the exurban parts of the region have produced a vicious cycle of dispersion. Not only is the core area of the region threatened by the bleeding out of capital investment and the dispersion of development, so too is the periphery of the region, as urban sprawl now threatens many productive economic activities that that exist within and help sustain the larger regional economy (E.g., Winnipeg Free Press 1997zd).
Market devaluation, housing abandonment and a general dispersion of activities on a scale that is only present in the most besieged American cities, like Detroit, mark the accummulation regime that now shapes investment in Winnipeg. Unless the province radically reconsiders existing policies and actively intervenes by either curtaining subsidies, pooling the costs and benefits of development for the entire region, or by formally limiting development, this dispersion is unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future. But this does not appear likely at the present moment, as the provincial government continues to subsidize exurban water and sewer infrastructure, and the city itself actively champions further suburban development. In the near term at least, that is why the institutional apparatus that frames and regulates the production of urban space will likey continue to encourage, rather than limit, dispersion in Winnipeg.
In addition to this, with the sharpest divergence between housing prices in the core and periphery in the country, the internal configuration of the property market is such that market impulses in Winnipeg are likely to remain quite resistant to the reconcentration of capital into the core of the region. Furthermore, with some of the lowest costs for operating an automobile and the second highest rate of automobile ownership in the country, this will make the generation of a more concentrated pattern of development all that more difficult. For as well as the institutional barriers, the continued subsidization of single-detached housing and the automobile in Winnipeg will continue to artificially lower the consumption costs of the two defining material artifacts of land-extensive development. This is why land-extensive development is likely to become more rather than less entrenched in Winnipeg over the next building cycle, further illustrating that the tale of development in Winnipeg and Vancouver is, indeed, a tale of two cities.
Chapter Three: Densification
3.0 - Definition of densification and opening statement
Densification refers to a pattern of investment that occurs when capital investment in the built environment becomes more concentrated. Rising land values, higher rents, and increased redevelopment are the most obvious signs of this new regime of accumulation.
Because of rising property values densification raises the capacity of land to extract rents, thereby increasing its capacity to absorb capital. Eventually, this creates the conditions for more concentrated investment to take place. Physically, this finds expression in the creation of distinctive high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise landscapes. At some stage, this may lead to an overall increase in population density, but this is not always the case, as the gentrification of some neighbourhoods well illustrates. Therefore, densification is not necessarily tied to rising population densities although it is often associated with this phenomena. However, in most cases both processes usually overlap and complement one another. As will be shown, population changes are but one of three different material variables which come into play and mold as well as define the densification process. Besides changing demographics, of which increased population density is just one possible manifestation, the other two variables that shape the densification process have to do with shifts in the urban land market and the adoption of different strategies for the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure.
There is, as a consequence of this, an economic, demographic and technological or institutional dimension to the evolution and progression of the densification process. Their interaction and relative strength in relation to each other will play a key role in determining the range and intensity of the densification process in a particular locality during a specific building cycle.
The economic dimension of this transformation is most clearly expressed in the operation of the urban land market. Shifting rates of immigration, or increases or decreases in the rate of natural population growth, and overall life cycle changes in the general population makeup the main features of the demographic dimension of the densification process, as all these demographic factors affect the demand for sparsely or densely configured housing forms. Finally, the technological and institutional dimension of the densification process surfaces when the impact of new transportation and communications infrastructure on patterns of investment in the built environment is examined.
When these three elements are looked at in relation to each other, from 1945 into the present two patterns of accumulation appear. From 1945 until the middle of the 1970s these three elements were locked into a program for accumulation which supported land-extensive patterns of development across the country. At the economic level this became apparent in the reconfiguration of the urban land market. The deflation in property values that was triggered by the Great Depression is the starting point for the incubation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation. Over the next 40 years, property values fell in relation to income. As a result, favourable economic conditions existed for large increases in the per capita consumption of urban land.
Similarly, there was a significant increase in the natural rate of population growth and a resumption of large-scale immigration. This increased the demand for more space extensive urban development, as can be seen in the demand and consumption of single-detached dwelling units at this time. And last of all, but not on the scale which was present in the United States, there was a massive reallocation of resources into road infrastructure after the war. As Pitman has stated (1997), cities that became entirely auto oriented tend to consume two to three times more space than those that remained configured around multi-modal systems of transportation systems. While all Canadian cities, with the exception of Toronto, begun to dismantle their public transit systems and reduce investment in public transit, there was not the same massive infusion of resources into the construction of highway and freeway infrastructure that facilitated the suburbanization of the city.
By the end of the 1950s, with the sole exception of Toronto, every streetcar line in the country had been dismantled. With the dissolution of the streetcar the main form giver of the streetcar era disappeared, and the city became more amoebae-like as the public transportation infrastructure that had given a definable form to the city, even in the period of laissez-faire development, was now dismantled, removing the last significant barrier to the unencumbered advance of land-extensive development by the late 1950s.
Not until the middle and late 1960s did the material and institutional base for this pattern of development begin to unravel as new investment patterns, ones that were now land-intensive rather than land-extensive, started to appear for the first time. Since the mid-60s densification has been a significant influence in three building cycles. During each of these cycles the built environment has been reshaped by the densification process, and new layers of dense urban tissue added to the existing cityscape. The first building cycle lasted from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. This was an inflationary period marked by rapidly escalating property values. It was also a time when shifting demographics were favourable for densification to take place across the entire country. As a result, the demand for apartment units surged everywhere, fueling the first wave of densification, which washed over every major city in the country. Since high-rise development became the defining feature of the first wave of land-intensive investment, the urban fabric of every major city in the country was radically altered. The second cycle began in the mid 80s. Unlike the first cycle, the second wave was shorter in duration, and more localized and uneven in its progression. During this second building cycle medium-rise development became more prominent, especially in Vancouver. Furthermore, unlike the earlier wave of land-intensive investment, strata-title rather than rental units were built. Except for Vancouver, this second wave only lasted lasted for about five years, running from 1985 to about 1990. However, in Vancouver, this second wave of investment continued up until 1997.
Presently, we are now experiencing a third building cycle. Since 1996 a third wave of investment has been building momentum in places such as Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary. While this third investment cycle may not become as pervasive as the first one in the 1960s, it may become more widespread than the second investment cycle that occurred in the 1980s, when land-intensive development was then principally confined to Canada's largest urban centres, and then, within these centres, with the exception of Vancouver, to the urban core of each city rather than the periphery.
There are several reasons for speculating why densification in this third building cycle may be more influential this time around. One reason has to do with the fiscal crisis of municipal governments. The arrival and popularization of new and pre-existing planning ideologies that encourage the management of growth and the adoption of regulations that promote low-rise densification is another new development which did not exist in the mid 1980s to the extent that it does now. Then there are changing demographics which are expected to support the production of denser housing. So even if the effects of deflation water down the land market, and reduce the densification ratio, these other forces which promote densification, which relate to investment in infrastructure and demographics, are now present, which was not the case in the 1980s, and these are forces that are expected to come increasingly into play in the 1990s and beyond.
While demographic shifts should become more important in the medium term, of all the factors that have been mentioned, the increasing inability of government to subsidize land-extensive development may turn out to be the most important development since the mid 1980s. At the same time, there has been renewed interest in experimentation with low-rise rather than medium-rise or high-rise formats. With infill housing becoming more acceptable in the suburbs, and the rise of the new urbanist movement, low-rise formats have become more prominent in many greenfield developments over the past few years (Gabor and Lewinberg 1997). Particularly for Toronto this may become important over the next building cycle in the exurban parts of the region, as billions of dollars have already been committed to this form of low-rise densification.
Until the 1990s Toronto functioned as the lead city for densification in Canada. This changed at the end of the second wave of investment in denser construction, as Vancouver supplanted Toronto. Although Toronto initially led the way during the second wave of investment, between 1984 and 1989 a bi-modal pattern started to develop as land-extensive development experienced a resurgence in Toronto. As a result, although the densification of the core area of the Toronto region continued unabated, there was a resurgence in land-extensive development in the exurban parts of Toronto. In Vancouver, there was no such resurgence. Instead densification became more pervasive and intense. Still, it was only with the recession of 1989, that Vancouver clearly took over from Toronto as the lead city.
As said before, the first round of densification reflected the development pressures created by internal than external forces. For this reason the first wave of land-intensive investment was much broader in its geographic scope than the second. Consequently, denser urban environments were created in nearly every major city across the country between 1965 and 1975. This would change when the second densification cycle began in the mid 1980s. Unlike the first cycle, this time around capital investment would be much more dependent upon international flows of capital and labour. Consequently a more uneven and bifurcated pattern of urban development ensued.
This became most apparent in declining cities experiencing relative decline, such as Winnipeg and Montreal. Here the gradual detachment of each city from international flows of capital and labour depressed the local real estate market, suppressing much of the momentum for densification that had built up in the 1960s and 1970s because of the inflation of property values. As a result, by the 1980s land-development in Winnipeg and Montreal started to diverge from the pattern that could be observed in Vancouver or Toronto. For example, while core property values in the inner city of Toronto and Vancouver doubled or tripled, between the mid-80s and the mid 90s, property values in several core area markets of Winnipeg fell by more than fifty percent. This would find expression in the configuration of new housing investment in each city. While the production of new multiple-dwelling units surged upwards in Vancouver and Toronto, the production of new multi-unit dwelling units by private capital in Winnipeg underwent a precipitous decline. At the same time as the production of multiple-units declined in Winnipeg, the proportion of new single-detached residential units dramatically increased (Table Two). So not only did the densification process slow down in Winnipeg, it actually went into reverse.
In ascending cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, a different trajectory was taken. The attraction of international capital and labour to Toronto and Vancouver meant that the on going inflation in land values that had begun in the middle of the 1960s would continue into the 1990s. As a consequence of this, compared to Winnipeg or Montreal, property markets in Toronto and Vancouver started to move in the opposite directions when the next wave of densifcation gathered force in the middle of the 1980s. This can be illustrated by looking at the densification ratio (Table One), which measures the relationship between household income and the cost of housing. While the densification ratio began to fall in Winnipeg and Montreal, the opposite happened in Vancouver and Toronto, as the real estate market in the country began to polarize around the extremes of the continuum which these four markets represented.
What is also noteworthy about this second great wave of investment is the position of Vancouver and Toronto. Whereas Toronto was clearly the lead city with regard to the first national cycle of investment where densification had become significant; by the end of the second investment cycle, Vancouver would supplant Toronto as the lead city. During the first cycle of land-intensive investment the three material elements which shape and promote the densification process were configured much more favourably in Toronto. For example, while resistance to freeway construction was as strong in Vancouver as it was in Toronto, renewed investment in public transit in the 1950s and 1960s created a new template for development in Toronto which would not exist in Vancouver until the mid 1980s. The same applies to land prices. Until the 1990s, except for the speculative boom of 1980 when house prices in Vancouver briefly rose above those of Toronto, during most of the postwar period land values in Toronto were much higher than those of Vancouver. Thus the economic incentive to conserve land was much greater in Toronto than it was in Vancouver until the 1990s. Similarly, much stronger demographic forces supported densification in Toronto, as it had become the largest destination point for new immigrants in the country.
Toronto's relative advantage would begin to diminish in the 1980s. Once again, this can be illustrated by looking at the three elements that shape the densification process. While new investment in transit infrastructure slowed to a halt in Toronto, investment in transit infrastructure underwent a quantum leap in Vancouver. Although Toronto retained its place as most popular destination point for new immigrants, Vancouver overtook Montreal to become the second most popular destination point for new immigrants in the country during the 1990s. Finally, for the first time in its history, throughout the 1990s, house prices in Vancouver were consistently pitched above those of Toronto.
It is too early too make any definitive assessment about the third cycle that began to emerge in 1996 (but has yet failed to take shape in Vancouver because of the recession of the late 1990’s). Although the overall direction of the current wave of investment is still unknown, this cycle may turn out to be a benchmark period with regard to the densification of the Canadian city. While the first two investment cycles took place in an inflationary context this had not been the case for the new cycle that appears to be emerging. Rather than inflation, deflation has become much more important in the current cycle of investment. And whereas the energy crisis, the relatively easy availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, and rising interest rates coloured the first and second densification waves; this time around deflation, and the fiscal crisis of the state, and the limited availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, have emerged as powerful forces that will limit or further shape the progression of land-extensive or land-intensive development in the 1990s.
Because of the multitude of countervailing forces now in operation, the resurgence in land-extensive development that took place in the mid-80s may turn out to be just an aberration. Despite the current regulatory flux where there is a move toward de-regulation, but, at the same time, a countervailing move to limit development and impose greater costs upon new development because of fiscal retrenchment by government, it remains to be seen whether fiscal pressures will over-ride the support that de-regulation has given to the promotion of land-extensive development. That is why what happens in the next construction cycle (that began in 1996) should be revealing in terms of making projections about the future densification of the city.
Nowhere will this be more the case than in Ontario, where many of the infrastructure subsidies and favourable taxation regimes that previously encouraged land-extensive are being eliminated. Only time will tell how far the dissolution of modern regulation will progress. But soon it should be possible to see out the massive restructuring of local government compromises the ability of developers and home buyers to ally themselves to the land-extensive development, which gained a second wind in Ontario during the mid-1980s.
Furthermore, if CMHC's (1997i) assessment of future demand projections are correct, the years between 1996 and 2001 may turn out to be a demographic watershed as well. Over the next few years the growth in households which have the greatest propensity to purchase single-detached homes is expected to level off and begin to gradually decline. Thus a number of countervailing forces are actively working to mute the resurgence of land-extensive development that began in the mid-1980s. To a certain extent this is reflected in the growing importance of renovation, where there has been a dramatic increase in renovations, with these expenditures now often exceeding the value of new residential construction in the 1990s.
For all of these reasons, a better idea of the shape of things to come should become more apparent once the next cycle of residential building has run its course. Unlike the 1980s, in the 1990s builders and consumers will have to respond to shifting demographics and fiscal retrenchment that will be much less favourable to land-extensive development. That is why the new cycle of construction that began in 1996 (after housing production reached a 30 year low in 1995), should provide a clearer picture of the trajectory that the densification process is likely to follow. And from the patterns that appear it should be easier to make a more definitive assessment on how the changes which have been mentioned so far will affect the long-term behaviour of both the consumer and the builders with regard to the production of space.
Once the present building cycle has run its course it should then be possible to obtain a better idea about the permanence or the transitory nature of the densification process, and from this, determine whether the reversion back to land extensive patterns of development in the 1980s is an aberration or a permanent feature. Although the current building cycle has not yet run its course, it has become apparent that many of the conditions that allowed land-extensive development to surge forward in the mid-1980s are not now absent, and that many which are still present, are not as strong as they were in the mid-1990s. With billions of dollars worth of development projected to be spent on this type of low-rise densification over the next decade in Greater Toronto, this may have a significant impact upon the evolution of densification process in this region.
The increasing influence of low-rise forms of densification presents several empirical challenges. While the progression of high-rise and medium rise forms of densification are relatively easy to track by simply looking looking at the changing proportion of single-detached dwelling units, this is not the case for low-rise densification. Since low-rise densification often involves unrecorded renovations, or the reconfiguration of existing single-detached dwelling units, other indicators are needed, particularly if the densification fostered by the new urbanism is to be tracked. Instead of looking at shifts in the production of single-detached dwelling units, clues about the progression of this low-rise form of densification will have to sorted out by choosing indicators which measure changes in net residential densities , as changes in the proportion of single-detached housing units only give an accurate reading of densification when mid-rise and high-rise forms of densification predominate.
Finally, the other thing to look at in the current building cycle is the impact that containment strategies might have. Even though provincial governments such as Alberta, Ontario and Manitoba have loosened up regulations for suburban development, at the local level planners and politicians have tried to initiate containment strategies. For instance in order to increase suburban densities and to incorporate principles associated with the new urbanism into the production of new urban space, Calgary has begun to rejig the regulation of new sub-divisions. Meanwhile, in Ottawa a formal containment strategy has been adopted with the passage of a new regional plan. Again however, it will be in the implementation rather than adoption of formal plans that result, which will be significant. And on this point it is still too early to tell what will come out of these new regulatory measures. Still they are significant because they provide an institutional framework for the further dispersion of low-rise forms of densification.
What this brief overview of the evolution of the densification process in Canada reveals to us, is that this process of transformation is complex, and that it is buffeted by contradictory impulses which affect some cities in different ways. Moreover, since the first building cycle, the uneven development of this process of transformation has become more noticeable, as revealed by the partial regression back to land-extensive development in the 1980s. Lastly, as the densification of the Canadian city has progressed through each of these three distinctive periods of innovation in city building, distinct layers of urban tissue have been laid down which can be looked at like rings on a tree with regard to the evolution of the densification of the Canadian city: with the first cycle, that ran between between 1965 and 1975, marked by the predominance of high-rise buildings; the second, which ran between 1975 and 1990, marked by experimentation with medium-rise dwelling units; and the current phase, which began to take shape in the early 1990s -- but only began to pick up momentum in the mid-1990s -- was marked by experimentation with low-rise formats. Because of this progression, the repertory of denser built forms has expanded greatly since the 1960s. Furthermore, if the institutional framework which supports these developments are studied, what also becomes clear is that the regulatory apparatus that supports the production of these denser urban spaces has become much more powerful and sophisticated in the intervening years. With regard to regulation by the state, this has created an anomaly of sorts that deserves some scrutiny, as all this happened during a time when deregulation became the mantra for policy makers. And, as will be shown, no where is this more the case, than in Vancouver.
For example, looking at the first building cycle, high-rise rentals predominated. In the second cycle (which was rooted in development that took place in the mid-70s but did not come into full bloom until the mid-80s) medium-rise developments began to flourish -- with St. Lawrence Towne and False Creek becoming the prototypes for what was to follow. While there has been a resurgence of high-rise residential construction it is likely to be the emergence of low-rise densification that may turn out to be the distinguishing feature of the current building cycle. This can be seen in the proliferation of secondary suites, increased expenditures on renovations, more infill construction, as well as the application of new urbanist principles to new greenfield developments in the suburbs. Together, these are the developments that promise to change the profile of densification in the Canadian city .
To summarize what has been said so far, although this investigation of densification will show that it is one of the defining attributes of late-twentieth century urbanization, what will also come out of this study is how open-ended and variable the nature of this transformation process is across the country. Mixed signals are still being given off with regard to the direction and format that the densification process will take in the overall evolution of the Canadian city in the next millennium.
Among census metropolitan areas, for instance, currently densification only exerts a hegemonic sway over the production of urban space in Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, in Victoria. Moreover, if changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units can be used as an surrogate measurement for densification, construction statistics reveal that it has become important in many smaller urban centres elsewhere in British Columbia, outside Vancouver and Victoria. Consequently densification has become a major restructuring force in Abbotsford, and in communities located on the east side of Vancouver Island, such as Nanaimo, plus the Okanagan, where cities like Kelowna are being transformed by the densification process.
Outside British Columbia, among Canadian Census Metropolitan areas, another trajectory can be observed. Unlike Vancouver, where densification exerts a hegemonic influence over the entire region, in Ottawa and Toronto a different scenario has unfolded since the 1980s. In these urban regions densification functions as an ascendant force with regard to the overall restructuring of urban space. Rather than one pattern of development predominating, two distinct investment regimes are observable. In the core area of Toronto and Ottawa densification clearly predominates. However, in the exurban parts of each urban region, land-extensive development still tends to predominates.
Since the early 1980s another pattern has emerged in smaller or slower growing centres. In cities such as Winnipeg, investment in the built environment has regressed back to land-extensive forms that were common in the 1950s.
Finally, the inter-national profile of densification is important to keep in mind. Densification is a significant force in other countries as well. About this switch in investment The Economist recently noted: "Cities in industrialized countries have enjoyed a renaissance . . . (since) . . . The Populations of the West's largest cities, in long term decline for half a century, stopped falling during the 1980s and are now starting to rise again,"(p.3). As the previous quote suggests, densification has become one of the defining features of the urbanization process in other western countries.
In the United States, leftist academics like Neil Smith (1984; 1996) have tried to explain why this is now happening by referring to the existence of a rent gap. Meanwhile, more mainstream analysts have put less emphasis on the operation of the property market and have focused more on how the diffusion of new energy and transportation technologies have changed the way that the built environment is organized. Borchert (1991), for instance, frames the densification process in a much larger discussion about technological innovation and changing urban form when he wrote about the start of a new urban epoch which he calls the "electronic-jet propulsion age" (p.231). And in Europe, some academics have even tried to construct a simple descriptive model of the densification process. For example in the early 1980s, van den Berg developed a stage model of urban development in which densification becomes a defining attribute of the fourth stage in the evolution of the city (van den Berg 1982; Bourne 1996).
In Australia, densification has even been given official policy sanction by the government when the Building Better Cities Program was adopted (Stitwell 1993). There is also a densification strategy in the Netherlands (Smith 1996). And even in the United Kingdom (Jencks 1996; Breheny 1997), the state is rethinking policies that were adopted in the 1980s, which encouraged suburbanization, as planners and policy makers are increasingly becoming more interested in densification strategies. What all these initiatives reveal is that densification is an issue in other countries as well. So what is now happening in Vancouver, may be of interest to policy makers and analysts outside the country as well.
Finally, one final note needs to be made: because densification is closely associated with the creation of new centres and margins within the urban hierarchy of each country, the impact of globalization also has to be taken into account when looking at the evolution of the densification process (Cohen 1997,p.115). In Canada, as already mentioned, the impact of globalization on the densification process can be illustrated by comparing the different development profiles of Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and Montreal.
3.0.1 - Canadian Exceptionalism: The Impact that Globalization and the International Division of labour have had on investment regimes in Canada and the United States.
The relationship between globalization and the evolution of the densification process also has some bearing on the emergence of a distinctive form of urbanization within Canada. Although not recognized by this name, by the early 1970s. densification had become responsible for the creation of anomalous development patterns in Canada. With the great apartment boom of the 1960s, commonly held assumptions about the existence of one pattern of urban development in North America started to be challenged.
No where had this become more apparent than in Toronto. As mentioned earlier, by the early 1970s Toronto had emerged as a prototype for a new pattern of urban development in North America. Long before densification was formally recognized in planning discourse it had already become an empirically significant phenomenon in Toronto. As far back as the 1950s, what was to occur as a result of the reconfiguration of the property market, and changing demographics would be foreshadowed by the emergence of a significant amount of private investment in apartment construction in the inner city. This, along with favourable tax policies, combined with the implementation of a public investment strategy that encouraged development around newly-constructed rapid transit stations, is what established the conditions for the great apartment boom of the 1960s. And it was from this apartment boom that the first real evidence of the existence of a different spatial logic for the organization of residential and commercial investment in the modern North American city would become first visible in Toronto.
Although densification was becoming more noticeable in other Canadian cities during the 1960s, as high-rise precincts emerged in Vancouver's West End, Calgary's Beltline Area or the Fort Rouge area in Winnipeg, it was in Toronto that the most impressive development appeared. Here, more than anywhere else, the connection between densification and the re-alignment of the three material elements that promoted densification became the most visible. With the highest housing prices in the country, denser spaces were produced as land values started to increase rapidly in relation to incomes. Consequently the densification ratio, which measures the relation between income and housing costs, started a steep upward climb.
Besides the country's highest housing prices, Toronto had also become the country's largest receptacle for new immigrants. What also made Toronto stand out from other cities was the construction of Canada's first subway line. Until Montreal opened the country's second subway system in the mid 60s, no other city in the country could use this infrastruture to mold development. Like most other North American cities, no transit-oriented templates remained in Canada which could attract investment away from the more amorphous patterns of suburban development that was organized around highway and freeway systems.
Rather than thinning out and becoming more amorphous, like most North American cities were doing in the 1950s and early 1960s, Toronto was beginning to densify instead. A linear and mult-nodal development corridors emerged which was organized around transit lines. While some low-rise densification started to emerge in the United States with the growth of planned-unit developments (McKenzie 1994), this development paled beside the high-rise densification that took hold in the Canadian city during the 1960s.
While some of the divergence which Toronto became emblematic of, can be explained by referring to the different demographic and technological and institutional forces that were molding the densification process in different ways in each country, as has been noted, some of this divergence was also rooted in larger macro-economic forces that have to do with globalization and shifts in the international division of labour. Although these forces are not the subject of this study they do require some acknowledgement. A brief detour is therefore required. For a brief while concerns about the impact of the urban land market, demographic shifts and the impact of investment in public infrastructure will be put aside, and some mention made of the larger processes that link the production of urban space to the operation of the broader economy.
In an abbreviated fashion, this can be done by looking at the differences in the international balance of trade and services. For, in addition to the divergence created by variations that can be observed in the urban land market, the demographic situation of each country and different investment strategies for the provision of communications infrastructure, there are differences in the balance of trade of services that have also affected the pattern of investment in the cities of both countries.
To illustrate this, the impact of variations in the size and configuration of the high-technology and tourism sectors can be used to how these larger macro forces have affected the settlement geography of each country. While the United States has a large surplus in both of these sectors, Canada has a deficit. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s the deficit in tourism rose from two to three billion dollars a year to over seven billion dollars in the early 1990s (Norcliffe 1996, p.35). Likewise, the deficit in the high-technology sector was even higher. For example, in just one segment of this sector, computers and office equipment, the trade deficit stood at 5.3 billion dollars in 1993 (Norcliffe 1996 p.32).
While it is not possible to make a direct link between the economic specialization of each country and patterning of urban space, it seems quite clearl that a relation exists. For example, in the United States the close relationship that exists between the expansion of several high-tech sectors and and the growth of exurban development has been documented (U.S. Congress 1995; Castells 1994). The relative size of these sectors therefore provides a partial explanation of the different scale of exurban development that can be observed in Canada and the United States. Hence, for Canada, it is possible to make some speculations about the connection that probably exist between the relatively small size of the high-technology sector and the absence of a large military-industrial complex, and the more limited extent of exurban development. While some distinctive exurban high-tech spaces have developed in the suburbs around some airports in Canada -- in places such as in Richmond in the case of Vancouver, Murray Industrial Park, in Winnipeg, or Saint Laurant near Dorval airport in the case of Montreal -- these high-technology landscapes pale beside the huge high-tech zones that exist in places like Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco, or Route 128 in Boston. Only in the exurban zone that surrounds Toronto has a high-tech exurban landscape come into existence that comes close to approximating the extensive high-tech landscapes that can be found on the periphery of the most dynamic urban centres in the United States.
Otherr nuances in the organization of space can be deduced from variations in the economic base. For example it may not be size but variations in the sector specialization ofthe high-technology sector in each country that may explain some of the political, cultural and spatial differences that colour the practices of the new middle class in each country. For example, Canada appears to have become more specialized in the production of information systems and media products rather than as a producer of high-tech hardware (Smith Vivian 1997; Enchin 1997; VS-290; VS-317). Since many of these media activities have an historic and functional relation to artistic modes of production the inner city rather than exurbia was viewed in a more favourable light by these high-tech sectors. Consequently, when compared to the United States, Canada's specialization in this high-tech media area has probably been a significant factor in anchoring certain fractions of middle class to the inner-city. The results can be seen in the expansion of important employment clusters in, film, video and the animation industries that have grown up in the core areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver since the mid 1980s.
In the consumer sphere, examining tourism also shows how the economic specialization of each country has affected the production of urban space. For reasons having to do with climate and the expertise that Americans have developed in the promotion of urban spectacles, (Huxtable 1997; Fryer 1997; Robinett and Camp 1997; Milner 1997) the economies of many urban regions in the United States have become highly specialized around tourism activities, as an extensive infrastructure devoted to mass tourism and retirement communities has arisen over the past 30 years, creating the demand for new kinds of space that tend to be located in the exurban parts of the urban region rather than in the core. While these landscapes are becoming more important in Canada, as with the high-technology sector,they are not yet found on the scale that is present in the United States. In Canada, just as there are no equivalents to Silicon Valley, with regard to tourism there are still no Canadian counterparts to places like Orlando, Las Vegas or Phoenix. Morevover, because much of the demand for these kind of spaces have been siphoned off to the United States, the market for these tourist and retirement landscapes has been further truncated in Canada (Clark 1997).
By contrast, while many Canadians flock to American retirement communities and exurban theme parks, there is also is an important counterflow of Americans and overseas visitors to the core areas of Canada's cities. Except for the West Edmonton Mall, and to a lesser extent Canada's Wonderland, most of the infrastructure of urban spectacle has been located in the core of the city or in the inner suburbs. For example the new theme park planned for the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver and the redevelopment of the Downsview lands into an entertainment centre are either located in core area of the urban region or the inner suburbs. (e.g.., Milner in The Globe and Mail, September 15,1997).
Differences can also be traced to the Canada's greater specialization in property and real estate. For example, the international specialization of Canadian capital in the property and development sector has played an important role in advancing the densification process in Canada (Naylor 1975). Since more intense forms of densification involve much more complex and sophisticated procedures for investment, the creation of powerful development corporations in Canada no doubt abetted the densification process. Here a pool of expertise, and access to capital has more easily allowed develpers to exploit new market opportunities created by the densification process. Not surprisingly, Canadian firms are now important players on the world stage, exporting much of their expertise in city-building to places like China, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany,and the United States (G/M 1997bw). This helps to explain why Architectural & Engineering services have become the fastest expanding service sector in the country, growing by 400 percent since 1990 despite the depression that began in 1989 (G/M 1997bv).
So while differences in the urban land market, demographics and the provisioning of urban transportation are the most important internal variables that shape and differentiate the densification process within the ambit of the local state in Canada, it is important to keep in mind the larger external factors that operate outside the sphere of the local state, as they also affect how the densification process will manifests itself in each city.
When this is done it then becomes possible to see how activities operating at one geographic scale are articulated and related to other process operating lower down or higher up. As the example of tourism and high-technology industries reveal, larger economic processes exist as a background context, and these forces set the macro-economic parameter for the operation of the three variables that shape the densification process within the confines of the local state, that will now be studied at greater length. Therefore the economic specialization of a city, or the division of labour in a particular locality cannot be ignored since they have an important but indirect effect on the shape that the densification process will assume in each place. For example, even within Canada, while the densification process only plays a dominant role in the restructuring of urban space in Vancouver, it only plays an ascendant role in the morphogensis of Toronto. Meanwhile except for Ottawa perhaps, in other cities the densification process operates at a much lower level of intensity.
And when comparisons are made with the United States current differences become even more striking. For instance if the production of single-detached dwelling units are used as an indicator for densification it soon becomes apparent that there are no equivalents to Vancouver at the present time in the United States. Since the proportion of single-detached units probably only falls below the fifty-five percent mark in one or two cities, few urban centres in the United States have even entered an ascendant phase with regard to the evolution of the densification process. Instead, in almost all cities in the United States densification is still only an emergent phenomenon (Gordon and Richardson 1997; Nowlan and Stewart 1991). As well, because low-rise densification is more common here, the densification manifests itself in the built environment in a different way. Unlike Canada where high-rise and medium-rise formats predominate. Moreover densification is more prevalent in exurban areas of the United States something that has been accentuated by the different scale of exurban development that is present in each country (Mckenzie 1995; Downs 1994). Thus, even if we look at cities which come closest to Vancouver and Toronto, such as San Francisco or Washington DC., in these places densification only appears as an emergent rather than dominant or ascendant force with regard to the restructuring of urban space (Bernick and Cervero 1997; Bruegman 1966).
3.1 - One: The Impact of the Urban Real Estate Market - Charting the shift from extensive to intensive regimes of accumulation
Having briefly surveyed the larger context that shapes the densification process, it is now the appropriate time to return to the sphere of the local state and look at the local conditions that have shaped the densification process in each locality. This variation can be studied by looking at how three material variables have broadly shaped the densification process in Canada. Property markets will be looked at first, then demographic influences. Finally, the impact that different investment strategies in the provisioning of transportation and communications will be looked at to see what impact they have had on the progression of the densification process. will be brought into the picture to show why the densification process has evolved so unevenly over time and space within a single urban region.
By constructing a densification ratio to chart the evolution of the urban real estate market the economic dimension of the movement away from a land-extensive mode of urban development to one that is more land-intensive can be traced over time and space. This can be done by looking at the ratio between house prices and income levels. Since housing represents the single largest land use in the city and normally absorbs more capital than any other land use, an increase in the price of land will usually lead to rent increases or land use changes that affect the production and consumption of urban space. Particularly as housing prices increase relative to income powerful economic constraints are put on the per capita consumption of space. Unless an individual is willing to forego other consumption in order to maintain the previous consumption of space or accept a decline in an existing standard of living, the consumption of space will have to decrease.
Although this densification ratio is only a crude indicator, it does provide a useful shorthand method for assessing the economic pressures that may either favour or impede the densification process. Moreover, it can act as a condenser of non economic forces, translating them into dollars and cents that will produce a specific market configuration for space.
If there are no countervailing forces in operation, when the densification ratio falls, the relative cost of land within the city in relation to income falls. Everything being equal, this should result in an increase in the per capita consumption of space. This, in turn, establishes the economic preconditions for an increase in the per capita consumption of land. Conversely, when the densification ratio rises, the opposite situation takes hold. Urban space becomes more expensive. When this happens, consumers will have to reduce their consumption of space or migrate to another location if some form of substitution is not undertaken. Usually, but not always, at some point this should produce higher population densities. Conversely, when the densification ratio is low or is declining, market impulses can be expected to work in the opposite direction, increasing the consumption of residential space, thereby lowering population densities if overcrowding does not take place.
By using the data on housing prices and income supplied by Statistics Canada from 1931 through to 1991, densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver were constructed to illustrate how these land extensive and land-intensive patterns of urban development have evolved over time in both cities (table one).
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Table One
Winnipeg Vancouver
1931 4.464 4.329
1941 2.218 2.196
1951 - - 2.940
1961 2.147 2.322
1971 1.779 2.503
1981 2.386 7.326
1986 1.990 3.772
1991 1.929 5.751
1996 2.000e 7.000 +
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While these ratios can be viewed as a snapshot of the economic parameters that govern the urban land market of these two cities the ratios only give us an abstract measurement of change. To show how these abstract numbers eventually result in the production of different urban landscapes, more concrete empirical statistics need to be used. Here statistics on housing forms, particularly the percentage of housing units made up of single detached dwelling units (table two) and changes in gross population density can provide the necessary historical texture that illustrates how changes in the densification ratio translate into the production of two quite different types of urban landscapes. Furthermore, the densification ratio and related changes in house type shed some additional light on the external factors that have conditioned the evolution of the real estate market in Vancouver and Winnipeg.
As well, if the historic relation between denser and less dense development still holds then densification ratios of 2 and 4 can be used as benchmarks for empirically verifying the presence or absence of specific economic impulses that either favour land-intensive or land-extensive development. At the same time the qualitative difference pointed to by the different densification ratio for Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 1990s can also be used as evidence to support the contention that two contrasting logics for the organization of urban space now exist in Canada. At one end of the spectrum there are cities like Winnipeg, that has a densification ratio that hovers around 2. Low readings like these indicate that the property market is still firmly anchored in land-extensive pattern of development. At the other end there are cities like Vancouver, Ottawa and to a lesser extent Toronto, which have densification ratios that hover around or above 4. When readings like this are found, if historic precedents still hold, market pressures in these cities will tend to favour more land-intensive patterns of development.
Finally, looking at differences in the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver also provide one means for charting the uneven and non linear aspects of the densification process in Canada. As the numbers in Table one show, the progression of the densification process in Vancouver has been quite different from Winnipeg's. While Vancouver permanently switched from a land-extensive mode of development of urban development to one that was land-intensive, the densification ratio for Winnipeg shows the city following a different route. Unlike Vancouver, the densification ratio in Winnipeg only rose briefly before returning to a downward trajectory that took it back to the benchmark ratio of two, something indicative of a well entrenched regime of land-extensive accumulation rather than a regime of land-intensive accumulation.
3.1.1 - A tale of two cities: Convergence and divergence in the production of urban spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver
If the densification ratios for both cities are tracked between 1931 and 1991 (table one), evidence of two distinct regimes of accumulation clearly emerges. Moreover, if we look at the uneven progression of the densification process the movement of the densification ratio over time sheds some light on how the property markets of both cities have been influenced by the shifting economic status of each city.
Thus, in 1931 the densification ratio for Winnipeg stood at 4.4, and Vancouver's at 4.3. With the densification ratios for both cities above four, the real estate market of both cities reflected the denser organization of urban space typical of the streetcar era of city building. The status of each city was also reflected in the price of housing and labour, with Winnipeg's dominance at this time expressed in higher incomes and housing prices. Thus the average income in Winnipeg was 18 percent higher than Vancouver's. Similarly housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent higher than in Vancouver. Consequently, Winnipeg's densification ratio was higher than Vancouver's at this time. Not surprisingly, this difference was reflected in the prewar urban morphology of each city as Winnipeg was then much denser than Vancouver. While gross population densities for Winnipeg were 7,800 people per square mile in 1941 they were only 5,100 in Vancouver. Consequently, gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than Vancouver's well into the 1940s. And even into the early 1960s densities in Winnipeg were still 25 percent above those of Vancouver.
This relation would change as the densification ratio declined more rapidly in Winnipeg. Thus by 1961 the densification ratio for Vancouver stood at 2.3 compared to 2.1 for Winnipeg. While the shift from 4 to around 2 signified that land-extensive development patterns had become firmly ingrained in both cities, the greater decline experienced by Winnipeg found its physical expression in the convergence of the population densities for both cities. Whereas densities in Winnipeg had been 50 percent higher than in Vancouver during the 1940s by the 1960s this gap had been cut in half. Although densities in both cities fell during the 1950's, the decline was steeper in Winnipeg. So by 1961, gross population densities in Winnipeg were 25 percent instead of 50 percent above those of Vancouver. As a result Winnipeg had 6,700 people per square mile in 1961, compared to 5,500 for Vancouver.
Between 1961 and 1971, this gap would disappear and then reverse itself as Vancouver now became the denser city. For while the densification ratio for Winnipeg continued to fall between 1961 and 1971, as it moved from 2.147 down to 1.779; for Vancouver, the densification ratio began to rise, climbing from 2.322 to 2.503. As a result, the 1960s was a watershed period for Vancouver. The property-market of the urban region was reset along a new trajectory, with the real estate market reconfigured to support a regime of land-intensive accumulation that has been maintained up to the present.
By the 1970s, these shifts would result in the production of very different physical spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver and this would show up in changes in the composition of the housing stock of each city. So not only would this shift from one regime to another show up in statistics on the gross density of each city, this divergence would also show up in changing proportion of single detached dwelling units in both Vancouver and Winnipeg. Just as gross population densities in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg during the 1960s, the proportion of less dense housing units in Vancouver converged with Winnipeg. However, after 1966 they would then begin to diverge, with the gap between each city steadily widening thereafter with each passing decade, as can be seen by comparing the proportion of single detached units and the number of strata title units in each city (tables two and three, pp. 49 and 61). During the 1950s relatively more single-detached dwelling units were constructed in Vancouver than in the nation as a whole; however, this ratio would be reversed in the 1960s for the first time. With upward shift in the densification ratio the production of single-detached units in Vancouver now fell below the national average.
For a brief while in the 1970s, the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose as well, climbing from 1.779 to 2.3 by 1981. But unlike Vancouver, this rise would be short lived. Nor was the shift strong enough to propel Winnipeg decisively away from the benchmark figure of 2 which signified the persistence of land extensive development patterns. Thus, after rising for a brief while between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio began a steady decline which has persisted into the 1990s. As a consequence the densification ratio for Winnipeg fell from 2.3, in 1981, to 1.99 in 1986, declining further to 1.92, in 1991, hovering around the benchmark figure of two up to the present.
Looking now at Vancouver, quite a different picture emerges. In the 1970s the densification ratio passes the historic benchmark reading of 4, as it spiked upwards from 2.5 in 1971 to 7.1 in 1981. Except for a brief dip between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio has plateaued well above historic readings indicative of a time of much denser urban development.
Because of the historical inertia created by built environment and independent existence of building cycles, these shifts in the densification ratio did not immediately result in the production of radically different environments. However, as the comparison of Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrates, if qualitative differences in the densification ratio are maintained over an extended period dramatic changes in the way that the built environment is organized will result. Indeed the contrast that can be seen in the evolution of built environment in Winnipeg and Vancouver provide powerful empirical evidence of this. If changes in the densification ratio of each city are correlated with changing population densities, and shifts in the composition of the housing stock, the materialization of the changes in the densification ratio in both cities becomes more apparent. As Vancouver shows, the maintenance of a high densification ratio over an extended time is correlated with rising gross population densities and dramatic changes in the city's housing stock, with denser house types replacing less dense house forms. As a result there has been a dramatic decline in the number of housing units in Vancouver made up of single detached units and a dramatic rise in strata title units. Conversely, as trends in Winnipeg reveal, the maintenance of lower densification ratios has done the opposite. Instead of rising, population densities have declined. Likewise, this is reflected in composition of the city's housing stock. As a result, since 1981 the proportion of single detached units has risen rather than fallen (table two). Similarly, Winnipeg has been the last major housing market in the country to accept strata title units. And even now, most units are simply recycled apartments rather than purpose-built condominiums (CMHC 1995, Manitoba, p.16; Condo Guide and New homes 1997).
Although there is not a one to one correspondence between changes in the densification ratio and shifts in a city's population density and alterations or the composition of its housing stock there is a loose but strong correspondence that can be observed over time. For example in 1931 when the densification ratio for Winnipeg was 10 percent higher than Vancouver's (4.464 versus 4.329) gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than in Vancouver. Later on, in the mid-1980s, when the densification ratio for Vancouver had been much higher than in Winnipeg for over a decade, this would be reflected in the diverging population densities of both cities. By 1986 densities in each city had reversed, moving in step with the different trajectory of the densification ratio for each city. With the densification ratio in Winnipeg only half that of Vancouver's (1.99 versus. 3.66) in 1986, gross population densities in Vancouver had risen thirty percent higher than Winnipeg -- with Winnipeg having 1330 people per square kilometer compared to 1720 for Vancouver.
Furthermore, as the densification ratio for Vancouver continued to rise during the late 1980's and Winnipeg's continued to fall, the gross population densities of each city diverged even more. By 1991 Vancouver had nearly 2000 people per square kilometer while gross population densities in Winnipeg had declined to 1076 people per square kilometer. Whereas Winnipeg had been 50 percent denser than Vancouver in 1941, by 1991 Vancouver was nearly twice as dense as Winnipeg.
This change shows up if national comparisons are made. For instance, in 1961 Vancouver was the third largest city in Canada but ranked seventh in terms of density. However, by 1991 Vancouver was the still the third largest city but had become the third densest city in the country. And into the future, unless densification in Toronto or Montreal intensifies, by 2001 Vancouver will still be Canada's third largest urban region but will likely become the densest city in the country. A momentous transformation in the urban morphology of Vancouver has therefore taken place in a relatively short span of time, a change that has transformed Vancouver first medium-density city in North America.
Furthermore, if the densification ratios for both Winnipeg and Vancouver are disaggregated, it is possible to see how changes in the place occupied by each city in the urban hierarchy have affected the built environment of both cities. If we disaggregate the densification ratio for 1931 we find that housing prices and wages were considerably higher in Winnipeg. Even though Vancouver had just surpassed Winnipeg in population to become Canada's third largest city in the 1930s, Winnipeg was still the leading decision-making centre in the West (Kerr 1965).
Thus, if income and housing prices for 1931 are compared with those for 1991 the relative shift that can be observed reflect the changing places occupied by each city in the national urban hierarchy. With an average wage of $1,120 in 1931 and average an average house price of $5,000 for Winnipeg compared to $947 and $4,100 for Vancouver, these differences were a sign of Winnipeg's economic dominance over the West during the first half of the twentieth century. But if the densification ratio for each city in 1991 is disaggregated, the steep decline that Winnipeg has undergone over the past 60 years becomes unmistakable if wages and house prices are compared to Vancouver. Unlike 1931, when wage levels in Winnipeg were 18 percent above those in Vancouver, in 1991 household incomes were 15 percent below those of Vancouver, with the average household income in Winnipeg standing at $49,000 compared to $57,000 for Vancouver. Even more significant are the differences in housing prices. Whereas housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent above Vancouver's in 1931, by 1991 the situation had become reversed: with housing prices in 1991 averaging $244,000 in Vancouver compared to $97,000 for Winnipeg. Thus, by 1991, housing prices in Vancouver were two-and-a-half times higher than in Winnipeg. And by 1996 this gap had widened further, with the average price of housing in Winnipeg dropping to $83,000 compared to an increase to over $300,000 for Vancouver (CMHC 1997e; Report on Business August 1997,p.38)
From this asymmetry in income and housing prices two quite different housing markets have evolved. This has also affected the social ecologies of both cities, producing stark contrasts in the settlement geography for each city. A scenario different from that proposed by Chicago school theorists has arisen in Winnipeg. In Winnipeg things have become unbalanced. Here disinvestment has come about because of unimpeded sprawl. As well, the migration of an urban underclass into the inner-city has created a dysfunctional version of the Chicago School's idealized representation of the modern city. Rather than function as a buffer, in Winnipeg the zone of discard has begun to engulf the entire downtown. At one time theorist's of the Chicago Schook did regard Winnipeg as Canada's equivalent to Chicago, but at present the city moves to a different trope, following the example of Detroit rather than Chicago. Rather than transforming itself into a postmodern city Winnipeg has mutated and regressed, becoming a dysfunctional modern city (Heron 1993; Whiteway 1992; G/M 1997dc). In Winnipeg and Detroit the growth of the zone of discard has become malignant. In Winnipeg and Detroit, not only has it created a habitat for a large urban underclass to live in; it has also engulfed areas of working-and-middle-class housing in the core and even overwhelmed parts of the downtown of each city -- places that are supposed to remain the epicenter of investment in the urban region, according to the model for the modern city first described by the Chicago School theorists.
In Vancouver precisely the opposite happened. Instead of the zone of discard expanding to take up the entire core area of the region, it has been erased, producing a distinctive postmodern settlement space in the core of the city where marginalized urban spaces only exist as receding enclaves in the middle class sea that has been created (figure eight, chapter five, p. 482). This becomes apparent when the location of new residential investment in Vancouver and Winnipeg is compared. For instance, unlike Winnipeg, in Vancouver during the first seven months of 1997, nearly 20 percent of the region's new housing stock was constructed on the downtown peninsula of the City of Vancouver, more than in Surrey, the region's largest suburb. By contrast, in Winnipeg, during 1996, for the first time in the city's history, more housing was built outside the perimeter than inside. In absolute terms this meant that exurban sprawl had now exceeded suburban expansion in the city. Realizing the threat that this poses to the assessment base, city council has put generous subsidies in place to subsidize suburban expansion within the city's boundaries. But this will only compound the problem of disinvestment in the core, since money that could be used as incentives for people to resettle in the core or to refurbish residential units will now be spent on dispersing capital further out into the suburbs, further hastening the decline of the core. So not only has the physical environment been altered, an entirely new social geography for each city has been created in each city.
For example, if Winnipeg is Canada's closest equivalent to Detroit in terms of the emergence of an urban underclass then Vancouver is Canada's closest version of San Francisco, where gentrification rather than the emergence of an urban underclass has acted as a magnet for capital, transforming both cities from polyglot urban centres into enclaves dominated by middle class residents. Instead of capital dispersing it has concentrated in the central city producing a very intense form of densification, which has brought with it displacement and affordability problems that even afflict the middle class. Again, this stands in contrast to Winnipeg, where there is little densification, and what investment that there is, goes to the periphery rather than to the core of the city. That is why the fundamental problem in the inner city is one of housing abandonment and the cannibalization of existing housing stock. The real estate market in Winnipeg's core is simply too weak to support significant reinvestment in the zone of working class homes such as the city's West End. That is why in Winnipeg, unlike Vancouver, it is the threat of capital disinvestment or abandonment rather than the displacement arising from house inflation and gentrification that define the context for the production and destruction of urban space in the core.
Having seen how changes in the densification ratio have affected the local property market and how, in turn, this has created two contrasting regimes of accumulation in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the affect that this has had on the population density and the composition of housing in each city can be examined to provide more texture. Since gross population density can encorporate a great deal undeveloped residential land, industrial and park uses, this measurement, by itself, can only provide a loose approximation of any changes in density. That is why changes in the composition of a city's housing can be used as an indicator of some changes in density, as any shift would relate directly to only residential land.
More pariticularly, since single-detached dwellings units are the most space consuming housing form that is produced (CMHC N.D.,p.26), one way of tracking the expansion or retreat of land-extensive and land-intensive development is to look at changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. Particularly when statistics on net residential densities are not readily available, this measure can serve as a useful surrogate indicator of land-intensive or land-extensive development . Except in cases where low-rise densification predominates, any change in the proportion of single-detached units shouldl reveal whether or not a city is becoming more or less dense over time.
As will later be shown, the construction of new single-detached dwelling units can even be used to gauge the intensity of land-intensive or land-extensive development at any point in time. For example in places where single-detached dwelling units make up more than 55 percent of all newly constructed units, the overall proportion of an urban region's housing stock made up of single-detached units will generally rise. Whenever this investment pattern prevails, densification only operates as a secondary and emergent phenomenon. Fifty-five percent is used as an approximate cut off line since between three to six percent of all new housing units are simply replacement housing. That is why more than fifty percent of all new housing units have to be made up of single-detached units if the overall composition of sparser house type is to be maintained. If this logic is accepted it is then possible to make some extrapolations, and state that any time the production of single detached units goes consistently above 55 percent a regime of land-extensive regime of accumulation will to be the dominant force shaping residential investment in the city. As previously mentioned, the only time this might not be the case would be when low-rise densification predominates. For unlike high-rise or medium-rise densification, the advance of low-rise densification may not be reflected by a corresponding shift in the composition of the housing stock. Again that is why the new urbanism deserves special attention in this regard.
To continue on, whenever the the production of single-detached units consistently falls below 55 percent the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units will start to fall. When this happens densification becomes an ascendant force. Lastly, if the production of single-detached dwellings falls consistently below 35 percent denser housing forms become predominant. When this happens densification becomes become a dominant force.
Looking at table two, with densification ratios ranging between 2 and 2.5, in 1961, the proportion of the housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units was very high in both Vancouver and Winnipeg,. Despite the differences between each city, what these figures reveal is that each city was securely locked into land-extensive regime of accumulation. With 70 percent of all dwelling units in Winnipeg made up single-detached dwelling, and 71 percent in Vancouver, the proportion of single detached units in both cities was well then above the national average are far above those of Toronto and Montreal. For example, in Toronto only 56 percent of the housing stock was made up of single detached units. And in Montreal, as late as 1961, only 19 percent of all dwelling units were made of of single-detached homes.
Thus, as late as 1961, with the percentage of single detached dwelling units in Winnipeg and Vancouver nearly ten percent above the national average, these percentages reveal that among the largest urban centres in the country, both Winnipeg and Vancouver were the sparest settled centres in the country at this time.
This makes the changes which have taken place since 1961 even more noteworthy. While Vancouver still the third largest city in the country, it will soon become the densest urban region in the nation. For Winnipeg just the opposite has happened. In 1961 it was the fourth largest city in the counrty. Since that time the city has fallen to eighth place. Even though Winnipeg was less dense than Toronto or Montreal, in 1961 it was still the densest city in the West. Now, however, among the larger cities in Western Canada it is now probably the least dense urban region.
Between 1961 and 1971 the percentage of dwelling units made up of single detached units fell faster in Winnipeg and Vancouver than for the nation as a whole. As the figures in table two show, the proportion of single detached units fell by nearly six percent across the nation but during this first surge in densification, it fell by nine percent in Vancouver and seven percent in Winnipeg. This indicated that the first wave of densification affected these two cities more than the nation as a whole, as the percentage of single-detached units declined from 71 to 62 percent, in the case of Vancouver, while it fell from 70 to 63 percent in Winnipeg. Since the first densification wave affected Vancouver more than Winnipeg residential densities gradually surpassed Winnipeg. In this regard 1966 is a watershed year as the number of single detached units in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg then fell below it. Since that time each city has moved further apart. While Winnipeg's population has thinned out, the opposite has happened in Vancouver.
What these numbers show is that both cities were strongly influenced by the first densification wave; however with the proportion of single detached units falling by ten percent in Toronto, the greatest impact of this first wave was no doubt felt in Toronto, where the proportion of single-detached units fell from 56 percent to 46 percent of the regions housing stock between 1961 and 1971.
If these steep declines are correlated with changes in the densification ratio, what also becomes obvious is that more than economic influences were at work in shaping the first wave of densification. While the densification ratio started to rise in the 1960s, it still was falling in Winnipeg at a time when the proportion of single detached dwelling units were rapidly declining. And even in Vancouver, although property values were rising quickly, the densification ratio only stood at 2.5. Even though densification was taking place -- the densification ratio was still a considerable distance away from the historic benchmark figure of four- - that historical precedent suggested was the level at which denser spaces started to be produced on a significant scale. As the next section will show, there is an explanation for this that has to do with demographics rather than the reconfiguration of the urban real estate market. For demographics, as much as changes in the urban land market, played an important role in shaping the first densification wave.
As with the densification ratio, the convergence of house types in Winnipeg and Vancouver would be fleeting. This would become more obvious in the 1970s. For example, between 1971 and 1981 the densification ratio for Vancouver rose from 2.5 to over 7, passing well beyond a ratio of four, which has been used as a benchmark figure for a market configuration denoting the presence of market forces favouring densification. Although the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose from about 1.8 to 2.3, this was not enough to establish a regime of accumulation where densification would become a permanet transformative feature (table one, p. 49). Because of these diverging ratios, by 1981 it became apparent that each city occupied two qualitatively different universes with regard to the operation of market forces. And this would find direct expression in the built environment, as can be seen in the growing divergence in the proportion of percentage of single-detached dwelling units located in each city. Still, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by four percent in Winnipeg and five percent in Vancouver. What was significant for Vancouver was that for the first time the proportion of single detached units in Vancouver fell in line with the national average, while in Winnipeg they continued to hover above this average. However, even in Winnipeg, the gap was almost closed, as the percentage of single-detached dwelling units came within two percentage points of the national average in 1981, before moving upwards during the rest of the 1980s.
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Table Two
V WPG T M Canada
1931 79% 73% 34% 5% 76%
1941 75% 66% 39% 7% 72%
1951 75% 67% 52% 11% 66.4%
1961 71% 70% 56% 19% 65.3%
1971 62% 63% 46% 26% 59.4%
1981 57% 59% 40% 27% 57.0%
1991 50% 61% 45% 31% 56.9%
1996(e) 45% 62% 46% 32% 53.2%
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From 1981 and 1991, the impact of two quite different urban land markets would become more apparent in production of new housing. While the proportion of single-detached units declined in Vancouver, this proportion rose in Winnipeg. As densification accelerated in Vancouver so too, did the decline in the proportion of single-detached units. Conversely, as declines in the densification ratio for Winnipeg reveal, as the densification process decelerated and even reversed itself, the proportion of single-detached began to rise rather than fall after 1980. The figures in Table Two show this, as the number of single-detached units in Winnipeg rose from 59 percent in 1981 to 61 percent in 1991.
Just the opposite occurred in Vancouver. As the densification ratio rose, the decline in the proportion of dwelling units made up of single-detached units accelerated -- falling from from 57 percent of the region's housing inventory in 1981, to 50 percent in 1991, a decline of seven percent. What make this decline even more remarkable, was that it occurred at a time when the advancement of the densification process had almost come to a halt across the nation. As table two shows, for the nation as a whole the proportion of single-detached units only fell by one-tenth of a percentage point in the 1980s, compared to 6 percent in the 1960s and two-point-five percent in the 1970s. And in some cities such as Winnipeg and Toronto there was even a reversal.
Estimates for 1996 (table two, p.61) show that since 1991 the densification process has accelerated again. Mostly because of what was happening in British Columbia, the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the nation fell by 3.5 percent. In the 1980s, one of the main reasons for the slow progression of the densification process was the striking reversal in the production of single-detached units that took place in the exurban part of Greater Toronto. In Toronto a bi-modal or split pattern of development emerged. In core of the region (centred within the boundaries of the old Metropolitan Corporation of Toronto) densification still remained a powerful force. However, in the exurban parts of the region a powerful counter tendency built up steam. As this was the fastest growing part of the region, resurgent land-extensive development that took place here overwhelmed what was happening in the core. This would show up in the composition of the housing stock. For instance, between 1986 and 1985 the proportion of single-detached units fell from 34 to 32.6 percent in the core, a drop of 1.4 percent. At the same time, the proportion of single-detached units rose from 62 to 63 percent in exurban Toronto.
Because exurban Toronto was then also the largest and most dynamic housing market in the country, this naturally skewed the national average, bringing to a halt the steady decline in the number of single-detached dwellings making up the country's housing stock, which had fallen at an accelerated rate since the early 60s. Even in Vancouver, deflationary pressures were at work in the early 80s. As a result of the bursting of the speculative housing bubble in 1980 and 81, the densification ratio fell below the benchmark level of four, when it momentarily sank to 3.8 in 1986 before beginning a decade long ascent (table one, p. 49).
Between 1991 and 1996, the resurgence of land-extensive development would be tamed somewhat. Although weaker than the 1960s and 70s, densification gained strength in the 1990s, as the proportion of single-detached dwelling units making up the nations housing inventory started to decline in a significant way once more, after almost coming to a halt between 1986 and 1991. This time, however, Vancouver rather than Toronto would become the lead city. Still, even in Toronto, densification gained some new momentum. As a result, there was a dramatic slowdown in the production of single-detached units within Greater Toronto between 1991 and 1995. Unlike the period between 1981 and 1991, when the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the region rose by 5 percent, between 1991 and 1996 this advance almost came to a halt, as the proportion of single-detached units only rose by 1 percent. Thus by 1996 single-detached units made up approximately 46 percent of the regions housing stock, a rise of six percent from 1981, when single-detached dwellings made up of 40 percent of the region's housing inventory.
With Densification ratio for Vancouver moving past seven in the 1990s, densification advanced much faster than in the nation, as a whole. Between 1991 and 1996 (in table two, p. 61) the proportion of single-detached units in Greater Vancouver fell by five percent, moving from 50 percent to about 45 percent. If present trends continue, within the decade, Vancouver will undoubtedly become the densiest city in the country, and perhaps the continent, as no other major urban centre in either the United States or Canada is experiencing such a dramatic. If the proportion of single-detached units can be taken as an accurate reflection of residential densities than only Montreal and Greater New York presently have a lower proportion of their housing stock made up of single-detached dwellings. With the eclipse of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver currently proceeding at faster rate than in Toronto during the 1960s -- when a ten percent drop in the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units made it the lead city for the densification process with the first wave of reinvestment -- it the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver may sink below 35 percent in less than ten years. If this occurs the rate of decline experienced in Vancouver will match or even exceed the ten percent drop experienced by Toronto in the 1960s. And if this does occur, Vancouver will hold the distinction of becoming the only major North American city that will be denser in the year 2001 than it was in 1931, when the era of the streetcar suburb came to an end.
With the proportion of single-detached dwelling in Winnipeg rising from 61 percent in 1991 to 62 percent in 1996, an entirely different urban configuration is unfolding. This is reflected in the densification ratios for each city. While the densification ratio for Vancouver's has moved well past the benchmark line of four, which suggests that densification has become a dominant force, in Winnipeg it has hovered around the benchmark figure of two, which suggests that land-extensive development will likely remain the dominant regime of accumulation for this city into the next century. From these diverging densification ratios dramatically different investment profiles for each city have resulted. Construction figures show this. For example, if housing starts for the first half of 1997, single-detached units accounted for 68 percent of all housing starts in Winnipeg. By contrast, in Vancouver single-detached units only made up 31 percent of all housing starts (SC-35).
As these figures indicate, each city is situated at opposite ends of the continuum. This can be shown by looking at the changes in the makeup of the housing stock for each city, and by comparing them to the national average. For Winnipeg, in 1981 the proportion of single-detached units was two percent above the national average. However by 1991 the gap had widened to nine percentage points (table two). Just the opposite happened in Vancouver. In 1981, the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver equalled the national average. However, since that time the gap has grown by 10 percentage points, but in the opposite direction from Winnipeg. For most of the postwar period the proportion of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver had stood well above the national average. Now, however, the proportion of single-detached units is well below the national average.
For the rest of the country, as the next construction cycle proceeds, it remains to be seen what will happen. Although Winnipeg will probably maintain its current trajectory, it is in the exurban areas of Toronto, which now make up the largest market for new housing in the country, that some new developments might unfold. Particularly since no other place in the country will likely be affected by the removal of hidden subsidies. With federal and provincial downloading, existing subsidies are now being openly challenged and debated. While some of the subsidies that support single-detached dwelling units are likely to remain in place many others may disappear. Even though planning regulations have been loosened up to allow more land-extensive development, cutbacks in infrastructure financing, tax pooling, and added development cost levies, may cancel this out.
Once the next construction cycle has run its course it will be easier to assess the impact of these changes.Will the bi-polar pattern of investment that has characterized the densification of Toronto since the 1980s become more entrenched? Moreover, since this same pattern can now be found in Montreal and Ottawa, will this pattern, rather than the one in Vancouver, define the future for the densification of the Canadian city ?
3.1.2 - The Great Deflation: 1930 to 1945
As the previous comparisons illustrate, there is not a direct-one-to-one correspondence between the movement of the densification ratio, changes in population density, and shifts in the housing composition of each city. As already stated, the time lag created by historical inertia accounts for much of the divergence that can be observed. Time lags and distortions do result because building cycles may not correspond exactly to the time in which shifts take place in the densification ratio. Finally, since the urban land market is just one facet of densification and densification itself, in turn, is just one aspect of a mode of urban development, there is an important institutional angle that needs to be considered when looking at the evolution of the densification process. This becomes easier to see if the time lag created by the incubation of two contrasting modes of urban development that have shaped the Canadian city in the late twentieth century are more closely examined.
Although this chapter is primarily concerned with regimes of accumulation rather than modes of regulation -- and so the material rather than social and political variables which shape the production of urban space --at some point these two spheres cross over and affect each other. There is no iron clad law which says that this has to happen. The only link is that of contingency and historical circumstance. Although a regime of accumulation and mode of regulation may have autonomous origins, when they start to interact with each other, each begins to affect the others course of evolution. From this this beginning of an institutional nexus can be sketched out and the emergence of a mode of urban development tracked. the articulation of material and institutional forces that creates a mode or model of urban development is far from seamless or pre-ordained. If the articulation of circumstances and background conditions which to a the creation of land-extensive regime of accumulation governed by modern norms are studied, we find a considerable time lag between shifts in the densification ratio and the inculcation of new spatial norms which resulted in the mass production of different kind of urban space that came with the suburbanization of the North American city after World War Two. Far from being pre-ordained or inevitable, for this new institutional configuration to become significant market signals created by a decline in the densification ratio had to be absorbed by the institutions of the local state in order for a reproducible pattern of accumulation to be established. What this reveals is that it is necessary to study the interaction between the housing market and local institutions when looking at the emergence of a distinctive mode of urban development. The economic forces which shape the city are always mediated by the institutions which regularize and transform material impulses and background conditions into regulatory programs that become the basis for the re-organization of urban space.
What such a perspective underlines is the importance of institutions. Because of this, far from being a seamless progression, or an inevitable trajectory, the process of change in the city quite open-ended, even when there are powerful economic, demographic, or technological forces at play. As will now be shown, all these material impulses are by the institutional matrix created by the local state. In the case of densification, for instance, it is possible to show how the progression of the densification process can be slowed down or accelerated by the institutional configuration of the local state in a particular locality .
Although a great deal of discussion about globalization fills the literature on urban change and transformation, the the influence of bureaucracy and the political culture of the local state has often been ignored. Even though the evolution of land-extensive and land-intensive regimes in Canada may appear inevitable and preordained facts when they are viewed in retrospect, if the role played by the local state is recognized and the historical record is examined, the contingent nature of the evolution of the city in the twentieth century becomes much more cleary laid out. For without the two incubation periods that created the institutional foundations that supported and guided these two regimes of accumulation, the changes unleashed by the economy -- which impacted the urban land markets -- new demographic influences, and changing technologies, would probably have produced outcomes different from the ones we can now observe: both in terms of the massive suburbanization that took place after 1945, and the densification that emerged as a major force for the first time in the mid 1960s.
For example, although the reconfiguration of the urban property market during the 1930s lowered the densification ratios of most cities, without legislation like the National Housing Act, or the other programs initiated by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation the potential for land-extensive development that was created by this decline in the densification ratio would not have been exploited as fully as it was. Without the support provided by these policies Canada's cities might well have developed more like British rather than American cities after the war.
The same can be said about the densification process as well. Without the large and powerful group development corporations that had been created in the modern period the high-rise and medium-rise densication which became so prominent in Canada would not have unfolded in the way that it did (Bellan 1977; Bettinson 1975) As well, it the state had not introduced new tenure forms, such as strata title ownership densification would have probably followed a much different course than it has taken so far (only introduced in the U.S. in 1961 and in B.C., in 1966).
Indeed, if a finer-grain analysis of the local state is made, in part, it is possible to show how two different institutional complexes set the context for the progression of land-extensive and land-intensive development, with variations in the institutional evolution of the city accounting for much of the uneveness that can be observed in the progression of land-intensive development in Canada. This becomes more obvious when a comparing the institutional supports for land-extensive and land intensive development. Unlike the current regime of land-intensive regime of accumulation, the previous land-extensive regime had a much more uniform and standardized regulatory framework because of the dominance of the federal government. By contrast, the regulatory framework for densification was much more uneven because of the receding influence of the federal government and the rising power of the provinces. This combined with the rising anarchist tendencies that were triggered by the growing influence of the market and anti-war sentiments, provided a much more chaotic framework since all centralized forms of bureaucratic rule were challenged -- whether it be a large corporation or the central state. While the ascent of beaucratic rule during the modern era made it possible tot for land-extensive development to take a regimented and standardizaed form, this would not be possible in the postmodern era and so, as a consequence, the regulation of the densification process.
This is important because the Depression and the war had greatly increased the influence and power of the federal government. Because of its wealth and influence, the federal government was able to set the agenda that would leed to the adoption of a uniform and standardized set of spatial norms which would be used to govern and promote the suburbanization of the city across the entire country. However, with the rising influence of the provinces in the 1960s, and later, the retreat of the federal government in the late 70s and 80s, this uniform institutional framework began to breakdown. This happened whn postmodern norms for the regulation of land-intensive regimes of accumulation developed. This one factor alone, established a regulatory context that was quite different from the modern era, one that was defined by the advance of bureaucratic rule -- in the case of modernism -- and the other by market rule -- as was more the cse in the postmodern era. So not only did more polarized flows of capital and labour made the progression of densification more uneven across the country, different institutional contexts for the incubation of modern and postmodern regulation. As a result two quite different institutional context governed the regulation of land-extensive and lend-intensive development. In part this explains why land-extensive development evolved in such a uniform and consistent manner during the modern period between 1945 and 1973. As well, this partially explains the contrasting unevenness of the model of urban development that came about when an insitutional nexus between densification and postmodern norms was established after 1973.
The presence of these two contrasting institutional frameworks explains why the supports that prop up the postmodern city are much more fragmented than the ones that supported land-intensive development. The fiscal crisis of the state has further compounded this situation. As already mentioned, fiscal retrenchment and the assertativeness of the provinces have reduced the ability of the federal government to set uniform standards and expectations for the organization of the city as it had done in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly since the 1980s, compared to the unambiguous unfolding of land-extensive development after 1945 this had been the case. This shows up in the polarized densification ratios, as regional rather than national trends become pronounsed in the diverging proportion of single detached dwellings that can be observed in the country's largest cities. From 1945 until the mid 60s, when a period of transition appeared, the densification ratio of every large city generally followed the same trajectory, producing spaces that were quite similar across the country as the densification ratio fell in every city and the proportion of single detached dwelling units occupied by the nuclear family unit increased rather than decreased. All this would change in the postmodern period, as the previous comparison between Winnipeg and Vancouver and the emergence of a bi-polar pattern of densification in Toronto so clearly show.
Looking more closely at these two transition periods, beginning with the changes that were brought about by the application of modern norms to the regulation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation that became the defining pattern of residential investment after 1945, the incubation for this regime of accumulation lasted approximately from 1925 to 1945, or about twenty years. As a result, 15 to 20 years elapsed before the full effect of decline of the decline in the densification ratio that occurred in the early 30s was translated into a regulatory language and set of practices which allowed the economic and social conditions for land-extensive development to be realized in the production of urban space on a mass scale. To illustrate this point we need only look at Winnipeg and Vancouver again to see how long the lag was between the fall in the densification ratio and resultant changes in the population density and housing stock of each city.
With the densification ratio for Winnipeg falling from 4.64 to 2.196 and Vancouver's falling from 4.329 to 2.196 between 1931 and 1951 (table one, p. 49) this time was clearly a watershed period for the property markets of both cities. Yet, in spite of the dramatic shift from a land-intensive to land-extensive regime, the absence of an institutional mechanism to support this new regime, along with the retardation of the building cycle that came with the depression and the war, the new economic signals given off by the reconfiguration of the property market were muffled for nearly twenty years. Not until the 1950s would changes in the configuration of the property market result in the actual production of considerably less dense urban space. For this to happen, the housing industry, which had largely ceased to exist because of the depression and the war, had to be reconstituted. New financial tools for the purchase of homes would have to be created. And of great importance, modern city planning would have to be re-instituted so that suburban development could be rationalized and the government's liability for the mass market it created in mortgages financing protected (Bettinson 1975; Harris 1996). Only after this economic and institutional framework was put in place did the suburbanization of the city -- sparked by the fall in the densification ratio -- move full speed ahead. For even into the late 1940s, as Miron has noted, materials shortages severally restricted the amount of new housing that could be undertaken (Miron 1988,p.168-9).
In the Labour Gazette (May 1951) for example, statistics compiled on housing expenditures showed a modest increase in housing expenditures occurring as the Great Depression was beginning to dissipate in the late 1930s, with 15.7 percent of total capital expenditures in 1939 devoted to housing. But even this modest level of expenditure evaporated as the level of housing expenditure decreased from 15.7 percent, in 1939 to 1.28 percent of all capital investment made in 1942. As a result, not until 1945 -- 15 years after the market had been reconfigured -- did the mass production of less dense suburban environments become the norm. And it wasn't until 1949 that the full impact of land-extensive development was felt, since it took this long for prewar levels of investment in housing to be reached, as investment in housing during the modern period rose to 18.2 percent of all capital investment (Labour Gazette May 1951). Thereafter, the rate of investment in housing would rise further, and plateau around 25 percent of all fixed investment (Miron 1988,p.194).
So while the great deflation initially led to the decline in the densification ratio, a long incubation period was required for the construction of the necessary institutional supports that were needed for the sustained mass production of housing. Thus, between 1931 and 1936 the average price of a house in Canada fell by 24 percent, but it wasn't until 1946 that housing prices would recover to their 1931 level, and housing production would begin to rise significantly (Historical Statistics of Canada 1983, Table S323-325). The deflation which took place was extensive and deep enough to take every city in the country down at the same time. However, there was some variation: in cities in decline, such as Winnipeg, prices deflated more than in ascendant cities like Vancouver. Whereas house prices fell by 45 percent in Winnipeg between 1931 and 1941, in Vancouver they only declined by 32 percent.
Besides the great deflation there were other factors that also set the stage for the great take off in housing production after the war. On the supply side, as we have seen, deflation had reduced the cost of land. However changes on the demand side would also play a role in what was to happen. Here two important factors would come into play. First there was the effect of the war. Because of rising employment and enforced savings that came with the war economy a huge pool of savings was created. Moreover, the unrest that came with the previous demobilization after World War One worried the government. This, combined with the concerns about unemployment and that the housing shortage, which had become a trigger for returning veterans-- who protested the shortage by occupying buildings like the Hotel Vancouver (Wade 1994) -- led the government to use housing as a shock absorber and anchor to keep unrest in line, since a population paying mortgages would have less time or energy to foment trouble. So not only did the federal government's postwar housing strategy address the critical housing shortage that resulted from 20 years of underinvestment, as well it also dealt with the increased demand for housing that came from the urbanization that was induced by the war. Moreover, it was also one way to discipline the population and a useful way for tapping into the huge pool of savings that had been built up during the war. By this means, the production of housing became a favoured counter-cyclical tool for the management of the economy. Besides these reasons, a huge demand for more land-extensive development was given an unexpected boost by the anomalous situation created by the great post-war baby boom. For the first time since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was a dramatic and sustained surge in the natural fertility rate.
This would be reflected in labour force participation figures. In spite of a booming economy, women were expected to leave the workforce and devote most of their energies to child-rearing. As a result, the percentage of the population involved in the workplace declined rather than increased until the early 1960s, with the percentage of the population in the labour force steadily falling from 40 percent between 1941 and 1945 to a low of around 35 percent in the early 1960s, before it began to rise during the transition period between the modern and postmodern periods, reaching 52 percent in 1989, as women became integrated into the labour force once again (The Globe and Mail 1997R).
Everything from realigning gender roles in the work place, to a massive increase in the birth rate (hat was related to this realignment) would support the great suburban housing boom which the great deflation had provided the initial impetus for by reducing the cost of land. The opportunities established by these material conditions might not have been realized without the creation of a supporting mode of regulation. From the mid 40s into the early 50s, most of the formal aspects of this mode of regulation were put in place through the enactment of National Housing Act in 1944 (Bettinson 1975), and the establishment of Canada Mortgage and Housing in 1945. This transformed the regulation and production of space from a laissez-faire mode to one that was corporatist in orientation. All of this was done deliberately to build up and rationalize the building industry so that the mass production of housing could go on without too much fear of devaluation or default by the consumer. With this accomplished, housing could also be used as a counter cyclical device to even out the oscillation of investment and therefore regulate unemployment to a certain extent. Consequently, modern city planning was revived as well to facilitate these various related goals. Together, all these changes created conditions with for the production of urban space that closely matched Fordist models for the organization of production. Largely because of this, in the modern era urban government closely mirrored the dominant corporated model. As a result, in more ways than one, Ford and General Motors were shaping the physical and institutional spaces of the modern city.
Thus, by the early 1950s the basic foundations for a new mode of urban development -- characterized by a land-extensive regime of accumulation and modernist regulatory norms -- was brought into existence. While property values had recovered to their 1931 levels by 1946, except for a brief inflationary surge around 1950 (as declining densification ratios show) until the early and mid 1960s this era would primarily be defined as a period of land extensive development since shelter costs generally lagged behind wage increases.
The articulation of this new regime of accumulation with a complementary mode of regulation would be accomplished by the late 1940s, and would herald the production of one of the most standardized and homogeneous built environments ever constructed. Thus, from a low point of 11,827 units in 1946, housing production rose to 135,000 units in 1956, then to 160,000 units in 1966 and to over 230,000 by 1976.
But even as the affordability of this space-extensive form of urban development was steadily improving, signs of change were beginning to loom on the horizon. As far back as 1952, portents of what was to follow appeared when shelter costs started to move dramatically above the consumer price index for the first time. While it would be over a decade before these rising price increases would outstrip wage increases this can be seen as a portend of the reconfiguration of the property market that was to come with the great inflation that would create the material basis for a new regime of accumulation, which was land-intensive rather than land-extensive.
3.1.2 - The Great Inflation: 1965 to 1975
Around 1965, the supply-and-demand factors that had been responsible for keeping the densification ratio around the benchmark figure of two started to reverse direction as rising inflation eventually led to the institution of wage and price controls in 1974 and rent controls around the same time. As well, soaring land prices and escalating interest rates undermined the material basis for the unproblematic extension of land-extensive development. After a long period of stasis and gradual decline, the densification ratio began to rise precipitously. One symptom of the crisis would be declining home ownership. After home ownership peaked in 1961 when the level of home ownership rose to 66 percent of all households, by 1971 the ownership rate had dropped to 60 percent (Miron 1988). Since 1971 there has been some modest recovery in the level of home ownership, with the percentage rising to 62 percent in 1981; however this is still below 1961 peak. Furthermore, especially in places like Vancouver, this modest increase has only occurred because of a change in tenure form and the move into denser housing units, since 20 percent of all housing in Vancouver is now strata title units which would indicate that nearly half of all ownership units in Vancouver are not single-detached dwelling units and that nearly half are not held in fee simple ownership -- the dominant tenure form during the modern era (table three, p.81). Accordingly the movement from fee simple to strata title forms of tenure can be seen as the one of the most important regulatory features of the postmodern era, since this insertion innovation would play a key role in eliminate the bottleneck to further densification by making it possible to experiment with new housing forms as well provide legitimacy to denser housing because it could now be owned rather than rented. Here a very close link between postmodern regulation and densification developed.
This would even be reflected in zoning regulations, particularly in Vancouver, where Comprehensive District zoning made it easier to institute denser mixed use developments spread from out from the City of Vancouver to the entire region with changes to the Municipal act by the provincial government in the mid 1990s (Ito 1997).
As with the formulation and application of modern norms, this did not happen without certain setbacks and considerable resistance. The permanent shift from land-extensive to land-intensive development in Vancouver that was triggered by the great inflation also provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification in Vancouver as well as across the country. Particularly, in those cities where the property market had been changed the most, initially this change provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification that flowed over the country's cities. Although much of this had to do with problems of afforability, equally significant in the reaction to densification was the aesthetic reaction to built environment that was being created. Here the flaws of modern formats for accommodating denser environments rose to the surface.
As a result, modernism lost much of its allure. On a variety of levels its legitimacy was called into question, because it was unable to create suitable environments for the denser spaces that were produced when the pattern of residential and commercial investment shifted and started to concentrate rather than disperse further out into the suburbs. Rather than greenfield sites, the redevelopment of existing built-up areas became the focal points for a great of new investment. This, combined with affordability problems, created a massive upheaval that prompted both mainstream (Bourne 1967; Lithwick 1970) and radical academics in Canada (Drache and Clement 1985, Chapter 25; Roussopoulos 1982; Pickvance 1976) to pay a great deal of attention to the city. This happened across a wide variety of disciplines and led to the creation of a distinctive urban discourse on the city in Canada, as academics tried to make sense of the densification process that was now unfolding. For example, in High Rise and Super Profits the authors caught the reigning sentiment when they remarked that:
Housing in Canada absorbs about 40% of a working person's wage. With land prices skyrocketing as it becomes more and more scarce, the price of housing has become the single most inflationary item of the consumers budget (as a result) . . .the logic of urban scarcity make it economically necessary to build up rather than out. That way, a greater number of people can be more profitably housed on less land. In fact, in metropolitan centres between 1968 and 1970, three times as many apartment units have been built as have single family dwellings. (Barker et el. 1973, p.3)
As already stated, the shift from land-intensive development was further complicated by the inability of modern regulation to deal with the turbulence and new formats that were required to made denser environments more acceptable to the middle class which once again moved out of its dormancy to become an active political force within the local state. While modern norms proved to be ideal for the regulation of land-extensive development this was less so when development shifted from a land extensive to land-intensive regime of accumulation - particularly when redevelopment took place on sites occupied by the new middle class or on land in which it had developed an interest. The situation was further aggravated by the limited aesthetic repertory of modern built forms. Since modernism in Canada relied on either the single detached dwelling units for land-extensive development, or the construction of high-rise development for the land-intensive development that took place in the 1960s, modernism did not have the capacity to adequately respond to the challenge posed by densification.
Many people were alienated from the environments that were created because of the strong set of associations between low-rise suburban environments and the good life and, conversely, the opposite association that existed between pathology and density that existed in both the popular and academic mind during the modern period, something that was further exacerbated by the negative symbolism that all high rise development would take on during the counterculture.
On several fronts, the weaknesses of modern philosophic, social and aesthetic practices for the regulation of space were brought out and exposed by the densification process. The sudden eruption of high-rise apartments across the country therefore provoked resistance to the entire framework that been responsible for the social and physical organization of space that had been in force since 1945, as the proportion of new housing stock made up of apartments rose from around 20 percent in the early 1960s to about 40 percent in the mid sixties, (1965) and then over 50 percent by the late 60s, when the first wave of densification crested. As this happened, so too did the resistance of the middle class to all forms of modern regulation.
The reaction that rose against the further spread of high-rise office buildings and apartment was not entirely negative. Their appearance also sparked the first experiments in postmodern planning, as alternative formats for accommodating density began to be explored. Similarly, the other key material artifact of the modern city -- the automobile -- was also challenged for the first time. As a result of this, there was a slowdown in freeway construction and an increase in the resources devoted to the provision of more transit infrastructure.
Also, a search for new house types was begun. Housing forms located between the extremes represented by the single detached home and the high-rise apartment buildings were experimented with. Long before the current popularization of neo-traditional planning or the new urbanism, architects in Canada such as Barton Myers and Jack Diamond had began to explore how denser housing could be accommodated through infill construction and medium rather than high-rise formats that were organized around the street rather than the highway and which also paid more attention to the existing urban fabric, putting the campus format -- best exemplified in the new university campuses that were constructed in the 1960s, such as York University, The University of Waterloo and the University of Regina or publicly sponsored urban renewal such as the Raymour complex in Vancouver, the Jeanne Mance project in Montreal or Regent Park in Toronto (Hodge 1986, p.101), or private redevelopment, the most famous of which was St. James Town in Toronto -- into disrepute.
Instead of this format alternative, postmodern format that involved mixed-use and medium-rise buildings aligned to existing urban streets were experimented with. Unlike modern formats, this new aesthetic order gave priority to the street rather than the highway, defining one of the key aesthetic principles for the postmodern organization of urban space that attempted to revive a form of urban space associated with 19th-century modernism, which typified the streetcar city and the laissez-faire period of development in the history of the North American city.
As well as this aesthetic shift, the modern regulation of space was challenged at the philosophic and social level also. Questions about the nature of urban space were raised. When land-extensive development predominated, most new housing construction took place on place on greenfield sites and it was possible for planners to view space as some blank slate or abstraction that they could manipulate at will, molding it to fit into a technocratic notion of efficiency and uniformity, as standardized spaces formatted around the mass production of single detached dwelling units or high-rise apartment units and the automobile became mirror images and symbols of Fordism. However, this became much more difficult to do so when real estate investment shifted to already developed sites -- especially when these sites were occupied by a new middle class, whose opposition to redevelopment was further reinforced by aesthetic considerations, as it rebelled against the format taken by this development. There was also a philosophic dimension to this as well, as the new middle class reacted strongly to its exclusion from the decision-making process that created the program to be used to redevelop an existing space.
Not surprisingly, sharp cultural clashes arose as the first wave of densification lead to the intrusion of apartments into already built-up areas, setting the stage for the legitimization crisis that modern planning was to experience between the late 1960s and the present, as the middle class rebelled against the modern city at every level of its regulation, but most stridently at the aesthetic level, where high-rises became a lightning rod for a broader reaction that took shape against all forms of twentieth-century modernism, particularly bureaucratic rule and the corporate control of the economy. On the philosophic plane, for instance, this entailed a strong challenge to bureaucratic rule in both the public and private sectors. On the social level, this resulted in the deconstruction of modern notion of deviance and normalcy. (Gutstein 1975; Ley 1974; Vancouver Urban Research group 1972; Lorimer 1972; Granastein 1971; Clarkson 1972; Caufield 1972; Sewell 1970; Lorimer 1970; Roussoupolos 1982).
In addition, the great inflation and the pressure for densification created by this set in motion a number of institutional adaptations and responses that would become important for sustaining densification in Canada. Just as the National Housing Act and Canada Mortgage and Housing had established the institutional supports for the suburbanization of the city after 1945, in a similar way two institutional innovations heralded the beginning of postmodern regime for the regulation of urban space. The first change had to do with amendments that were made to the National Housing Act in 1973. In turn these amendments provided the funding and rules for the creation of a vibrant non-profit and co-operative sector from 1973 until 1993 that became central features of the livable city program for the postmodern transformation of the city. The second important innovation had to do with the introduction of strata title legislation in the middle of the 1960s. It would not become significant in the first phase of the postmodern transformation of the city during the 1970s, but would become pivotal to the densification process in the 1980s (during the era of the urban spectacle).
In Vancouver, the link between these pieces of legislation and the production of urban space would be far-reaching, their relative dominance denoting the existence of two quite different phases in the postmodern transformation of the city. As table three (p. 81) shows, the diffusion of strata title units has been highly uneven -- not only within the country but even with in a single urban region, such as Vancouver. If national comparisons are made, the divergence between Vancouver and the nation becomes striking. Whereas only about 4 percent of all dwelling units in Canada were made up of strata title units in Greater Vancouver they made up 20 percent of all units. The divergence becomes even greater where densification in the region has been the most intense or where middle class resettlement has become extensive.
In the Core area of Greater Vancouver (figure three, chapter five, p. 403) where densification was the most intense, the proportion of strata title was over 30 percent (table three, p. 81), nearly nine times the national average. And within the core, in local areas such as the Downtown and Fairview, where densification and the middle class colonization of urban space have been even more intense, the proportion of strata title units have approached 50 percent of all dwelling units, or twelve times the national average. Not surprisingly Vancouver has the highest level of strata ownership in the country (Lo 1989). Thus, in 1996 condominiums accounted for over 55 percent (CMHC 1996) of all new housing units in the region and up to 62 percent of all new housing units constructed within the City of Vancouver (VS-351).
Canada Mortgage and Housing (1994, p. 31) projections on housing starts show that this extremely uneven diffusion of strata title units has continued into the 1990s. In the projections that were made cities and even provinces experiencing the most intense form of densification, such as Vancouver and British Columbia, the production of strata title units between 1993 and 1995 was projected to be around 48,883 or about 56 percent of all new strata title units constructed in the nation (even though the province only accounted for about 13 percent of the country's population). The same applies to Vancouver. With 28,000 strata title units projected over this time period, Vancouver was expected to account for 33 percent of the national total, even though it only had 7 percent of the nation's population.
At the other end of the continuum there are cities such as Winnipeg that have a densification ratio that is below two, so land-extensive patterns of development are much more deeply entrenched here. In places like this, the level of new condominium construction has been very low. As the figures for Manitoba reveal, CMHC forecasts only 454 new strata title units for the province between 1993 and 1995. Since most of these units would be constructed in Winnipeg, from this one can infer that less than one half of one per cent of the national total of new strata title units projected be built in Canada would appear in Winnipeg, a city with a third of Vancouver's population and around two percent of the nation's population. While the proportion of strata title units in Vancouver was nearly over-represented by a factor of five; Winnipeg was under-represented by a factor of 40.
With densification ratio hovers around or above 2.5, cities such Calgary and Edmonton, occupy an intermediate position between the extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver. This shows up in the construction of strata title units for the province of Alberta where, as in Winnipeg, the vast majority of strata title units are located in either Edmonton or Calgary. Here the same CMHC projection forecast that between 1993 and 1995 7,550 new strata title units would be built in Alberta, or approximately 9 percent of the national total. When the sizes of Edmonton and Calgary are factored into this projection both cities lie reasonably close to the national average of 4 percent.
Although the fact that strata title legislation provided the legal and institutional mechanism for densification to proceed since the mid 1980s in Toronto and Vancouver, it is surprising to note how little recognition has been given to the impact that this tenure form has had on the production of space. Unlike the first wave, in which the production of rental units surfaced as the most important manifestation of the densification process, when the second wave emerged it would be strata title tenure house forms rather than rental units that would become the preferred tenure format for the production of denser housing.
While the great inflation reversed the trajectory of the densification ratio in most large cities, changing demographics and renewed interest in public transit also set off changes that also could impede or facilitate the extension of the densification process. Moreover, as this brief outline of the two waves of densification and the possible beginning of a third wave in places like Toronto may show, the shift from one regime to another can be a long and drawn out affair, and may work itself out in idiosyncratic ways in different cities. Moreover, as table one and two reveal, it is a process that does not just go on in a linear fashion. Even where it is most strongly expressed, such as in Vancouver and Toronto, there is an ebb and flow to the progression of the densification process that is tied into the independent movement of the building cycle. Moreover, as Winnipeg the densification process can even be permanently reversed. Likewise, where it is not dominant, the examples of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa reveal that land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation can co-exist within a single urban region.
As the history of modern city planning has shown, the incubation of a new mode of urban development can be a long and drawn out affair. That is why it is not yet possible to make a definitive statement about the evolution of the current mode of urban development. Nevertheless, a simple comparison of what was absent in the previous mode of urban development, but now present in the current one, does reveal that some distinguishing patterns have emerged which set the urbanization that took place in the mid-twentieth century apart from what is now taking place in the late-twentieth century. While densification may not be dominant in every city, it appears as either an emergent or localized phenomenon in most large cities or as an ascendant force in the reshaping of urban space because of the that demographics have upon the shaping of the densification process and the role that the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure can have on the concentration of dispersion of investment capital. Likewise, the spread of postmodern spatial norms can be viewed as another sign of the emergence of a new age with regard to the production of urban space. Still, it is not clear what final shape the current mode of urban development will take across the country. Keeping this in mind, the impact that population and demographics, and later, the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure have had on the evolution of densification process can now be looked at.
--------------------------- TABLE THREE --------------------------------------
Strata Title Units As A Proportion Of Total Housing Stock
Canada Metro C. of Van Outer City Core Area CBD Fairview
1981 1% 8% 6% 2.5% 9.3% - 16%
1991 3% 15% 12% 4.5% 21% 6% 35%
1996 4%(e) 19%(e) 19.5% (e) 8.6%(e) 31%(e) 48%(e) 41%(e)
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3.2 - Two: The Impact of Population and Demographics on densification
Even though economic influences are viewed as the single most important variable that shapes the densification process, the fact that the densification process in Vancouver was actually first triggered by demographic rather than economic factors indicates that the densification process is a complex process, where other forces intervene. This explains why the has not evolved in a unilinear direction, as other forces are at work in shaping it. As will now be illustrated, the interplay of non-economic factors are important too. While changes in the property market absorb and reflect changing demographic patterns, as well different strategies for the provisioning of transportation infrastructure, it is still necessary to look at these other two key material variables separately.
Demographic influences can be broken up into three different categories. One influence is the result of changes in population growth. The second has to do with immigration. And the third has to do with life cycle changes in the general population. With the exception of immigration, unlike economic changes, or shifts in transportation and communications technology, it is possible to project some demographic patterns accurately into the future. Moreover, as already mentioned, over time demographic influences work themselves out more in a cyclical rather than linear fashion. Because many of these movements are long-term and predictable, this has led some analysts to link demographic information too closely with other phenomena, or to assume too much stability in the way demographic tendencies unfold. In some cases this has led to a form of demographic determinism, which mimicks the economic and technological determinism that so often has surfaced in interpretation of urban transformation.
Therefore, some care has to be taken when using population projections to predict other occurrences -- not only because there are two other variables which affect the densification process that need to be considered, but also because of the different way that these variables affect each other when they become articulated with one another. As will be shown, economic influences which affect the property market and demographic influences that affect the demand for sparser or denser housing forms do not necessarily move in sync with each other. Contradictory impulses can be a work at the same time. The densification process does not simply progress in a linear fashion, it is also shaped by counter cyclical forces as well. As a consequence, in certain articulations, demographic forces, amplify or counter act existing economic impulses that and even over ride them in some instances, either supporting land-extensive or land-intensive patterns of development.
Demographic influences have even acted as a trigger for the densification process in some conjunctures. At other times, they have acted as breaks, modifying or, mediating changes created by shifts in the densification ration -- amplifying or muffling existing economic tendencies in land development. For instance, in Winnipeg, this can be shown by looking at the great surge in apartment construction that took place between 1961 and 1971. Although the densification ratio (table one, p. 49) was still dropping in Winnipeg between 1961 and 1971, the large drop in the proportion of the housing stock made up single detached units during this time (table two, p.61) indicates that demographic influences played a very important part in triggering the first wave of densification in this city. As well, demographic rather than economic impulses appeared to have functioned as the initial triggers for the densification process in Vancouver. This can be illustrated by looking at the West End, where the first large boom in postwar apartment construction took place at time when the densification ratio was falling, but a surge in the number of seniors into the neighbourhood counteracted this general fall. Interestingly enough, this neighbourhood became the birthplace for the first wave of densification in Greater Vancouver. Not surprisingly there is a link between the first mini boom in apartment construction and the fact that the West End was rapidly aging because of the migration of seniors into the neighbourhood. This created a regional anomaly in the 1950s, since the proportion of seniors living in the West End was rising steeply at a time when the general population of the region was getting younger.
For Vancouver as a whole, the influence of demographics can best be outlined by looking at the work of David Baxter (1994; 1997). His work provides the most comprehensive and complete analysis of the relation that exists between demographics and the demand for different types of housing in the region. From his analysis of housing it is possible to distill the correlations that exist between life cycle shifts in the general population and the demand created for denser or sparser forms of housing .
Except for a brief inflationary surge in 1949 and 1950, because densification ratios in Vancouver were falling until the mid 1960s, the general trend was for housing prices to fall relative to income. Furthermore, since single-detached dwelling units were the most desired housing form it is hardly surprising to see that the demand for this type of low-density accommodation increased significantly when the densification was falling. This shows up clearly in rising home ownership rates between 1941 and 1961. As a result, the percentage of households in Canada owning their own housing increased from 57 percent to 66 percent in this twenty year time span. Naturally this was also reflected in an increase in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. For instance, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached units rose from 52 percent of the entire housing stock in 1941 to 55.9 percent in 1961, peaking at this level before a rising densification ratio began to reverse this trend in the mid 60s.
However, as the example of the West End shows, there were periods when this correlation was counteracted by opposing demographic influences. Although the densification ratio in Vancouver continued to fall after 1954, the production of apartments started to increase. While some modest increases in land and shelter prices did take place during the 1950s and early 1960s, wages generally stayed one step ahead of this price rise. Therefore, changes in the property market, by themselves, were not sufficient to explain the upward swing in apartment construction. Similary the same can be said about Toronto and even Winnipeg. However, if we look at the West End example and correlate the national surge in apartment construction with the movement of the key age cohorts most likely to live in apartments (those 65 years and older and those you are between the ages of 15 and 24 years), a demographic rather than economic explanation of the first surge in apartment construction can be made.
For this reason, it is possible to link the first postwar surge in apartment construction to the sequential expansion and contraction of these two age cohorts. Consequently, the first postwar apartment boom corresponds quite closely to the expansion of the seniors population that took place in the early to middle 1950s. Soon after, a much larger and longer lasting surge in apartment construction took place from the early and middle 1960s that continued into the early 1970s. But this time the demand for denser accommodation was created by the dramatic rise in the 15-to-24 year old age cohort rather than the seniors cohort. Because densification ratios were generally falling until the mid 1960s, demographic rather than economic factors were clearly the initial trigger for the beginning of the densification process until the late 1960s -- at which time escalating land prices started to kick in, lifting densification ratios upward across the nation and not just in Vancouver.
Life cycle changes therefore became the first important trigger for the densification process. The impact this had can be assessed by looking at the size of each age cohort and a measurement known as the household maintainer rate. The household maintainer rate shows what the likelihood is of an individual forming a household in a particular age cohort. It also can be used to examine the demand structure for sparser single-detached units and denser multiple dwellings units that are generated by each age cohort.
In his research on the housing market in the Greater Vancouver area, Baxter has shown that the two age cohorts most likely to maintain apartment households stand at opposite ends of the age continuum. As already mentioned, one group is made up of the 15-to-24 year old age cohort and the other, the seniors age group 65 . For example, using 1961 figures, Baxter found that the 15-to-24 age group had the highest probability of maintaining an apartment unit, with 50 percent of all households in this age cohort housed in apartment households. The next highest take up of apartment units was accounted for by the 65-plus cohort, with 36 percent of all households in this age group made up of apartment dwellers in 1961. The movement of these two age cohorts can therefore be used to chart the one of ebb and flow of one of demographic influence on the densification process.
Looking in more detail at the movement of these two age cohorts the contention that demographic rather economic influences were likely the most important initial triggers for the densification process can be shown by looking at what happened to the 65-year-old and over age group between 1951 and 1956. Statistics show that the number of seniors grew at a faster rate than the adult population as a whole at this time. While the adult population grew by 2.6 percent a year during this time in Vancouver, the 65 plus age cohort grew by 3.6 percent. However, after 1956 the rate of increase in the seniors population began to trail the growth in the adult population. In a period which has been stereotyped as the baby boom era where the level of family formation was high, it is important to recognize that important countertrends were also present, and that this had an important effect on the production of denser housing units due to the brief surge in non family households made up of seniors at a time when housing was still becoming relatively more inexpensive.
While this growing seniors population may have triggered the densification process this age cohort was not large enough to maintain the momentum for the continued production of denser housing units. The slack created by the slow down in the growth of the seniors population in the late 50s was soon taken up by the 15-to-24 age cohort, that now started to grow much more rapidly than the 65 plus age cohort in the early 1960s. With this age cohort becoming the fastest growing segment of the adult population during the 1960s, it grew by 6 percent a year compared to 3 to 3.5 percent for the adult population as a whole.
Since Vancouver's West End was the crucible for these changes. this showed up in the high levels of apartment construction. As growth in the seniors population levelled off, and the number of young adults increased, the proportion of larger apartment units constructed declined, while the number of studio and one bedroom units grew dramatically as a percentage of the total housing stock. Moreover, the much larger size of this young adult population produced the largest and most sustained apartment boom in the city's history, with the construction of new units exceeding 3,000 units a year in the late 1960s.
Thus, if the densification ratio and demographic movements are compared, it becomes clear that demographic and economic cycles can ran counter to each other. This happened from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. While declines in the densification ratio would have encouraged the production of sparser single detached dwelling units, in part this was counteracts by a growth spurt in the number of seniors and then later, the growth of young adults. Conversely, when demographic and economic influences moved in sync with each other -- as was the case in the mid-1960s -- they amplify each other. When this happened, not surprisingly, record levels of apartment construction were recorded in the West End, and elsewhere in Greater Vancouver, and across Canada in the late 1960s.
In the 1970s, these economic and demographic influences would diverge once again. However, unlike the 1960s, this time demographics would act as a drag rather than as an amplifier with regard to the densification process. This happened because the age cohorts that grew the fastest in the 1970s were those located between the 15-to-24 and 65-years-and-above age groups. Growing much fastest than either of these groups this mature adult population was situated in the key family-formation period of the life cycle where the demand was greatest for single detached dwelling units.
Unlike the 1950s, in the late 60s and 1970s the densification ratio was rising rather than falling. Now the situation was the reverse of the late 50s. This time internal demographic shifts were counteracting the rise of the densification ratio rather than its fall. In turn, the effect of this demographic profile was further amplified by the introduction of additional government subsidies .
Table two shows this (p.61). In the 1970s the rising densification ratio should have led to a sharp decline in the the production of single-detached units. But the opposide occurred. In the 1970s more single-detached units were constructed than in the 1960s. Whereas the proportion of single-detached units across the nation declined by around six percent in the 1960s, during the 1970s the rate of decline was halved. Rather than falling by six percent, as it had done in the 1960s, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by less than three percent (table two).
So even though the densification ratio within Vancouver continued to rise during the 1970s, there was not an identical decline in new single-detached dwellings. On the contrary, for the two reasons just cited, the dramatic rise in the densification ratio did not significantly curtail the production of new single detached units. In relative and absolute terms, more single-detached units were produced during the 1970s than in the 1960s. This explains why the largest number of single-detached dwellings ever produced in Greater Vancouver occurred during the 1970s, rather than the 1950s or the 1960s -- the time periods most often associated with the unimpeded expansion of the modern postwar suburb. What this strongly suggests is that the first densification wave was set off by demographic rather than economic triggers. As this example shows, when demographics are brought into the picture the relationship between the densification ratio and the production of denser housing is not necessarily linear. That is why the largest number of single-detached units ever produced in Vancouver occurred in the 1970s -- when the densification ratio was rapidly climbing rather than falling.
However, just as the market for denser accommodation that was generated by younger adults began to flatten out in the 1970s, the growth rate for the 65-plus-age cohort began to turn around again, after declining throughout the 1960s. In the future, unlike the first densification wave, this segment of the population (and not young adults) will become increasingly influential over the evolution of the densification process. For unlike the 1960s, when young adults provided the demographic fuel for the growing market for denser accommodation, in the future (SC-8b) it will be mature adults and seniors, as well as a growing singles population that will increasingly sustain the demand for more for denser housing units.
Another important difference that sets the second wave of densification apart from the first in Vancouver is the presence of postmodern rather than modern norms. Also this time around the land market was influenced by an absolute rather than relative shortage of developable land. This, along with a lower birth rate, growing immigration, and changes in its composition, created a different background context for the the second wave of densification to proceed within, as compared to the first wave of densification that took place in the 1960s.
So, in addition to shifts in the life cycle of the population, changing immigration patterns have had a profound impact on the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver. For not only has the overall impact of immigration increased due to the decline in the natural birth rate, the impact of immigration on the production of housing has also changed because of the origins of most immigrants has changed since changes were made to the immigration act in 1967. For Vancouver this resulted in the flow of immigration becoming Asia rather than Euro-centric. Furthermore, when the federal government created a new business class of immigrant in 1986 the social status of immigrants became much higher (Lapointe and Murdie 1996). One result was that the local residential real estate market became articulated with global markets for the first time in a significant way.
These factors, and the fact that Vancouver has attracted a disproportionate share of well-to-do Asian immigrants, has led to the creation of a the Zone Of Asian Resettlement (figures four and five, pp.404 and 410; table eight, p.465 ). While suburban enclaves have formed in other urban regions, nowhere is it as extensive as in Vancouver. As a result of this, part of the core housing market and the property market in some inner suburbs of Vancouver are now being shaped by international rather than local forces. From abroad capital has been funneled into selected suburban neighbourhood in the City of Vancouver as well as the inner suburbs, and this has resulted in a silent but massive displacement of the indigenous middle-class and working-class population that once occupied this space.
What this review of demographic variables reveals, is that process of transformation involved with the densification process is not a mono-causal one. Demographic as well as economic factors can play an important part in the evolution of the densification process. The difficulty here is determining the exact effect that these related (but autonomous) economic and demographic impulses have in fueling and shaping the densification process. Because the economic and demographic aspects of the densification process are often so intertwined, it is not always easy to disentangle and separate them, particularly when they camouflage each other, which often happens when they move in sync with one another.
It is more easy to see the separate impact that each variable has when market and demographic forces are out of sync with each other -- as was the case in the 1950s and early 1960s. When this occurs it is easier to see how demographic influences washed out or blunted the impact of lower densification ratios. However, when demographic and economic variables moved in sync with each other during the mid-to-late 60s, producing the first wave of densification that swept across the country, it is much more difficult to see the impact that each variable has in shaping the densification process since existing trends are only amplified.
Lastly, another difference has to do with the different rhythms and geographic range of each impulse. For example the movement of the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver show that market impulses vacillate more in a linear up-and-down fashion compared to demographic shifts, which are more stable. Compared with the evolution of the property market, as the convergence of birth rates across the country indicates, with the exception of immigration and population migration, demographic are more uniform across space and time. For this reason, demographic patterns can be projected into the future with some degree of accuracy, and that is why predictions about urban form based upon demographic changes have become so popular in some academic circles, but more especially with real estate interests, which crave certainty and are looking for a means to exploit knowledge about the future.
3.3 - Three: The impact of communications technology and the provision of transportation infrastructure on the densification process
Up to this point, this investigation of densification has been mostly looked at how changing economic and demographic circumstances have affected the evolution of the densification process. However, when we look at the impact that the provision of new communications (The Globe and Mail 1997b, p. C2; Rogue 1996) and transportation infrastructure have on the densification process, there is a change in emphasis. Instead of primarily looking at demand factors, the emphasis moves to the supply side of the ledger, since the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure has on the demand for denser or sparser house types is not as straight forward as the two other variables, since the construction of infrastructure serves to redistribute rather than create a demand for denser or sparser housing in a particular locality.
This can work in both directions. On the one hand, the provision of more transportation infrastructure can bring more land within the range of development -- indirectly lowering the cost of land and, by doing so, encouraging more land-extensive patterns of development. Conversely, on the other hand, if this infrastructure increases the accessibility certain parts of the region, investment may start to concentrated in these areas, creating grooves for capital to flow into which focus rather than disperse development. Sometimes, but only under special circumstances, the provision of urban transit infrastructure can act as an important trigger for densification, but this usually only happens when favourable supporting economic and demographic conditions are present.
Because the provision of infrastructure may or may not generate the investment profile sought after, investment in highways or public transit can generate wicked or un-intended effects. As a consequence, using rapid transit to induce densification can be a hit or miss proposition if the numerous other factors are not in sync with its the aims of its provision. Past investment in transit infrastructure in Canadian and American cities suggest that only when the densification ratio for a city is increasing ,or when it is positioned at a high level, does the provision of public transit infrastructure become an influential structural element in the densification process (US. Congress 1977).
This works in the opposite direction as well. If freeways rather than public transit systems are built in a fast growing city, more room for land extensive-development will be because of the additional land made available for development. But even here there are limits. If land and housing become too expensive, and congestion and pollution become too severe, as it has in freeway oriented cities such as Los Angeles, land-extensive development will be constrained even if more freeways are added. L.A. therefore shows the limits of infrastructure investment in one direction. Not surprisingly, to correct the unbalanced transportation system that has been created from this, one of the most ambitious public transit projects in North America has been initiated in L.A. (VS-340).
In Canada the impact of investment in transportation infrastructure can be shown by looking at how investment in transit infrastructure has affected urban development in cities with different densification ratios and different transportation investment strategies. Although there is not a perfect one to one correspondence between these two elements, it is possible to observe different effects in cities which have low (with readings between 2 or 2.5 or below), intermediate (between 2.5 and 3.5) and high (4.0 and above) densification ratios. According to how high or low the densification ratio is in each city, different land use patterns appear to emerge from the addition of new transit and freeway infrastructure.
For example, in cities with low or medium densification ratios, the impact of new investment in new transit has muted. The best example of this would no doubt be Montreal. Since the 1960s probably more money has been spent on Montreal's subway system than on any other in Canada. Yet this investment has generated very little development outside the city's downtown. A flagging economy and slow population growth has put downward pressure on the densification ratio for the city, cancelling out the economic opportunities created for densification by this massive investment in transit.
The adoption of contradictory transportation strategies for Montreal may have also been a factor. For example, unlike Toronto where a complete halt on all new major freeway construction resulted from the shift to public transit in the early 1970s; in Montreal road building and subway building were carried out simultaneously. And this probably served to cancel out much of the potential that investment in public transit had to shape densification in Montreal.
On a less significant scale this happened in smaller centres, as well. In smaller cities with low to medium densification ratios, such as Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa, hundreds of millions, instead of billions of dollars ,were spent on new transit infrastructure. Like Montreal, the impact on investment has been slight so far. Since the late 1970s Ottawa has spent $450 million on a 31 kilometer busway system. And Calgary and Edmonton have each spent about $500-million on light rapid transit systems. Despite this investment only slight or modest amounts of capital have been attracted to the transit zones that have been created. For example, ambitious plans were made in Edmonton to create several regional town centres in Clairview to the North East, and in Mill Woods to the South East. However these plans fell by the wayside when the real estate market collapsed, with the end of the oil boom in the early 1980s. Calgary did the same. As with Edmonton, ambitious plans for concentrating development along its LRT lines were formulated but then abandoned. However, with further expansion of transit and rising densification ratios, interest in these transit corridors has been rekindled in Calgary.
However, if we now look at cities which have high densification ratios, such as Toronto and Vancouver, investment in transit has proven to be more significant. In both cities transit corridors have dramatically altered the morphology of each region. Although the real estate market in Toronto has weakened considerably since the late 1980s, substantial residential development continues to take place near the city's subway corridors, with billions of dollars of transit oriented investment expected to occur along a new subway line which is presently under construction along Sheppard Avenue in the former Toronto suburb of North York.
For example, in the case of the Sheppard line, over seven billion dollars worth of new investment by 2011 has been projected. 94,000 employment positions are expected to be created in this transit corridor, and enough residential development to house 67,000 people. Furthermore, between 250 to 400-million dollars a year in new property taxes are expected to be generated according to former North York Mayor, Mel Lastman. Even though these figures are probably overly optimistic, they do, nevertheless, give an idea of the amount of investment that can be triggered by investment in public transit infrastructure under the right circumstances.
How transit investment will affect the densification process as a possible third investment wave for denser development begins to gather force in the late 1990s remains to be seen, as the real estate market recovers from the deep recession of the early 1990s. Until recently, Toronto provided the best example of transit oriented development in North America. But as Pearl and Pucher (1995; 1998) have noted, governments in Canada have withdrawn more support from transit than the United States since the mid 1980s even though ridership levels and investment opportunities were better realized in Canada. And nowhere is this retreat more obvious than in Toronto where riders are covering eighty percent of the cost of transit -- a level far above any other system in a developed country (Toronto Star 1997h).
For Ontario, in particular, this will be critical. As the current building cycle build momentum, opportunities for transit to reshape urban development are being lost. The opportunity created by a rising densification ratio and renewed population growth may not be fully realized, particularly since provincial off loading had encumbered the ability of Toronto to invest in rapid transit. While Ottawa has retained its commitment to extending fixed transit infrastructure, the commitment has grown more tenuous in the face of cutbacks by the provincial government. Consequently it remains to be seen whether the regional district's approval of a $130-million expansion of the transit way will take place.
Except for Vancouver, in the immediate short term, Calgary may be the only other urban region in Canada where a significant amount of new investment in public transit might take place. Having repositioned itself as the undisputed headquarters centre for Western Canada over the past ten years, and with the adoption of GOPlan, in Contrast to Edmonton, Calgary has clearly adopted a pro-transit strategy for new public investment. Consequently, many of the supporting conditions for the creation of a transit oriented development corridor have appeared in the 1990w, which were not present in the 1980s.
However, just as with Ontario, whether this potential is realized or not will largely depend upon the provincial government (VS-319; VS-330; VS-344). However, unlike Ontario, the chance of something happening here is much greater because the Government of Alberta is no longer limited by deficit constraints (Laghi 1997).
While Toronto and Vancouver best reveal how investment in public transit can shape the densification process; Winnipeg shows the opposite. Led by the engineering department, the local bureaucracy in Winnipeg has been able to implement a freeway strategy for the city, even though it was formally abandoned by city council in the 1960s. With the assistance of the province, massive additions to the road system have been made outside and inside the city limits. Meanwhile, modest attempts to jump start a long sought-after transit system have come to nought. While about $50-million has been allocated to further expansion of the road system, the light rapid transit corridor has been completely stricken form the 1997-2001 capital budget, and only about $2M has been allocated to new initiatives in transit (City of Winnipeg 1996). The same bias can be seen in "TransPlan, the new master plan for transportation that was released in 1998. While hundreds of millions of dollars are proposed for new roadways, bus shelters are the only fixed capital expenditures explicitly referred to in the plan (City of Winnipeg 1998). At the same time, an elaborate discussion is given over to how this deficit plagued city could create an institutional mechanism to establish dedicated funding for the $260-million freeway that is proposed in the new transportation master plan. If the estimates of the Manitoba Infrastructure Council are correct, this expenditure would take place at the same time that the city already has a $500-million deficit with regard to the maintenance and repair of the existing road system.
Other cities such as Edmonton have recently formulated strategies similar to Winnipeg's; however, nowhere else is the commitment to land-extensive investment as extreme, or as deeply entrenched as it is in Winnipeg. This is made all the more ironic by the fact that until recently Winnipeg residents were one of the country's highest per capita users of transit. Yet, expensive investment in freeway grade infrastructure, like the new Main Street bridge, continue to move forward even, as up to 20 percent of the city's revenues is being absorbed by debt servicing resulting from investment like this.
What is also interesting to note about the slow progression of densification in Winnipeg is how this can be tied to the persistence of modern norms. While most other major cities have moved away from a modernist framework for the regulation and production of urban space, Winnipeg's bureaucracy remains firmly entrenched in this system. This lag not only manifests itself in planning -- as revealed by the subordination of planning to engineering -- but can be seem in other civic departments within Winnipeg as well, such as the police department. Here the incredible resistance to neighbourhood policing by rank and file officers, and the attraction of more technocratic and automobile centred methods, illustrates how tenacious the hold of bureaucratic practices from the modern era still are in this city.
From this general comparison of bureaucracies, and the more particular comparison of transportation strategies in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the important role that local institutions play in the progression of the densification process can be grasped. As a corollary to this, the significance of culture is also revealed. For learned behaviour, or culture, affects how space is used and perceived. This, in turn, affects how institutions behave. More specifically, as will be later shown, postmodern modes of consumption, and the adoption of postmodern regulatory norms, became important parts of the institutional scaffolding that supported the densification process. Because this scaffolding was less developed in Winnipeg, market and institutional barriers to densification remained more entrenched here.
The impact of these different investment strategies would show up in a variety of other ways. Changes in ridership levels would be one example. In the early 1960s transit use in Vancouver was almost twenty-five percent below the national average. At the same time, per capita use of transit was 20 percent above the national average in Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would be reversed. Because of steep declines in transit patronage during the 1990s ridership levels in Winnipeg probably went below the national average for the first time. Meanwhile the opposite has happened in Vancouver. In the late 1990s ridership levels have either approached, or now may even exceed the national average.
The transformation of the urban morphology of each city would be another example of the changes that resulted. For instance, during the 1950s the layout of Vancouver was much more amorphous than Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would change. As the urban skeleton of Winnipeg was gradually erased by the construction of a system of suburban beltways, just the opposite happened in Vancouver. With transit infrastructure rather than freeway construction increasingly guiding the location of new development several clearly defined urban spines appeared.
Looking in more detail at Winnipeg. even into the early 1960s, the pattern of development that was established in the streetcar era still remained etched into the organization and production of space. During the mini boom that preceded the first national wave of apartment construction in the late 1950s new apartment construction still followed the land use template left over from the streetcar era.
Although this older wheel-spoke patterns persisted into the 1950s, signs of dispersion and suburbanization were evident. Unlike Vancouver, where the West End acted as the point of origin, and the epicentre for the then nascent beginning of the densification process; in Winnipeg there was no equivalent to the West End. While some apartment construction took place downtown and in Fort Rouge, from the late 1950s to the mid-60s most upscale apartment construction occurred in the suburb of St James, rather than in the inner city. Even so, what is interesting to note about this development, was even though it was located in the suburbs, this new construction was located mostly along Portage Avenue. Consequently, the distinctive spoke and wheel pattern of the streetcar era was maintained. However, since that time this linear pattern has almost been erased.
What has happened to both cities can be seen by looking at diverging property values, and the symbolic resonance of each of these inner cities. While property values in the West End have steadily risen in the inner city of Winnipeg they have remained stagnant, or have declined. While the cachet of the West End has been enhanced, in Winnipeg the middle class have increasingly bypassed the region's core for the outer suburbs, and the exurban parts of the region. This contrasting attraction and repulsion to the core surfaces when we look at vacancies rates for apartments in both cities. Generally speaking, the West End, and most other inner apartment districts in the City of Vancouver, have the lowest vacancies in the region. The opposite holds for Winnipeg. Unlike Vancouver, vacancies in Winnipeg are generally much higher in the core than in the suburbs. For example, the outer suburbs such as Surrey, in Greater Vancouver, often have some of the highest vacancies in the region; in Winnipeg it is the outer suburban areas, such as Assinaboia, which generally have the lowest vacancies.
While Winnipeg's distinctive spoke and wheel configuration has steadily been eroded since the 1980s, in Vancouver the opposite has occurred. Here investment in public transit rather than roadways has increasingly channelled private investment into transit corridors. So far four distinct transit oriented development corridors have emerged in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Similarly, on a smaller scale in the City of Vancouver, several arterials, such as West Fourth Ave. and West Broadway, have begun to develop into transit and pedestrian friendly commercial corridors (figure one).
In Vancouver, the amorphous and diffuse pattern of urban development predicted for the future by commentators such Garreau (1991) and Lessinger (1991) has not come to pass. Like Toronto in the 1960s, in the 1990s favourable conditions for transit oriented development during has made Vancouver stand out among North America cities, as an alternative model for urban development. And this has become most obvious with the recent emergence of several transit oriented urban spines (figures one; seven; eight B).
The most important spine begins in the City of North Vancouver (City of North Vancouver 1992) and runs along Lonsdale Avenue down to Burrard Inlet, where a ferry system called Seabus connects this corridor to downtown Vancouver, and to Skytrain, which runs along an old streetcar right of way into Burnaby, where the most intensive development (other than the downtown) is taking place around Metrotown (Ito 1995; VS-406c). Skytrain then continues into New Westminister, ending in Surrey. Although development has been lackluster so far in Surrey, planners expect that Surrey will be able to eventually become the region's second downtown.
In addition to this, there are three secondary spines that are also beginning to emerge (diagram Two). One starts along the South Shore of Burrard Inlet and then continues along the North Shore of the Fraser River, following the route of the West Coast commuter train that began service in 1995. With plans a foot for the creation of a new town centre at the terminus of the line in Mission (65 kilometers east of downtown Vancouver), recent developments in Port Moody and Coquitlam, along with the recent designation of Haney as a regional town centre, the beginning transit oriented investment spine can be seen. (Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows June 25,1997).
With plans for an LRT line terminating in the eastern suburb of Coquitlam, another development spine may soon emerge along Broadway and the Lougheed Highway (diagram One). Here as well a plan is beginning to be prepared for the creation of another high-density development corridor, with the City of Burnaby preparing a redevelopment strategy for the industrial land which lies along the proposed transit line.
Lastly, if a transit line is extended south from the City of Vancouver to Richmond another development corridor will emerge. Like the first line, this spine would emerge along a previous spine that had largely been erased in the 1950s and 1960 (closely following the old streetcar line that once ran to the fishing port of Steveston, in Richmond).
To conclude, a high densification ratio, favourable demographics, and heavy investment in public transit are the forces that have combined together to make densification such a powerful force here. These condition have been responsible for one of the most successful reintroductions of a spoke and wheel pattern of urban development in North America, If the province of B.C. maintains its commitment to transit, Vancouver may well end up becoming what Stockholm has to Europe (Cervero 1996). If this happens Vancouver has the potential to become the most transit oriented city on the continent.
At the other end of the continuum there are cities like Winnipeg. Here low, or declining densification ratios, slow population growth, net out migration, and a freeway oriented strategy for public investment, have pushed the development of the city in an entirely different direction from Vancouver.
A stunning role reversal has occurred because of this. In 1961 Winnipeg was the densest city in Western Canada. Vancouver then had one of the lowest densities. Now Vancouver is the densest city in the west. Meanwhile, Winnipeg has been transformed into one of the most sprawled out and amorphous urban region's in the country.
While Winnipeg's transit system languishes, one of the most dynamic transit oriented investment corridors in North America has appeared in Vancouver. This is one reason why Vancouver rather than Toronto now stands at the forefront of transit led urban development in North America. Unless the cutbacks initiated by province of Ontario are ended, and a renewed commitment to transit in Toronto is made, Vancouver's role as a lead city is unlikely to be challenged. (VS-168).
Figure One
3.4 - Densification at the local level
Having examined the broad economic, demographic and technological variables that shape the densification process closer inspection of the different physical formats taken by the this process within a single urban region can now be looked at in more detail. For instance, in Greater Vancouver three distinctive rings of development have emerged over the past thirty years. In the core, the construction of high-rise dwellings has become the dominant format taken by the densification process. In the transitional area, medium-rise structures predominate, Farther out, in the suburban parts of the region densification manifests itself in the creation of low-rise structures. How these three forms have evolved in the region can be read from what has happened in the City of Vancouver. In each case the City of Vancouver became the incubation ground and regulatory standard bearer for the creaton of the new institutional mechanisms that were required to regulate the high-rise, medium-rise and low rise forms of densification that first took root in the city before spreading out to the rest of the region.
Furthermore, what is particularly interesting to note about the City of Vancouver, is how the the diffusion of the densification process from out of its epicentre, in the West End, corresponded to the creation of three new distinctive settlement zones. Not only did a new social ecology come into existence as a result of this, in each case as well, a new regulatory culture was created, one which set the tone for what would later happen in the rest of the region as the densification process spread out from the city into the suburbs. Consequently, it is to these three settlement zones in the City of Vancouver that we must turn to and look at if we are to understand the institutional history of densification process, as it is in these three settlement zones that the most sophisticated regulatory responses to high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise densification in the region can be found. That is why it is possible to view the first three settlement zones as a microcosm for each of the three formats that the densification would take on as it spread out to engulf and reshape the entire region (figures nine B; thirteen A to D).
The link that exists between the production of these spaces and the new social spaces that accompanied them is also worth taking note of. The most obvious example of this would be the downtown peninsula. Here the most visible manifestation of the densification process was connected to one of the most dramatic social transformations that took place in the region (VS-351; VS-314; Fabish 1996; Building Canada 1997a). This happened because the high-rises that were constructed created a the physical habitat that allowed a variety of singles-oriented sub-cultures to emerge. In turn, this led to the creation of a population base that would later be able support the creation of an economy organized around the urban spectacle, out of which a "collage city" would be created in the core. Particularly for Vancouver's West End, but not the rest of the downtown peninsula, this was an incremental process of transfomration that took place over several decades. For only after twenty years of change did a distinctly postmodern culture begin to flower in the cure during the late 1970s and 1980s. Hence, over a forty year period, the West End was transformed from a single-detached neighbourhood into the region's largest cluster of apartments.
In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that much of would happen here also had to do with the tenure form taken by the high-rise units that were constructed. Had not rental units been constructed in an incremental fashion by a variety of small small scale builders, the fluid social spaces that now typify the West End would not likely have developed as they did.
In the next zone out from the downtown peninsula, a ring of medium-rise development arose. Although high-rises became the most visible expression of the densification in the region, medium-rise structures actually became the defining format for the densification of the region as a whole. Particularly in the 1970s, the transitional area that surrounds the downtown peninsula became the epicentre, as well as incubation ground for this type of development in the region, as experimentation in medium-rise housing was carried out in direct opposition to the high-rise construction that had dominated the densification process during the 1960s, when the West End was the focal point for densification in the city. In part the switch from high-rise to medium-rises had to do with a change in sensibility. For one of the defining aspects of the shift from modernism to postmodernism in the 1970s would be the move away from high-rise to medium-rise buildings, and a move away from urban renewal to one more focused on the conservation of the existing urban fabric.
Along with changes in the tax act, the emphasis on conservation and infill -- which the shift to a postmodern sensibility, and experimentation with medium-rise structures supported -- the movement away from high-rise to medium-rise development signified an important stage in the evolution of the densification proces, as new norms and institutional mechanisms were coming into existence to support the densification of the city. As already mentioned, one example of this would be the emergence of new tenure forms. Until this time, most households in the country were either rentals or ownerhip units, held in Fee Simple. However with the experimentation in medium-rise dwellings strata title and co-op units became much more popular. Particulary with regard to the densification of the region, and the progression of the gentrification process in the City of Vancouver, the emergence of strata-title tenure forms became a critical instituional support to the advancement of this process.
Just as the high-rise zone that emerged in the downtown peninsula established the physical base for the creation of a collage city in the 1960s, so too did the shift to a medium-rise format create yet another settlement zone Instead of a collage city, a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement emerged in the 1970s. Because of the gentrification induced by strata title development a much more homogeneous landscape was created. And just as the downtown peninsula became the incubation ground and epicentre for high-rise densification in the region; in a similar fashion, this Zone of Middle Class Resettlement became the most sophisticaded expression of medium-rise densification in the region, if not the country (table three).
Finally, low-rise densification has helped to create a third distinctive settlement ring. This happened mostly in an area zoned predominantly for single-detached rather than high or medium-rise dwellings. As with the two other zones, the City of Vancouver became the focal point for this form of densification. Like the Core area and the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, the suburban areas of the city became the extensive examples of low-rise densification in the region. And like the two other settlements, the most sophisticated procedures to control low-rise densification in the region developed here as wellin the region. Like the other two settlement zones in the City of Vancouver densification of this third zone was also accompanied by the social transformation of this areas. If high-rise densification produced a habitat that would provid a space for the sub-cultures of the collage city in the core to flourish, and medium-rise densification created the physical backdrop for the createion of a Zone of Asian Resettlement, in a similar fashion, low-rise densification became associated with the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement within the City of Vancouver and the inner suburbs, which would take in Richmond, Burnaby as well as parts of the North Shore. While the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement was the most dramatic social feature of this densification, smaller pockets of development oriented towards seniors was another feature of this densification process (figures eleven A and B; CVCO-48). This can be seen in the profusion of gated communities in the outer suburbs, and in the marketing of adult communities, where children were discouraged, something that must be considered a radical departure from the settlement pattern that defined the suburbs in the modern period.
While low-rise densification has not yet brought about a major switch in tenure form, as has happened in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, when co-op, non profit and strata title units weree produced as the area was redeveloped, or what is now taking place in the Core, with the production of strata title rather than rental units, nontheless, some changes have occurred. In areas settled by the Asian middle class fee simple tenure has remained dominant. However, major changes have taken place further out in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Here the construction of adult communities for older Caucasians moving away from the inner suburbs has dramatically increased the number of strata title units. Because of this migration from the Zone of Asian Resettlement, a large number of strata title units are now being produced for mature adults and seniors in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Unlike their middle class counterprts in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, or the Core area, this group favours attached bungalows or townhouses.
What is also interesting to observe about this lower-rise densification, is the significant number of rental units that have been created. Unlike the fee simple and strata title tenure forms that have been mentioned so far, many of these rental units exist outside the formal housing market. Even though these secondary suites make up an ever growing part of the region's rental stock they have only recieved limited legal or institutional recognition so far.
Like all the other social and physical changes that have come about because of the densification of Greater Vancouver, the City of Vancouver stands out in this regard as well, as the city probably has more secondary suities than any other jurisdiction in the region. For this reason, and like the other manifestations of the densification process, the City of Vancouver is also the place where the most elaborate regulatory mechanism have been developed to deal with the problems created by the profusion of these suites. For example, it has been estimated that there at least 25,000 such units in the city. And of these 25,000 units, only about 3,000 units have received legal certification.
Finally, there are other manifestations of low-rise densification that need to be mentioned. One form of low-rise densification occurrs when large lots are sub-divided into smaller lots. In Vancouver this has produced thousands of new single-detached units (figure 10-C). Then there is infill housing. Low-rise densification also proceeds by the demolition of smaller and older single-detached units, and their replacement by new units that have much larger site coverage. Moreover, many of the units have been designed so that they can easily be turned into miniature apartment blocks to raise revenue by an absentee owner. As earlier pointed out, because the most sophisticated and varied formats for this kind of densification are to be found in the City of Vancouver where there has been the most controversey. Not surprisingly, as stated before, this low-rise densification set the stage for the development of the most complex zoning regimes that can be found for zoning in single family areas (McAfee 1987; Ho 1989; Petite 1991; VS-170; VS-173AA; VS-256; VS-328a).
The different geographic configuration of each form of densification shows up in annual construction figures for the region. For example, if data from 1997 is used, and new housing starts are sub-divided into high, medium and low rise dwellings, we find that the largest number of starts in the region consisted of medium-rise dwellings, followed by low-rise units, with high-rise dwellings trailing behind in third place. Thus medium-rise units accounted for about 48 percent of all starts, followed by low-rise units, which made up about 30 percent of all starts. In third place, accounting for around 21 percent of all housing starts, were high-rise units. As the figures indicate, overall, medium-rise densification predominates. However, if break down the figures and look at various sub-regions different formats clearly exist.
In the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, for instance, medium-rise densification still stands out when regional comparisons are made. While the difference is not as much as it used to be, the fact that the number of medium-rise starts is higher than the regional average suggests that this area still remains the cradle and epicentre for medium-rise development in the region (figures nine-B and thirteen-C, chapter five). With over 50 percent of all starts is this zone made up medium-rise structures we see that this area still remains a specialized settlement zone for medium-rise dwellings in relation to the region as a whole. Likewise, within the City of Vancouver, the Core and the Zone of Asian Resettlement have retained their status as specialized localities for high-rise and low-rise densification. Thus, in 1997 nearly all units begun in the Core were made up of high-rise units. Conversely, in the same time period low-rise units predominated in the Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Moving outside the City of Vancouver, these three patterns are repeated elsewhere in the region. For instance, Uptown and Downtown New Westminister, and the City of North Vancouver can be viewed as suburban examples of the high-rise densifiction found in Downtown Vancouver (VS-291; VS-174); VS-112b). Other suburban example of high-rise densification would be Ambleside, in West Vancouver; and Metrotown (Ito 1995), and the Edmonds Station area in Burnaby. Unlike low-rise or medium-rise precincts, most recent residential high-rise construction in the region is quited localized. For the most part, this kind of development is confined to the high-rise nodes that were previously mentioned, remaining close to the region's transit corridors or on former industrial land (VS-406).
While the most varied and elaborate medium-rise dwellings are located in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement (figure seven A), such as can be seen by the wide variety of co-operatives, lofts, and other medium-rise luxury strata title units (table three). Upper and lower-middle class counterparts to this settlement zone can be found in the rest of the region. The redevelopment of Maillardville in the suburb of Coquitlam would be one example. Downtown Port Coquitlam, Steveston (VS-137; DaSilva 1997; 1997c), in Richmond, and the medium-rise transformation of the cities of Langley and White Rock would be other examples.
Unlike high and medium-rise dwellings, suburban examples of low-rise densification are more dispersed. One of the most common variants would no doublt be building enclaves that are oriented to adults and senior. Here the most obvious example would be the profusion of gated-communities in the outer suburbs (DaSilva 1997b; Brady 1997). However the most extensive suburban concentration of this type of densification outside the City of Vancouver remains the outer ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, which is situated outside the City of Vancouver, but takes in the inner suburbs of Burnaby and Richmond, as well as parts of the District of North Vancouver and parts of Surrey. Thus Burnaby and Richmond have undergone very extensive low-rise densification in areas zoned for single-detached dwelling units. This also applies to secondary suites, where Burnaby has always had a high concentration of units because of Simon Fraser University. However it is Surrey, which now probably rivals the City of Vancouver in terms of the number of secondary suites, as over 12,000 secondary suites have already been identified by the municipality (Surrey/North Delta 1997)). With the creation of new provincial legislation (GBC-3 1994) to accommodate secondary suites, and the apperance of new zoning schedules to control and discipline their production, the decay of one of the most prominent features of modern regulation is revealed in the dissolution of RS-1 Zoning for single families. In this, and other ways, one of the most powerful and prominent regulatory feature of the modern era that was associated with land-extensive development has been radically amended and significantly undermined: something, once again, which is most apparent in the City of Vancouver, in the inner precinct of the Zone of Asian Resettlement which makes up the suburban areas of the city.
To see this it is only necessary to track how the area covered by the original RS-1 zone schedule, which most clearly embraced the social and design aspirations of the modern era, has steadily shrunk in size. For example a zoning map from 1973 would show that nearly 100 percent of the area regulated by RS-1 was covered by regulations set out in the early 1950s. Up to the the early 1970s about seventy percent of the city was shaded white to represent areas that were expected to abide by the single family housing code. (CVPD-30a). However the zoning maps of the late 1990s would show quite a different picture (CVPD-135a; CVPD-83). Presently half of the area that was once white is now shaded gray. This gray area designates RS-1 areas where secondary suites are now legally allowed. Furthermore, at least another thirty percent of the areas that was once RS-1 has been rezoned to RS-5 and 6 schedules. Located mostly on the west side of the city, this was done in order to control site coverage and address design problems that arose because of the diffusion of low- rise densification into the more afluent west side suburban parts of the city during the 1980s and 1990s. As a reaction of the profusion of large homes and the denuding of the existing landscape elborate zoning controls were put in place to control the densification of the single family areas that had largely escaped the densification process (CVC0-48; CV-27; VS-113; VS-143a). With housing prices so high, and incomes remaining stagnant the pressure to densify areas zoned for single family dwellings has moved beyond the outer and inner ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, and has now become a concern that is affecting nearly every municipality in Greater Vancouver (VS-206; VS-87abc; VS-80).
In one way or another, all three formats have been shaped by the interplay of the local property market, modified by demographic forces that involve changing immigration patterns as well as the emergence of a new middle class. Finally, all of these formats have been shaped by the provision of transportation infrastructure. The specialization of the densification process into one of three different formats in Vancouver shows that there can be considerable variation within a single region. and not just between cities. Furthermore, the important background context provided by pre=existing zoning schedules also comes out, as the three types of densification that have been described correspond to a specific type of zoning. For example, high-rise densification in Vancouver developed in areas zoned for high density dwellings, or on discarded industrial land - most of which was originally located in the core area of the region. By contrast, medium-rise formats originated in the transitional zone, which later became the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement. Here an RT Zoning schedule governed land use, creating a special transitional zoning that provided a cushion between areas zoning for high-rise and single family dwellings. Similary, low-rise formats were incubated in the RS-1 areas of the City of Vancouver. Like the transitional areas, which became a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, with low-rise densification, this area has since been transformed into the inner ring of a Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Even when similar market forces are shaping the real estate market in each city, different zoning regimes, contrasting immigration patterns, and variations in the configuration of the property market explain why the densification process may not develop uniformily in a single region. When looking at how densification unfolds in different urban regions this is even more the case. Even if the same marcro trends were at work in Toronto, Montreal or Winnipeg pre-existing zoning, and the configuration of demand and supply forces in each city create considerable room for variation. The presence of three distinctive kinds of densification in Vancouver, and the uneven distribution of low-rise, medium-rise, and high-rise densification, illustrates how much variation is possible.
That is why it is always important to take local institutions and impact of local regulation into account, particularly the regulatory cultures that shape and modify the economic, demographic and transportation and communications strategies for investment, that broadly shape the densification process. While demographics provide the necessary raw material for the densification process, and ultimately provide the bedrock for the evolution of the densification process, these influences are tempered by market forces which, in turn, are shaped by local zoning regulations Similarly, the same goes for the provision of transportation infrastructure. For example, zoning for higher densities around transit stations will affect how investment in transportation infrastructure will translate into the production of denser environments.
Furthermore, this will vary over time as well as space. Depending upon how these three broad modifying forces interact with each other in a specific time and place, and how they are modified by local insitutions, together this will determine how distinctive layers of denser urban space are laid out in a particular place. The operation of countervailing tendencies stands as a caution for those trying to set out the evolution of the densifiction process along a linear pathway. The interaction of the property market and demographics in the modern era shows how complex and variable the progression of the densification process can be. To see this it is only necessary to look at one dimension of the process revealed by the interaction of the property market and shifting demographics. Whereas young adults were the most important age cohort when the first wave of densification swept over Vancouver in the 1960s; from the mid-1980s onwards mature adults (i.e., families with children no longer at home) and a growing population of affluent seniors have become an increasingly important marketfor denser units.
This change will be significant when looking at the futher evolution of the densification process. Even in cities, such as Winnipeg, where densification is highly localized, it has been these seniors that has provided the market for the small but limited construction of new condominium units in the city and the only signs of densification in a city otherwise totally affected by land-extensive pattern of development (CMHC 1994B; 1995). In this regard the transformation of the City of White Rock exhibit how influential this fast growing market has become, something that is now widely acknowledged in regional and national studies that attempt to project future housing demand (Baxter 1989; Foot 1996; CMHC 1997i). Here the presence of the most concentrated number of seniors in the region, where the number of seniors now exceed the metropolitan average by three hundred percent, is strongly linked to the densification that has taken place here, as it can be for a great deal of the production of denser housing in the City of Langley and Abbotsford.
Finally, as already mentioned in the previous section, densification has flowed into the investment grooves established by the construction of new transit corridors in Vancouver. If past trends are any indication of future investment possibilities the provision of additional transit infrastructure is likely to play an even more important role in shaping the configuration the investment geography of Vancouver over the next decade. Since Skytrain opened in 1986, on a per capita basis, more investment has probably been poured into this transit corridor than anywhere else in North America. With two other transit corridors planned and a third possibly going to Richmond, up to four transit corridors may emerge Vancouver. If this happens, the transit orientation of additional investment in the production of urban space will climb far above the high levels of investment that already exist. Accordingly, if these transit oriented investment spines emerge, a 21st century version of the streetcar city will come into existence within the next twenty years (diagram one). As said before, if this happens, Vancouver will move into a league of its own, surpassing Toronto to become North America's interpretation of the rail centred city of which Stockholm would be its closest equivalent in Europe (Cervero 1996).
So what is noteworthy about the historical evolution of Vancouver is how each of the three material elements that shape the densification process kicks in to produce different types of environments. Far from being a linear or uniform progression the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver shows itself to be quite variegated over time and space, particularly if its outward diffusion form its place of origin in the West End of Vancouver is examined .
Having briefly described the geography of densification in Greater Vancouver it is now the appropriate time to review its history. Because no other neighbourhood has been affected by this process as long as the West End (or so profoundly transformed by it), a short history of the West End can be used to encapsulate the stages of development that can be used to describe the evolution of the densification process for the region as a whole (figures six A and B). At present about 40,000 people occupy nearly one square mile that make up the West End, which lies adjacent to Vancouver's downtown. Although the beginning of the postwar transformation of the West End began in the early 1950s, prewar traces of this process of transformation go as far back as 70 years ago, to the 1920s , when the first great surge in apartment construction took place. In part, it was fears about density, social decay, and falling property values (believed to accompany the invasion of apartments into single family districts) that thrust Vancouver out of its laissez-faire period of development into the modern era, when RS-1 zoning was created in the late 1920s, to make the areas of single detached units inviolate from the invasion of denser types of land use. So for Vancouver at least, there is an ironic twist to what happened. With the West End turned into the only high density residential area of the city, it had to be cordoned off from the rest of the city by a number of protective zones that were meant to cushion areas zoned for single family dwellings from salubrious influences of high density, thereby preventing the further degradation of property as well as the moral fiber of the community. It would not be until the early 1980s that this association was completely laid to rest by planners and the more informed public. Regardless of the motivation, the designation of the West End as the only area in the region zoned for high density residential development established the regulatory parameters for the total transformation of the West End in the 1950s into the densest residential neighbourhood in the region - since even into the middle of the 1950s the physical makeup of the West End was still predominately defined by single detached dwelling units. However, by 1997, this once common house type had become an endangered artifact of the Victorian city. Presently about one-hundred houses remain from the thousands that existed here in the 1950s now remain, or about point-zero-five percent of the entire neighbourhood's housing stock (compare this figure to table two). At present, of the 100 or so blocks that make up the West End, only one block, now known as Mole Hill (Petrie 1995) survives as the only intact block of single -detached dwellings units. As such it remains the last redoubt of the suburban neighbourhood that once existed here, and the only place which hasnot yet succumbed to the high-rise densification that enveloped the entire West End between 1957 and 1970 (McAfee 1967; 1972).
Over the next forty years this predominantly low rise neighbourhood of single-detached dwelling units would be transformed into Canada's most famous high-rise precinct. Furthermore, what also made the West End unique was that unlike most other contemporary high-rise apartment areas, no subsidies had to be given to feul the massive private redevelopment that took place here (Gaylor 1971). From the ultimate bourgeois suburb (Gibson 1972; Robertson 1977), it was, for some, transformed into its symbolic opposite, as the West End becme identified with the jet set and glamorous high-rise living (Forbes 1970; VP-18). In retrospect, as early as the 1950s the West End would stand out as a precurssor of the urban spectacle that would later grip the entire core of the city in the 1980s, when the postmodern regulation mutated into its current market and entertainment driven form. Thus, even in the 1950s the quest for beauty and leisure and not utility, or the concerns of child rearing and work, would become one of the defining aspects of the regulation of the West End. Thus, even in the 1950s the West End would foreshadow much of what would follow in the 1990s, as the quest for beauty and leisure, not the responsibilities and burdens of child-rearing, began to influence the evolution of zoning protocols (CVPD-1).
Thus not only has the West End been affected by the densification process longer than anywhere else in the region. As a result no other neighbourhood has been more radically transformed by the densification process than the West End. In turn, this explains why the West End was regarded as such an anomaly in the modern era. The sociological transformation of urban space that accompanied its physical transformation was problematic for modern planners since density was closely associated with deviance and urban pathology. Therefore, how planners attempted to cope with the densification of this neighbourhood reveals a great deal about the limitation of modern regulation. That is why the West End is both a symbolic marker and a regulatory touchstone that can be used to explore the relation that exists between densification, modernism and the postmodern regulation of space. For what happened here in the 50s and 60s would foreshadow what would later happen in the rest of the region during the 70s and 80s.
From a regulatory perspective, the modernist bias against density and the early postmodern aesthetic reaction to high-rise living produced a great deal of ambivalence about the West End in the public's mind, as well within professional planning discourse (VP-16a; VS-33). Although at times the West End was portrayed in a glamorous light, more often than not, it was regarded with unease and suspicion by planners and citizens. Particularly for the new middle class, which first came into existence as an identifiable social group in the late 1960s, the West End became an object of derision and ridicule. Functioning as a lightning rod for the postmodern reaction to the way that the modernist accommodation to the first densification wave, the West End provoked the search for an alternative format for the production of denser spaces. Albeit in a negative way, the West End nevertheless acted as a catalyst for much of the experimentation in medium-rise densification take was to develop in reaction to the high-rise form of densification which the West End stood for. In this way, paradoxically, the West End helped give birth to its antithesis, as middle-class activists saw the construction of medium-rise landscapes as an antidote to what was happening in the West End. Indeed, for most of the first phase of the postmodern transformation of Vancouver the West End was held in low regard by planners and citizens alike. Only in the 1980s, with the revision of the postmodern aesthetic and the creation of a new economic base for the core area of the region did this change. Rather than being reviled in postmodern discourse, as it was in the 1970s, in the 1980s, but more so in the 1990s (Durning 1996), it has become a symbol for the livable and sustainable city rather than its antithesis -- even receiving the seal of approval from the doyenne of postmodernism herself -- Jane Jacobs.
Last of all, because no other neighourhood in Vancouver has gone through every phase of development in the evolution of the densification process it is possible to regard the West End as an end point that can be used to establish a series of benchmarks for calibrating the different stages in the transformation of the built environment brought about by the densification process. This can be done by looking at the changes in the composition of the housing stock in the West End. Whereas at one time nearly one-hundred percent of the housing stock was made up of single-detached dwelling, at present they only number point zero five percent of all dwelling units. Using the movement from one extreme to the other as markers of the evolution of the densification process four distinct stages in the physical transformation of the built environment of the West End can be identified and then used to chart out the progression of the densification process elsewhere in the region.
The first stage can be described as one of emergence. This began in the second decade of the twentieth century and continued into the 1920s and 1930s when purpose built apartments became a noticeable but subsidiary part of the built environment in the West End. The ascendant stage began in 1940s and 1950s. This happened when the construction of purpose built multiple dwelling units began to consistently replace the existing stock of single-detached units. Simultaneously, a weaker form of densification was also taking place in the West End, as large houses were being converted into boarding houses. Nonetheless, as the ascendant stage progressed single-detached units were gradually replaced by apartments, preparing the way for the next stage. The third stage that followed can be described as one of dominance. As the word suggests, this stage began in the West End when apartments became the dominant house type. With regard to high-rise and medium-rise densification, this occurs when less than fifty percent of the housing stock is made up of single detached units. For the West End this stage began in the 1950s and lasted into the early 1970s.
There is the fourth and final stage. It can be described as one of maturation. This stage comes into existence when denser housing accommodation clearly becomes overwhelmingly predominant. From here on in changes in house form are incremental. Usually there is no further rapid change in the built environment. For the West End this happened in the early 1970s. For example, during 1973 new zoning introduced which slowed down the rate of change (CVPD-35). As a result, over the past 25 years there has been little alteration to the existing morphology of the West End. Since that time change has been been modest and gradual, something which was further emphasized in the most recent zoning amendments that were put in place in 1989 (CVPD-77; CVPD-89).
While these markers are only of limited value when tracking low-rise forms of densification, they do allow the advance of densification process to be measured fairly accurately during the modern era since the production of denser housing forms generally appeared as high-rise or medium-rise apartments.
Applying these markers to the City of Vancouver, 1954 marks the beginning of the ascendant phase. Largely because of the redevelopment of the West End the number of new apartment units surpassed the production of single-detached dwellings for the first time in the city. Just as with the West End, a stage of dominance was achieved in the city in 1971, when the proportion of single-detached units making up the city's housing stock fell below fifty percent for the first time.
---------------------------------Figure Two----------------------------------------
With the exception of Kerrisdale, South Granville Street and the Marpole area (until the late 1960s), at this time the majority of new apartment construction in the City of Vancouver was confined to The West End. However, by the early 1970s, apartment construction was beginning to filter into the transitional - and mixed use neighbourhoods that surrounded Downtown Vancouver. By the middle of the 1960s apartment construction had even leap-frogged across the zone of single-detached homes that made up the suburban (or non core) area of the City of Vancouver as high-rise apartments became a characteristic feature of the the inner suburbs as well(City of Burnaby 1969).
When moving from the city to the region, 1962 becomes a watershed year for the progression of the densification process. In the early 1960s apartment construction in the suburbs takes the densification process into its emergent phase. This happened when the number of apartments constructed in the suburbs doubled, as apartment starts climbed from 628 units in 1961 to 1147 units in 1962. Forty years after this had happened in the West End, and nearly ten years after this stage was reached for the City of Vancouver, this would happen for the region as a whole in 1962. From this moment onwards, the densification process would speed up. Barely five years the region had entered the emergent phase, it began to move into the next stage. Consequently, during the mid-1960s densification had entered into its ascendant stage.
By the late 1960s four large suburban satellite zones for apartments had come into existence outside the City of Vancouver: two on the North Shore, one by Ambleside beach in the City of West Vancouver and the other across the harbour from downtown Vancouver, in the City of North Vancouver. The other two remaining satellites were located to the east, in the Midtown section of New Westminister and the Central Park precinct in Burnaby.
By 1971, not only was high-rise densification physically altering the City of Vancouver, it was also now transforming the physical morphology of the inner suburbs. By 1991, twenty years after densification had become dominant within the City of Vancouver, this next stage in the densification process would be reached by the region as a whole, as the percentage of the housing units made up of single-detached units fell to fifty percent for the region as a whole. Since 1991, the process has accelerated. In 1996 the number of single-detached units had fallen to 45 percent (See table two). And within the core of the region, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of dwelling units made up of single-detached units had fallen to about 27 percent.
At present, only the Montreal urban region has a larger percentage of denser housing units. And if present trends continue, Vancouver may soon exceed Montreal in this regard. What this rapid densification reveals is that Vancouver is so far the only large urban region in North America to unequivocally switch over from a land-extensive pattern of development to one which is land-intensive. Unlike most other North American cities, where densification appears as a secondary influence with regard to the production of space, in Vancouver densification has become a dominant force in this regard. In fact, densification has become so intense in Vancouver that it has now begun to spill out past the commuter zone. Unlike the exurban fringe of Toronto or Montreal, where a bimodal pattern exists -- which is why the porportion of single-detached units making up the housing stock of these exurban areas often range somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of all starts-- in the exurban fringes of Vancouver this percentage is much lower. With the proportion of single-detached usually resting below 50 percent in most exurban areas of Vancouver, the gap between the the core and exurbia is not as great as in other cities. Instead, housing projections suggest that the rift between the core and the periphery may diminish over time rather than widen, as is now the case in Toronto and Montreal.
Densification therefore casts a much longer shadow over Vancouver's hinterland. For example in Abbotsford, which is the largest exurban hinterland community in Greater Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached dwellings fell from 61 percent in 1991 to 58 percent in 1996. Furthermore, in the future the porportion of single-detached units in Abbotsford is forecast to fall below 50 percent shortly after the year 2000, with the percentage of single-detached units expected to drop to around 45 percent by the year 2021. The same trend line can be seen in Squamish or even Kelowna, which is a five hour drive away from Vancouver.
The intensity of the densification process in Greater Vancouver can be gauged by looking at population figures as well as housing statistics. Using population figures from the 1996 Census (SC-18), comparisons within and between urban regions reveal how strong this transformation has become in Vancouver. Even though densification now dominates all parts of Greater Vancouver, the most recent population figures for the City of Vancouver show that the city still remains the epicenter for this process. Although population increases in the city were below the regional average, nontheless, in light of the fact the City of Vancouver was completely developed, the increase in population was quite substantial. What is remarkable is that although the City of Vancouver did not grow as fast as the region, the city still grew faster than the metropolitan average for all Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada between 1991 and 1996.
Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the population of the City of Vancouver grew by eight-point-nine percent, or about sixty-two percent of the metropolitan growth rate, which was fourteen point-three percent. This rate of growth was 50 percent above the average for all metropolitan areas in Canada. Still, the impressive growth of the city was overshadowed by the even stronger growth rate of the region. It is only when comparisons are made between the core area of different urban regions that the intensity of the densification process in the City of Vancouver can be fully appreciated. Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the City of Vancouver grew nearly three times faster than its closest core rivals. While the population of the City of Vancouver nearly increased by nine percent, the old City of Toronto only grew by two-point-nine percent. At the same time the City of Montreal declined by point-zero-one percent. Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa only grew by about three percent.
More detailed examination of the latest population figures also reveal something about the densification of the the inner suburbs of Vancouver, particularly Burnaby and New Westminister. Burnaby, which, like Vancouver, is almost completely developed, grew by twelve-point-eight percent between 1991 and 1996; and in New Westminister, which is completely developed as well (functioning more as a satellite city rather than a suburb), the population grew by thirteen-point-two percent. Like Vancouver, what is particularly noteworthy about New Westminister is that such a high rate of growth is occurring where the land base is already completely developed. Consequently all growth in New Westminister involved some form of densification. What is also interesting about the growth of New Westminister (and some other suburban communities) is that current populations levels have already exceed the 2021 projections set out by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (July 1996).
In New Westminister, for example, currently approved or proposed developments are expected to take the city's population up to 84,000 -- or 5,600 above the GVRD (July 1996) assignment of 78,783. What is just as intriguing about this is that the realization of this level of development will take urban densities in New Westminister past those that exist in the City of Vancouver for the first time. At present urban densities in New Westminister are only 71 percent of those in the City of Vancouver, but if all the predicted development that is forecast for New Westminister takes place, urban densities will exceed those in the City of Vancouver by a slight margin. Meanwhile, if Burnaby simply complies with GVRD allocations urban densities will approach those of the City of Vancouver in 1996.
Just as intriguing, are the population projections for White Rock, the City of North Vancouver and the City of Langley. None of these cities are in the area designated by the region for more compact growth, yet they are growing faster than regional projections. It is important to note that this growth is land-intensive rather than land-extensive, and that it is occurring on the fringes of the region rather than in the core. For example the GVRD projected that the population of the City of White Rock would grow to 17,997 by 2021; however by 1996 the population has already reached 17,210. Similar densification is taking place in the City of North Vancouver. In this case projections for 2021 set earlier in the 1990s by the Greater Vancouver Regional Governemnt may exceeded by several thousand. What is more interesting is that while some municipalities are resisting the goals set by the region for densification, other suburban localities, like Richmond, are demanding more densification than they were allocated in the regional plan (VS-203a). All this can be taken as further evidence of the generalized nature of the densification process in Greater Vancouver ,and a sign of its intensity, with the core areas, the suburbs and the exurban areas participating in this restructuring.
3:5 - Variations on a theme: How densification in Vancouver corresponds to what is transpiring in other North American cities - looking at variations in the real estate markets of Edmonton, Winnipeg and Seattle and San Francisco in relation to Vancouver.
If the variation of property values that exist within a single region are further studied differences between the centre and periphery of the region can reveal something about the intensity and configuration of the densification process if comparisons are made with other cities. Except for some examples of gentrification, in which the middle class is able to take advantage of the existence of a rent gap to increase its consumption of space (Smith 1984), there appears appear to be a correlation between rising rather than falling property values and the reconcentration or dispersion of investment capital. When higher values are registered in the core areas of the region the necessary market preconditions for the initiation of a land-intensive regime are generally realized. Coversely, when property values in the core area fall in relation to the perhiphery, not only will more land-extensive pattern of investment become more significant, as well, it appears that low-rise forms of densification become more important. How steep the price gradient between the core and the periphery is may also tell us something about the intensity of the densification process. When Property values in the periphery are higher than the core, and the price gradient between the core and periphery is relatively flat, powerful centrifugal market forces are likely to be operating, indicating that residential capital is probably dispersing to the periphery of an urban region rather than concentrating in its core. Similarly, an inverse relation applies when core values are higher, and the gradient between the core and periphery is steeper.
Consequently, when core residential property values soar above the metropolitan average densification can be expected to be more entrenched because of the operation of these market forces. Conversely, when core residential property values fall below the regional average land-extensive rather than land-intensive patterns of investment are more likely to predominate. Also, in urban regions such as Toronto, where there are high values in both the core and the exurban periphery, the price variations that can be observed show how the configuration of the urban land market may lead to the creation of a bi-modal pattern of investment: where land-intensive and land-extensive patterns of development co-exist with each other in the same region, but where no one pattern necessarily dominates.
These price gradients are also useful to look at because they can be used as indicators which can tell us something about how intense or dispersed the pressure for densification will be in a city, and where in a specific urban region the pressure for redevelopment is likely to be the strongest. These gradients are also useful guideposts when looking at differences between Canadian and American cities, particularly when differences in the price gap that exists between the suburban, exurban and core areas of the city are compared (Goldberg and Mercer 1986).
Again, regarding Canada's largest cities, the only exceptions that really stand out are Edmonton and Winnipeg, with the gap much more in evidence in Winnipeg than it is in Edmonton, if differences between core, suburban and exurban housing prices are compared. For example in a Summer survey of housing prices by ReMax the average value of a home sold in the core area of Edmonton was approximately $104,000, or about 7% below the region wide average, while the average selling price of a home in one of the region's largest exurban communities, Sherwood Park, was $145,000. Not surprisingly the dispersion of residential construction is much more pronounced in Edmonton than it is in Calgary, where property values are much higher in the core area (Edmonton Journal 1997b).
However, as stated before, the most obvious exception to the core periphery gap is Winnipeg. If there is a twenty-nine percent difference between the core and the periphery of Edmonton, the gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg is much greater. While the average selling price of a MLS listing for Winnipeg in 1996 was approximately $90,000 and the median value of a new home in the suburban part of the city was about $135,000, for vast areas of the core house prices averaged around $30,000, with the average for some inner city neighbourhoods nearly falling to $20,000. Instead of a difference of twenty-nine percent, which was the one that was observed in Edmonton, the price gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg was over four-hundred percent. Indeed, in a walk through the West Broadway Neighbourhood a house was spotted that was selling for as low as $14,900. While the price gap in Edmonton indicated that investment was dispersing, the relatively small gap between the core and the regional average meant that the inner city was still a viable place for capital investment. In contrast to this, the chasm that exists between core and suburban values in Winnipeg discloses a market that can neither support any new construction nor even any major renovations of the existing housing stock. With housing values falling by 30 percent in two large inner city neighbourhoods (the West End and Point Douglas) between 1991 and 1996 while the average price in the city rose by five percent, this combined with systemic red lining (PI-56) indicate that the real estate market in much of the inner city has gone wild and is now so weak that regular institutions that normally stabilize and protect property values have abandoned much of the inner city. Not only has this undermined the exchange value of much of the inner city housing stock, but also its use value as well, since the only rational action for an owner not living in a unit is to milk a housing unit for as much rent as possible without engaging in any maintenance or repairs. What can only follow from this is rapid decay and obsolescence of the existing of the housing stock and its eventual abandonment. Signs of this are already appearing in the inner city as some sites are reverting to prairie.
Nowhere else in Canada are such conditions found. Even if there was no red-lining, which would mean that at least a property could be insured, the fact that prices are so low means that the market actually serves to repel new investment. Even with a below market construction costs of $60 a square foot, any new construction in much of the core would immediately be penalized and discounted by at least fifty percent, if not more, as soon as the investment were made. What is also disturbing is how closely Winnipeg's inner city parallels Detroit's. Perhaps no where else in the United States has a large urban centre been so severely affected by capital abandonment and dispersion. With floor prices in some of the worst neighbourhoods in Detroit -- such as the Martin Luther Area -- going for about $15,000 Canadian, the property markets of both cities seem to mirror each other (Refer to SNC, Vol.2, Chpt. 3, Note 168). And as already pointed out, there are even some houses on the market in Winnipeg which actually fall below this floor. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that what denser accommodation is being built in Winnipeg follows the American pattern. Thus most investment in denser housing is now located in the periphery rather than the core of Winnipeg, since this is where most of the very limited condominium construction in the city is taking place.
Although Winnipeg is an extreme case in point, some of the core area markets in Edmonton and Montreal are problematic as well. However, here land-extensive development has not yet produced the level of regional dysfunction that is now so apparent in Winnipeg.
Because of their long touted commonalties, comparing Vancouver with Seattle provides another vantage point to look at the unique situation of Vancouver. Except for New York City, Chicago, San Francisco or Miami Beach -- where significant high-rise densification is taking place in the core of the urban region, in most other American cities densification is low-rise, and it more likely to be found in the periphery rather than in the core of each region. In this regard, Seattle appears to occupy a middle position. Some high-rise residential construction is taking place. Similarly, construction figures, and housing prices for various parts of the region indicate that a bi-modal pattern of investment is emerging. Although there are some similarities with the pattern that can be seen in Toronto's, it is much weaker than Toronto in terms of the amount of investment that is taking place in the core. This is even more the case when residential investment in the core area of Seattle is compared with Vancouver.
Still, if the three internal variables that shape the densification process are examined for Seattle, despite some reconcentration of capital in the core, housing starts, property values and investment patterns show that the region remains influenced more by land-extensive development. Although some densification is taking place, it plays a secondary role in the shaping of the urban morphology of this region.
Hence, unlike Vancouver (with the exception of West Vancouver -- which is a much smaller market in regional terms), the City of Seattle ($192,952) does not yet have the highest property values in the region. While the urban core of Seattle has the second highest values, it still trails far behind the East Shore, where values hover around $270,593 in the mid 90s.
If Seattle does move towards a more land-intensive regime, it will be starting from a position occuppied by Vancouver forty years ago, when reinvestment was just beginning to take place in Vancouver's West End. So there is a considerable lag between each region, which will take a long time time to diminish.
Up to the 1960s, the West End stood out as an isolated island of land-intensive development in a sea of land-extensive development. As with Seattle at the present time, most investment was geared towards the expansion of the suburbs rather than the reconcentration of residential capital into the core. Just as rising property assessments for the West End during the 1950s served as a harbinger of the densification that would later affect the entire region, so too for Seattle, the recent inflation in property values within the City of Seattle, and the increased residential investment that has accompanied this price rise, may serve as sign that an important watershed may have been passed in Seattle, and that densification could now become an important feature in the development of this region. But again, this remains to be seen.
Even if densification advances in Seattle, it is not likely to evolve in eactly the same fashion that it has in Vancouver. For instance if we look at the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver, we see that during the late 1950s and early 1960s the West End was the only large built up area of the city where assessment values were rising dramatically rather than remaining stable or declining. Although core values in Seattle are now rising, other areas in the region, such as Belluvue, are experiencing significant re-investment. And although more high-rise residential towers are being built in neighbourhoods such as Belltown, there is still no equivalent to the West End in Seattle, and there may well never be.
Although a Zone Of Middle Class Resettlement has emerged in Seattle, this zone is not as developed as Vancouver's. Although recent price rises may change this, for most of the 1990s, the price differential between the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement in Vancouver was much greater than its counterpart in Seattle. Unlike Seattle, except for a few small pockets, property values in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, are generally well above the metropolitan average for Vancouver. This is less so in Seattle.
The difference between both cities makes it possible to speculate that property markets in Seattle support a far less intense form of densification, densification which may also be less focussed upon the core of the region. While many exurban markets in Seattle approach or exceed the core (ie. the City of Seattle), in Vancouver the opposite holds true. In most exurban localities within Greater Vancouver, the price of a single-detached unit (for instance in places such as the District of Langley, Surrey or Maple Ridge) are only a third or half of the average price that can be found in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement.
However, since this section was written the real estate market has exploded because of the high-tech boom. If a great deal of the price increase in Vancouver can be related the movement of wealthy immigrants into the city, in Seattle’s case this has to do with the migration of this high-tech new middle class into the city. Now, just as with Vancouver, displacement has beome an important issue. Also, with rising property values high-rise residential in the Core has become visible for the first time. Although at present, the scale of development was where the West End was in the late 50’s.
Since this neighbourhood once had some of the lowest property values in the region, what has happened to Strathcona over the past forty years reveal how powerful densification has become in Vancouver. In the 1950s this area was slated for urban renewal because of weak property values. However, by the 1990s the average value of a home in Strathcona stood eleven percent above the metropolitan average and approximately thirty percent above average values that were present in peripheral areas in the region, such as Maple Ridge and Surrey. Because of zoning, and the location of this neighbourhood in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, densification has not taken the high-rise format that predominates in the downtown peninsula. Instead incremental gentrification has been the vector followed by the densification process here. Although densification in Strathcona has not brought about a dramatic increase in the population, it has resulted in substantial reinvestment in the existing building stock, as well as rising property values.
To conclude, even though densification has been far more influential in Canada, it would be inaccurate to say that densification in North America is primarily a Canadian phenomenon. Again, comparing densification ratios helps to point this out. In some American cities, such as Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC, the existence higher densification ratios reveals that market pressure for the production of denser built environments is building up. Favourable markets, along with the alignment of other factors that support densification, could create a background context for the production of denser environments in the United States which is similar to Canada'a. If a densification ratio of three is used as a signpost to mark a space of transition between land-extensive and land-intensive development, there are some American cities which fall into this orbit. However, as national averages indicate, overall, market forces favour densification more in Canada than in the United States. For example, if we look at house prices for 1997, the densification ratio in Canada (3.1) stands just slightly above this benchmark figure, while the densification ratio for the United States (2.7) rests slightly below this figure (Rhodes 1997). What these numbers suggest is that Canada has advanced further down the road towards urban densification. Likewise, a densification ratio of 2.7 suggests that densification may soon be entering a watershed in the United States, but that land-extensive development is still clearly dominant.
These ratios appear less abstract and arbitrary if they are linked to the production of housing. This can be seen in the production of single-detached units for each country. While the percentage of new housing starts in Canada hovered aroun 55 percent for most of the 1990s, in the United States single-detached units acounted for a much larger percentage of housing starts, with about 80 percent of all starts made up of single-detached units.
Although there is no one-to-one correspondence between the rise and fall of this ratio and the type of housing starts that result, if a comparison is made with the United States, there seems to be a correlation between higher densification ratios in Canada and the production of a lower number of single-detached units. Recent data on housing supports this claim. For example, in the third quarter of 1997 single-detached units in the United States (G/M 1997zl) accounted for about eighty percent of all housing starts, compared to about sixty percent for Canada (G/M 1997zq). What these figures suggest is that densification in the United States is till only an emergent phenomenon. By contrast, in Canada, the same figues suggest that densification has become an ascendant force in the reshaping of the city. At pesent, not only is densification considerably weaker in the United States than it is in Canada, it also configured differently, with a differentphysical and geographic format that is only partially revealed by comparing densification ratios but which becomes more apparent when looking at the production of different house forms and where they are located. For example, it appears that investment in new strata title units in the United States are much likely to be found along the exurban fringe rather than in the core, as is more the case for Canada -- Winnipeg being one notable exception to this (Mckenzie 1994).
These national differences come into clear relief if Vancouver is compared to San Francisco rather than Seattle, since this is the city where the property market, the provision of transportation and demographics have created the most favourable configuration for densification in the United States. Even though the City of San Francisco has a densification ratio of four-point-five, and is now the most expensive housing market in the United States, densification in San Francisco still remains muted in comparison to Vancouver. While the densification ratio for the City of San Francisco indicates that densification exerts a dominant influence upon the restructuring of urban space, this does not yet apply to the entire region, where housing starts and estimates of the densification ratio for the rest of the Bay Area suggest that densification is only ascendant or emergent. This stands in marked contrast to Vancouver, where densification is dominant throughout the entire region.
Until recently, at least, further comparisons show that the densification ratio for the core area of San Francisco was probably below that of Vancouver. Making a rough estimate, in the mid-90s the densification ratio for a single-detached home in the City of Vancouver may have peaked as high as fifteen on the west side of the city and probably hovered between seven and eight on the east side. For the city as a whole, a high-rise condominium (with two bedrooms) probably rose to about eight. Even the cheapest accommodation available -- a low-rise two bedroom condominium -- would have only taken the densification ratio down to about four. By comparison, for the City of San Franscisco, the overall average for single-detached dwelling units was about four-point-five, a ratio that was only then equivalent to the low, rather than than high end of the market, in the City of Vancouver (CMHC 1997a).
Moreover, if we look at housing figures for greater San Francisco, and not just the city proper (except for the Silicon Valley), the densification ratio drops dramatically in the adjacent counties that surround the city. For example, across the bay, in the City of Oakland, the densification ratio falls to three, and then falls as low as two-point-nine in the Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa area, in the North East quadrant of the region. Again, this may be one reason why so little development has taken place around BART. Even though it has been in operation for nearly 30 years, until quite recently hardly any suburban development has occurred. Contrast this with Vancouver, where development has mushroomed along Vancouver's Skytrain line, although the system has only been in operation for ten years.
Thus, Vancouver is not alone. But with the highest densification ratio on the continent, and the continent most active transit corridors, no other major city is being so rapidly reconfigured into a late twentieth century version of the early twentieth century street car city. For this reason, it is misleading to view Vancouver as a satellite of Portland and Seattle. Naive notions about a larger regional entity called Cascadia -- an entity based upon propinquity and climate -- can only distract attention away from the forces that are transforming Vancouver into a singularly unique urban region. Although there are some signs of densification in Seattle and Portland, their movement in this direction is of an entirely different order. And while there are some philosophic similarities between the type of postmodern regulation which govern these three cities, quite different demographic and economic influences are at work which make each city distinctive and separate. Indeed even the attempt to establish some equivalence between Portland and Seattle may be overplayed. Still, whatever the similarities between Portland and Seattle, it is clear that Vancouver is travelling in a direction that is quite different from these other two cities (Reid 1992, Summer/Fall pp. 14-17; VS-318).
In fact, if the social ecology and the economic base of each city are looked at more closely, Vancouver probably has a closer affinity to Miami than either Portland or Seattle. Similarly, when looking at the densification process, Vancouver has more in common with Toronto and San Francisco or Washington DC. than it does with either Portland or Seattle.
If comparisions are to be made, besides Miami, Vancouver is closer to San Francisco or Washington D.C. than to either Seattle or Portland. Regardless of the comparisons that are made, Vancouver presently stands apart from all other North American cities because both its core and the periphery are being reshaped by densification. Unlike other urban regions, densification has become a dominant feature of the this region, something which sets Vancouver apart from all other cities for the time being.
3: 6 - Concluding remarks and observations
In closing, two contrasting patterns of capital investment have shaped the development of the Canadain city since 1945. Furthermore, each of these investment regimes were also connected to a corresponding regularoy regime, one which set the political, social and cultural contexts for the reproduction of land-extensive (suburbanization) and land-intensive (densification) development. One important difference that was noted in the evolution of each regime was the uneven progression of the land-intensive patterns of development in comparison to the land-entensive pattern which preceded it.
Other factors which shaped each regime were also duly noted. For example, the link that exists between the advance of bureaucratic rule, the rise of modern regulation, and the reproduction of land-extensive development patterns of development was drawn out. In Canada this was most clearly embodied in the actions of a triumphant and all powerful federal state, since it played the central role in midwiving land-extensive development. The rules for suburban development, and the standards for land-extensive development that it set up, established a remarkably uniform pattern of development across the country. This would stand in contrast to the land-intensive development that followed atterwards, when the provinces would exert more control over urban development. The creation of a credit market for the purchase of new homes was probably the most significant action taken by the federal governent As a whole array of stiuplations followed from access to this credit, the production of housing was linked to the policies and programs initiated by the federal governemtnt. In this way a mass market for single-detached dwelling units was created, one which became the central feature of land-extensive development.
In true fordist fashion, the production of space was largely shaped by one central agency which, in this case, was CMHC. n the context of advancing bureaucratic rule, urban development was standardized This would change in the postmodern era as provincial governments and market forces would free themselves from the bureaucratic structures that had been created by the federal government. In part this change would even be encapsulated in the name change of CMHC in the postmodern era, as Central Mortgage and Housing was renamed the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In the modern era the provinces were too underdeveloped to challenge the Federal Government's de facto management of urban development. Lacking fiscal and human resources to challenge to federal agencies like CMHC, bureaucratic norms increasingly influenced the way that space was organized in the city. This changed in the postmodern era, as the influence of the federal government receded and that of the provinces expanded. This along with the fragmentation of the urban system that came with globalization and free trade, produced a much more polarized pattern of development (Little 1997k, 1997l; G/M 1997zb VS-361).
Along with the configuration created by the re-articulation of the three material variables that shape the densification process, an uneven and polarized development pattern emerged that became a defining feature of the postmodern era.
These changed affected the geographic alignment of classes within the region in several ways. Particularly so for the new middle class. During the modern era this class did not even exist. However, in the postmodern era it would become a significant force for change in the in the inner city and exurban parts of the region. Indeed, across the country this new middle class would play a critical role in the densification of the core areas of most Canadian cities. Still, because of the centralization of decision making functions and the concentration of knowledge workers into only a few select cities, the impact of this class would be quite uneven. Most noticeable in Toronto and Vancouver, but far less so in places such as Winnipeg, the uneven development of this class reflects the more polarized development that currently defines the restructuring of the postmodern city. This would surface in a variety of ways. For example, in the diffusion of postmodern tenure form. Here, for instance, there is a correlation that can be drawn out between the production of strata title units in general and more specifically, their concentration in the inner-city, and the prominence of the new middle class in a particular city. What can be shown from this, is that there is a close correlation between the spread of strata title units in the inner city and the reconcentration of the middle class into the core of the city.
A comparison between tables two and three also reveals something about the polarized development that has taken place in the postmodern era. With the exception of Montreal, for instance, the variations in single-detached units during the modern era were not as nearly as large as the one that can now be observed for the production of strata title units. This gap here is quite revealing, as it provides further corroboration of the differences that exist between these two models of urban development, and the different investment geographies that have been created For example, in the middle of the 1990s the Winnipeg market only absorbed 10 new strata title units per month, and most of these units were located in low-rise developments situated in the outer suburbs (CMHC 1994b). In Calgary the supply and demand structure is quite different. By 1998 the production of strata title units moved up to at least 250 per month (Calgary Herald 1997M). Furthermore, unlike Winnipeg a large proportion of these units were being constructed in the inner city. Lastly there is Vancouver. Here, the production of of strata title units are the norm rather than the exception. Although a disproportionate number are constructed in the region's core, strata title units make up the majority of housing units throughout the region. Not surprisingly, the production of strata title units often exceeds 1000 units a month (CMHC 1997). While the proportion of new single-detached units produced in Vancouver and Winnipeg may have diverged by ten or twenty percent in the modern era, this variations pales besides the variation that can now be observed with regard to the production of strata title units in each city. Rather than citing a difference of ten or twenty percent when comparing the production of strata title units in each the difference can only now be measured by a factor of two, or a difference of nearly 1000 percent.
Finally the uniformity of the first mode of urban development and the polarization that is present in the second emerges more clearly when looking at the demographics of the Canadian city in the postmodern era VS-361). Again Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrate the range of variation that exists. During the modern era, the baby boom provided a fairly uniform demographic base to support the production of land-extensive housing forms in child-centered suburbs across the country. Even though immigration rose to new highs during modern period, most population growth was generated internally because of the unprecedented, but temporary reverasal, in the fall of the birth rate.
Particulary in the mid 1980s this changed. As the birth rate declined to new lows, even in years which had high unemployment levels, the level of immigration remained high. Presently immigration rather than natural increase account for most of the population growth that is taking place in Canada. Unlike the modern era, when a rising birth rate created a more uniform rate of population growth, in the postmodern era this changed as immigration became more crucial to the continued growth of the population. With the overwhelmingly majority of immigrants going to a few select cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, population growth has become much more polarized (VS-361). Changes made to the immigration act since 1986 have further amplified this polarization. With the introduction of a federal program to attract immigrants with capital an even greater number of immigrants have moved to places like Vancouver. This, in turn, has had a direct impact on the configuration of local real estate markets. Especially in the case of Vancouver, parts of the city have become articulated to some of the most expensive residential markets in the world. The emergence of a Zone of Asian Resettlement has been one result of this. In turn, as with the country as a whole, this has produced a considerable amount of internal polarization in the region, with displacement becominge generalized over much of the core area of Vancouver in the past ten years.
In Winnipeg, by contrast, the opposite is more the case. Although Winnipeg has not attracted very many investor class immigrants, until the beginning of the 1990s it was able to attract enough blue- and-pink collar immigrants into the core area of the city to maintain a floor with regard to property values. But since this time, these immigrants have declined in number. While immigrants in Vancouver were flooding into the core area of the region the opposite was happening to Winnipeg, with the impact further accentuated by the fact that overall immigration was declining at the same time. Consequently, rather than inflationary pressures being set off, deflationary forces were activated. Not surprisingly, property values in some inner city areas of Winnipeg which used to take many of these new immigrants expereinced declines of fifty percent. While there were other causes for the collapse of the real estate market in much of the inner city of Winnipeg during the 1990s, declining levels of immigration no doubt played a role in what happened. Although this decline may have bottomed out as the level of immigration has started to rise once more Winnipeg, while immigration levels have fallen in Vancouver, nontheless, the contrast impact and size of immigration in both Winnipeg and Vancouver reamins a key factor in polarized development patterns that can be observed in each city.
To conclude, changes in the urban land market -- as reflected in shifting densification rations -- changing demographics, and different patterns of infrastructure investment, have affected the organization of space. As shown in tables one and two, between 1981 and 1996, falling densification ratios have generally translated into increased demand for single-detached units. However, as the review of demographics and infrastructure investment have also shown, other forces can intervene to modify this trajectory.
The resurgence in land-extensive development that occured since the mid 80s suggests that other factors were at play as well, as does it diminution in the 1990s, as shown by the decline in the proportion of housing units made up of single-detached units, which accelerated in the 1990s, after almost coming to a halt in the 1980s. Although national figures are skewed by the intense densification experienced by Vancouver between 1991 and 1996, estimates for Toronto show that after a significant resurgence in land-extensive development in the 1980s, densification picked up some of its momentum while land-extensive development lost much of its steam (Peck 1995; CHMC 1997g).
What this flux also reveals is the polarization of development patterns. While most urban centres followed the same trajectory in the modern era, beginning in the late 70s and early 1980s, much more polarized patterns started to emerge. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by looking at increasing divergence between Winnipeg and Vancouver. While the densification ratio for Winnipeg remained around two -- which was the benchmark figure denoting land-extensive development -- in Vancouver the densification ratio soared above the historic benchmark figure of four -- which has been used as an historic guidepost to land-intensive development. As shifts in the production of new housing illustrate, these ratios are not abstractions, but useful indicators that tell us something about the configuration of the local real estate market and the impact this can have on the production of space.
Just as the densification ratios for Vancouver and Winnipeg became polarized, so too did the actual production of housing. For example, between 1991 and 1996 the densification ratio for Vancouver soared further upwards, past the benchmark reading of four; however, in Winnipeg's case the densification ratio remained stationary, hovering around the benchmark level of two. Not surprisingly, these diverging economic signals have translated into the production of two quite different built environments. Whereas the decline in single-detached units accelerated in Vancouver over this period, the opposite happened in Winnipeg. Here the proportion of single-detached units in increased rather than decreased.
Finally, between the two extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver, there exists a third pattern , one that has emerged since the 1980s. In Toronto and Ottawa most particularly and, to a lesser extent in Montreal, a bi-polar pattern of urban development has emerged. Here land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation have nearly equal weight in the organization of space. But here as well important differences can be detected. For example, even with the resurgence of land-extensive development in Toronto, compared to Montreal, development in Toronto is still weighted more towards more land-intensive development. While development in the core of the Toronto region acts as a powerful countervailing force, this is less the case for Montreal, where residential development in the core makes up a much smaller percentage of all new residential development in the region.
Elsewhere in the country, while land-extensive development strongly reasserted itself in Calgary and Edmonton during the early 1990s, rising housing prices in the late 1990s may mute this resurgence or turn it around. While the proportion of new single-detached units in Calgary and Edmonton exceeded Winnipeg for most of 1990s, this shift back to land-extensive development may be temporary. While housing prices in Winnipeg have continued to languish near the bottom since the late 70s, even as late as the early 1980s Calgary had the second highest housing prices in the country for a short while (Won 1997). With housing prices in Calgary becoming the fourth most expensive in the country in 1998, the effect of rising housing prices on new construction can be seen in the declining proportion of housing starts made up of single-detached units.
For example, many times in the 1990s the proportion of single-detached units constructed in Calgary exceeded 80 percent, but there are signs that this is beginning to drop. Even though CHMC is predicting that the highest number of single detached units ever produced in Calgary will be started in 1998, they will only make up 75 percent of the new housing stock, down over 10 percent from the relative peak experienced a few years earlier, when the percentage of new housing starts made up of single-detached dwellings approached 90 percent.
So far it appears that Winnipeg and Montreal are the only large urban areas (with over 500,000 in population) where a more land-extensive pattern development has become firmly entrenched.
Despite the dispersion of investment and the relative underinvestment in the core, even Edmonton shows some signs of a turnaround. For example, evidence of a slight resurgance in land-intensive development is suggested in the guidelines for increasing density in new sub-divisions and new measuring being considered for the densification of the city's mature suburbs. Here, as in the City of Vancouver's Zone of Asian Resetttlement, low-rise densification is becoming more noticeable. Just as with the suburban zone of the City of Vancouver, the adoption of postmodern zoning regimes to control site density, height and design features of infill and replacement housing in suburban areas of Edmonton provides evidence of this (Edmonton Journal 1997c). Furthermore, if ambitious plans for resettling downtown Edmonton are realized, further impetus will be given to high-rise and medium-rise densification in city. If this happens, it is possible that a bi-modal pattern of investment, that resembles what can now be seem in Ottawa and Toronto, might evolve here as well (City of Edmonton 1997).
Elsewhere on the Prairies, even in smaller centres like Saskatoon -- rising housing prices may limit the progression of land-extensive development, as housing prices Saskatoon have soared past Winnipeg's. Meanwhile, Regina is likely to move more in step with Winnipeg than Saskatoon or Calgary. With housing prices in Regina even lower than Winnipeg, and with up to thirty percent of all new residential development taking place outside the city limits the amount of dispersed development rivals what is taking place in Winnipeg (Regina Leader Post 1997a). As well, like Winnipeg, there is also a large and growing Native underclass in Regina, As with Winnipeg this hasprobably contributed to the exodus of middle-class residents from the core area of the city (Winnipeg Free Press 1997zc). Even so, although Regina appears to be a smaller scale version of Winnipeg, there are some differences. For instance institutional subsidies for land-extensive development appear to be less evident here. Indeed, some important differences in the institutional culture of each city suggest that more effort is being taken to arrest the flight of capital from the inner city in Regina. For example, with current subsidies adding up to as much as $9,000 dollars for the construction of new suburban homes in Winnipeg, there is a stronger institutional bias for dispersed development in Winnipeg than in Regina (Winnipeg Real Estate Board 1997).
Winnipeg is probably an anomaly in this regard. Unlike most other large urban centres, where developers and consumers increasingly have to contend with development cost charges on every new unit of housing ,in Winnipeg the opposite situation applies. Even though the city is reputed to have the highest property taxes in the country and one of the largest municipal debts, rather than levies being applied to shoulder some of the costs of new suburban development an array of subsidies are being provided by the city instead. With additional road infrastructure being built in the suburbs backlog on maintenance rises this pattern of growth has not only become inequitable, it has also become dysfunctional, as large parts of the housing stock in the core faces cannibalization and capital abandonment. The province has further aggravated this situation. Along with an inequitable tax structure for the region which penalizes the city while encouraging exurban development,subsidies given to highway construction, sewer and water utilities in the exurban parts of the region have produced a vicious cycle of dispersion. Not only is the core area of the region threatened by the bleeding out of capital investment and the dispersion of development, so too is the periphery of the region, as urban sprawl now threatens many productive economic activities that that exist within and help sustain the larger regional economy (E.g., Winnipeg Free Press 1997zd).
Market devaluation, housing abandonment and a general dispersion of activities on a scale that is only present in the most besieged American cities, like Detroit, mark the accummulation regime that now shapes investment in Winnipeg. Unless the province radically reconsiders existing policies and actively intervenes by either curtaining subsidies, pooling the costs and benefits of development for the entire region, or by formally limiting development, this dispersion is unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future. But this does not appear likely at the present moment, as the provincial government continues to subsidize exurban water and sewer infrastructure, and the city itself actively champions further suburban development. In the near term at least, that is why the institutional apparatus that frames and regulates the production of urban space will likey continue to encourage, rather than limit, dispersion in Winnipeg.
In addition to this, with the sharpest divergence between housing prices in the core and periphery in the country, the internal configuration of the property market is such that market impulses in Winnipeg are likely to remain quite resistant to the reconcentration of capital into the core of the region. Furthermore, with some of the lowest costs for operating an automobile and the second highest rate of automobile ownership in the country, this will make the generation of a more concentrated pattern of development all that more difficult. For as well as the institutional barriers, the continued subsidization of single-detached housing and the automobile in Winnipeg will continue to artificially lower the consumption costs of the two defining material artifacts of land-extensive development. This is why land-extensive development is likely to become more rather than less entrenched in Winnipeg over the next building cycle, further illustrating that the tale of development in Winnipeg and Vancouver is, indeed, a tale of two cities.
Chapter Three: Densification
3.0 - Definition of densification and opening statement
Densification refers to a pattern of investment that occurs when capital investment in the built environment becomes more concentrated. Rising land values, higher rents, and increased redevelopment are the most obvious signs of this new regime of accumulation.
Because of rising property values densification raises the capacity of land to extract rents, thereby increasing its capacity to absorb capital. Eventually, this creates the conditions for more concentrated investment to take place. Physically, this finds expression in the creation of distinctive high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise landscapes. At some stage, this may lead to an overall increase in population density, but this is not always the case, as the gentrification of some neighbourhoods well illustrates. Therefore, densification is not necessarily tied to rising population densities although it is often associated with this phenomena. However, in most cases both processes usually overlap and complement one another. As will be shown, population changes are but one of three different material variables which come into play and mold as well as define the densification process. Besides changing demographics, of which increased population density is just one possible manifestation, the other two variables that shape the densification process have to do with shifts in the urban land market and the adoption of different strategies for the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure.
There is, as a consequence of this, an economic, demographic and technological or institutional dimension to the evolution and progression of the densification process. Their interaction and relative strength in relation to each other will play a key role in determining the range and intensity of the densification process in a particular locality during a specific building cycle.
The economic dimension of this transformation is most clearly expressed in the operation of the urban land market. Shifting rates of immigration, or increases or decreases in the rate of natural population growth, and overall life cycle changes in the general population makeup the main features of the demographic dimension of the densification process, as all these demographic factors affect the demand for sparsely or densely configured housing forms. Finally, the technological and institutional dimension of the densification process surfaces when the impact of new transportation and communications infrastructure on patterns of investment in the built environment is examined.
When these three elements are looked at in relation to each other, from 1945 into the present two patterns of accumulation appear. From 1945 until the middle of the 1970s these three elements were locked into a program for accumulation which supported land-extensive patterns of development across the country. At the economic level this became apparent in the reconfiguration of the urban land market. The deflation in property values that was triggered by the Great Depression is the starting point for the incubation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation. Over the next 40 years, property values fell in relation to income. As a result, favourable economic conditions existed for large increases in the per capita consumption of urban land.
Similarly, there was a significant increase in the natural rate of population growth and a resumption of large-scale immigration. This increased the demand for more space extensive urban development, as can be seen in the demand and consumption of single-detached dwelling units at this time. And last of all, but not on the scale which was present in the United States, there was a massive reallocation of resources into road infrastructure after the war. As Pitman has stated (1997), cities that became entirely auto oriented tend to consume two to three times more space than those that remained configured around multi-modal systems of transportation systems. While all Canadian cities, with the exception of Toronto, begun to dismantle their public transit systems and reduce investment in public transit, there was not the same massive infusion of resources into the construction of highway and freeway infrastructure that facilitated the suburbanization of the city.
By the end of the 1950s, with the sole exception of Toronto, every streetcar line in the country had been dismantled. With the dissolution of the streetcar the main form giver of the streetcar era disappeared, and the city became more amoebae-like as the public transportation infrastructure that had given a definable form to the city, even in the period of laissez-faire development, was now dismantled, removing the last significant barrier to the unencumbered advance of land-extensive development by the late 1950s.
Not until the middle and late 1960s did the material and institutional base for this pattern of development begin to unravel as new investment patterns, ones that were now land-intensive rather than land-extensive, started to appear for the first time. Since the mid-60s densification has been a significant influence in three building cycles. During each of these cycles the built environment has been reshaped by the densification process, and new layers of dense urban tissue added to the existing cityscape. The first building cycle lasted from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. This was an inflationary period marked by rapidly escalating property values. It was also a time when shifting demographics were favourable for densification to take place across the entire country. As a result, the demand for apartment units surged everywhere, fueling the first wave of densification, which washed over every major city in the country. Since high-rise development became the defining feature of the first wave of land-intensive investment, the urban fabric of every major city in the country was radically altered. The second cycle began in the mid 80s. Unlike the first cycle, the second wave was shorter in duration, and more localized and uneven in its progression. During this second building cycle medium-rise development became more prominent, especially in Vancouver. Furthermore, unlike the earlier wave of land-intensive investment, strata-title rather than rental units were built. Except for Vancouver, this second wave only lasted lasted for about five years, running from 1985 to about 1990. However, in Vancouver, this second wave of investment continued up until 1997.
Presently, we are now experiencing a third building cycle. Since 1996 a third wave of investment has been building momentum in places such as Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary. While this third investment cycle may not become as pervasive as the first one in the 1960s, it may become more widespread than the second investment cycle that occurred in the 1980s, when land-intensive development was then principally confined to Canada's largest urban centres, and then, within these centres, with the exception of Vancouver, to the urban core of each city rather than the periphery.
There are several reasons for speculating why densification in this third building cycle may be more influential this time around. One reason has to do with the fiscal crisis of municipal governments. The arrival and popularization of new and pre-existing planning ideologies that encourage the management of growth and the adoption of regulations that promote low-rise densification is another new development which did not exist in the mid 1980s to the extent that it does now. Then there are changing demographics which are expected to support the production of denser housing. So even if the effects of deflation water down the land market, and reduce the densification ratio, these other forces which promote densification, which relate to investment in infrastructure and demographics, are now present, which was not the case in the 1980s, and these are forces that are expected to come increasingly into play in the 1990s and beyond.
While demographic shifts should become more important in the medium term, of all the factors that have been mentioned, the increasing inability of government to subsidize land-extensive development may turn out to be the most important development since the mid 1980s. At the same time, there has been renewed interest in experimentation with low-rise rather than medium-rise or high-rise formats. With infill housing becoming more acceptable in the suburbs, and the rise of the new urbanist movement, low-rise formats have become more prominent in many greenfield developments over the past few years (Gabor and Lewinberg 1997). Particularly for Toronto this may become important over the next building cycle in the exurban parts of the region, as billions of dollars have already been committed to this form of low-rise densification.
Until the 1990s Toronto functioned as the lead city for densification in Canada. This changed at the end of the second wave of investment in denser construction, as Vancouver supplanted Toronto. Although Toronto initially led the way during the second wave of investment, between 1984 and 1989 a bi-modal pattern started to develop as land-extensive development experienced a resurgence in Toronto. As a result, although the densification of the core area of the Toronto region continued unabated, there was a resurgence in land-extensive development in the exurban parts of Toronto. In Vancouver, there was no such resurgence. Instead densification became more pervasive and intense. Still, it was only with the recession of 1989, that Vancouver clearly took over from Toronto as the lead city.
As said before, the first round of densification reflected the development pressures created by internal than external forces. For this reason the first wave of land-intensive investment was much broader in its geographic scope than the second. Consequently, denser urban environments were created in nearly every major city across the country between 1965 and 1975. This would change when the second densification cycle began in the mid 1980s. Unlike the first cycle, this time around capital investment would be much more dependent upon international flows of capital and labour. Consequently a more uneven and bifurcated pattern of urban development ensued.
This became most apparent in declining cities experiencing relative decline, such as Winnipeg and Montreal. Here the gradual detachment of each city from international flows of capital and labour depressed the local real estate market, suppressing much of the momentum for densification that had built up in the 1960s and 1970s because of the inflation of property values. As a result, by the 1980s land-development in Winnipeg and Montreal started to diverge from the pattern that could be observed in Vancouver or Toronto. For example, while core property values in the inner city of Toronto and Vancouver doubled or tripled, between the mid-80s and the mid 90s, property values in several core area markets of Winnipeg fell by more than fifty percent. This would find expression in the configuration of new housing investment in each city. While the production of new multiple-dwelling units surged upwards in Vancouver and Toronto, the production of new multi-unit dwelling units by private capital in Winnipeg underwent a precipitous decline. At the same time as the production of multiple-units declined in Winnipeg, the proportion of new single-detached residential units dramatically increased (Table Two). So not only did the densification process slow down in Winnipeg, it actually went into reverse.
In ascending cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, a different trajectory was taken. The attraction of international capital and labour to Toronto and Vancouver meant that the on going inflation in land values that had begun in the middle of the 1960s would continue into the 1990s. As a consequence of this, compared to Winnipeg or Montreal, property markets in Toronto and Vancouver started to move in the opposite directions when the next wave of densifcation gathered force in the middle of the 1980s. This can be illustrated by looking at the densification ratio (Table One), which measures the relationship between household income and the cost of housing. While the densification ratio began to fall in Winnipeg and Montreal, the opposite happened in Vancouver and Toronto, as the real estate market in the country began to polarize around the extremes of the continuum which these four markets represented.
What is also noteworthy about this second great wave of investment is the position of Vancouver and Toronto. Whereas Toronto was clearly the lead city with regard to the first national cycle of investment where densification had become significant; by the end of the second investment cycle, Vancouver would supplant Toronto as the lead city. During the first cycle of land-intensive investment the three material elements which shape and promote the densification process were configured much more favourably in Toronto. For example, while resistance to freeway construction was as strong in Vancouver as it was in Toronto, renewed investment in public transit in the 1950s and 1960s created a new template for development in Toronto which would not exist in Vancouver until the mid 1980s. The same applies to land prices. Until the 1990s, except for the speculative boom of 1980 when house prices in Vancouver briefly rose above those of Toronto, during most of the postwar period land values in Toronto were much higher than those of Vancouver. Thus the economic incentive to conserve land was much greater in Toronto than it was in Vancouver until the 1990s. Similarly, much stronger demographic forces supported densification in Toronto, as it had become the largest destination point for new immigrants in the country.
Toronto's relative advantage would begin to diminish in the 1980s. Once again, this can be illustrated by looking at the three elements that shape the densification process. While new investment in transit infrastructure slowed to a halt in Toronto, investment in transit infrastructure underwent a quantum leap in Vancouver. Although Toronto retained its place as most popular destination point for new immigrants, Vancouver overtook Montreal to become the second most popular destination point for new immigrants in the country during the 1990s. Finally, for the first time in its history, throughout the 1990s, house prices in Vancouver were consistently pitched above those of Toronto.
It is too early too make any definitive assessment about the third cycle that began to emerge in 1996 (but has yet failed to take shape in Vancouver because of the recession of the late 1990’s). Although the overall direction of the current wave of investment is still unknown, this cycle may turn out to be a benchmark period with regard to the densification of the Canadian city. While the first two investment cycles took place in an inflationary context this had not been the case for the new cycle that appears to be emerging. Rather than inflation, deflation has become much more important in the current cycle of investment. And whereas the energy crisis, the relatively easy availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, and rising interest rates coloured the first and second densification waves; this time around deflation, and the fiscal crisis of the state, and the limited availability of capital for investment in infrastructure, have emerged as powerful forces that will limit or further shape the progression of land-extensive or land-intensive development in the 1990s.
Because of the multitude of countervailing forces now in operation, the resurgence in land-extensive development that took place in the mid-80s may turn out to be just an aberration. Despite the current regulatory flux where there is a move toward de-regulation, but, at the same time, a countervailing move to limit development and impose greater costs upon new development because of fiscal retrenchment by government, it remains to be seen whether fiscal pressures will over-ride the support that de-regulation has given to the promotion of land-extensive development. That is why what happens in the next construction cycle (that began in 1996) should be revealing in terms of making projections about the future densification of the city.
Nowhere will this be more the case than in Ontario, where many of the infrastructure subsidies and favourable taxation regimes that previously encouraged land-extensive are being eliminated. Only time will tell how far the dissolution of modern regulation will progress. But soon it should be possible to see out the massive restructuring of local government compromises the ability of developers and home buyers to ally themselves to the land-extensive development, which gained a second wind in Ontario during the mid-1980s.
Furthermore, if CMHC's (1997i) assessment of future demand projections are correct, the years between 1996 and 2001 may turn out to be a demographic watershed as well. Over the next few years the growth in households which have the greatest propensity to purchase single-detached homes is expected to level off and begin to gradually decline. Thus a number of countervailing forces are actively working to mute the resurgence of land-extensive development that began in the mid-1980s. To a certain extent this is reflected in the growing importance of renovation, where there has been a dramatic increase in renovations, with these expenditures now often exceeding the value of new residential construction in the 1990s.
For all of these reasons, a better idea of the shape of things to come should become more apparent once the next cycle of residential building has run its course. Unlike the 1980s, in the 1990s builders and consumers will have to respond to shifting demographics and fiscal retrenchment that will be much less favourable to land-extensive development. That is why the new cycle of construction that began in 1996 (after housing production reached a 30 year low in 1995), should provide a clearer picture of the trajectory that the densification process is likely to follow. And from the patterns that appear it should be easier to make a more definitive assessment on how the changes which have been mentioned so far will affect the long-term behaviour of both the consumer and the builders with regard to the production of space.
Once the present building cycle has run its course it should then be possible to obtain a better idea about the permanence or the transitory nature of the densification process, and from this, determine whether the reversion back to land extensive patterns of development in the 1980s is an aberration or a permanent feature. Although the current building cycle has not yet run its course, it has become apparent that many of the conditions that allowed land-extensive development to surge forward in the mid-1980s are not now absent, and that many which are still present, are not as strong as they were in the mid-1990s. With billions of dollars worth of development projected to be spent on this type of low-rise densification over the next decade in Greater Toronto, this may have a significant impact upon the evolution of densification process in this region.
The increasing influence of low-rise forms of densification presents several empirical challenges. While the progression of high-rise and medium rise forms of densification are relatively easy to track by simply looking looking at the changing proportion of single-detached dwelling units, this is not the case for low-rise densification. Since low-rise densification often involves unrecorded renovations, or the reconfiguration of existing single-detached dwelling units, other indicators are needed, particularly if the densification fostered by the new urbanism is to be tracked. Instead of looking at shifts in the production of single-detached dwelling units, clues about the progression of this low-rise form of densification will have to sorted out by choosing indicators which measure changes in net residential densities , as changes in the proportion of single-detached housing units only give an accurate reading of densification when mid-rise and high-rise forms of densification predominate.
Finally, the other thing to look at in the current building cycle is the impact that containment strategies might have. Even though provincial governments such as Alberta, Ontario and Manitoba have loosened up regulations for suburban development, at the local level planners and politicians have tried to initiate containment strategies. For instance in order to increase suburban densities and to incorporate principles associated with the new urbanism into the production of new urban space, Calgary has begun to rejig the regulation of new sub-divisions. Meanwhile, in Ottawa a formal containment strategy has been adopted with the passage of a new regional plan. Again however, it will be in the implementation rather than adoption of formal plans that result, which will be significant. And on this point it is still too early to tell what will come out of these new regulatory measures. Still they are significant because they provide an institutional framework for the further dispersion of low-rise forms of densification.
What this brief overview of the evolution of the densification process in Canada reveals to us, is that this process of transformation is complex, and that it is buffeted by contradictory impulses which affect some cities in different ways. Moreover, since the first building cycle, the uneven development of this process of transformation has become more noticeable, as revealed by the partial regression back to land-extensive development in the 1980s. Lastly, as the densification of the Canadian city has progressed through each of these three distinctive periods of innovation in city building, distinct layers of urban tissue have been laid down which can be looked at like rings on a tree with regard to the evolution of the densification of the Canadian city: with the first cycle, that ran between between 1965 and 1975, marked by the predominance of high-rise buildings; the second, which ran between 1975 and 1990, marked by experimentation with medium-rise dwelling units; and the current phase, which began to take shape in the early 1990s -- but only began to pick up momentum in the mid-1990s -- was marked by experimentation with low-rise formats. Because of this progression, the repertory of denser built forms has expanded greatly since the 1960s. Furthermore, if the institutional framework which supports these developments are studied, what also becomes clear is that the regulatory apparatus that supports the production of these denser urban spaces has become much more powerful and sophisticated in the intervening years. With regard to regulation by the state, this has created an anomaly of sorts that deserves some scrutiny, as all this happened during a time when deregulation became the mantra for policy makers. And, as will be shown, no where is this more the case, than in Vancouver.
For example, looking at the first building cycle, high-rise rentals predominated. In the second cycle (which was rooted in development that took place in the mid-70s but did not come into full bloom until the mid-80s) medium-rise developments began to flourish -- with St. Lawrence Towne and False Creek becoming the prototypes for what was to follow. While there has been a resurgence of high-rise residential construction it is likely to be the emergence of low-rise densification that may turn out to be the distinguishing feature of the current building cycle. This can be seen in the proliferation of secondary suites, increased expenditures on renovations, more infill construction, as well as the application of new urbanist principles to new greenfield developments in the suburbs. Together, these are the developments that promise to change the profile of densification in the Canadian city .
To summarize what has been said so far, although this investigation of densification will show that it is one of the defining attributes of late-twentieth century urbanization, what will also come out of this study is how open-ended and variable the nature of this transformation process is across the country. Mixed signals are still being given off with regard to the direction and format that the densification process will take in the overall evolution of the Canadian city in the next millennium.
Among census metropolitan areas, for instance, currently densification only exerts a hegemonic sway over the production of urban space in Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, in Victoria. Moreover, if changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units can be used as an surrogate measurement for densification, construction statistics reveal that it has become important in many smaller urban centres elsewhere in British Columbia, outside Vancouver and Victoria. Consequently densification has become a major restructuring force in Abbotsford, and in communities located on the east side of Vancouver Island, such as Nanaimo, plus the Okanagan, where cities like Kelowna are being transformed by the densification process.
Outside British Columbia, among Canadian Census Metropolitan areas, another trajectory can be observed. Unlike Vancouver, where densification exerts a hegemonic influence over the entire region, in Ottawa and Toronto a different scenario has unfolded since the 1980s. In these urban regions densification functions as an ascendant force with regard to the overall restructuring of urban space. Rather than one pattern of development predominating, two distinct investment regimes are observable. In the core area of Toronto and Ottawa densification clearly predominates. However, in the exurban parts of each urban region, land-extensive development still tends to predominates.
Since the early 1980s another pattern has emerged in smaller or slower growing centres. In cities such as Winnipeg, investment in the built environment has regressed back to land-extensive forms that were common in the 1950s.
Finally, the inter-national profile of densification is important to keep in mind. Densification is a significant force in other countries as well. About this switch in investment The Economist recently noted: "Cities in industrialized countries have enjoyed a renaissance . . . (since) . . . The Populations of the West's largest cities, in long term decline for half a century, stopped falling during the 1980s and are now starting to rise again,"(p.3). As the previous quote suggests, densification has become one of the defining features of the urbanization process in other western countries.
In the United States, leftist academics like Neil Smith (1984; 1996) have tried to explain why this is now happening by referring to the existence of a rent gap. Meanwhile, more mainstream analysts have put less emphasis on the operation of the property market and have focused more on how the diffusion of new energy and transportation technologies have changed the way that the built environment is organized. Borchert (1991), for instance, frames the densification process in a much larger discussion about technological innovation and changing urban form when he wrote about the start of a new urban epoch which he calls the "electronic-jet propulsion age" (p.231). And in Europe, some academics have even tried to construct a simple descriptive model of the densification process. For example in the early 1980s, van den Berg developed a stage model of urban development in which densification becomes a defining attribute of the fourth stage in the evolution of the city (van den Berg 1982; Bourne 1996).
In Australia, densification has even been given official policy sanction by the government when the Building Better Cities Program was adopted (Stitwell 1993). There is also a densification strategy in the Netherlands (Smith 1996). And even in the United Kingdom (Jencks 1996; Breheny 1997), the state is rethinking policies that were adopted in the 1980s, which encouraged suburbanization, as planners and policy makers are increasingly becoming more interested in densification strategies. What all these initiatives reveal is that densification is an issue in other countries as well. So what is now happening in Vancouver, may be of interest to policy makers and analysts outside the country as well.
Finally, one final note needs to be made: because densification is closely associated with the creation of new centres and margins within the urban hierarchy of each country, the impact of globalization also has to be taken into account when looking at the evolution of the densification process (Cohen 1997,p.115). In Canada, as already mentioned, the impact of globalization on the densification process can be illustrated by comparing the different development profiles of Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and Montreal.
3.0.1 - Canadian Exceptionalism: The Impact that Globalization and the International Division of labour have had on investment regimes in Canada and the United States.
The relationship between globalization and the evolution of the densification process also has some bearing on the emergence of a distinctive form of urbanization within Canada. Although not recognized by this name, by the early 1970s. densification had become responsible for the creation of anomalous development patterns in Canada. With the great apartment boom of the 1960s, commonly held assumptions about the existence of one pattern of urban development in North America started to be challenged.
No where had this become more apparent than in Toronto. As mentioned earlier, by the early 1970s Toronto had emerged as a prototype for a new pattern of urban development in North America. Long before densification was formally recognized in planning discourse it had already become an empirically significant phenomenon in Toronto. As far back as the 1950s, what was to occur as a result of the reconfiguration of the property market, and changing demographics would be foreshadowed by the emergence of a significant amount of private investment in apartment construction in the inner city. This, along with favourable tax policies, combined with the implementation of a public investment strategy that encouraged development around newly-constructed rapid transit stations, is what established the conditions for the great apartment boom of the 1960s. And it was from this apartment boom that the first real evidence of the existence of a different spatial logic for the organization of residential and commercial investment in the modern North American city would become first visible in Toronto.
Although densification was becoming more noticeable in other Canadian cities during the 1960s, as high-rise precincts emerged in Vancouver's West End, Calgary's Beltline Area or the Fort Rouge area in Winnipeg, it was in Toronto that the most impressive development appeared. Here, more than anywhere else, the connection between densification and the re-alignment of the three material elements that promoted densification became the most visible. With the highest housing prices in the country, denser spaces were produced as land values started to increase rapidly in relation to incomes. Consequently the densification ratio, which measures the relation between income and housing costs, started a steep upward climb.
Besides the country's highest housing prices, Toronto had also become the country's largest receptacle for new immigrants. What also made Toronto stand out from other cities was the construction of Canada's first subway line. Until Montreal opened the country's second subway system in the mid 60s, no other city in the country could use this infrastruture to mold development. Like most other North American cities, no transit-oriented templates remained in Canada which could attract investment away from the more amorphous patterns of suburban development that was organized around highway and freeway systems.
Rather than thinning out and becoming more amorphous, like most North American cities were doing in the 1950s and early 1960s, Toronto was beginning to densify instead. A linear and mult-nodal development corridors emerged which was organized around transit lines. While some low-rise densification started to emerge in the United States with the growth of planned-unit developments (McKenzie 1994), this development paled beside the high-rise densification that took hold in the Canadian city during the 1960s.
While some of the divergence which Toronto became emblematic of, can be explained by referring to the different demographic and technological and institutional forces that were molding the densification process in different ways in each country, as has been noted, some of this divergence was also rooted in larger macro-economic forces that have to do with globalization and shifts in the international division of labour. Although these forces are not the subject of this study they do require some acknowledgement. A brief detour is therefore required. For a brief while concerns about the impact of the urban land market, demographic shifts and the impact of investment in public infrastructure will be put aside, and some mention made of the larger processes that link the production of urban space to the operation of the broader economy.
In an abbreviated fashion, this can be done by looking at the differences in the international balance of trade and services. For, in addition to the divergence created by variations that can be observed in the urban land market, the demographic situation of each country and different investment strategies for the provision of communications infrastructure, there are differences in the balance of trade of services that have also affected the pattern of investment in the cities of both countries.
To illustrate this, the impact of variations in the size and configuration of the high-technology and tourism sectors can be used to how these larger macro forces have affected the settlement geography of each country. While the United States has a large surplus in both of these sectors, Canada has a deficit. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s the deficit in tourism rose from two to three billion dollars a year to over seven billion dollars in the early 1990s (Norcliffe 1996, p.35). Likewise, the deficit in the high-technology sector was even higher. For example, in just one segment of this sector, computers and office equipment, the trade deficit stood at 5.3 billion dollars in 1993 (Norcliffe 1996 p.32).
While it is not possible to make a direct link between the economic specialization of each country and patterning of urban space, it seems quite clearl that a relation exists. For example, in the United States the close relationship that exists between the expansion of several high-tech sectors and and the growth of exurban development has been documented (U.S. Congress 1995; Castells 1994). The relative size of these sectors therefore provides a partial explanation of the different scale of exurban development that can be observed in Canada and the United States. Hence, for Canada, it is possible to make some speculations about the connection that probably exist between the relatively small size of the high-technology sector and the absence of a large military-industrial complex, and the more limited extent of exurban development. While some distinctive exurban high-tech spaces have developed in the suburbs around some airports in Canada -- in places such as in Richmond in the case of Vancouver, Murray Industrial Park, in Winnipeg, or Saint Laurant near Dorval airport in the case of Montreal -- these high-technology landscapes pale beside the huge high-tech zones that exist in places like Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco, or Route 128 in Boston. Only in the exurban zone that surrounds Toronto has a high-tech exurban landscape come into existence that comes close to approximating the extensive high-tech landscapes that can be found on the periphery of the most dynamic urban centres in the United States.
Otherr nuances in the organization of space can be deduced from variations in the economic base. For example it may not be size but variations in the sector specialization ofthe high-technology sector in each country that may explain some of the political, cultural and spatial differences that colour the practices of the new middle class in each country. For example, Canada appears to have become more specialized in the production of information systems and media products rather than as a producer of high-tech hardware (Smith Vivian 1997; Enchin 1997; VS-290; VS-317). Since many of these media activities have an historic and functional relation to artistic modes of production the inner city rather than exurbia was viewed in a more favourable light by these high-tech sectors. Consequently, when compared to the United States, Canada's specialization in this high-tech media area has probably been a significant factor in anchoring certain fractions of middle class to the inner-city. The results can be seen in the expansion of important employment clusters in, film, video and the animation industries that have grown up in the core areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver since the mid 1980s.
In the consumer sphere, examining tourism also shows how the economic specialization of each country has affected the production of urban space. For reasons having to do with climate and the expertise that Americans have developed in the promotion of urban spectacles, (Huxtable 1997; Fryer 1997; Robinett and Camp 1997; Milner 1997) the economies of many urban regions in the United States have become highly specialized around tourism activities, as an extensive infrastructure devoted to mass tourism and retirement communities has arisen over the past 30 years, creating the demand for new kinds of space that tend to be located in the exurban parts of the urban region rather than in the core. While these landscapes are becoming more important in Canada, as with the high-technology sector,they are not yet found on the scale that is present in the United States. In Canada, just as there are no equivalents to Silicon Valley, with regard to tourism there are still no Canadian counterparts to places like Orlando, Las Vegas or Phoenix. Morevover, because much of the demand for these kind of spaces have been siphoned off to the United States, the market for these tourist and retirement landscapes has been further truncated in Canada (Clark 1997).
By contrast, while many Canadians flock to American retirement communities and exurban theme parks, there is also is an important counterflow of Americans and overseas visitors to the core areas of Canada's cities. Except for the West Edmonton Mall, and to a lesser extent Canada's Wonderland, most of the infrastructure of urban spectacle has been located in the core of the city or in the inner suburbs. For example the new theme park planned for the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver and the redevelopment of the Downsview lands into an entertainment centre are either located in core area of the urban region or the inner suburbs. (e.g.., Milner in The Globe and Mail, September 15,1997).
Differences can also be traced to the Canada's greater specialization in property and real estate. For example, the international specialization of Canadian capital in the property and development sector has played an important role in advancing the densification process in Canada (Naylor 1975). Since more intense forms of densification involve much more complex and sophisticated procedures for investment, the creation of powerful development corporations in Canada no doubt abetted the densification process. Here a pool of expertise, and access to capital has more easily allowed develpers to exploit new market opportunities created by the densification process. Not surprisingly, Canadian firms are now important players on the world stage, exporting much of their expertise in city-building to places like China, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany,and the United States (G/M 1997bw). This helps to explain why Architectural & Engineering services have become the fastest expanding service sector in the country, growing by 400 percent since 1990 despite the depression that began in 1989 (G/M 1997bv).
So while differences in the urban land market, demographics and the provisioning of urban transportation are the most important internal variables that shape and differentiate the densification process within the ambit of the local state in Canada, it is important to keep in mind the larger external factors that operate outside the sphere of the local state, as they also affect how the densification process will manifests itself in each city.
When this is done it then becomes possible to see how activities operating at one geographic scale are articulated and related to other process operating lower down or higher up. As the example of tourism and high-technology industries reveal, larger economic processes exist as a background context, and these forces set the macro-economic parameter for the operation of the three variables that shape the densification process within the confines of the local state, that will now be studied at greater length. Therefore the economic specialization of a city, or the division of labour in a particular locality cannot be ignored since they have an important but indirect effect on the shape that the densification process will assume in each place. For example, even within Canada, while the densification process only plays a dominant role in the restructuring of urban space in Vancouver, it only plays an ascendant role in the morphogensis of Toronto. Meanwhile except for Ottawa perhaps, in other cities the densification process operates at a much lower level of intensity.
And when comparisons are made with the United States current differences become even more striking. For instance if the production of single-detached dwelling units are used as an indicator for densification it soon becomes apparent that there are no equivalents to Vancouver at the present time in the United States. Since the proportion of single-detached units probably only falls below the fifty-five percent mark in one or two cities, few urban centres in the United States have even entered an ascendant phase with regard to the evolution of the densification process. Instead, in almost all cities in the United States densification is still only an emergent phenomenon (Gordon and Richardson 1997; Nowlan and Stewart 1991). As well, because low-rise densification is more common here, the densification manifests itself in the built environment in a different way. Unlike Canada where high-rise and medium-rise formats predominate. Moreover densification is more prevalent in exurban areas of the United States something that has been accentuated by the different scale of exurban development that is present in each country (Mckenzie 1995; Downs 1994). Thus, even if we look at cities which come closest to Vancouver and Toronto, such as San Francisco or Washington DC., in these places densification only appears as an emergent rather than dominant or ascendant force with regard to the restructuring of urban space (Bernick and Cervero 1997; Bruegman 1966).
3.1 - One: The Impact of the Urban Real Estate Market - Charting the shift from extensive to intensive regimes of accumulation
Having briefly surveyed the larger context that shapes the densification process, it is now the appropriate time to return to the sphere of the local state and look at the local conditions that have shaped the densification process in each locality. This variation can be studied by looking at how three material variables have broadly shaped the densification process in Canada. Property markets will be looked at first, then demographic influences. Finally, the impact that different investment strategies in the provisioning of transportation and communications will be looked at to see what impact they have had on the progression of the densification process. will be brought into the picture to show why the densification process has evolved so unevenly over time and space within a single urban region.
By constructing a densification ratio to chart the evolution of the urban real estate market the economic dimension of the movement away from a land-extensive mode of urban development to one that is more land-intensive can be traced over time and space. This can be done by looking at the ratio between house prices and income levels. Since housing represents the single largest land use in the city and normally absorbs more capital than any other land use, an increase in the price of land will usually lead to rent increases or land use changes that affect the production and consumption of urban space. Particularly as housing prices increase relative to income powerful economic constraints are put on the per capita consumption of space. Unless an individual is willing to forego other consumption in order to maintain the previous consumption of space or accept a decline in an existing standard of living, the consumption of space will have to decrease.
Although this densification ratio is only a crude indicator, it does provide a useful shorthand method for assessing the economic pressures that may either favour or impede the densification process. Moreover, it can act as a condenser of non economic forces, translating them into dollars and cents that will produce a specific market configuration for space.
If there are no countervailing forces in operation, when the densification ratio falls, the relative cost of land within the city in relation to income falls. Everything being equal, this should result in an increase in the per capita consumption of space. This, in turn, establishes the economic preconditions for an increase in the per capita consumption of land. Conversely, when the densification ratio rises, the opposite situation takes hold. Urban space becomes more expensive. When this happens, consumers will have to reduce their consumption of space or migrate to another location if some form of substitution is not undertaken. Usually, but not always, at some point this should produce higher population densities. Conversely, when the densification ratio is low or is declining, market impulses can be expected to work in the opposite direction, increasing the consumption of residential space, thereby lowering population densities if overcrowding does not take place.
By using the data on housing prices and income supplied by Statistics Canada from 1931 through to 1991, densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver were constructed to illustrate how these land extensive and land-intensive patterns of urban development have evolved over time in both cities (table one).
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Table One
Winnipeg Vancouver
1931 4.464 4.329
1941 2.218 2.196
1951 - - 2.940
1961 2.147 2.322
1971 1.779 2.503
1981 2.386 7.326
1986 1.990 3.772
1991 1.929 5.751
1996 2.000e 7.000 +
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While these ratios can be viewed as a snapshot of the economic parameters that govern the urban land market of these two cities the ratios only give us an abstract measurement of change. To show how these abstract numbers eventually result in the production of different urban landscapes, more concrete empirical statistics need to be used. Here statistics on housing forms, particularly the percentage of housing units made up of single detached dwelling units (table two) and changes in gross population density can provide the necessary historical texture that illustrates how changes in the densification ratio translate into the production of two quite different types of urban landscapes. Furthermore, the densification ratio and related changes in house type shed some additional light on the external factors that have conditioned the evolution of the real estate market in Vancouver and Winnipeg.
As well, if the historic relation between denser and less dense development still holds then densification ratios of 2 and 4 can be used as benchmarks for empirically verifying the presence or absence of specific economic impulses that either favour land-intensive or land-extensive development. At the same time the qualitative difference pointed to by the different densification ratio for Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 1990s can also be used as evidence to support the contention that two contrasting logics for the organization of urban space now exist in Canada. At one end of the spectrum there are cities like Winnipeg, that has a densification ratio that hovers around 2. Low readings like these indicate that the property market is still firmly anchored in land-extensive pattern of development. At the other end there are cities like Vancouver, Ottawa and to a lesser extent Toronto, which have densification ratios that hover around or above 4. When readings like this are found, if historic precedents still hold, market pressures in these cities will tend to favour more land-intensive patterns of development.
Finally, looking at differences in the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver also provide one means for charting the uneven and non linear aspects of the densification process in Canada. As the numbers in Table one show, the progression of the densification process in Vancouver has been quite different from Winnipeg's. While Vancouver permanently switched from a land-extensive mode of development of urban development to one that was land-intensive, the densification ratio for Winnipeg shows the city following a different route. Unlike Vancouver, the densification ratio in Winnipeg only rose briefly before returning to a downward trajectory that took it back to the benchmark ratio of two, something indicative of a well entrenched regime of land-extensive accumulation rather than a regime of land-intensive accumulation.
3.1.1 - A tale of two cities: Convergence and divergence in the production of urban spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver
If the densification ratios for both cities are tracked between 1931 and 1991 (table one), evidence of two distinct regimes of accumulation clearly emerges. Moreover, if we look at the uneven progression of the densification process the movement of the densification ratio over time sheds some light on how the property markets of both cities have been influenced by the shifting economic status of each city.
Thus, in 1931 the densification ratio for Winnipeg stood at 4.4, and Vancouver's at 4.3. With the densification ratios for both cities above four, the real estate market of both cities reflected the denser organization of urban space typical of the streetcar era of city building. The status of each city was also reflected in the price of housing and labour, with Winnipeg's dominance at this time expressed in higher incomes and housing prices. Thus the average income in Winnipeg was 18 percent higher than Vancouver's. Similarly housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent higher than in Vancouver. Consequently, Winnipeg's densification ratio was higher than Vancouver's at this time. Not surprisingly, this difference was reflected in the prewar urban morphology of each city as Winnipeg was then much denser than Vancouver. While gross population densities for Winnipeg were 7,800 people per square mile in 1941 they were only 5,100 in Vancouver. Consequently, gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than Vancouver's well into the 1940s. And even into the early 1960s densities in Winnipeg were still 25 percent above those of Vancouver.
This relation would change as the densification ratio declined more rapidly in Winnipeg. Thus by 1961 the densification ratio for Vancouver stood at 2.3 compared to 2.1 for Winnipeg. While the shift from 4 to around 2 signified that land-extensive development patterns had become firmly ingrained in both cities, the greater decline experienced by Winnipeg found its physical expression in the convergence of the population densities for both cities. Whereas densities in Winnipeg had been 50 percent higher than in Vancouver during the 1940s by the 1960s this gap had been cut in half. Although densities in both cities fell during the 1950's, the decline was steeper in Winnipeg. So by 1961, gross population densities in Winnipeg were 25 percent instead of 50 percent above those of Vancouver. As a result Winnipeg had 6,700 people per square mile in 1961, compared to 5,500 for Vancouver.
Between 1961 and 1971, this gap would disappear and then reverse itself as Vancouver now became the denser city. For while the densification ratio for Winnipeg continued to fall between 1961 and 1971, as it moved from 2.147 down to 1.779; for Vancouver, the densification ratio began to rise, climbing from 2.322 to 2.503. As a result, the 1960s was a watershed period for Vancouver. The property-market of the urban region was reset along a new trajectory, with the real estate market reconfigured to support a regime of land-intensive accumulation that has been maintained up to the present.
By the 1970s, these shifts would result in the production of very different physical spaces in Winnipeg and Vancouver and this would show up in changes in the composition of the housing stock of each city. So not only would this shift from one regime to another show up in statistics on the gross density of each city, this divergence would also show up in changing proportion of single detached dwelling units in both Vancouver and Winnipeg. Just as gross population densities in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg during the 1960s, the proportion of less dense housing units in Vancouver converged with Winnipeg. However, after 1966 they would then begin to diverge, with the gap between each city steadily widening thereafter with each passing decade, as can be seen by comparing the proportion of single detached units and the number of strata title units in each city (tables two and three, pp. 49 and 61). During the 1950s relatively more single-detached dwelling units were constructed in Vancouver than in the nation as a whole; however, this ratio would be reversed in the 1960s for the first time. With upward shift in the densification ratio the production of single-detached units in Vancouver now fell below the national average.
For a brief while in the 1970s, the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose as well, climbing from 1.779 to 2.3 by 1981. But unlike Vancouver, this rise would be short lived. Nor was the shift strong enough to propel Winnipeg decisively away from the benchmark figure of 2 which signified the persistence of land extensive development patterns. Thus, after rising for a brief while between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio began a steady decline which has persisted into the 1990s. As a consequence the densification ratio for Winnipeg fell from 2.3, in 1981, to 1.99 in 1986, declining further to 1.92, in 1991, hovering around the benchmark figure of two up to the present.
Looking now at Vancouver, quite a different picture emerges. In the 1970s the densification ratio passes the historic benchmark reading of 4, as it spiked upwards from 2.5 in 1971 to 7.1 in 1981. Except for a brief dip between 1981 and 1986, the densification ratio has plateaued well above historic readings indicative of a time of much denser urban development.
Because of the historical inertia created by built environment and independent existence of building cycles, these shifts in the densification ratio did not immediately result in the production of radically different environments. However, as the comparison of Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrates, if qualitative differences in the densification ratio are maintained over an extended period dramatic changes in the way that the built environment is organized will result. Indeed the contrast that can be seen in the evolution of built environment in Winnipeg and Vancouver provide powerful empirical evidence of this. If changes in the densification ratio of each city are correlated with changing population densities, and shifts in the composition of the housing stock, the materialization of the changes in the densification ratio in both cities becomes more apparent. As Vancouver shows, the maintenance of a high densification ratio over an extended time is correlated with rising gross population densities and dramatic changes in the city's housing stock, with denser house types replacing less dense house forms. As a result there has been a dramatic decline in the number of housing units in Vancouver made up of single detached units and a dramatic rise in strata title units. Conversely, as trends in Winnipeg reveal, the maintenance of lower densification ratios has done the opposite. Instead of rising, population densities have declined. Likewise, this is reflected in composition of the city's housing stock. As a result, since 1981 the proportion of single detached units has risen rather than fallen (table two). Similarly, Winnipeg has been the last major housing market in the country to accept strata title units. And even now, most units are simply recycled apartments rather than purpose-built condominiums (CMHC 1995, Manitoba, p.16; Condo Guide and New homes 1997).
Although there is not a one to one correspondence between changes in the densification ratio and shifts in a city's population density and alterations or the composition of its housing stock there is a loose but strong correspondence that can be observed over time. For example in 1931 when the densification ratio for Winnipeg was 10 percent higher than Vancouver's (4.464 versus 4.329) gross population densities for Winnipeg were 50 percent higher than in Vancouver. Later on, in the mid-1980s, when the densification ratio for Vancouver had been much higher than in Winnipeg for over a decade, this would be reflected in the diverging population densities of both cities. By 1986 densities in each city had reversed, moving in step with the different trajectory of the densification ratio for each city. With the densification ratio in Winnipeg only half that of Vancouver's (1.99 versus. 3.66) in 1986, gross population densities in Vancouver had risen thirty percent higher than Winnipeg -- with Winnipeg having 1330 people per square kilometer compared to 1720 for Vancouver.
Furthermore, as the densification ratio for Vancouver continued to rise during the late 1980's and Winnipeg's continued to fall, the gross population densities of each city diverged even more. By 1991 Vancouver had nearly 2000 people per square kilometer while gross population densities in Winnipeg had declined to 1076 people per square kilometer. Whereas Winnipeg had been 50 percent denser than Vancouver in 1941, by 1991 Vancouver was nearly twice as dense as Winnipeg.
This change shows up if national comparisons are made. For instance, in 1961 Vancouver was the third largest city in Canada but ranked seventh in terms of density. However, by 1991 Vancouver was the still the third largest city but had become the third densest city in the country. And into the future, unless densification in Toronto or Montreal intensifies, by 2001 Vancouver will still be Canada's third largest urban region but will likely become the densest city in the country. A momentous transformation in the urban morphology of Vancouver has therefore taken place in a relatively short span of time, a change that has transformed Vancouver first medium-density city in North America.
Furthermore, if the densification ratios for both Winnipeg and Vancouver are disaggregated, it is possible to see how changes in the place occupied by each city in the urban hierarchy have affected the built environment of both cities. If we disaggregate the densification ratio for 1931 we find that housing prices and wages were considerably higher in Winnipeg. Even though Vancouver had just surpassed Winnipeg in population to become Canada's third largest city in the 1930s, Winnipeg was still the leading decision-making centre in the West (Kerr 1965).
Thus, if income and housing prices for 1931 are compared with those for 1991 the relative shift that can be observed reflect the changing places occupied by each city in the national urban hierarchy. With an average wage of $1,120 in 1931 and average an average house price of $5,000 for Winnipeg compared to $947 and $4,100 for Vancouver, these differences were a sign of Winnipeg's economic dominance over the West during the first half of the twentieth century. But if the densification ratio for each city in 1991 is disaggregated, the steep decline that Winnipeg has undergone over the past 60 years becomes unmistakable if wages and house prices are compared to Vancouver. Unlike 1931, when wage levels in Winnipeg were 18 percent above those in Vancouver, in 1991 household incomes were 15 percent below those of Vancouver, with the average household income in Winnipeg standing at $49,000 compared to $57,000 for Vancouver. Even more significant are the differences in housing prices. Whereas housing prices in Winnipeg were 21 percent above Vancouver's in 1931, by 1991 the situation had become reversed: with housing prices in 1991 averaging $244,000 in Vancouver compared to $97,000 for Winnipeg. Thus, by 1991, housing prices in Vancouver were two-and-a-half times higher than in Winnipeg. And by 1996 this gap had widened further, with the average price of housing in Winnipeg dropping to $83,000 compared to an increase to over $300,000 for Vancouver (CMHC 1997e; Report on Business August 1997,p.38)
From this asymmetry in income and housing prices two quite different housing markets have evolved. This has also affected the social ecologies of both cities, producing stark contrasts in the settlement geography for each city. A scenario different from that proposed by Chicago school theorists has arisen in Winnipeg. In Winnipeg things have become unbalanced. Here disinvestment has come about because of unimpeded sprawl. As well, the migration of an urban underclass into the inner-city has created a dysfunctional version of the Chicago School's idealized representation of the modern city. Rather than function as a buffer, in Winnipeg the zone of discard has begun to engulf the entire downtown. At one time theorist's of the Chicago Schook did regard Winnipeg as Canada's equivalent to Chicago, but at present the city moves to a different trope, following the example of Detroit rather than Chicago. Rather than transforming itself into a postmodern city Winnipeg has mutated and regressed, becoming a dysfunctional modern city (Heron 1993; Whiteway 1992; G/M 1997dc). In Winnipeg and Detroit the growth of the zone of discard has become malignant. In Winnipeg and Detroit, not only has it created a habitat for a large urban underclass to live in; it has also engulfed areas of working-and-middle-class housing in the core and even overwhelmed parts of the downtown of each city -- places that are supposed to remain the epicenter of investment in the urban region, according to the model for the modern city first described by the Chicago School theorists.
In Vancouver precisely the opposite happened. Instead of the zone of discard expanding to take up the entire core area of the region, it has been erased, producing a distinctive postmodern settlement space in the core of the city where marginalized urban spaces only exist as receding enclaves in the middle class sea that has been created (figure eight, chapter five, p. 482). This becomes apparent when the location of new residential investment in Vancouver and Winnipeg is compared. For instance, unlike Winnipeg, in Vancouver during the first seven months of 1997, nearly 20 percent of the region's new housing stock was constructed on the downtown peninsula of the City of Vancouver, more than in Surrey, the region's largest suburb. By contrast, in Winnipeg, during 1996, for the first time in the city's history, more housing was built outside the perimeter than inside. In absolute terms this meant that exurban sprawl had now exceeded suburban expansion in the city. Realizing the threat that this poses to the assessment base, city council has put generous subsidies in place to subsidize suburban expansion within the city's boundaries. But this will only compound the problem of disinvestment in the core, since money that could be used as incentives for people to resettle in the core or to refurbish residential units will now be spent on dispersing capital further out into the suburbs, further hastening the decline of the core. So not only has the physical environment been altered, an entirely new social geography for each city has been created in each city.
For example, if Winnipeg is Canada's closest equivalent to Detroit in terms of the emergence of an urban underclass then Vancouver is Canada's closest version of San Francisco, where gentrification rather than the emergence of an urban underclass has acted as a magnet for capital, transforming both cities from polyglot urban centres into enclaves dominated by middle class residents. Instead of capital dispersing it has concentrated in the central city producing a very intense form of densification, which has brought with it displacement and affordability problems that even afflict the middle class. Again, this stands in contrast to Winnipeg, where there is little densification, and what investment that there is, goes to the periphery rather than to the core of the city. That is why the fundamental problem in the inner city is one of housing abandonment and the cannibalization of existing housing stock. The real estate market in Winnipeg's core is simply too weak to support significant reinvestment in the zone of working class homes such as the city's West End. That is why in Winnipeg, unlike Vancouver, it is the threat of capital disinvestment or abandonment rather than the displacement arising from house inflation and gentrification that define the context for the production and destruction of urban space in the core.
Having seen how changes in the densification ratio have affected the local property market and how, in turn, this has created two contrasting regimes of accumulation in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the affect that this has had on the population density and the composition of housing in each city can be examined to provide more texture. Since gross population density can encorporate a great deal undeveloped residential land, industrial and park uses, this measurement, by itself, can only provide a loose approximation of any changes in density. That is why changes in the composition of a city's housing can be used as an indicator of some changes in density, as any shift would relate directly to only residential land.
More pariticularly, since single-detached dwellings units are the most space consuming housing form that is produced (CMHC N.D.,p.26), one way of tracking the expansion or retreat of land-extensive and land-intensive development is to look at changes in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. Particularly when statistics on net residential densities are not readily available, this measure can serve as a useful surrogate indicator of land-intensive or land-extensive development . Except in cases where low-rise densification predominates, any change in the proportion of single-detached units shouldl reveal whether or not a city is becoming more or less dense over time.
As will later be shown, the construction of new single-detached dwelling units can even be used to gauge the intensity of land-intensive or land-extensive development at any point in time. For example in places where single-detached dwelling units make up more than 55 percent of all newly constructed units, the overall proportion of an urban region's housing stock made up of single-detached units will generally rise. Whenever this investment pattern prevails, densification only operates as a secondary and emergent phenomenon. Fifty-five percent is used as an approximate cut off line since between three to six percent of all new housing units are simply replacement housing. That is why more than fifty percent of all new housing units have to be made up of single-detached units if the overall composition of sparser house type is to be maintained. If this logic is accepted it is then possible to make some extrapolations, and state that any time the production of single detached units goes consistently above 55 percent a regime of land-extensive regime of accumulation will to be the dominant force shaping residential investment in the city. As previously mentioned, the only time this might not be the case would be when low-rise densification predominates. For unlike high-rise or medium-rise densification, the advance of low-rise densification may not be reflected by a corresponding shift in the composition of the housing stock. Again that is why the new urbanism deserves special attention in this regard.
To continue on, whenever the the production of single-detached units consistently falls below 55 percent the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units will start to fall. When this happens densification becomes an ascendant force. Lastly, if the production of single-detached dwellings falls consistently below 35 percent denser housing forms become predominant. When this happens densification becomes become a dominant force.
Looking at table two, with densification ratios ranging between 2 and 2.5, in 1961, the proportion of the housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units was very high in both Vancouver and Winnipeg,. Despite the differences between each city, what these figures reveal is that each city was securely locked into land-extensive regime of accumulation. With 70 percent of all dwelling units in Winnipeg made up single-detached dwelling, and 71 percent in Vancouver, the proportion of single detached units in both cities was well then above the national average are far above those of Toronto and Montreal. For example, in Toronto only 56 percent of the housing stock was made up of single detached units. And in Montreal, as late as 1961, only 19 percent of all dwelling units were made of of single-detached homes.
Thus, as late as 1961, with the percentage of single detached dwelling units in Winnipeg and Vancouver nearly ten percent above the national average, these percentages reveal that among the largest urban centres in the country, both Winnipeg and Vancouver were the sparest settled centres in the country at this time.
This makes the changes which have taken place since 1961 even more noteworthy. While Vancouver still the third largest city in the country, it will soon become the densest urban region in the nation. For Winnipeg just the opposite has happened. In 1961 it was the fourth largest city in the counrty. Since that time the city has fallen to eighth place. Even though Winnipeg was less dense than Toronto or Montreal, in 1961 it was still the densest city in the West. Now, however, among the larger cities in Western Canada it is now probably the least dense urban region.
Between 1961 and 1971 the percentage of dwelling units made up of single detached units fell faster in Winnipeg and Vancouver than for the nation as a whole. As the figures in table two show, the proportion of single detached units fell by nearly six percent across the nation but during this first surge in densification, it fell by nine percent in Vancouver and seven percent in Winnipeg. This indicated that the first wave of densification affected these two cities more than the nation as a whole, as the percentage of single-detached units declined from 71 to 62 percent, in the case of Vancouver, while it fell from 70 to 63 percent in Winnipeg. Since the first densification wave affected Vancouver more than Winnipeg residential densities gradually surpassed Winnipeg. In this regard 1966 is a watershed year as the number of single detached units in Vancouver reached parity with Winnipeg then fell below it. Since that time each city has moved further apart. While Winnipeg's population has thinned out, the opposite has happened in Vancouver.
What these numbers show is that both cities were strongly influenced by the first densification wave; however with the proportion of single detached units falling by ten percent in Toronto, the greatest impact of this first wave was no doubt felt in Toronto, where the proportion of single-detached units fell from 56 percent to 46 percent of the regions housing stock between 1961 and 1971.
If these steep declines are correlated with changes in the densification ratio, what also becomes obvious is that more than economic influences were at work in shaping the first wave of densification. While the densification ratio started to rise in the 1960s, it still was falling in Winnipeg at a time when the proportion of single detached dwelling units were rapidly declining. And even in Vancouver, although property values were rising quickly, the densification ratio only stood at 2.5. Even though densification was taking place -- the densification ratio was still a considerable distance away from the historic benchmark figure of four- - that historical precedent suggested was the level at which denser spaces started to be produced on a significant scale. As the next section will show, there is an explanation for this that has to do with demographics rather than the reconfiguration of the urban real estate market. For demographics, as much as changes in the urban land market, played an important role in shaping the first densification wave.
As with the densification ratio, the convergence of house types in Winnipeg and Vancouver would be fleeting. This would become more obvious in the 1970s. For example, between 1971 and 1981 the densification ratio for Vancouver rose from 2.5 to over 7, passing well beyond a ratio of four, which has been used as a benchmark figure for a market configuration denoting the presence of market forces favouring densification. Although the densification ratio for Winnipeg rose from about 1.8 to 2.3, this was not enough to establish a regime of accumulation where densification would become a permanet transformative feature (table one, p. 49). Because of these diverging ratios, by 1981 it became apparent that each city occupied two qualitatively different universes with regard to the operation of market forces. And this would find direct expression in the built environment, as can be seen in the growing divergence in the proportion of percentage of single-detached dwelling units located in each city. Still, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by four percent in Winnipeg and five percent in Vancouver. What was significant for Vancouver was that for the first time the proportion of single detached units in Vancouver fell in line with the national average, while in Winnipeg they continued to hover above this average. However, even in Winnipeg, the gap was almost closed, as the percentage of single-detached dwelling units came within two percentage points of the national average in 1981, before moving upwards during the rest of the 1980s.
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Table Two
V WPG T M Canada
1931 79% 73% 34% 5% 76%
1941 75% 66% 39% 7% 72%
1951 75% 67% 52% 11% 66.4%
1961 71% 70% 56% 19% 65.3%
1971 62% 63% 46% 26% 59.4%
1981 57% 59% 40% 27% 57.0%
1991 50% 61% 45% 31% 56.9%
1996(e) 45% 62% 46% 32% 53.2%
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From 1981 and 1991, the impact of two quite different urban land markets would become more apparent in production of new housing. While the proportion of single-detached units declined in Vancouver, this proportion rose in Winnipeg. As densification accelerated in Vancouver so too, did the decline in the proportion of single-detached units. Conversely, as declines in the densification ratio for Winnipeg reveal, as the densification process decelerated and even reversed itself, the proportion of single-detached began to rise rather than fall after 1980. The figures in Table Two show this, as the number of single-detached units in Winnipeg rose from 59 percent in 1981 to 61 percent in 1991.
Just the opposite occurred in Vancouver. As the densification ratio rose, the decline in the proportion of dwelling units made up of single-detached units accelerated -- falling from from 57 percent of the region's housing inventory in 1981, to 50 percent in 1991, a decline of seven percent. What make this decline even more remarkable, was that it occurred at a time when the advancement of the densification process had almost come to a halt across the nation. As table two shows, for the nation as a whole the proportion of single-detached units only fell by one-tenth of a percentage point in the 1980s, compared to 6 percent in the 1960s and two-point-five percent in the 1970s. And in some cities such as Winnipeg and Toronto there was even a reversal.
Estimates for 1996 (table two, p.61) show that since 1991 the densification process has accelerated again. Mostly because of what was happening in British Columbia, the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the nation fell by 3.5 percent. In the 1980s, one of the main reasons for the slow progression of the densification process was the striking reversal in the production of single-detached units that took place in the exurban part of Greater Toronto. In Toronto a bi-modal or split pattern of development emerged. In core of the region (centred within the boundaries of the old Metropolitan Corporation of Toronto) densification still remained a powerful force. However, in the exurban parts of the region a powerful counter tendency built up steam. As this was the fastest growing part of the region, resurgent land-extensive development that took place here overwhelmed what was happening in the core. This would show up in the composition of the housing stock. For instance, between 1986 and 1985 the proportion of single-detached units fell from 34 to 32.6 percent in the core, a drop of 1.4 percent. At the same time, the proportion of single-detached units rose from 62 to 63 percent in exurban Toronto.
Because exurban Toronto was then also the largest and most dynamic housing market in the country, this naturally skewed the national average, bringing to a halt the steady decline in the number of single-detached dwellings making up the country's housing stock, which had fallen at an accelerated rate since the early 60s. Even in Vancouver, deflationary pressures were at work in the early 80s. As a result of the bursting of the speculative housing bubble in 1980 and 81, the densification ratio fell below the benchmark level of four, when it momentarily sank to 3.8 in 1986 before beginning a decade long ascent (table one, p. 49).
Between 1991 and 1996, the resurgence of land-extensive development would be tamed somewhat. Although weaker than the 1960s and 70s, densification gained strength in the 1990s, as the proportion of single-detached dwelling units making up the nations housing inventory started to decline in a significant way once more, after almost coming to a halt between 1986 and 1991. This time, however, Vancouver rather than Toronto would become the lead city. Still, even in Toronto, densification gained some new momentum. As a result, there was a dramatic slowdown in the production of single-detached units within Greater Toronto between 1991 and 1995. Unlike the period between 1981 and 1991, when the proportion of single-detached dwelling units in the region rose by 5 percent, between 1991 and 1996 this advance almost came to a halt, as the proportion of single-detached units only rose by 1 percent. Thus by 1996 single-detached units made up approximately 46 percent of the regions housing stock, a rise of six percent from 1981, when single-detached dwellings made up of 40 percent of the region's housing inventory.
With Densification ratio for Vancouver moving past seven in the 1990s, densification advanced much faster than in the nation, as a whole. Between 1991 and 1996 (in table two, p. 61) the proportion of single-detached units in Greater Vancouver fell by five percent, moving from 50 percent to about 45 percent. If present trends continue, within the decade, Vancouver will undoubtedly become the densiest city in the country, and perhaps the continent, as no other major urban centre in either the United States or Canada is experiencing such a dramatic. If the proportion of single-detached units can be taken as an accurate reflection of residential densities than only Montreal and Greater New York presently have a lower proportion of their housing stock made up of single-detached dwellings. With the eclipse of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver currently proceeding at faster rate than in Toronto during the 1960s -- when a ten percent drop in the proportion of the region's housing stock made up of single-detached dwelling units made it the lead city for the densification process with the first wave of reinvestment -- it the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver may sink below 35 percent in less than ten years. If this occurs the rate of decline experienced in Vancouver will match or even exceed the ten percent drop experienced by Toronto in the 1960s. And if this does occur, Vancouver will hold the distinction of becoming the only major North American city that will be denser in the year 2001 than it was in 1931, when the era of the streetcar suburb came to an end.
With the proportion of single-detached dwelling in Winnipeg rising from 61 percent in 1991 to 62 percent in 1996, an entirely different urban configuration is unfolding. This is reflected in the densification ratios for each city. While the densification ratio for Vancouver's has moved well past the benchmark line of four, which suggests that densification has become a dominant force, in Winnipeg it has hovered around the benchmark figure of two, which suggests that land-extensive development will likely remain the dominant regime of accumulation for this city into the next century. From these diverging densification ratios dramatically different investment profiles for each city have resulted. Construction figures show this. For example, if housing starts for the first half of 1997, single-detached units accounted for 68 percent of all housing starts in Winnipeg. By contrast, in Vancouver single-detached units only made up 31 percent of all housing starts (SC-35).
As these figures indicate, each city is situated at opposite ends of the continuum. This can be shown by looking at the changes in the makeup of the housing stock for each city, and by comparing them to the national average. For Winnipeg, in 1981 the proportion of single-detached units was two percent above the national average. However by 1991 the gap had widened to nine percentage points (table two). Just the opposite happened in Vancouver. In 1981, the proportion of single-detached units in Vancouver equalled the national average. However, since that time the gap has grown by 10 percentage points, but in the opposite direction from Winnipeg. For most of the postwar period the proportion of single-detached dwellings in Vancouver had stood well above the national average. Now, however, the proportion of single-detached units is well below the national average.
For the rest of the country, as the next construction cycle proceeds, it remains to be seen what will happen. Although Winnipeg will probably maintain its current trajectory, it is in the exurban areas of Toronto, which now make up the largest market for new housing in the country, that some new developments might unfold. Particularly since no other place in the country will likely be affected by the removal of hidden subsidies. With federal and provincial downloading, existing subsidies are now being openly challenged and debated. While some of the subsidies that support single-detached dwelling units are likely to remain in place many others may disappear. Even though planning regulations have been loosened up to allow more land-extensive development, cutbacks in infrastructure financing, tax pooling, and added development cost levies, may cancel this out.
Once the next construction cycle has run its course it will be easier to assess the impact of these changes.Will the bi-polar pattern of investment that has characterized the densification of Toronto since the 1980s become more entrenched? Moreover, since this same pattern can now be found in Montreal and Ottawa, will this pattern, rather than the one in Vancouver, define the future for the densification of the Canadian city ?
3.1.2 - The Great Deflation: 1930 to 1945
As the previous comparisons illustrate, there is not a direct-one-to-one correspondence between the movement of the densification ratio, changes in population density, and shifts in the housing composition of each city. As already stated, the time lag created by historical inertia accounts for much of the divergence that can be observed. Time lags and distortions do result because building cycles may not correspond exactly to the time in which shifts take place in the densification ratio. Finally, since the urban land market is just one facet of densification and densification itself, in turn, is just one aspect of a mode of urban development, there is an important institutional angle that needs to be considered when looking at the evolution of the densification process. This becomes easier to see if the time lag created by the incubation of two contrasting modes of urban development that have shaped the Canadian city in the late twentieth century are more closely examined.
Although this chapter is primarily concerned with regimes of accumulation rather than modes of regulation -- and so the material rather than social and political variables which shape the production of urban space --at some point these two spheres cross over and affect each other. There is no iron clad law which says that this has to happen. The only link is that of contingency and historical circumstance. Although a regime of accumulation and mode of regulation may have autonomous origins, when they start to interact with each other, each begins to affect the others course of evolution. From this this beginning of an institutional nexus can be sketched out and the emergence of a mode of urban development tracked. the articulation of material and institutional forces that creates a mode or model of urban development is far from seamless or pre-ordained. If the articulation of circumstances and background conditions which to a the creation of land-extensive regime of accumulation governed by modern norms are studied, we find a considerable time lag between shifts in the densification ratio and the inculcation of new spatial norms which resulted in the mass production of different kind of urban space that came with the suburbanization of the North American city after World War Two. Far from being pre-ordained or inevitable, for this new institutional configuration to become significant market signals created by a decline in the densification ratio had to be absorbed by the institutions of the local state in order for a reproducible pattern of accumulation to be established. What this reveals is that it is necessary to study the interaction between the housing market and local institutions when looking at the emergence of a distinctive mode of urban development. The economic forces which shape the city are always mediated by the institutions which regularize and transform material impulses and background conditions into regulatory programs that become the basis for the re-organization of urban space.
What such a perspective underlines is the importance of institutions. Because of this, far from being a seamless progression, or an inevitable trajectory, the process of change in the city quite open-ended, even when there are powerful economic, demographic, or technological forces at play. As will now be shown, all these material impulses are by the institutional matrix created by the local state. In the case of densification, for instance, it is possible to show how the progression of the densification process can be slowed down or accelerated by the institutional configuration of the local state in a particular locality .
Although a great deal of discussion about globalization fills the literature on urban change and transformation, the the influence of bureaucracy and the political culture of the local state has often been ignored. Even though the evolution of land-extensive and land-intensive regimes in Canada may appear inevitable and preordained facts when they are viewed in retrospect, if the role played by the local state is recognized and the historical record is examined, the contingent nature of the evolution of the city in the twentieth century becomes much more cleary laid out. For without the two incubation periods that created the institutional foundations that supported and guided these two regimes of accumulation, the changes unleashed by the economy -- which impacted the urban land markets -- new demographic influences, and changing technologies, would probably have produced outcomes different from the ones we can now observe: both in terms of the massive suburbanization that took place after 1945, and the densification that emerged as a major force for the first time in the mid 1960s.
For example, although the reconfiguration of the urban property market during the 1930s lowered the densification ratios of most cities, without legislation like the National Housing Act, or the other programs initiated by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation the potential for land-extensive development that was created by this decline in the densification ratio would not have been exploited as fully as it was. Without the support provided by these policies Canada's cities might well have developed more like British rather than American cities after the war.
The same can be said about the densification process as well. Without the large and powerful group development corporations that had been created in the modern period the high-rise and medium-rise densication which became so prominent in Canada would not have unfolded in the way that it did (Bellan 1977; Bettinson 1975) As well, it the state had not introduced new tenure forms, such as strata title ownership densification would have probably followed a much different course than it has taken so far (only introduced in the U.S. in 1961 and in B.C., in 1966).
Indeed, if a finer-grain analysis of the local state is made, in part, it is possible to show how two different institutional complexes set the context for the progression of land-extensive and land-intensive development, with variations in the institutional evolution of the city accounting for much of the uneveness that can be observed in the progression of land-intensive development in Canada. This becomes more obvious when a comparing the institutional supports for land-extensive and land intensive development. Unlike the current regime of land-intensive regime of accumulation, the previous land-extensive regime had a much more uniform and standardized regulatory framework because of the dominance of the federal government. By contrast, the regulatory framework for densification was much more uneven because of the receding influence of the federal government and the rising power of the provinces. This combined with the rising anarchist tendencies that were triggered by the growing influence of the market and anti-war sentiments, provided a much more chaotic framework since all centralized forms of bureaucratic rule were challenged -- whether it be a large corporation or the central state. While the ascent of beaucratic rule during the modern era made it possible tot for land-extensive development to take a regimented and standardizaed form, this would not be possible in the postmodern era and so, as a consequence, the regulation of the densification process.
This is important because the Depression and the war had greatly increased the influence and power of the federal government. Because of its wealth and influence, the federal government was able to set the agenda that would leed to the adoption of a uniform and standardized set of spatial norms which would be used to govern and promote the suburbanization of the city across the entire country. However, with the rising influence of the provinces in the 1960s, and later, the retreat of the federal government in the late 70s and 80s, this uniform institutional framework began to breakdown. This happened whn postmodern norms for the regulation of land-intensive regimes of accumulation developed. This one factor alone, established a regulatory context that was quite different from the modern era, one that was defined by the advance of bureaucratic rule -- in the case of modernism -- and the other by market rule -- as was more the cse in the postmodern era. So not only did more polarized flows of capital and labour made the progression of densification more uneven across the country, different institutional contexts for the incubation of modern and postmodern regulation. As a result two quite different institutional context governed the regulation of land-extensive and lend-intensive development. In part this explains why land-extensive development evolved in such a uniform and consistent manner during the modern period between 1945 and 1973. As well, this partially explains the contrasting unevenness of the model of urban development that came about when an insitutional nexus between densification and postmodern norms was established after 1973.
The presence of these two contrasting institutional frameworks explains why the supports that prop up the postmodern city are much more fragmented than the ones that supported land-intensive development. The fiscal crisis of the state has further compounded this situation. As already mentioned, fiscal retrenchment and the assertativeness of the provinces have reduced the ability of the federal government to set uniform standards and expectations for the organization of the city as it had done in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly since the 1980s, compared to the unambiguous unfolding of land-extensive development after 1945 this had been the case. This shows up in the polarized densification ratios, as regional rather than national trends become pronounsed in the diverging proportion of single detached dwellings that can be observed in the country's largest cities. From 1945 until the mid 60s, when a period of transition appeared, the densification ratio of every large city generally followed the same trajectory, producing spaces that were quite similar across the country as the densification ratio fell in every city and the proportion of single detached dwelling units occupied by the nuclear family unit increased rather than decreased. All this would change in the postmodern period, as the previous comparison between Winnipeg and Vancouver and the emergence of a bi-polar pattern of densification in Toronto so clearly show.
Looking more closely at these two transition periods, beginning with the changes that were brought about by the application of modern norms to the regulation of a land-extensive regime of accumulation that became the defining pattern of residential investment after 1945, the incubation for this regime of accumulation lasted approximately from 1925 to 1945, or about twenty years. As a result, 15 to 20 years elapsed before the full effect of decline of the decline in the densification ratio that occurred in the early 30s was translated into a regulatory language and set of practices which allowed the economic and social conditions for land-extensive development to be realized in the production of urban space on a mass scale. To illustrate this point we need only look at Winnipeg and Vancouver again to see how long the lag was between the fall in the densification ratio and resultant changes in the population density and housing stock of each city.
With the densification ratio for Winnipeg falling from 4.64 to 2.196 and Vancouver's falling from 4.329 to 2.196 between 1931 and 1951 (table one, p. 49) this time was clearly a watershed period for the property markets of both cities. Yet, in spite of the dramatic shift from a land-intensive to land-extensive regime, the absence of an institutional mechanism to support this new regime, along with the retardation of the building cycle that came with the depression and the war, the new economic signals given off by the reconfiguration of the property market were muffled for nearly twenty years. Not until the 1950s would changes in the configuration of the property market result in the actual production of considerably less dense urban space. For this to happen, the housing industry, which had largely ceased to exist because of the depression and the war, had to be reconstituted. New financial tools for the purchase of homes would have to be created. And of great importance, modern city planning would have to be re-instituted so that suburban development could be rationalized and the government's liability for the mass market it created in mortgages financing protected (Bettinson 1975; Harris 1996). Only after this economic and institutional framework was put in place did the suburbanization of the city -- sparked by the fall in the densification ratio -- move full speed ahead. For even into the late 1940s, as Miron has noted, materials shortages severally restricted the amount of new housing that could be undertaken (Miron 1988,p.168-9).
In the Labour Gazette (May 1951) for example, statistics compiled on housing expenditures showed a modest increase in housing expenditures occurring as the Great Depression was beginning to dissipate in the late 1930s, with 15.7 percent of total capital expenditures in 1939 devoted to housing. But even this modest level of expenditure evaporated as the level of housing expenditure decreased from 15.7 percent, in 1939 to 1.28 percent of all capital investment made in 1942. As a result, not until 1945 -- 15 years after the market had been reconfigured -- did the mass production of less dense suburban environments become the norm. And it wasn't until 1949 that the full impact of land-extensive development was felt, since it took this long for prewar levels of investment in housing to be reached, as investment in housing during the modern period rose to 18.2 percent of all capital investment (Labour Gazette May 1951). Thereafter, the rate of investment in housing would rise further, and plateau around 25 percent of all fixed investment (Miron 1988,p.194).
So while the great deflation initially led to the decline in the densification ratio, a long incubation period was required for the construction of the necessary institutional supports that were needed for the sustained mass production of housing. Thus, between 1931 and 1936 the average price of a house in Canada fell by 24 percent, but it wasn't until 1946 that housing prices would recover to their 1931 level, and housing production would begin to rise significantly (Historical Statistics of Canada 1983, Table S323-325). The deflation which took place was extensive and deep enough to take every city in the country down at the same time. However, there was some variation: in cities in decline, such as Winnipeg, prices deflated more than in ascendant cities like Vancouver. Whereas house prices fell by 45 percent in Winnipeg between 1931 and 1941, in Vancouver they only declined by 32 percent.
Besides the great deflation there were other factors that also set the stage for the great take off in housing production after the war. On the supply side, as we have seen, deflation had reduced the cost of land. However changes on the demand side would also play a role in what was to happen. Here two important factors would come into play. First there was the effect of the war. Because of rising employment and enforced savings that came with the war economy a huge pool of savings was created. Moreover, the unrest that came with the previous demobilization after World War One worried the government. This, combined with the concerns about unemployment and that the housing shortage, which had become a trigger for returning veterans-- who protested the shortage by occupying buildings like the Hotel Vancouver (Wade 1994) -- led the government to use housing as a shock absorber and anchor to keep unrest in line, since a population paying mortgages would have less time or energy to foment trouble. So not only did the federal government's postwar housing strategy address the critical housing shortage that resulted from 20 years of underinvestment, as well it also dealt with the increased demand for housing that came from the urbanization that was induced by the war. Moreover, it was also one way to discipline the population and a useful way for tapping into the huge pool of savings that had been built up during the war. By this means, the production of housing became a favoured counter-cyclical tool for the management of the economy. Besides these reasons, a huge demand for more land-extensive development was given an unexpected boost by the anomalous situation created by the great post-war baby boom. For the first time since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was a dramatic and sustained surge in the natural fertility rate.
This would be reflected in labour force participation figures. In spite of a booming economy, women were expected to leave the workforce and devote most of their energies to child-rearing. As a result, the percentage of the population involved in the workplace declined rather than increased until the early 1960s, with the percentage of the population in the labour force steadily falling from 40 percent between 1941 and 1945 to a low of around 35 percent in the early 1960s, before it began to rise during the transition period between the modern and postmodern periods, reaching 52 percent in 1989, as women became integrated into the labour force once again (The Globe and Mail 1997R).
Everything from realigning gender roles in the work place, to a massive increase in the birth rate (hat was related to this realignment) would support the great suburban housing boom which the great deflation had provided the initial impetus for by reducing the cost of land. The opportunities established by these material conditions might not have been realized without the creation of a supporting mode of regulation. From the mid 40s into the early 50s, most of the formal aspects of this mode of regulation were put in place through the enactment of National Housing Act in 1944 (Bettinson 1975), and the establishment of Canada Mortgage and Housing in 1945. This transformed the regulation and production of space from a laissez-faire mode to one that was corporatist in orientation. All of this was done deliberately to build up and rationalize the building industry so that the mass production of housing could go on without too much fear of devaluation or default by the consumer. With this accomplished, housing could also be used as a counter cyclical device to even out the oscillation of investment and therefore regulate unemployment to a certain extent. Consequently, modern city planning was revived as well to facilitate these various related goals. Together, all these changes created conditions with for the production of urban space that closely matched Fordist models for the organization of production. Largely because of this, in the modern era urban government closely mirrored the dominant corporated model. As a result, in more ways than one, Ford and General Motors were shaping the physical and institutional spaces of the modern city.
Thus, by the early 1950s the basic foundations for a new mode of urban development -- characterized by a land-extensive regime of accumulation and modernist regulatory norms -- was brought into existence. While property values had recovered to their 1931 levels by 1946, except for a brief inflationary surge around 1950 (as declining densification ratios show) until the early and mid 1960s this era would primarily be defined as a period of land extensive development since shelter costs generally lagged behind wage increases.
The articulation of this new regime of accumulation with a complementary mode of regulation would be accomplished by the late 1940s, and would herald the production of one of the most standardized and homogeneous built environments ever constructed. Thus, from a low point of 11,827 units in 1946, housing production rose to 135,000 units in 1956, then to 160,000 units in 1966 and to over 230,000 by 1976.
But even as the affordability of this space-extensive form of urban development was steadily improving, signs of change were beginning to loom on the horizon. As far back as 1952, portents of what was to follow appeared when shelter costs started to move dramatically above the consumer price index for the first time. While it would be over a decade before these rising price increases would outstrip wage increases this can be seen as a portend of the reconfiguration of the property market that was to come with the great inflation that would create the material basis for a new regime of accumulation, which was land-intensive rather than land-extensive.
3.1.2 - The Great Inflation: 1965 to 1975
Around 1965, the supply-and-demand factors that had been responsible for keeping the densification ratio around the benchmark figure of two started to reverse direction as rising inflation eventually led to the institution of wage and price controls in 1974 and rent controls around the same time. As well, soaring land prices and escalating interest rates undermined the material basis for the unproblematic extension of land-extensive development. After a long period of stasis and gradual decline, the densification ratio began to rise precipitously. One symptom of the crisis would be declining home ownership. After home ownership peaked in 1961 when the level of home ownership rose to 66 percent of all households, by 1971 the ownership rate had dropped to 60 percent (Miron 1988). Since 1971 there has been some modest recovery in the level of home ownership, with the percentage rising to 62 percent in 1981; however this is still below 1961 peak. Furthermore, especially in places like Vancouver, this modest increase has only occurred because of a change in tenure form and the move into denser housing units, since 20 percent of all housing in Vancouver is now strata title units which would indicate that nearly half of all ownership units in Vancouver are not single-detached dwelling units and that nearly half are not held in fee simple ownership -- the dominant tenure form during the modern era (table three, p.81). Accordingly the movement from fee simple to strata title forms of tenure can be seen as the one of the most important regulatory features of the postmodern era, since this insertion innovation would play a key role in eliminate the bottleneck to further densification by making it possible to experiment with new housing forms as well provide legitimacy to denser housing because it could now be owned rather than rented. Here a very close link between postmodern regulation and densification developed.
This would even be reflected in zoning regulations, particularly in Vancouver, where Comprehensive District zoning made it easier to institute denser mixed use developments spread from out from the City of Vancouver to the entire region with changes to the Municipal act by the provincial government in the mid 1990s (Ito 1997).
As with the formulation and application of modern norms, this did not happen without certain setbacks and considerable resistance. The permanent shift from land-extensive to land-intensive development in Vancouver that was triggered by the great inflation also provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification in Vancouver as well as across the country. Particularly, in those cities where the property market had been changed the most, initially this change provoked a powerful social and political reaction to the first wave of densification that flowed over the country's cities. Although much of this had to do with problems of afforability, equally significant in the reaction to densification was the aesthetic reaction to built environment that was being created. Here the flaws of modern formats for accommodating denser environments rose to the surface.
As a result, modernism lost much of its allure. On a variety of levels its legitimacy was called into question, because it was unable to create suitable environments for the denser spaces that were produced when the pattern of residential and commercial investment shifted and started to concentrate rather than disperse further out into the suburbs. Rather than greenfield sites, the redevelopment of existing built-up areas became the focal points for a great of new investment. This, combined with affordability problems, created a massive upheaval that prompted both mainstream (Bourne 1967; Lithwick 1970) and radical academics in Canada (Drache and Clement 1985, Chapter 25; Roussopoulos 1982; Pickvance 1976) to pay a great deal of attention to the city. This happened across a wide variety of disciplines and led to the creation of a distinctive urban discourse on the city in Canada, as academics tried to make sense of the densification process that was now unfolding. For example, in High Rise and Super Profits the authors caught the reigning sentiment when they remarked that:
Housing in Canada absorbs about 40% of a working person's wage. With land prices skyrocketing as it becomes more and more scarce, the price of housing has become the single most inflationary item of the consumers budget (as a result) . . .the logic of urban scarcity make it economically necessary to build up rather than out. That way, a greater number of people can be more profitably housed on less land. In fact, in metropolitan centres between 1968 and 1970, three times as many apartment units have been built as have single family dwellings. (Barker et el. 1973, p.3)
As already stated, the shift from land-intensive development was further complicated by the inability of modern regulation to deal with the turbulence and new formats that were required to made denser environments more acceptable to the middle class which once again moved out of its dormancy to become an active political force within the local state. While modern norms proved to be ideal for the regulation of land-extensive development this was less so when development shifted from a land extensive to land-intensive regime of accumulation - particularly when redevelopment took place on sites occupied by the new middle class or on land in which it had developed an interest. The situation was further aggravated by the limited aesthetic repertory of modern built forms. Since modernism in Canada relied on either the single detached dwelling units for land-extensive development, or the construction of high-rise development for the land-intensive development that took place in the 1960s, modernism did not have the capacity to adequately respond to the challenge posed by densification.
Many people were alienated from the environments that were created because of the strong set of associations between low-rise suburban environments and the good life and, conversely, the opposite association that existed between pathology and density that existed in both the popular and academic mind during the modern period, something that was further exacerbated by the negative symbolism that all high rise development would take on during the counterculture.
On several fronts, the weaknesses of modern philosophic, social and aesthetic practices for the regulation of space were brought out and exposed by the densification process. The sudden eruption of high-rise apartments across the country therefore provoked resistance to the entire framework that been responsible for the social and physical organization of space that had been in force since 1945, as the proportion of new housing stock made up of apartments rose from around 20 percent in the early 1960s to about 40 percent in the mid sixties, (1965) and then over 50 percent by the late 60s, when the first wave of densification crested. As this happened, so too did the resistance of the middle class to all forms of modern regulation.
The reaction that rose against the further spread of high-rise office buildings and apartment was not entirely negative. Their appearance also sparked the first experiments in postmodern planning, as alternative formats for accommodating density began to be explored. Similarly, the other key material artifact of the modern city -- the automobile -- was also challenged for the first time. As a result of this, there was a slowdown in freeway construction and an increase in the resources devoted to the provision of more transit infrastructure.
Also, a search for new house types was begun. Housing forms located between the extremes represented by the single detached home and the high-rise apartment buildings were experimented with. Long before the current popularization of neo-traditional planning or the new urbanism, architects in Canada such as Barton Myers and Jack Diamond had began to explore how denser housing could be accommodated through infill construction and medium rather than high-rise formats that were organized around the street rather than the highway and which also paid more attention to the existing urban fabric, putting the campus format -- best exemplified in the new university campuses that were constructed in the 1960s, such as York University, The University of Waterloo and the University of Regina or publicly sponsored urban renewal such as the Raymour complex in Vancouver, the Jeanne Mance project in Montreal or Regent Park in Toronto (Hodge 1986, p.101), or private redevelopment, the most famous of which was St. James Town in Toronto -- into disrepute.
Instead of this format alternative, postmodern format that involved mixed-use and medium-rise buildings aligned to existing urban streets were experimented with. Unlike modern formats, this new aesthetic order gave priority to the street rather than the highway, defining one of the key aesthetic principles for the postmodern organization of urban space that attempted to revive a form of urban space associated with 19th-century modernism, which typified the streetcar city and the laissez-faire period of development in the history of the North American city.
As well as this aesthetic shift, the modern regulation of space was challenged at the philosophic and social level also. Questions about the nature of urban space were raised. When land-extensive development predominated, most new housing construction took place on place on greenfield sites and it was possible for planners to view space as some blank slate or abstraction that they could manipulate at will, molding it to fit into a technocratic notion of efficiency and uniformity, as standardized spaces formatted around the mass production of single detached dwelling units or high-rise apartment units and the automobile became mirror images and symbols of Fordism. However, this became much more difficult to do so when real estate investment shifted to already developed sites -- especially when these sites were occupied by a new middle class, whose opposition to redevelopment was further reinforced by aesthetic considerations, as it rebelled against the format taken by this development. There was also a philosophic dimension to this as well, as the new middle class reacted strongly to its exclusion from the decision-making process that created the program to be used to redevelop an existing space.
Not surprisingly, sharp cultural clashes arose as the first wave of densification lead to the intrusion of apartments into already built-up areas, setting the stage for the legitimization crisis that modern planning was to experience between the late 1960s and the present, as the middle class rebelled against the modern city at every level of its regulation, but most stridently at the aesthetic level, where high-rises became a lightning rod for a broader reaction that took shape against all forms of twentieth-century modernism, particularly bureaucratic rule and the corporate control of the economy. On the philosophic plane, for instance, this entailed a strong challenge to bureaucratic rule in both the public and private sectors. On the social level, this resulted in the deconstruction of modern notion of deviance and normalcy. (Gutstein 1975; Ley 1974; Vancouver Urban Research group 1972; Lorimer 1972; Granastein 1971; Clarkson 1972; Caufield 1972; Sewell 1970; Lorimer 1970; Roussoupolos 1982).
In addition, the great inflation and the pressure for densification created by this set in motion a number of institutional adaptations and responses that would become important for sustaining densification in Canada. Just as the National Housing Act and Canada Mortgage and Housing had established the institutional supports for the suburbanization of the city after 1945, in a similar way two institutional innovations heralded the beginning of postmodern regime for the regulation of urban space. The first change had to do with amendments that were made to the National Housing Act in 1973. In turn these amendments provided the funding and rules for the creation of a vibrant non-profit and co-operative sector from 1973 until 1993 that became central features of the livable city program for the postmodern transformation of the city. The second important innovation had to do with the introduction of strata title legislation in the middle of the 1960s. It would not become significant in the first phase of the postmodern transformation of the city during the 1970s, but would become pivotal to the densification process in the 1980s (during the era of the urban spectacle).
In Vancouver, the link between these pieces of legislation and the production of urban space would be far-reaching, their relative dominance denoting the existence of two quite different phases in the postmodern transformation of the city. As table three (p. 81) shows, the diffusion of strata title units has been highly uneven -- not only within the country but even with in a single urban region, such as Vancouver. If national comparisons are made, the divergence between Vancouver and the nation becomes striking. Whereas only about 4 percent of all dwelling units in Canada were made up of strata title units in Greater Vancouver they made up 20 percent of all units. The divergence becomes even greater where densification in the region has been the most intense or where middle class resettlement has become extensive.
In the Core area of Greater Vancouver (figure three, chapter five, p. 403) where densification was the most intense, the proportion of strata title was over 30 percent (table three, p. 81), nearly nine times the national average. And within the core, in local areas such as the Downtown and Fairview, where densification and the middle class colonization of urban space have been even more intense, the proportion of strata title units have approached 50 percent of all dwelling units, or twelve times the national average. Not surprisingly Vancouver has the highest level of strata ownership in the country (Lo 1989). Thus, in 1996 condominiums accounted for over 55 percent (CMHC 1996) of all new housing units in the region and up to 62 percent of all new housing units constructed within the City of Vancouver (VS-351).
Canada Mortgage and Housing (1994, p. 31) projections on housing starts show that this extremely uneven diffusion of strata title units has continued into the 1990s. In the projections that were made cities and even provinces experiencing the most intense form of densification, such as Vancouver and British Columbia, the production of strata title units between 1993 and 1995 was projected to be around 48,883 or about 56 percent of all new strata title units constructed in the nation (even though the province only accounted for about 13 percent of the country's population). The same applies to Vancouver. With 28,000 strata title units projected over this time period, Vancouver was expected to account for 33 percent of the national total, even though it only had 7 percent of the nation's population
At the other end of the continuum there are cities such as Winnipeg that have a densification ratio that is below two, so land-extensive patterns of development are much more deeply entrenched here. In places like this, the level of new condominium construction has been very low. As the figures for Manitoba reveal, CMHC forecasts only 454 new strata title units for the province between 1993 and 1995. Since most of these units would be constructed in Winnipeg, from this one can infer that less than one half of one per cent of the national total of new strata title units projected be built in Canada would appear in Winnipeg, a city with a third of Vancouver's population and around two percent of the nation's population. While the proportion of strata title units in Vancouver was nearly over-represented by a factor of five; Winnipeg was under-represented by a factor of 40.
With densification ratio hovers around or above 2.5, cities such Calgary and Edmonton, occupy an intermediate position between the extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver. This shows up in the construction of strata title units for the province of Alberta where, as in Winnipeg, the vast majority of strata title units are located in either Edmonton or Calgary. Here the same CMHC projection forecast that between 1993 and 1995 7,550 new strata title units would be built in Alberta, or approximately 9 percent of the national total. When the sizes of Edmonton and Calgary are factored into this projection both cities lie reasonably close to the national average of 4 percent.
Although the fact that strata title legislation provided the legal and institutional mechanism for densification to proceed since the mid 1980s in Toronto and Vancouver, it is surprising to note how little recognition has been given to the impact that this tenure form has had on the production of space. Unlike the first wave, in which the production of rental units surfaced as the most important manifestation of the densification process, when the second wave emerged it would be strata title tenure house forms rather than rental units that would become the preferred tenure format for the production of denser housing.
While the great inflation reversed the trajectory of the densification ratio in most large cities, changing demographics and renewed interest in public transit also set off changes that also could impede or facilitate the extension of the densification process. Moreover, as this brief outline of the two waves of densification and the possible beginning of a third wave in places like Toronto may show, the shift from one regime to another can be a long and drawn out affair, and may work itself out in idiosyncratic ways in different cities. Moreover, as table one and two reveal, it is a process that does not just go on in a linear fashion. Even where it is most strongly expressed, such as in Vancouver and Toronto, there is an ebb and flow to the progression of the densification process that is tied into the independent movement of the building cycle. Moreover, as Winnipeg the densification process can even be permanently reversed. Likewise, where it is not dominant, the examples of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa reveal that land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation can co-exist within a single urban region.
As the history of modern city planning has shown, the incubation of a new mode of urban development can be a long and drawn out affair. That is why it is not yet possible to make a definitive statement about the evolution of the current mode of urban development. Nevertheless, a simple comparison of what was absent in the previous mode of urban development, but now present in the current one, does reveal that some distinguishing patterns have emerged which set the urbanization that took place in the mid-twentieth century apart from what is now taking place in the late-twentieth century. While densification may not be dominant in every city, it appears as either an emergent or localized phenomenon in most large cities or as an ascendant force in the reshaping of urban space because of the that demographics have upon the shaping of the densification process and the role that the provision of transportation and communications infrastructure can have on the concentration of dispersion of investment capital. Likewise, the spread of postmodern spatial norms can be viewed as another sign of the emergence of a new age with regard to the production of urban space. Still, it is not clear what final shape the current mode of urban development will take across the country. Keeping this in mind, the impact that population and demographics, and later, the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure have had on the evolution of densification process can now be looked at.
--------------------------- TABLE THREE --------------------------------------
Strata Title Units As A Proportion Of Total Housing Stock
Canada Metro C. of Van Outer City Core Area CBD Fairview
1981 1% 8% 6% 2.5% 9.3% - 16%
1991 3% 15% 12% 4.5% 21% 6% 35%
1996 4%(e) 19%(e) 19.5% (e) 8.6%(e) 31%(e) 48%(e) 41%(e)
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3.2 - Two: The Impact of Population and Demographics on densification
Even though economic influences are viewed as the single most important variable that shapes the densification process, the fact that the densification process in Vancouver was actually first triggered by demographic rather than economic factors indicates that the densification process is a complex process, where other forces intervene. This explains why the has not evolved in a unilinear direction, as other forces are at work in shaping it. As will now be illustrated, the interplay of non-economic factors are important too. While changes in the property market absorb and reflect changing demographic patterns, as well different strategies for the provisioning of transportation infrastructure, it is still necessary to look at these other two key material variables separately.
Demographic influences can be broken up into three different categories. One influence is the result of changes in population growth. The second has to do with immigration. And the third has to do with life cycle changes in the general population. With the exception of immigration, unlike economic changes, or shifts in transportation and communications technology, it is possible to project some demographic patterns accurately into the future. Moreover, as already mentioned, over time demographic influences work themselves out more in a cyclical rather than linear fashion. Because many of these movements are long-term and predictable, this has led some analysts to link demographic information too closely with other phenomena, or to assume too much stability in the way demographic tendencies unfold. In some cases this has led to a form of demographic determinism, which mimicks the economic and technological determinism that so often has surfaced in interpretation of urban transformation.
Therefore, some care has to be taken when using population projections to predict other occurrences -- not only because there are two other variables which affect the densification process that need to be considered, but also because of the different way that these variables affect each other when they become articulated with one another. As will be shown, economic influences which affect the property market and demographic influences that affect the demand for sparser or denser housing forms do not necessarily move in sync with each other. Contradictory impulses can be a work at the same time. The densification process does not simply progress in a linear fashion, it is also shaped by counter cyclical forces as well. As a consequence, in certain articulations, demographic forces, amplify or counter act existing economic impulses that and even over ride them in some instances, either supporting land-extensive or land-intensive patterns of development.
Demographic influences have even acted as a trigger for the densification process in some conjunctures. At other times, they have acted as breaks, modifying or, mediating changes created by shifts in the densification ration -- amplifying or muffling existing economic tendencies in land development. For instance, in Winnipeg, this can be shown by looking at the great surge in apartment construction that took place between 1961 and 1971. Although the densification ratio (table one, p. 49) was still dropping in Winnipeg between 1961 and 1971, the large drop in the proportion of the housing stock made up single detached units during this time (table two, p.61) indicates that demographic influences played a very important part in triggering the first wave of densification in this city. As well, demographic rather than economic impulses appeared to have functioned as the initial triggers for the densification process in Vancouver. This can be illustrated by looking at the West End, where the first large boom in postwar apartment construction took place at time when the densification ratio was falling, but a surge in the number of seniors into the neighbourhood counteracted this general fall. Interestingly enough, this neighbourhood became the birthplace for the first wave of densification in Greater Vancouver. Not surprisingly there is a link between the first mini boom in apartment construction and the fact that the West End was rapidly aging because of the migration of seniors into the neighbourhood. This created a regional anomaly in the 1950s, since the proportion of seniors living in the West End was rising steeply at a time when the general population of the region was getting younger.
For Vancouver as a whole, the influence of demographics can best be outlined by looking at the work of David Baxter (1994; 1997). His work provides the most comprehensive and complete analysis of the relation that exists between demographics and the demand for different types of housing in the region. From his analysis of housing it is possible to distill the correlations that exist between life cycle shifts in the general population and the demand created for denser or sparser forms of housing .
Except for a brief inflationary surge in 1949 and 1950, because densification ratios in Vancouver were falling until the mid 1960s, the general trend was for housing prices to fall relative to income. Furthermore, since single-detached dwelling units were the most desired housing form it is hardly surprising to see that the demand for this type of low-density accommodation increased significantly when the densification was falling. This shows up clearly in rising home ownership rates between 1941 and 1961. As a result, the percentage of households in Canada owning their own housing increased from 57 percent to 66 percent in this twenty year time span. Naturally this was also reflected in an increase in the proportion of single-detached dwelling units. For instance, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached units rose from 52 percent of the entire housing stock in 1941 to 55.9 percent in 1961, peaking at this level before a rising densification ratio began to reverse this trend in the mid 60s.
However, as the example of the West End shows, there were periods when this correlation was counteracted by opposing demographic influences. Although the densification ratio in Vancouver continued to fall after 1954, the production of apartments started to increase. While some modest increases in land and shelter prices did take place during the 1950s and early 1960s, wages generally stayed one step ahead of this price rise. Therefore, changes in the property market, by themselves, were not sufficient to explain the upward swing in apartment construction. Similary the same can be said about Toronto and even Winnipeg. However, if we look at the West End example and correlate the national surge in apartment construction with the movement of the key age cohorts most likely to live in apartments (those 65 years and older and those you are between the ages of 15 and 24 years), a demographic rather than economic explanation of the first surge in apartment construction can be made.
For this reason, it is possible to link the first postwar surge in apartment construction to the sequential expansion and contraction of these two age cohorts. Consequently, the first postwar apartment boom corresponds quite closely to the expansion of the seniors population that took place in the early to middle 1950s. Soon after, a much larger and longer lasting surge in apartment construction took place from the early and middle 1960s that continued into the early 1970s. But this time the demand for denser accommodation was created by the dramatic rise in the 15-to-24 year old age cohort rather than the seniors cohort. Because densification ratios were generally falling until the mid 1960s, demographic rather than economic factors were clearly the initial trigger for the beginning of the densification process until the late 1960s -- at which time escalating land prices started to kick in, lifting densification ratios upward across the nation and not just in Vancouver.
Life cycle changes therefore became the first important trigger for the densification process. The impact this had can be assessed by looking at the size of each age cohort and a measurement known as the household maintainer rate. The household maintainer rate shows what the likelihood is of an individual forming a household in a particular age cohort. It also can be used to examine the demand structure for sparser single-detached units and denser multiple dwellings units that are generated by each age cohort.
In his research on the housing market in the Greater Vancouver area, Baxter has shown that the two age cohorts most likely to maintain apartment households stand at opposite ends of the age continuum. As already mentioned, one group is made up of the 15-to-24 year old age cohort and the other, the seniors age group 65 . For example, using 1961 figures, Baxter found that the 15-to-24 age group had the highest probability of maintaining an apartment unit, with 50 percent of all households in this age cohort housed in apartment households. The next highest take up of apartment units was accounted for by the 65-plus cohort, with 36 percent of all households in this age group made up of apartment dwellers in 1961. The movement of these two age cohorts can therefore be used to chart the one of ebb and flow of one of demographic influence on the densification process.
Looking in more detail at the movement of these two age cohorts the contention that demographic rather economic influences were likely the most important initial triggers for the densification process can be shown by looking at what happened to the 65-year-old and over age group between 1951 and 1956. Statistics show that the number of seniors grew at a faster rate than the adult population as a whole at this time. While the adult population grew by 2.6 percent a year during this time in Vancouver, the 65 plus age cohort grew by 3.6 percent. However, after 1956 the rate of increase in the seniors population began to trail the growth in the adult population. In a period which has been stereotyped as the baby boom era where the level of family formation was high, it is important to recognize that important countertrends were also present, and that this had an important effect on the production of denser housing units due to the brief surge in non family households made up of seniors at a time when housing was still becoming relatively more inexpensive.
While this growing seniors population may have triggered the densification process this age cohort was not large enough to maintain the momentum for the continued production of denser housing units. The slack created by the slow down in the growth of the seniors population in the late 50s was soon taken up by the 15-to-24 age cohort, that now started to grow much more rapidly than the 65 plus age cohort in the early 1960s. With this age cohort becoming the fastest growing segment of the adult population during the 1960s, it grew by 6 percent a year compared to 3 to 3.5 percent for the adult population as a whole.
Since Vancouver's West End was the crucible for these changes. this showed up in the high levels of apartment construction. As growth in the seniors population levelled off, and the number of young adults increased, the proportion of larger apartment units constructed declined, while the number of studio and one bedroom units grew dramatically as a percentage of the total housing stock. Moreover, the much larger size of this young adult population produced the largest and most sustained apartment boom in the city's history, with the construction of new units exceeding 3,000 units a year in the late 1960s.
Thus, if the densification ratio and demographic movements are compared, it becomes clear that demographic and economic cycles can ran counter to each other. This happened from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. While declines in the densification ratio would have encouraged the production of sparser single detached dwelling units, in part this was counteracts by a growth spurt in the number of seniors and then later, the growth of young adults. Conversely, when demographic and economic influences moved in sync with each other -- as was the case in the mid-1960s -- they amplify each other. When this happened, not surprisingly, record levels of apartment construction were recorded in the West End, and elsewhere in Greater Vancouver, and across Canada in the late 1960s.
In the 1970s, these economic and demographic influences would diverge once again. However, unlike the 1960s, this time demographics would act as a drag rather than as an amplifier with regard to the densification process. This happened because the age cohorts that grew the fastest in the 1970s were those located between the 15-to-24 and 65-years-and-above age groups. Growing much fastest than either of these groups this mature adult population was situated in the key family-formation period of the life cycle where the demand was greatest for single detached dwelling units.
Unlike the 1950s, in the late 60s and 1970s the densification ratio was rising rather than falling. Now the situation was the reverse of the late 50s. This time internal demographic shifts were counteracting the rise of the densification ratio rather than its fall. In turn, the effect of this demographic profile was further amplified by the introduction of additional government subsidies .
Table two shows this (p.61). In the 1970s the rising densification ratio should have led to a sharp decline in the the production of single-detached units. But the opposide occurred. In the 1970s more single-detached units were constructed than in the 1960s. Whereas the proportion of single-detached units across the nation declined by around six percent in the 1960s, during the 1970s the rate of decline was halved. Rather than falling by six percent, as it had done in the 1960s, between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of single-detached units fell by less than three percent (table two).
So even though the densification ratio within Vancouver continued to rise during the 1970s, there was not an identical decline in new single-detached dwellings. On the contrary, for the two reasons just cited, the dramatic rise in the densification ratio did not significantly curtail the production of new single detached units. In relative and absolute terms, more single-detached units were produced during the 1970s than in the 1960s. This explains why the largest number of single-detached dwellings ever produced in Greater Vancouver occurred during the 1970s, rather than the 1950s or the 1960s -- the time periods most often associated with the unimpeded expansion of the modern postwar suburb. What this strongly suggests is that the first densification wave was set off by demographic rather than economic triggers. As this example shows, when demographics are brought into the picture the relationship between the densification ratio and the production of denser housing is not necessarily linear. That is why the largest number of single-detached units ever produced in Vancouver occurred in the 1970s -- when the densification ratio was rapidly climbing rather than falling.
However, just as the market for denser accommodation that was generated by younger adults began to flatten out in the 1970s, the growth rate for the 65-plus-age cohort began to turn around again, after declining throughout the 1960s. In the future, unlike the first densification wave, this segment of the population (and not young adults) will become increasingly influential over the evolution of the densification process. For unlike the 1960s, when young adults provided the demographic fuel for the growing market for denser accommodation, in the future (SC-8b) it will be mature adults and seniors, as well as a growing singles population that will increasingly sustain the demand for more for denser housing units.
Another important difference that sets the second wave of densification apart from the first in Vancouver is the presence of postmodern rather than modern norms. Also this time around the land market was influenced by an absolute rather than relative shortage of developable land. This, along with a lower birth rate, growing immigration, and changes in its composition, created a different background context for the the second wave of densification to proceed within, as compared to the first wave of densification that took place in the 1960s.
So, in addition to shifts in the life cycle of the population, changing immigration patterns have had a profound impact on the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver. For not only has the overall impact of immigration increased due to the decline in the natural birth rate, the impact of immigration on the production of housing has also changed because of the origins of most immigrants has changed since changes were made to the immigration act in 1967. For Vancouver this resulted in the flow of immigration becoming Asia rather than Euro-centric. Furthermore, when the federal government created a new business class of immigrant in 1986 the social status of immigrants became much higher (Lapointe and Murdie 1996). One result was that the local residential real estate market became articulated with global markets for the first time in a significant way.
These factors, and the fact that Vancouver has attracted a disproportionate share of well-to-do Asian immigrants, has led to the creation of a the Zone Of Asian Resettlement (figures four and five, pp.404 and 410; table eight, p.465 ). While suburban enclaves have formed in other urban regions, nowhere is it as extensive as in Vancouver. As a result of this, part of the core housing market and the property market in some inner suburbs of Vancouver are now being shaped by international rather than local forces. From abroad capital has been funneled into selected suburban neighbourhood in the City of Vancouver as well as the inner suburbs, and this has resulted in a silent but massive displacement of the indigenous middle-class and working-class population that once occupied this space.
What this review of demographic variables reveals, is that process of transformation involved with the densification process is not a mono-causal one. Demographic as well as economic factors can play an important part in the evolution of the densification process. The difficulty here is determining the exact effect that these related (but autonomous) economic and demographic impulses have in fueling and shaping the densification process. Because the economic and demographic aspects of the densification process are often so intertwined, it is not always easy to disentangle and separate them, particularly when they camouflage each other, which often happens when they move in sync with one another.
It is more easy to see the separate impact that each variable has when market and demographic forces are out of sync with each other -- as was the case in the 1950s and early 1960s. When this occurs it is easier to see how demographic influences washed out or blunted the impact of lower densification ratios. However, when demographic and economic variables moved in sync with each other during the mid-to-late 60s, producing the first wave of densification that swept across the country, it is much more difficult to see the impact that each variable has in shaping the densification process since existing trends are only amplified.
Lastly, another difference has to do with the different rhythms and geographic range of each impulse. For example the movement of the densification ratios for Winnipeg and Vancouver show that market impulses vacillate more in a linear up-and-down fashion compared to demographic shifts, which are more stable. Compared with the evolution of the property market, as the convergence of birth rates across the country indicates, with the exception of immigration and population migration, demographic are more uniform across space and time. For this reason, demographic patterns can be projected into the future with some degree of accuracy, and that is why predictions about urban form based upon demographic changes have become so popular in some academic circles, but more especially with real estate interests, which crave certainty and are looking for a means to exploit knowledge about the future.
3.3 - Three: The impact of communications technology and the provision of transportation infrastructure on the densification process
Up to this point, this investigation of densification has been mostly looked at how changing economic and demographic circumstances have affected the evolution of the densification process. However, when we look at the impact that the provision of new communications (The Globe and Mail 1997b, p. C2; Rogue 1996) and transportation infrastructure have on the densification process, there is a change in emphasis. Instead of primarily looking at demand factors, the emphasis moves to the supply side of the ledger, since the impact that the provision of transportation infrastructure has on the demand for denser or sparser house types is not as straight forward as the two other variables, since the construction of infrastructure serves to redistribute rather than create a demand for denser or sparser housing in a particular locality.
This can work in both directions. On the one hand, the provision of more transportation infrastructure can bring more land within the range of development -- indirectly lowering the cost of land and, by doing so, encouraging more land-extensive patterns of development. Conversely, on the other hand, if this infrastructure increases the accessibility certain parts of the region, investment may start to concentrated in these areas, creating grooves for capital to flow into which focus rather than disperse development. Sometimes, but only under special circumstances, the provision of urban transit infrastructure can act as an important trigger for densification, but this usually only happens when favourable supporting economic and demographic conditions are present.
Because the provision of infrastructure may or may not generate the investment profile sought after, investment in highways or public transit can generate wicked or un-intended effects. As a consequence, using rapid transit to induce densification can be a hit or miss proposition if the numerous other factors are not in sync with its the aims of its provision. Past investment in transit infrastructure in Canadian and American cities suggest that only when the densification ratio for a city is increasing ,or when it is positioned at a high level, does the provision of public transit infrastructure become an influential structural element in the densification process (US. Congress 1977).
This works in the opposite direction as well. If freeways rather than public transit systems are built in a fast growing city, more room for land extensive-development will be because of the additional land made available for development. But even here there are limits. If land and housing become too expensive, and congestion and pollution become too severe, as it has in freeway oriented cities such as Los Angeles, land-extensive development will be constrained even if more freeways are added. L.A. therefore shows the limits of infrastructure investment in one direction. Not surprisingly, to correct the unbalanced transportation system that has been created from this, one of the most ambitious public transit projects in North America has been initiated in L.A. (VS-340).
In Canada the impact of investment in transportation infrastructure can be shown by looking at how investment in transit infrastructure has affected urban development in cities with different densification ratios and different transportation investment strategies. Although there is not a perfect one to one correspondence between these two elements, it is possible to observe different effects in cities which have low (with readings between 2 or 2.5 or below), intermediate (between 2.5 and 3.5) and high (4.0 and above) densification ratios. According to how high or low the densification ratio is in each city, different land use patterns appear to emerge from the addition of new transit and freeway infrastructure.
For example, in cities with low or medium densification ratios, the impact of new investment in new transit has muted. The best example of this would no doubt be Montreal. Since the 1960s probably more money has been spent on Montreal's subway system than on any other in Canada. Yet this investment has generated very little development outside the city's downtown. A flagging economy and slow population growth has put downward pressure on the densification ratio for the city, cancelling out the economic opportunities created for densification by this massive investment in transit.
The adoption of contradictory transportation strategies for Montreal may have also been a factor. For example, unlike Toronto where a complete halt on all new major freeway construction resulted from the shift to public transit in the early 1970s; in Montreal road building and subway building were carried out simultaneously. And this probably served to cancel out much of the potential that investment in public transit had to shape densification in Montreal.
On a less significant scale this happened in smaller centres, as well. In smaller cities with low to medium densification ratios, such as Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa, hundreds of millions, instead of billions of dollars ,were spent on new transit infrastructure. Like Montreal, the impact on investment has been slight so far. Since the late 1970s Ottawa has spent $450 million on a 31 kilometer busway system. And Calgary and Edmonton have each spent about $500-million on light rapid transit systems. Despite this investment only slight or modest amounts of capital have been attracted to the transit zones that have been created. For example, ambitious plans were made in Edmonton to create several regional town centres in Clairview to the North East, and in Mill Woods to the South East. However these plans fell by the wayside when the real estate market collapsed, with the end of the oil boom in the early 1980s. Calgary did the same. As with Edmonton, ambitious plans for concentrating development along its LRT lines were formulated but then abandoned. However, with further expansion of transit and rising densification ratios, interest in these transit corridors has been rekindled in Calgary.
However, if we now look at cities which have high densification ratios, such as Toronto and Vancouver, investment in transit has proven to be more significant. In both cities transit corridors have dramatically altered the morphology of each region. Although the real estate market in Toronto has weakened considerably since the late 1980s, substantial residential development continues to take place near the city's subway corridors, with billions of dollars of transit oriented investment expected to occur along a new subway line which is presently under construction along Sheppard Avenue in the former Toronto suburb of North York.
For example, in the case of the Sheppard line, over seven billion dollars worth of new investment by 2011 has been projected. 94,000 employment positions are expected to be created in this transit corridor, and enough residential development to house 67,000 people. Furthermore, between 250 to 400-million dollars a year in new property taxes are expected to be generated according to former North York Mayor, Mel Lastman. Even though these figures are probably overly optimistic, they do, nevertheless, give an idea of the amount of investment that can be triggered by investment in public transit infrastructure under the right circumstances.
How transit investment will affect the densification process as a possible third investment wave for denser development begins to gather force in the late 1990s remains to be seen, as the real estate market recovers from the deep recession of the early 1990s. Until recently, Toronto provided the best example of transit oriented development in North America. But as Pearl and Pucher (1995; 1998) have noted, governments in Canada have withdrawn more support from transit than the United States since the mid 1980s even though ridership levels and investment opportunities were better realized in Canada. And nowhere is this retreat more obvious than in Toronto where riders are covering eighty percent of the cost of transit -- a level far above any other system in a developed country (Toronto Star 1997h).
For Ontario, in particular, this will be critical. As the current building cycle build momentum, opportunities for transit to reshape urban development are being lost. The opportunity created by a rising densification ratio and renewed population growth may not be fully realized, particularly since provincial off loading had encumbered the ability of Toronto to invest in rapid transit. While Ottawa has retained its commitment to extending fixed transit infrastructure, the commitment has grown more tenuous in the face of cutbacks by the provincial government. Consequently it remains to be seen whether the regional district's approval of a $130-million expansion of the transit way will take place.
Except for Vancouver, in the immediate short term, Calgary may be the only other urban region in Canada where a significant amount of new investment in public transit might take place. Having repositioned itself as the undisputed headquarters centre for Western Canada over the past ten years, and with the adoption of GOPlan, in Contrast to Edmonton, Calgary has clearly adopted a pro-transit strategy for new public investment. Consequently, many of the supporting conditions for the creation of a transit oriented development corridor have appeared in the 1990w, which were not present in the 1980s.
However, just as with Ontario, whether this potential is realized or not will largely depend upon the provincial government (VS-319; VS-330; VS-344). However, unlike Ontario, the chance of something happening here is much greater because the Government of Alberta is no longer limited by deficit constraints (Laghi 1997).
While Toronto and Vancouver best reveal how investment in public transit can shape the densification process; Winnipeg shows the opposite. Led by the engineering department, the local bureaucracy in Winnipeg has been able to implement a freeway strategy for the city, even though it was formally abandoned by city council in the 1960s. With the assistance of the province, massive additions to the road system have been made outside and inside the city limits. Meanwhile, modest attempts to jump start a long sought-after transit system have come to nought. While about $50-million has been allocated to further expansion of the road system, the light rapid transit corridor has been completely stricken form the 1997-2001 capital budget, and only about $2M has been allocated to new initiatives in transit (City of Winnipeg 1996). The same bias can be seen in "TransPlan, the new master plan for transportation that was released in 1998. While hundreds of millions of dollars are proposed for new roadways, bus shelters are the only fixed capital expenditures explicitly referred to in the plan (City of Winnipeg 1998). At the same time, an elaborate discussion is given over to how this deficit plagued city could create an institutional mechanism to establish dedicated funding for the $260-million freeway that is proposed in the new transportation master plan. If the estimates of the Manitoba Infrastructure Council are correct, this expenditure would take place at the same time that the city already has a $500-million deficit with regard to the maintenance and repair of the existing road system.
Other cities such as Edmonton have recently formulated strategies similar to Winnipeg's; however, nowhere else is the commitment to land-extensive investment as extreme, or as deeply entrenched as it is in Winnipeg. This is made all the more ironic by the fact that until recently Winnipeg residents were one of the country's highest per capita users of transit. Yet, expensive investment in freeway grade infrastructure, like the new Main Street bridge, continue to move forward even, as up to 20 percent of the city's revenues is being absorbed by debt servicing resulting from investment like this.
What is also interesting to note about the slow progression of densification in Winnipeg is how this can be tied to the persistence of modern norms. While most other major cities have moved away from a modernist framework for the regulation and production of urban space, Winnipeg's bureaucracy remains firmly entrenched in this system. This lag not only manifests itself in planning -- as revealed by the subordination of planning to engineering -- but can be seem in other civic departments within Winnipeg as well, such as the police department. Here the incredible resistance to neighbourhood policing by rank and file officers, and the attraction of more technocratic and automobile centred methods, illustrates how tenacious the hold of bureaucratic practices from the modern era still are in this city.
From this general comparison of bureaucracies, and the more particular comparison of transportation strategies in Vancouver and Winnipeg, the important role that local institutions play in the progression of the densification process can be grasped. As a corollary to this, the significance of culture is also revealed. For learned behaviour, or culture, affects how space is used and perceived. This, in turn, affects how institutions behave. More specifically, as will be later shown, postmodern modes of consumption, and the adoption of postmodern regulatory norms, became important parts of the institutional scaffolding that supported the densification process. Because this scaffolding was less developed in Winnipeg, market and institutional barriers to densification remained more entrenched here.
The impact of these different investment strategies would show up in a variety of other ways. Changes in ridership levels would be one example. In the early 1960s transit use in Vancouver was almost twenty-five percent below the national average. At the same time, per capita use of transit was 20 percent above the national average in Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would be reversed. Because of steep declines in transit patronage during the 1990s ridership levels in Winnipeg probably went below the national average for the first time. Meanwhile the opposite has happened in Vancouver. In the late 1990s ridership levels have either approached, or now may even exceed the national average.
The transformation of the urban morphology of each city would be another example of the changes that resulted. For instance, during the 1950s the layout of Vancouver was much more amorphous than Winnipeg. Over the next thirty years this would change. As the urban skeleton of Winnipeg was gradually erased by the construction of a system of suburban beltways, just the opposite happened in Vancouver. With transit infrastructure rather than freeway construction increasingly guiding the location of new development several clearly defined urban spines appeared.
Looking in more detail at Winnipeg. even into the early 1960s, the pattern of development that was established in the streetcar era still remained etched into the organization and production of space. During the mini boom that preceded the first national wave of apartment construction in the late 1950s new apartment construction still followed the land use template left over from the streetcar era.
Although this older wheel-spoke patterns persisted into the 1950s, signs of dispersion and suburbanization were evident. Unlike Vancouver, where the West End acted as the point of origin, and the epicentre for the then nascent beginning of the densification process; in Winnipeg there was no equivalent to the West End. While some apartment construction took place downtown and in Fort Rouge, from the late 1950s to the mid-60s most upscale apartment construction occurred in the suburb of St James, rather than in the inner city. Even so, what is interesting to note about this development, was even though it was located in the suburbs, this new construction was located mostly along Portage Avenue. Consequently, the distinctive spoke and wheel pattern of the streetcar era was maintained. However, since that time this linear pattern has almost been erased.
What has happened to both cities can be seen by looking at diverging property values, and the symbolic resonance of each of these inner cities. While property values in the West End have steadily risen in the inner city of Winnipeg they have remained stagnant, or have declined. While the cachet of the West End has been enhanced, in Winnipeg the middle class have increasingly bypassed the region's core for the outer suburbs, and the exurban parts of the region. This contrasting attraction and repulsion to the core surfaces when we look at vacancies rates for apartments in both cities. Generally speaking, the West End, and most other inner apartment districts in the City of Vancouver, have the lowest vacancies in the region. The opposite holds for Winnipeg. Unlike Vancouver, vacancies in Winnipeg are generally much higher in the core than in the suburbs. For example, the outer suburbs such as Surrey, in Greater Vancouver, often have some of the highest vacancies in the region; in Winnipeg it is the outer suburban areas, such as Assinaboia, which generally have the lowest vacancies.
While Winnipeg's distinctive spoke and wheel configuration has steadily been eroded since the 1980s, in Vancouver the opposite has occurred. Here investment in public transit rather than roadways has increasingly channelled private investment into transit corridors. So far four distinct transit oriented development corridors have emerged in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Similarly, on a smaller scale in the City of Vancouver, several arterials, such as West Fourth Ave. and West Broadway, have begun to develop into transit and pedestrian friendly commercial corridors (figure one).
In Vancouver, the amorphous and diffuse pattern of urban development predicted for the future by commentators such Garreau (1991) and Lessinger (1991) has not come to pass. Like Toronto in the 1960s, in the 1990s favourable conditions for transit oriented development during has made Vancouver stand out among North America cities, as an alternative model for urban development. And this has become most obvious with the recent emergence of several transit oriented urban spines (figures one; seven; eight B).
The most important spine begins in the City of North Vancouver (City of North Vancouver 1992) and runs along Lonsdale Avenue down to Burrard Inlet, where a ferry system called Seabus connects this corridor to downtown Vancouver, and to Skytrain, which runs along an old streetcar right of way into Burnaby, where the most intensive development (other than the downtown) is taking place around Metrotown (Ito 1995; VS-406c). Skytrain then continues into New Westminister, ending in Surrey. Although development has been lackluster so far in Surrey, planners expect that Surrey will be able to eventually become the region's second downtown.
In addition to this, there are three secondary spines that are also beginning to emerge (diagram Two). One starts along the South Shore of Burrard Inlet and then continues along the North Shore of the Fraser River, following the route of the West Coast commuter train that began service in 1995. With plans a foot for the creation of a new town centre at the terminus of the line in Mission (65 kilometers east of downtown Vancouver), recent developments in Port Moody and Coquitlam, along with the recent designation of Haney as a regional town centre, the beginning transit oriented investment spine can be seen. (Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows June 25,1997).
With plans for an LRT line terminating in the eastern suburb of Coquitlam, another development spine may soon emerge along Broadway and the Lougheed Highway (diagram One). Here as well a plan is beginning to be prepared for the creation of another high-density development corridor, with the City of Burnaby preparing a redevelopment strategy for the industrial land which lies along the proposed transit line.
Lastly, if a transit line is extended south from the City of Vancouver to Richmond another development corridor will emerge. Like the first line, this spine would emerge along a previous spine that had largely been erased in the 1950s and 1960 (closely following the old streetcar line that once ran to the fishing port of Steveston, in Richmond).
To conclude, a high densification ratio, favourable demographics, and heavy investment in public transit are the forces that have combined together to make densification such a powerful force here. These condition have been responsible for one of the most successful reintroductions of a spoke and wheel pattern of urban development in North America, If the province of B.C. maintains its commitment to transit, Vancouver may well end up becoming what Stockholm has to Europe (Cervero 1996). If this happens Vancouver has the potential to become the most transit oriented city on the continent.
At the other end of the continuum there are cities like Winnipeg. Here low, or declining densification ratios, slow population growth, net out migration, and a freeway oriented strategy for public investment, have pushed the development of the city in an entirely different direction from Vancouver.
A stunning role reversal has occurred because of this. In 1961 Winnipeg was the densest city in Western Canada. Vancouver then had one of the lowest densities. Now Vancouver is the densest city in the west. Meanwhile, Winnipeg has been transformed into one of the most sprawled out and amorphous urban region's in the country.
While Winnipeg's transit system languishes, one of the most dynamic transit oriented investment corridors in North America has appeared in Vancouver. This is one reason why Vancouver rather than Toronto now stands at the forefront of transit led urban development in North America. Unless the cutbacks initiated by province of Ontario are ended, and a renewed commitment to transit in Toronto is made, Vancouver's role as a lead city is unlikely to be challenged. (VS-168).
Figure One
3.4 - Densification at the local level
Having examined the broad economic, demographic and technological variables that shape the densification process closer inspection of the different physical formats taken by the this process within a single urban region can now be looked at in more detail. For instance, in Greater Vancouver three distinctive rings of development have emerged over the past thirty years. In the core, the construction of high-rise dwellings has become the dominant format taken by the densification process. In the transitional area, medium-rise structures predominate, Farther out, in the suburban parts of the region densification manifests itself in the creation of low-rise structures. How these three forms have evolved in the region can be read from what has happened in the City of Vancouver. In each case the City of Vancouver became the incubation ground and regulatory standard bearer for the creaton of the new institutional mechanisms that were required to regulate the high-rise, medium-rise and low rise forms of densification that first took root in the city before spreading out to the rest of the region.
Furthermore, what is particularly interesting to note about the City of Vancouver, is how the the diffusion of the densification process from out of its epicentre, in the West End, corresponded to the creation of three new distinctive settlement zones. Not only did a new social ecology come into existence as a result of this, in each case as well, a new regulatory culture was created, one which set the tone for what would later happen in the rest of the region as the densification process spread out from the city into the suburbs. Consequently, it is to these three settlement zones in the City of Vancouver that we must turn to and look at if we are to understand the institutional history of densification process, as it is in these three settlement zones that the most sophisticated regulatory responses to high-rise, medium-rise and low-rise densification in the region can be found. That is why it is possible to view the first three settlement zones as a microcosm for each of the three formats that the densification would take on as it spread out to engulf and reshape the entire region (figures nine B; thirteen A to D).
The link that exists between the production of these spaces and the new social spaces that accompanied them is also worth taking note of. The most obvious example of this would be the downtown peninsula. Here the most visible manifestation of the densification process was connected to one of the most dramatic social transformations that took place in the region (VS-351; VS-314; Fabish 1996; Building Canada 1997a). This happened because the high-rises that were constructed created a the physical habitat that allowed a variety of singles-oriented sub-cultures to emerge. In turn, this led to the creation of a population base that would later be able support the creation of an economy organized around the urban spectacle, out of which a "collage city" would be created in the core. Particularly for Vancouver's West End, but not the rest of the downtown peninsula, this was an incremental process of transfomration that took place over several decades. For only after twenty years of change did a distinctly postmodern culture begin to flower in the cure during the late 1970s and 1980s. Hence, over a forty year period, the West End was transformed from a single-detached neighbourhood into the region's largest cluster of apartments.
In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that much of would happen here also had to do with the tenure form taken by the high-rise units that were constructed. Had not rental units been constructed in an incremental fashion by a variety of small small scale builders, the fluid social spaces that now typify the West End would not likely have developed as they did.
In the next zone out from the downtown peninsula, a ring of medium-rise development arose. Although high-rises became the most visible expression of the densification in the region, medium-rise structures actually became the defining format for the densification of the region as a whole. Particularly in the 1970s, the transitional area that surrounds the downtown peninsula became the epicentre, as well as incubation ground for this type of development in the region, as experimentation in medium-rise housing was carried out in direct opposition to the high-rise construction that had dominated the densification process during the 1960s, when the West End was the focal point for densification in the city. In part the switch from high-rise to medium-rises had to do with a change in sensibility. For one of the defining aspects of the shift from modernism to postmodernism in the 1970s would be the move away from high-rise to medium-rise buildings, and a move away from urban renewal to one more focused on the conservation of the existing urban fabric.
Along with changes in the tax act, the emphasis on conservation and infill -- which the shift to a postmodern sensibility, and experimentation with medium-rise structures supported -- the movement away from high-rise to medium-rise development signified an important stage in the evolution of the densification proces, as new norms and institutional mechanisms were coming into existence to support the densification of the city. As already mentioned, one example of this would be the emergence of new tenure forms. Until this time, most households in the country were either rentals or ownerhip units, held in Fee Simple. However with the experimentation in medium-rise dwellings strata title and co-op units became much more popular. Particulary with regard to the densification of the region, and the progression of the gentrification process in the City of Vancouver, the emergence of strata-title tenure forms became a critical instituional support to the advancement of this process.
Just as the high-rise zone that emerged in the downtown peninsula established the physical base for the creation of a collage city in the 1960s, so too did the shift to a medium-rise format create yet another settlement zone Instead of a collage city, a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement emerged in the 1970s. Because of the gentrification induced by strata title development a much more homogeneous landscape was created. And just as the downtown peninsula became the incubation ground and epicentre for high-rise densification in the region; in a similar fashion, this Zone of Middle Class Resettlement became the most sophisticaded expression of medium-rise densification in the region, if not the country (table three).
Finally, low-rise densification has helped to create a third distinctive settlement ring. This happened mostly in an area zoned predominantly for single-detached rather than high or medium-rise dwellings. As with the two other zones, the City of Vancouver became the focal point for this form of densification. Like the Core area and the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, the suburban areas of the city became the extensive examples of low-rise densification in the region. And like the two other settlements, the most sophisticated procedures to control low-rise densification in the region developed here as wellin the region. Like the other two settlement zones in the City of Vancouver densification of this third zone was also accompanied by the social transformation of this areas. If high-rise densification produced a habitat that would provid a space for the sub-cultures of the collage city in the core to flourish, and medium-rise densification created the physical backdrop for the createion of a Zone of Asian Resettlement, in a similar fashion, low-rise densification became associated with the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement within the City of Vancouver and the inner suburbs, which would take in Richmond, Burnaby as well as parts of the North Shore. While the creation of a Zone of Asian Resettlement was the most dramatic social feature of this densification, smaller pockets of development oriented towards seniors was another feature of this densification process (figures eleven A and B; CVCO-48). This can be seen in the profusion of gated communities in the outer suburbs, and in the marketing of adult communities, where children were discouraged, something that must be considered a radical departure from the settlement pattern that defined the suburbs in the modern period.
While low-rise densification has not yet brought about a major switch in tenure form, as has happened in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, when co-op, non profit and strata title units weree produced as the area was redeveloped, or what is now taking place in the Core, with the production of strata title rather than rental units, nontheless, some changes have occurred. In areas settled by the Asian middle class fee simple tenure has remained dominant. However, major changes have taken place further out in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Here the construction of adult communities for older Caucasians moving away from the inner suburbs has dramatically increased the number of strata title units. Because of this migration from the Zone of Asian Resettlement, a large number of strata title units are now being produced for mature adults and seniors in the Zone of Caucasian Resettlement. Unlike their middle class counterprts in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, or the Core area, this group favours attached bungalows or townhouses.
What is also interesting to observe about this lower-rise densification, is the significant number of rental units that have been created. Unlike the fee simple and strata title tenure forms that have been mentioned so far, many of these rental units exist outside the formal housing market. Even though these secondary suites make up an ever growing part of the region's rental stock they have only recieved limited legal or institutional recognition so far.
Like all the other social and physical changes that have come about because of the densification of Greater Vancouver, the City of Vancouver stands out in this regard as well, as the city probably has more secondary suities than any other jurisdiction in the region. For this reason, and like the other manifestations of the densification process, the City of Vancouver is also the place where the most elaborate regulatory mechanism have been developed to deal with the problems created by the profusion of these suites. For example, it has been estimated that there at least 25,000 such units in the city. And of these 25,000 units, only about 3,000 units have received legal certification.
Finally, there are other manifestations of low-rise densification that need to be mentioned. One form of low-rise densification occurrs when large lots are sub-divided into smaller lots. In Vancouver this has produced thousands of new single-detached units (figure 10-C). Then there is infill housing. Low-rise densification also proceeds by the demolition of smaller and older single-detached units, and their replacement by new units that have much larger site coverage. Moreover, many of the units have been designed so that they can easily be turned into miniature apartment blocks to raise revenue by an absentee owner. As earlier pointed out, because the most sophisticated and varied formats for this kind of densification are to be found in the City of Vancouver where there has been the most controversey. Not surprisingly, as stated before, this low-rise densification set the stage for the development of the most complex zoning regimes that can be found for zoning in single family areas (McAfee 1987; Ho 1989; Petite 1991; VS-170; VS-173AA; VS-256; VS-328a).
The different geographic configuration of each form of densification shows up in annual construction figures for the region. For example, if data from 1997 is used, and new housing starts are sub-divided into high, medium and low rise dwellings, we find that the largest number of starts in the region consisted of medium-rise dwellings, followed by low-rise units, with high-rise dwellings trailing behind in third place. Thus medium-rise units accounted for about 48 percent of all starts, followed by low-rise units, which made up about 30 percent of all starts. In third place, accounting for around 21 percent of all housing starts, were high-rise units. As the figures indicate, overall, medium-rise densification predominates. However, if break down the figures and look at various sub-regions different formats clearly exist.
In the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, for instance, medium-rise densification still stands out when regional comparisons are made. While the difference is not as much as it used to be, the fact that the number of medium-rise starts is higher than the regional average suggests that this area still remains the cradle and epicentre for medium-rise development in the region (figures nine-B and thirteen-C, chapter five). With over 50 percent of all starts is this zone made up medium-rise structures we see that this area still remains a specialized settlement zone for medium-rise dwellings in relation to the region as a whole. Likewise, within the City of Vancouver, the Core and the Zone of Asian Resettlement have retained their status as specialized localities for high-rise and low-rise densification. Thus, in 1997 nearly all units begun in the Core were made up of high-rise units. Conversely, in the same time period low-rise units predominated in the Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Moving outside the City of Vancouver, these three patterns are repeated elsewhere in the region. For instance, Uptown and Downtown New Westminister, and the City of North Vancouver can be viewed as suburban examples of the high-rise densifiction found in Downtown Vancouver (VS-291; VS-174); VS-112b). Other suburban example of high-rise densification would be Ambleside, in West Vancouver; and Metrotown (Ito 1995), and the Edmonds Station area in Burnaby. Unlike low-rise or medium-rise precincts, most recent residential high-rise construction in the region is quited localized. For the most part, this kind of development is confined to the high-rise nodes that were previously mentioned, remaining close to the region's transit corridors or on former industrial land (VS-406).
While the most varied and elaborate medium-rise dwellings are located in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement (figure seven A), such as can be seen by the wide variety of co-operatives, lofts, and other medium-rise luxury strata title units (table three). Upper and lower-middle class counterparts to this settlement zone can be found in the rest of the region. The redevelopment of Maillardville in the suburb of Coquitlam would be one example. Downtown Port Coquitlam, Steveston (VS-137; DaSilva 1997; 1997c), in Richmond, and the medium-rise transformation of the cities of Langley and White Rock would be other examples.
Unlike high and medium-rise dwellings, suburban examples of low-rise densification are more dispersed. One of the most common variants would no doublt be building enclaves that are oriented to adults and senior. Here the most obvious example would be the profusion of gated-communities in the outer suburbs (DaSilva 1997b; Brady 1997). However the most extensive suburban concentration of this type of densification outside the City of Vancouver remains the outer ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, which is situated outside the City of Vancouver, but takes in the inner suburbs of Burnaby and Richmond, as well as parts of the District of North Vancouver and parts of Surrey. Thus Burnaby and Richmond have undergone very extensive low-rise densification in areas zoned for single-detached dwelling units. This also applies to secondary suites, where Burnaby has always had a high concentration of units because of Simon Fraser University. However it is Surrey, which now probably rivals the City of Vancouver in terms of the number of secondary suites, as over 12,000 secondary suites have already been identified by the municipality (Surrey/North Delta 1997)). With the creation of new provincial legislation (GBC-3 1994) to accommodate secondary suites, and the apperance of new zoning schedules to control and discipline their production, the decay of one of the most prominent features of modern regulation is revealed in the dissolution of RS-1 Zoning for single families. In this, and other ways, one of the most powerful and prominent regulatory feature of the modern era that was associated with land-extensive development has been radically amended and significantly undermined: something, once again, which is most apparent in the City of Vancouver, in the inner precinct of the Zone of Asian Resettlement which makes up the suburban areas of the city.
To see this it is only necessary to track how the area covered by the original RS-1 zone schedule, which most clearly embraced the social and design aspirations of the modern era, has steadily shrunk in size. For example a zoning map from 1973 would show that nearly 100 percent of the area regulated by RS-1 was covered by regulations set out in the early 1950s. Up to the the early 1970s about seventy percent of the city was shaded white to represent areas that were expected to abide by the single family housing code. (CVPD-30a). However the zoning maps of the late 1990s would show quite a different picture (CVPD-135a; CVPD-83). Presently half of the area that was once white is now shaded gray. This gray area designates RS-1 areas where secondary suites are now legally allowed. Furthermore, at least another thirty percent of the areas that was once RS-1 has been rezoned to RS-5 and 6 schedules. Located mostly on the west side of the city, this was done in order to control site coverage and address design problems that arose because of the diffusion of low- rise densification into the more afluent west side suburban parts of the city during the 1980s and 1990s. As a reaction of the profusion of large homes and the denuding of the existing landscape elborate zoning controls were put in place to control the densification of the single family areas that had largely escaped the densification process (CVC0-48; CV-27; VS-113; VS-143a). With housing prices so high, and incomes remaining stagnant the pressure to densify areas zoned for single family dwellings has moved beyond the outer and inner ring of the Zone of Asian Resettlement, and has now become a concern that is affecting nearly every municipality in Greater Vancouver (VS-206; VS-87abc; VS-80).
In one way or another, all three formats have been shaped by the interplay of the local property market, modified by demographic forces that involve changing immigration patterns as well as the emergence of a new middle class. Finally, all of these formats have been shaped by the provision of transportation infrastructure. The specialization of the densification process into one of three different formats in Vancouver shows that there can be considerable variation within a single region. and not just between cities. Furthermore, the important background context provided by pre=existing zoning schedules also comes out, as the three types of densification that have been described correspond to a specific type of zoning. For example, high-rise densification in Vancouver developed in areas zoned for high density dwellings, or on discarded industrial land - most of which was originally located in the core area of the region. By contrast, medium-rise formats originated in the transitional zone, which later became the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement. Here an RT Zoning schedule governed land use, creating a special transitional zoning that provided a cushion between areas zoning for high-rise and single family dwellings. Similary, low-rise formats were incubated in the RS-1 areas of the City of Vancouver. Like the transitional areas, which became a Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, with low-rise densification, this area has since been transformed into the inner ring of a Zone of Asian Resettlement.
Even when similar market forces are shaping the real estate market in each city, different zoning regimes, contrasting immigration patterns, and variations in the configuration of the property market explain why the densification process may not develop uniformily in a single region. When looking at how densification unfolds in different urban regions this is even more the case. Even if the same marcro trends were at work in Toronto, Montreal or Winnipeg pre-existing zoning, and the configuration of demand and supply forces in each city create considerable room for variation. The presence of three distinctive kinds of densification in Vancouver, and the uneven distribution of low-rise, medium-rise, and high-rise densification, illustrates how much variation is possible.
That is why it is always important to take local institutions and impact of local regulation into account, particularly the regulatory cultures that shape and modify the economic, demographic and transportation and communications strategies for investment, that broadly shape the densification process. While demographics provide the necessary raw material for the densification process, and ultimately provide the bedrock for the evolution of the densification process, these influences are tempered by market forces which, in turn, are shaped by local zoning regulations Similarly, the same goes for the provision of transportation infrastructure. For example, zoning for higher densities around transit stations will affect how investment in transportation infrastructure will translate into the production of denser environments.
Furthermore, this will vary over time as well as space. Depending upon how these three broad modifying forces interact with each other in a specific time and place, and how they are modified by local insitutions, together this will determine how distinctive layers of denser urban space are laid out in a particular place. The operation of countervailing tendencies stands as a caution for those trying to set out the evolution of the densifiction process along a linear pathway. The interaction of the property market and demographics in the modern era shows how complex and variable the progression of the densification process can be. To see this it is only necessary to look at one dimension of the process revealed by the interaction of the property market and shifting demographics. Whereas young adults were the most important age cohort when the first wave of densification swept over Vancouver in the 1960s; from the mid-1980s onwards mature adults (i.e., families with children no longer at home) and a growing population of affluent seniors have become an increasingly important marketfor denser units.
This change will be significant when looking at the futher evolution of the densification process. Even in cities, such as Winnipeg, where densification is highly localized, it has been these seniors that has provided the market for the small but limited construction of new condominium units in the city and the only signs of densification in a city otherwise totally affected by land-extensive pattern of development (CMHC 1994B; 1995). In this regard the transformation of the City of White Rock exhibit how influential this fast growing market has become, something that is now widely acknowledged in regional and national studies that attempt to project future housing demand (Baxter 1989; Foot 1996; CMHC 1997i). Here the presence of the most concentrated number of seniors in the region, where the number of seniors now exceed the metropolitan average by three hundred percent, is strongly linked to the densification that has taken place here, as it can be for a great deal of the production of denser housing in the City of Langley and Abbotsford.
Finally, as already mentioned in the previous section, densification has flowed into the investment grooves established by the construction of new transit corridors in Vancouver. If past trends are any indication of future investment possibilities the provision of additional transit infrastructure is likely to play an even more important role in shaping the configuration the investment geography of Vancouver over the next decade. Since Skytrain opened in 1986, on a per capita basis, more investment has probably been poured into this transit corridor than anywhere else in North America. With two other transit corridors planned and a third possibly going to Richmond, up to four transit corridors may emerge Vancouver. If this happens, the transit orientation of additional investment in the production of urban space will climb far above the high levels of investment that already exist. Accordingly, if these transit oriented investment spines emerge, a 21st century version of the streetcar city will come into existence within the next twenty years (diagram one). As said before, if this happens, Vancouver will move into a league of its own, surpassing Toronto to become North America's interpretation of the rail centred city of which Stockholm would be its closest equivalent in Europe (Cervero 1996).
So what is noteworthy about the historical evolution of Vancouver is how each of the three material elements that shape the densification process kicks in to produce different types of environments. Far from being a linear or uniform progression the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver shows itself to be quite variegated over time and space, particularly if its outward diffusion form its place of origin in the West End of Vancouver is examined .
Having briefly described the geography of densification in Greater Vancouver it is now the appropriate time to review its history. Because no other neighbourhood has been affected by this process as long as the West End (or so profoundly transformed by it), a short history of the West End can be used to encapsulate the stages of development that can be used to describe the evolution of the densification process for the region as a whole (figures six A and B). At present about 40,000 people occupy nearly one square mile that make up the West End, which lies adjacent to Vancouver's downtown. Although the beginning of the postwar transformation of the West End began in the early 1950s, prewar traces of this process of transformation go as far back as 70 years ago, to the 1920s , when the first great surge in apartment construction took place. In part, it was fears about density, social decay, and falling property values (believed to accompany the invasion of apartments into single family districts) that thrust Vancouver out of its laissez-faire period of development into the modern era, when RS-1 zoning was created in the late 1920s, to make the areas of single detached units inviolate from the invasion of denser types of land use. So for Vancouver at least, there is an ironic twist to what happened. With the West End turned into the only high density residential area of the city, it had to be cordoned off from the rest of the city by a number of protective zones that were meant to cushion areas zoned for single family dwellings from salubrious influences of high density, thereby preventing the further degradation of property as well as the moral fiber of the community. It would not be until the early 1980s that this association was completely laid to rest by planners and the more informed public. Regardless of the motivation, the designation of the West End as the only area in the region zoned for high density residential development established the regulatory parameters for the total transformation of the West End in the 1950s into the densest residential neighbourhood in the region - since even into the middle of the 1950s the physical makeup of the West End was still predominately defined by single detached dwelling units. However, by 1997, this once common house type had become an endangered artifact of the Victorian city. Presently about one-hundred houses remain from the thousands that existed here in the 1950s now remain, or about point-zero-five percent of the entire neighbourhood's housing stock (compare this figure to table two). At present, of the 100 or so blocks that make up the West End, only one block, now known as Mole Hill (Petrie 1995) survives as the only intact block of single -detached dwellings units. As such it remains the last redoubt of the suburban neighbourhood that once existed here, and the only place which hasnot yet succumbed to the high-rise densification that enveloped the entire West End between 1957 and 1970 (McAfee 1967; 1972).
Over the next forty years this predominantly low rise neighbourhood of single-detached dwelling units would be transformed into Canada's most famous high-rise precinct. Furthermore, what also made the West End unique was that unlike most other contemporary high-rise apartment areas, no subsidies had to be given to feul the massive private redevelopment that took place here (Gaylor 1971). From the ultimate bourgeois suburb (Gibson 1972; Robertson 1977), it was, for some, transformed into its symbolic opposite, as the West End becme identified with the jet set and glamorous high-rise living (Forbes 1970; VP-18). In retrospect, as early as the 1950s the West End would stand out as a precurssor of the urban spectacle that would later grip the entire core of the city in the 1980s, when the postmodern regulation mutated into its current market and entertainment driven form. Thus, even in the 1950s the quest for beauty and leisure and not utility, or the concerns of child rearing and work, would become one of the defining aspects of the regulation of the West End. Thus, even in the 1950s the West End would foreshadow much of what would follow in the 1990s, as the quest for beauty and leisure, not the responsibilities and burdens of child-rearing, began to influence the evolution of zoning protocols (CVPD-1).
Thus not only has the West End been affected by the densification process longer than anywhere else in the region. As a result no other neighbourhood has been more radically transformed by the densification process than the West End. In turn, this explains why the West End was regarded as such an anomaly in the modern era. The sociological transformation of urban space that accompanied its physical transformation was problematic for modern planners since density was closely associated with deviance and urban pathology. Therefore, how planners attempted to cope with the densification of this neighbourhood reveals a great deal about the limitation of modern regulation. That is why the West End is both a symbolic marker and a regulatory touchstone that can be used to explore the relation that exists between densification, modernism and the postmodern regulation of space. For what happened here in the 50s and 60s would foreshadow what would later happen in the rest of the region during the 70s and 80s.
From a regulatory perspective, the modernist bias against density and the early postmodern aesthetic reaction to high-rise living produced a great deal of ambivalence about the West End in the public's mind, as well within professional planning discourse (VP-16a; VS-33). Although at times the West End was portrayed in a glamorous light, more often than not, it was regarded with unease and suspicion by planners and citizens. Particularly for the new middle class, which first came into existence as an identifiable social group in the late 1960s, the West End became an object of derision and ridicule. Functioning as a lightning rod for the postmodern reaction to the way that the modernist accommodation to the first densification wave, the West End provoked the search for an alternative format for the production of denser spaces. Albeit in a negative way, the West End nevertheless acted as a catalyst for much of the experimentation in medium-rise densification take was to develop in reaction to the high-rise form of densification which the West End stood for. In this way, paradoxically, the West End helped give birth to its antithesis, as middle-class activists saw the construction of medium-rise landscapes as an antidote to what was happening in the West End. Indeed, for most of the first phase of the postmodern transformation of Vancouver the West End was held in low regard by planners and citizens alike. Only in the 1980s, with the revision of the postmodern aesthetic and the creation of a new economic base for the core area of the region did this change. Rather than being reviled in postmodern discourse, as it was in the 1970s, in the 1980s, but more so in the 1990s (Durning 1996), it has become a symbol for the livable and sustainable city rather than its antithesis -- even receiving the seal of approval from the doyenne of postmodernism herself -- Jane Jacobs.
Last of all, because no other neighourhood in Vancouver has gone through every phase of development in the evolution of the densification process it is possible to regard the West End as an end point that can be used to establish a series of benchmarks for calibrating the different stages in the transformation of the built environment brought about by the densification process. This can be done by looking at the changes in the composition of the housing stock in the West End. Whereas at one time nearly one-hundred percent of the housing stock was made up of single-detached dwelling, at present they only number point zero five percent of all dwelling units. Using the movement from one extreme to the other as markers of the evolution of the densification process four distinct stages in the physical transformation of the built environment of the West End can be identified and then used to chart out the progression of the densification process elsewhere in the region.
The first stage can be described as one of emergence. This began in the second decade of the twentieth century and continued into the 1920s and 1930s when purpose built apartments became a noticeable but subsidiary part of the built environment in the West End. The ascendant stage began in 1940s and 1950s. This happened when the construction of purpose built multiple dwelling units began to consistently replace the existing stock of single-detached units. Simultaneously, a weaker form of densification was also taking place in the West End, as large houses were being converted into boarding houses. Nonetheless, as the ascendant stage progressed single-detached units were gradually replaced by apartments, preparing the way for the next stage. The third stage that followed can be described as one of dominance. As the word suggests, this stage began in the West End when apartments became the dominant house type. With regard to high-rise and medium-rise densification, this occurs when less than fifty percent of the housing stock is made up of single detached units. For the West End this stage began in the 1950s and lasted into the early 1970s.
There is the fourth and final stage. It can be described as one of maturation. This stage comes into existence when denser housing accommodation clearly becomes overwhelmingly predominant. From here on in changes in house form are incremental. Usually there is no further rapid change in the built environment. For the West End this happened in the early 1970s. For example, during 1973 new zoning introduced which slowed down the rate of change (CVPD-35). As a result, over the past 25 years there has been little alteration to the existing morphology of the West End. Since that time change has been been modest and gradual, something which was further emphasized in the most recent zoning amendments that were put in place in 1989 (CVPD-77; CVPD-89).
While these markers are only of limited value when tracking low-rise forms of densification, they do allow the advance of densification process to be measured fairly accurately during the modern era since the production of denser housing forms generally appeared as high-rise or medium-rise apartments.
Applying these markers to the City of Vancouver, 1954 marks the beginning of the ascendant phase. Largely because of the redevelopment of the West End the number of new apartment units surpassed the production of single-detached dwellings for the first time in the city. Just as with the West End, a stage of dominance was achieved in the city in 1971, when the proportion of single-detached units making up the city's housing stock fell below fifty percent for the first time.
---------------------------------Figure Two----------------------------------------
With the exception of Kerrisdale, South Granville Street and the Marpole area (until the late 1960s), at this time the majority of new apartment construction in the City of Vancouver was confined to The West End. However, by the early 1970s, apartment construction was beginning to filter into the transitional - and mixed use neighbourhoods that surrounded Downtown Vancouver. By the middle of the 1960s apartment construction had even leap-frogged across the zone of single-detached homes that made up the suburban (or non core) area of the City of Vancouver as high-rise apartments became a characteristic feature of the the inner suburbs as well(City of Burnaby 1969).
When moving from the city to the region, 1962 becomes a watershed year for the progression of the densification process. In the early 1960s apartment construction in the suburbs takes the densification process into its emergent phase. This happened when the number of apartments constructed in the suburbs doubled, as apartment starts climbed from 628 units in 1961 to 1147 units in 1962. Forty years after this had happened in the West End, and nearly ten years after this stage was reached for the City of Vancouver, this would happen for the region as a whole in 1962. From this moment onwards, the densification process would speed up. Barely five years the region had entered the emergent phase, it began to move into the next stage. Consequently, during the mid-1960s densification had entered into its ascendant stage.
By the late 1960s four large suburban satellite zones for apartments had come into existence outside the City of Vancouver: two on the North Shore, one by Ambleside beach in the City of West Vancouver and the other across the harbour from downtown Vancouver, in the City of North Vancouver. The other two remaining satellites were located to the east, in the Midtown section of New Westminister and the Central Park precinct in Burnaby.
By 1971, not only was high-rise densification physically altering the City of Vancouver, it was also now transforming the physical morphology of the inner suburbs. By 1991, twenty years after densification had become dominant within the City of Vancouver, this next stage in the densification process would be reached by the region as a whole, as the percentage of the housing units made up of single-detached units fell to fifty percent for the region as a whole. Since 1991, the process has accelerated. In 1996 the number of single-detached units had fallen to 45 percent (See table two). And within the core of the region, in the City of Vancouver, the percentage of dwelling units made up of single-detached units had fallen to about 27 percent.
At present, only the Montreal urban region has a larger percentage of denser housing units. And if present trends continue, Vancouver may soon exceed Montreal in this regard. What this rapid densification reveals is that Vancouver is so far the only large urban region in North America to unequivocally switch over from a land-extensive pattern of development to one which is land-intensive. Unlike most other North American cities, where densification appears as a secondary influence with regard to the production of space, in Vancouver densification has become a dominant force in this regard. In fact, densification has become so intense in Vancouver that it has now begun to spill out past the commuter zone. Unlike the exurban fringe of Toronto or Montreal, where a bimodal pattern exists -- which is why the porportion of single-detached units making up the housing stock of these exurban areas often range somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of all starts-- in the exurban fringes of Vancouver this percentage is much lower. With the proportion of single-detached usually resting below 50 percent in most exurban areas of Vancouver, the gap between the the core and exurbia is not as great as in other cities. Instead, housing projections suggest that the rift between the core and the periphery may diminish over time rather than widen, as is now the case in Toronto and Montreal.
Densification therefore casts a much longer shadow over Vancouver's hinterland. For example in Abbotsford, which is the largest exurban hinterland community in Greater Vancouver, the percentage of single-detached dwellings fell from 61 percent in 1991 to 58 percent in 1996. Furthermore, in the future the porportion of single-detached units in Abbotsford is forecast to fall below 50 percent shortly after the year 2000, with the percentage of single-detached units expected to drop to around 45 percent by the year 2021. The same trend line can be seen in Squamish or even Kelowna, which is a five hour drive away from Vancouver.
The intensity of the densification process in Greater Vancouver can be gauged by looking at population figures as well as housing statistics. Using population figures from the 1996 Census (SC-18), comparisons within and between urban regions reveal how strong this transformation has become in Vancouver. Even though densification now dominates all parts of Greater Vancouver, the most recent population figures for the City of Vancouver show that the city still remains the epicenter for this process. Although population increases in the city were below the regional average, nontheless, in light of the fact the City of Vancouver was completely developed, the increase in population was quite substantial. What is remarkable is that although the City of Vancouver did not grow as fast as the region, the city still grew faster than the metropolitan average for all Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada between 1991 and 1996.
Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the population of the City of Vancouver grew by eight-point-nine percent, or about sixty-two percent of the metropolitan growth rate, which was fourteen point-three percent. This rate of growth was 50 percent above the average for all metropolitan areas in Canada. Still, the impressive growth of the city was overshadowed by the even stronger growth rate of the region. It is only when comparisons are made between the core area of different urban regions that the intensity of the densification process in the City of Vancouver can be fully appreciated. Thus, between 1991 and 1996 the City of Vancouver grew nearly three times faster than its closest core rivals. While the population of the City of Vancouver nearly increased by nine percent, the old City of Toronto only grew by two-point-nine percent. At the same time the City of Montreal declined by point-zero-one percent. Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa only grew by about three percent.
More detailed examination of the latest population figures also reveal something about the densification of the the inner suburbs of Vancouver, particularly Burnaby and New Westminister. Burnaby, which, like Vancouver, is almost completely developed, grew by twelve-point-eight percent between 1991 and 1996; and in New Westminister, which is completely developed as well (functioning more as a satellite city rather than a suburb), the population grew by thirteen-point-two percent. Like Vancouver, what is particularly noteworthy about New Westminister is that such a high rate of growth is occurring where the land base is already completely developed. Consequently all growth in New Westminister involved some form of densification. What is also interesting about the growth of New Westminister (and some other suburban communities) is that current populations levels have already exceed the 2021 projections set out by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (July 1996).
In New Westminister, for example, currently approved or proposed developments are expected to take the city's population up to 84,000 -- or 5,600 above the GVRD (July 1996) assignment of 78,783. What is just as intriguing about this is that the realization of this level of development will take urban densities in New Westminister past those that exist in the City of Vancouver for the first time. At present urban densities in New Westminister are only 71 percent of those in the City of Vancouver, but if all the predicted development that is forecast for New Westminister takes place, urban densities will exceed those in the City of Vancouver by a slight margin. Meanwhile, if Burnaby simply complies with GVRD allocations urban densities will approach those of the City of Vancouver in 1996.
Just as intriguing, are the population projections for White Rock, the City of North Vancouver and the City of Langley. None of these cities are in the area designated by the region for more compact growth, yet they are growing faster than regional projections. It is important to note that this growth is land-intensive rather than land-extensive, and that it is occurring on the fringes of the region rather than in the core. For example the GVRD projected that the population of the City of White Rock would grow to 17,997 by 2021; however by 1996 the population has already reached 17,210. Similar densification is taking place in the City of North Vancouver. In this case projections for 2021 set earlier in the 1990s by the Greater Vancouver Regional Governemnt may exceeded by several thousand. What is more interesting is that while some municipalities are resisting the goals set by the region for densification, other suburban localities, like Richmond, are demanding more densification than they were allocated in the regional plan (VS-203a). All this can be taken as further evidence of the generalized nature of the densification process in Greater Vancouver ,and a sign of its intensity, with the core areas, the suburbs and the exurban areas participating in this restructuring.
3:5 - Variations on a theme: How densification in Vancouver corresponds to what is transpiring in other North American cities - looking at variations in the real estate markets of Edmonton, Winnipeg and Seattle and San Francisco in relation to Vancouver.
If the variation of property values that exist within a single region are further studied differences between the centre and periphery of the region can reveal something about the intensity and configuration of the densification process if comparisons are made with other cities. Except for some examples of gentrification, in which the middle class is able to take advantage of the existence of a rent gap to increase its consumption of space (Smith 1984), there appears appear to be a correlation between rising rather than falling property values and the reconcentration or dispersion of investment capital. When higher values are registered in the core areas of the region the necessary market preconditions for the initiation of a land-intensive regime are generally realized. Coversely, when property values in the core area fall in relation to the perhiphery, not only will more land-extensive pattern of investment become more significant, as well, it appears that low-rise forms of densification become more important. How steep the price gradient between the core and the periphery is may also tell us something about the intensity of the densification process. When Property values in the periphery are higher than the core, and the price gradient between the core and periphery is relatively flat, powerful centrifugal market forces are likely to be operating, indicating that residential capital is probably dispersing to the periphery of an urban region rather than concentrating in its core. Similarly, an inverse relation applies when core values are higher, and the gradient between the core and periphery is steeper.
Consequently, when core residential property values soar above the metropolitan average densification can be expected to be more entrenched because of the operation of these market forces. Conversely, when core residential property values fall below the regional average land-extensive rather than land-intensive patterns of investment are more likely to predominate. Also, in urban regions such as Toronto, where there are high values in both the core and the exurban periphery, the price variations that can be observed show how the configuration of the urban land market may lead to the creation of a bi-modal pattern of investment: where land-intensive and land-extensive patterns of development co-exist with each other in the same region, but where no one pattern necessarily dominates.
These price gradients are also useful to look at because they can be used as indicators which can tell us something about how intense or dispersed the pressure for densification will be in a city, and where in a specific urban region the pressure for redevelopment is likely to be the strongest. These gradients are also useful guideposts when looking at differences between Canadian and American cities, particularly when differences in the price gap that exists between the suburban, exurban and core areas of the city are compared (Goldberg and Mercer 1986).
Again, regarding Canada's largest cities, the only exceptions that really stand out are Edmonton and Winnipeg, with the gap much more in evidence in Winnipeg than it is in Edmonton, if differences between core, suburban and exurban housing prices are compared. For example in a Summer survey of housing prices by ReMax the average value of a home sold in the core area of Edmonton was approximately $104,000, or about 7% below the region wide average, while the average selling price of a home in one of the region's largest exurban communities, Sherwood Park, was $145,000. Not surprisingly the dispersion of residential construction is much more pronounced in Edmonton than it is in Calgary, where property values are much higher in the core area (Edmonton Journal 1997b).
However, as stated before, the most obvious exception to the core periphery gap is Winnipeg. If there is a twenty-nine percent difference between the core and the periphery of Edmonton, the gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg is much greater. While the average selling price of a MLS listing for Winnipeg in 1996 was approximately $90,000 and the median value of a new home in the suburban part of the city was about $135,000, for vast areas of the core house prices averaged around $30,000, with the average for some inner city neighbourhoods nearly falling to $20,000. Instead of a difference of twenty-nine percent, which was the one that was observed in Edmonton, the price gap between the core and the periphery in Winnipeg was over four-hundred percent. Indeed, in a walk through the West Broadway Neighbourhood a house was spotted that was selling for as low as $14,900. While the price gap in Edmonton indicated that investment was dispersing, the relatively small gap between the core and the regional average meant that the inner city was still a viable place for capital investment. In contrast to this, the chasm that exists between core and suburban values in Winnipeg discloses a market that can neither support any new construction nor even any major renovations of the existing housing stock. With housing values falling by 30 percent in two large inner city neighbourhoods (the West End and Point Douglas) between 1991 and 1996 while the average price in the city rose by five percent, this combined with systemic red lining (PI-56) indicate that the real estate market in much of the inner city has gone wild and is now so weak that regular institutions that normally stabilize and protect property values have abandoned much of the inner city. Not only has this undermined the exchange value of much of the inner city housing stock, but also its use value as well, since the only rational action for an owner not living in a unit is to milk a housing unit for as much rent as possible without engaging in any maintenance or repairs. What can only follow from this is rapid decay and obsolescence of the existing of the housing stock and its eventual abandonment. Signs of this are already appearing in the inner city as some sites are reverting to prairie.
Nowhere else in Canada are such conditions found. Even if there was no red-lining, which would mean that at least a property could be insured, the fact that prices are so low means that the market actually serves to repel new investment. Even with a below market construction costs of $60 a square foot, any new construction in much of the core would immediately be penalized and discounted by at least fifty percent, if not more, as soon as the investment were made. What is also disturbing is how closely Winnipeg's inner city parallels Detroit's. Perhaps no where else in the United States has a large urban centre been so severely affected by capital abandonment and dispersion. With floor prices in some of the worst neighbourhoods in Detroit -- such as the Martin Luther Area -- going for about $15,000 Canadian, the property markets of both cities seem to mirror each other (Refer to SNC, Vol.2, Chpt. 3, Note 168). And as already pointed out, there are even some houses on the market in Winnipeg which actually fall below this floor. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that what denser accommodation is being built in Winnipeg follows the American pattern. Thus most investment in denser housing is now located in the periphery rather than the core of Winnipeg, since this is where most of the very limited condominium construction in the city is taking place.
Although Winnipeg is an extreme case in point, some of the core area markets in Edmonton and Montreal are problematic as well. However, here land-extensive development has not yet produced the level of regional dysfunction that is now so apparent in Winnipeg.
Because of their long touted commonalties, comparing Vancouver with Seattle provides another vantage point to look at the unique situation of Vancouver. Except for New York City, Chicago, San Francisco or Miami Beach -- where significant high-rise densification is taking place in the core of the urban region, in most other American cities densification is low-rise, and it more likely to be found in the periphery rather than in the core of each region. In this regard, Seattle appears to occupy a middle position. Some high-rise residential construction is taking place. Similarly, construction figures, and housing prices for various parts of the region indicate that a bi-modal pattern of investment is emerging. Although there are some similarities with the pattern that can be seen in Toronto's, it is much weaker than Toronto in terms of the amount of investment that is taking place in the core. This is even more the case when residential investment in the core area of Seattle is compared with Vancouver.
Still, if the three internal variables that shape the densification process are examined for Seattle, despite some reconcentration of capital in the core, housing starts, property values and investment patterns show that the region remains influenced more by land-extensive development. Although some densification is taking place, it plays a secondary role in the shaping of the urban morphology of this region.
Hence, unlike Vancouver (with the exception of West Vancouver -- which is a much smaller market in regional terms), the City of Seattle ($192,952) does not yet have the highest property values in the region. While the urban core of Seattle has the second highest values, it still trails far behind the East Shore, where values hover around $270,593 in the mid 90s.
If Seattle does move towards a more land-intensive regime, it will be starting from a position occuppied by Vancouver forty years ago, when reinvestment was just beginning to take place in Vancouver's West End. So there is a considerable lag between each region, which will take a long time time to diminish.
Up to the 1960s, the West End stood out as an isolated island of land-intensive development in a sea of land-extensive development. As with Seattle at the present time, most investment was geared towards the expansion of the suburbs rather than the reconcentration of residential capital into the core. Just as rising property assessments for the West End during the 1950s served as a harbinger of the densification that would later affect the entire region, so too for Seattle, the recent inflation in property values within the City of Seattle, and the increased residential investment that has accompanied this price rise, may serve as sign that an important watershed may have been passed in Seattle, and that densification could now become an important feature in the development of this region. But again, this remains to be seen.
Even if densification advances in Seattle, it is not likely to evolve in eactly the same fashion that it has in Vancouver. For instance if we look at the evolution of the densification process in Vancouver, we see that during the late 1950s and early 1960s the West End was the only large built up area of the city where assessment values were rising dramatically rather than remaining stable or declining. Although core values in Seattle are now rising, other areas in the region, such as Belluvue, are experiencing significant re-investment. And although more high-rise residential towers are being built in neighbourhoods such as Belltown, there is still no equivalent to the West End in Seattle, and there may well never be.
Although a Zone Of Middle Class Resettlement has emerged in Seattle, this zone is not as developed as Vancouver's. Although recent price rises may change this, for most of the 1990s, the price differential between the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement in Vancouver was much greater than its counterpart in Seattle. Unlike Seattle, except for a few small pockets, property values in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, are generally well above the metropolitan average for Vancouver. This is less so in Seattle.
The difference between both cities makes it possible to speculate that property markets in Seattle support a far less intense form of densification, densification which may also be less focussed upon the core of the region. While many exurban markets in Seattle approach or exceed the core (ie. the City of Seattle), in Vancouver the opposite holds true. In most exurban localities within Greater Vancouver, the price of a single-detached unit (for instance in places such as the District of Langley, Surrey or Maple Ridge) are only a third or half of the average price that can be found in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement.
However, since this section was written the real estate market has exploded because of the high-tech boom. If a great deal of the price increase in Vancouver can be related the movement of wealthy immigrants into the city, in Seattle’s case this has to do with the migration of this high-tech new middle class into the city. Now, just as with Vancouver, displacement has beome an important issue. Also, with rising property values high-rise residential in the Core has become visible for the first time. Although at present, the scale of development was where the West End was in the late 50’s.
Since this neighbourhood once had some of the lowest property values in the region, what has happened to Strathcona over the past forty years reveal how powerful densification has become in Vancouver. In the 1950s this area was slated for urban renewal because of weak property values. However, by the 1990s the average value of a home in Strathcona stood eleven percent above the metropolitan average and approximately thirty percent above average values that were present in peripheral areas in the region, such as Maple Ridge and Surrey. Because of zoning, and the location of this neighbourhood in the Zone of Middle Class Resettlement, densification has not taken the high-rise format that predominates in the downtown peninsula. Instead incremental gentrification has been the vector followed by the densification process here. Although densification in Strathcona has not brought about a dramatic increase in the population, it has resulted in substantial reinvestment in the existing building stock, as well as rising property values.
To conclude, even though densification has been far more influential in Canada, it would be inaccurate to say that densification in North America is primarily a Canadian phenomenon. Again, comparing densification ratios helps to point this out. In some American cities, such as Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC, the existence higher densification ratios reveals that market pressure for the production of denser built environments is building up. Favourable markets, along with the alignment of other factors that support densification, could create a background context for the production of denser environments in the United States which is similar to Canada'a. If a densification ratio of three is used as a signpost to mark a space of transition between land-extensive and land-intensive development, there are some American cities which fall into this orbit. However, as national averages indicate, overall, market forces favour densification more in Canada than in the United States. For example, if we look at house prices for 1997, the densification ratio in Canada (3.1) stands just slightly above this benchmark figure, while the densification ratio for the United States (2.7) rests slightly below this figure (Rhodes 1997). What these numbers suggest is that Canada has advanced further down the road towards urban densification. Likewise, a densification ratio of 2.7 suggests that densification may soon be entering a watershed in the United States, but that land-extensive development is still clearly dominant.
These ratios appear less abstract and arbitrary if they are linked to the production of housing. This can be seen in the production of single-detached units for each country. While the percentage of new housing starts in Canada hovered aroun 55 percent for most of the 1990s, in the United States single-detached units acounted for a much larger percentage of housing starts, with about 80 percent of all starts made up of single-detached units.
Although there is no one-to-one correspondence between the rise and fall of this ratio and the type of housing starts that result, if a comparison is made with the United States, there seems to be a correlation between higher densification ratios in Canada and the production of a lower number of single-detached units. Recent data on housing supports this claim. For example, in the third quarter of 1997 single-detached units in the United States (G/M 1997zl) accounted for about eighty percent of all housing starts, compared to about sixty percent for Canada (G/M 1997zq). What these figures suggest is that densification in the United States is till only an emergent phenomenon. By contrast, in Canada, the same figues suggest that densification has become an ascendant force in the reshaping of the city. At pesent, not only is densification considerably weaker in the United States than it is in Canada, it also configured differently, with a differentphysical and geographic format that is only partially revealed by comparing densification ratios but which becomes more apparent when looking at the production of different house forms and where they are located. For example, it appears that investment in new strata title units in the United States are much likely to be found along the exurban fringe rather than in the core, as is more the case for Canada -- Winnipeg being one notable exception to this (Mckenzie 1994).
These national differences come into clear relief if Vancouver is compared to San Francisco rather than Seattle, since this is the city where the property market, the provision of transportation and demographics have created the most favourable configuration for densification in the United States. Even though the City of San Francisco has a densification ratio of four-point-five, and is now the most expensive housing market in the United States, densification in San Francisco still remains muted in comparison to Vancouver. While the densification ratio for the City of San Francisco indicates that densification exerts a dominant influence upon the restructuring of urban space, this does not yet apply to the entire region, where housing starts and estimates of the densification ratio for the rest of the Bay Area suggest that densification is only ascendant or emergent. This stands in marked contrast to Vancouver, where densification is dominant throughout the entire region.
Until recently, at least, further comparisons show that the densification ratio for the core area of San Francisco was probably below that of Vancouver. Making a rough estimate, in the mid-90s the densification ratio for a single-detached home in the City of Vancouver may have peaked as high as fifteen on the west side of the city and probably hovered between seven and eight on the east side. For the city as a whole, a high-rise condominium (with two bedrooms) probably rose to about eight. Even the cheapest accommodation available -- a low-rise two bedroom condominium -- would have only taken the densification ratio down to about four. By comparison, for the City of San Franscisco, the overall average for single-detached dwelling units was about four-point-five, a ratio that was only then equivalent to the low, rather than than high end of the market, in the City of Vancouver (CMHC 1997a).
Moreover, if we look at housing figures for greater San Francisco, and not just the city proper (except for the Silicon Valley), the densification ratio drops dramatically in the adjacent counties that surround the city. For example, across the bay, in the City of Oakland, the densification ratio falls to three, and then falls as low as two-point-nine in the Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa area, in the North East quadrant of the region. Again, this may be one reason why so little development has taken place around BART. Even though it has been in operation for nearly 30 years, until quite recently hardly any suburban development has occurred. Contrast this with Vancouver, where development has mushroomed along Vancouver's Skytrain line, although the system has only been in operation for ten years.
Thus, Vancouver is not alone. But with the highest densification ratio on the continent, and the continent most active transit corridors, no other major city is being so rapidly reconfigured into a late twentieth century version of the early twentieth century street car city. For this reason, it is misleading to view Vancouver as a satellite of Portland and Seattle. Naive notions about a larger regional entity called Cascadia -- an entity based upon propinquity and climate -- can only distract attention away from the forces that are transforming Vancouver into a singularly unique urban region. Although there are some signs of densification in Seattle and Portland, their movement in this direction is of an entirely different order. And while there are some philosophic similarities between the type of postmodern regulation which govern these three cities, quite different demographic and economic influences are at work which make each city distinctive and separate. Indeed even the attempt to establish some equivalence between Portland and Seattle may be overplayed. Still, whatever the similarities between Portland and Seattle, it is clear that Vancouver is travelling in a direction that is quite different from these other two cities (Reid 1992, Summer/Fall pp. 14-17; VS-318).
In fact, if the social ecology and the economic base of each city are looked at more closely, Vancouver probably has a closer affinity to Miami than either Portland or Seattle. Similarly, when looking at the densification process, Vancouver has more in common with Toronto and San Francisco or Washington DC. than it does with either Portland or Seattle.
If comparisions are to be made, besides Miami, Vancouver is closer to San Francisco or Washington D.C. than to either Seattle or Portland. Regardless of the comparisons that are made, Vancouver presently stands apart from all other North American cities because both its core and the periphery are being reshaped by densification. Unlike other urban regions, densification has become a dominant feature of the this region, something which sets Vancouver apart from all other cities for the time being.
3: 6 - Concluding remarks and observations
In closing, two contrasting patterns of capital investment have shaped the development of the Canadain city since 1945. Furthermore, each of these investment regimes were also connected to a corresponding regularoy regime, one which set the political, social and cultural contexts for the reproduction of land-extensive (suburbanization) and land-intensive (densification) development. One important difference that was noted in the evolution of each regime was the uneven progression of the land-intensive patterns of development in comparison to the land-entensive pattern which preceded it.
Other factors which shaped each regime were also duly noted. For example, the link that exists between the advance of bureaucratic rule, the rise of modern regulation, and the reproduction of land-extensive development patterns of development was drawn out. In Canada this was most clearly embodied in the actions of a triumphant and all powerful federal state, since it played the central role in midwiving land-extensive development. The rules for suburban development, and the standards for land-extensive development that it set up, established a remarkably uniform pattern of development across the country. This would stand in contrast to the land-intensive development that followed atterwards, when the provinces would exert more control over urban development. The creation of a credit market for the purchase of new homes was probably the most significant action taken by the federal governent As a whole array of stiuplations followed from access to this credit, the production of housing was linked to the policies and programs initiated by the federal governemtnt. In this way a mass market for single-detached dwelling units was created, one which became the central feature of land-extensive development.
In true fordist fashion, the production of space was largely shaped by one central agency which, in this case, was CMHC. n the context of advancing bureaucratic rule, urban development was standardized This would change in the postmodern era as provincial governments and market forces would free themselves from the bureaucratic structures that had been created by the federal government. In part this change would even be encapsulated in the name change of CMHC in the postmodern era, as Central Mortgage and Housing was renamed the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In the modern era the provinces were too underdeveloped to challenge the Federal Government's de facto management of urban development. Lacking fiscal and human resources to challenge to federal agencies like CMHC, bureaucratic norms increasingly influenced the way that space was organized in the city. This changed in the postmodern era, as the influence of the federal government receded and that of the provinces expanded. This along with the fragmentation of the urban system that came with globalization and free trade, produced a much more polarized pattern of development (Little 1997k, 1997l; G/M 1997zb VS-361).
Along with the configuration created by the re-articulation of the three material variables that shape the densification process, an uneven and polarized development pattern emerged that became a defining feature of the postmodern era.
These changed affected the geographic alignment of classes within the region in several ways. Particularly so for the new middle class. During the modern era this class did not even exist. However, in the postmodern era it would become a significant force for change in the in the inner city and exurban parts of the region. Indeed, across the country this new middle class would play a critical role in the densification of the core areas of most Canadian cities. Still, because of the centralization of decision making functions and the concentration of knowledge workers into only a few select cities, the impact of this class would be quite uneven. Most noticeable in Toronto and Vancouver, but far less so in places such as Winnipeg, the uneven development of this class reflects the more polarized development that currently defines the restructuring of the postmodern city. This would surface in a variety of ways. For example, in the diffusion of postmodern tenure form. Here, for instance, there is a correlation that can be drawn out between the production of strata title units in general and more specifically, their concentration in the inner-city, and the prominence of the new middle class in a particular city. What can be shown from this, is that there is a close correlation between the spread of strata title units in the inner city and the reconcentration of the middle class into the core of the city.
A comparison between tables two and three also reveals something about the polarized development that has taken place in the postmodern era. With the exception of Montreal, for instance, the variations in single-detached units during the modern era were not as nearly as large as the one that can now be observed for the production of strata title units. This gap here is quite revealing, as it provides further corroboration of the differences that exist between these two models of urban development, and the different investment geographies that have been created For example, in the middle of the 1990s the Winnipeg market only absorbed 10 new strata title units per month, and most of these units were located in low-rise developments situated in the outer suburbs (CMHC 1994b). In Calgary the supply and demand structure is quite different. By 1998 the production of strata title units moved up to at least 250 per month (Calgary Herald 1997M). Furthermore, unlike Winnipeg a large proportion of these units were being constructed in the inner city. Lastly there is Vancouver. Here, the production of of strata title units are the norm rather than the exception. Although a disproportionate number are constructed in the region's core, strata title units make up the majority of housing units throughout the region. Not surprisingly, the production of strata title units often exceeds 1000 units a month (CMHC 1997). While the proportion of new single-detached units produced in Vancouver and Winnipeg may have diverged by ten or twenty percent in the modern era, this variations pales besides the variation that can now be observed with regard to the production of strata title units in each city. Rather than citing a difference of ten or twenty percent when comparing the production of strata title units in each the difference can only now be measured by a factor of two, or a difference of nearly 1000 percent.
Finally the uniformity of the first mode of urban development and the polarization that is present in the second emerges more clearly when looking at the demographics of the Canadian city in the postmodern era VS-361). Again Winnipeg and Vancouver illustrate the range of variation that exists. During the modern era, the baby boom provided a fairly uniform demographic base to support the production of land-extensive housing forms in child-centered suburbs across the country. Even though immigration rose to new highs during modern period, most population growth was generated internally because of the unprecedented, but temporary reverasal, in the fall of the birth rate.
Particulary in the mid 1980s this changed. As the birth rate declined to new lows, even in years which had high unemployment levels, the level of immigration remained high. Presently immigration rather than natural increase account for most of the population growth that is taking place in Canada. Unlike the modern era, when a rising birth rate created a more uniform rate of population growth, in the postmodern era this changed as immigration became more crucial to the continued growth of the population. With the overwhelmingly majority of immigrants going to a few select cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, population growth has become much more polarized (VS-361). Changes made to the immigration act since 1986 have further amplified this polarization. With the introduction of a federal program to attract immigrants with capital an even greater number of immigrants have moved to places like Vancouver. This, in turn, has had a direct impact on the configuration of local real estate markets. Especially in the case of Vancouver, parts of the city have become articulated to some of the most expensive residential markets in the world. The emergence of a Zone of Asian Resettlement has been one result of this. In turn, as with the country as a whole, this has produced a considerable amount of internal polarization in the region, with displacement becominge generalized over much of the core area of Vancouver in the past ten years.
In Winnipeg, by contrast, the opposite is more the case. Although Winnipeg has not attracted very many investor class immigrants, until the beginning of the 1990s it was able to attract enough blue- and-pink collar immigrants into the core area of the city to maintain a floor with regard to property values. But since this time, these immigrants have declined in number. While immigrants in Vancouver were flooding into the core area of the region the opposite was happening to Winnipeg, with the impact further accentuated by the fact that overall immigration was declining at the same time. Consequently, rather than inflationary pressures being set off, deflationary forces were activated. Not surprisingly, property values in some inner city areas of Winnipeg which used to take many of these new immigrants expereinced declines of fifty percent. While there were other causes for the collapse of the real estate market in much of the inner city of Winnipeg during the 1990s, declining levels of immigration no doubt played a role in what happened. Although this decline may have bottomed out as the level of immigration has started to rise once more Winnipeg, while immigration levels have fallen in Vancouver, nontheless, the contrast impact and size of immigration in both Winnipeg and Vancouver reamins a key factor in polarized development patterns that can be observed in each city.
To conclude, changes in the urban land market -- as reflected in shifting densification rations -- changing demographics, and different patterns of infrastructure investment, have affected the organization of space. As shown in tables one and two, between 1981 and 1996, falling densification ratios have generally translated into increased demand for single-detached units. However, as the review of demographics and infrastructure investment have also shown, other forces can intervene to modify this trajectory.
The resurgence in land-extensive development that occured since the mid 80s suggests that other factors were at play as well, as does it diminution in the 1990s, as shown by the decline in the proportion of housing units made up of single-detached units, which accelerated in the 1990s, after almost coming to a halt in the 1980s. Although national figures are skewed by the intense densification experienced by Vancouver between 1991 and 1996, estimates for Toronto show that after a significant resurgence in land-extensive development in the 1980s, densification picked up some of its momentum while land-extensive development lost much of its steam (Peck 1995; CHMC 1997g).
What this flux also reveals is the polarization of development patterns. While most urban centres followed the same trajectory in the modern era, beginning in the late 70s and early 1980s, much more polarized patterns started to emerge. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by looking at increasing divergence between Winnipeg and Vancouver. While the densification ratio for Winnipeg remained around two -- which was the benchmark figure denoting land-extensive development -- in Vancouver the densification ratio soared above the historic benchmark figure of four -- which has been used as an historic guidepost to land-intensive development. As shifts in the production of new housing illustrate, these ratios are not abstractions, but useful indicators that tell us something about the configuration of the local real estate market and the impact this can have on the production of space.
Just as the densification ratios for Vancouver and Winnipeg became polarized, so too did the actual production of housing. For example, between 1991 and 1996 the densification ratio for Vancouver soared further upwards, past the benchmark reading of four; however, in Winnipeg's case the densification ratio remained stationary, hovering around the benchmark level of two. Not surprisingly, these diverging economic signals have translated into the production of two quite different built environments. Whereas the decline in single-detached units accelerated in Vancouver over this period, the opposite happened in Winnipeg. Here the proportion of single-detached units in increased rather than decreased.
Finally, between the two extremes represented by Winnipeg and Vancouver, there exists a third pattern , one that has emerged since the 1980s. In Toronto and Ottawa most particularly and, to a lesser extent in Montreal, a bi-polar pattern of urban development has emerged. Here land-extensive and land-intensive regimes of accumulation have nearly equal weight in the organization of space. But here as well important differences can be detected. For example, even with the resurgence of land-extensive development in Toronto, compared to Montreal, development in Toronto is still weighted more towards more land-intensive development. While development in the core of the Toronto region acts as a powerful countervailing force, this is less the case for Montreal, where residential development in the core makes up a much smaller percentage of all new residential development in the region.
Elsewhere in the country, while land-extensive development strongly reasserted itself in Calgary and Edmonton during the early 1990s, rising housing prices in the late 1990s may mute this resurgence or turn it around. While the proportion of new single-detached units in Calgary and Edmonton exceeded Winnipeg for most of 1990s, this shift back to land-extensive development may be temporary. While housing prices in Winnipeg have continued to languish near the bottom since the late 70s, even as late as the early 1980s Calgary had the second highest housing prices in the country for a short while (Won 1997). With housing prices in Calgary becoming the fourth most expensive in the country in 1998, the effect of rising housing prices on new construction can be seen in the declining proportion of housing starts made up of single-detached units.
For example, many times in the 1990s the proportion of single-detached units constructed in Calgary exceeded 80 percent, but there are signs that this is beginning to drop. Even though CHMC is predicting that the highest number of single detached units ever produced in Calgary will be started in 1998, they will only make up 75 percent of the new housing stock, down over 10 percent from the relative peak experienced a few years earlier, when the percentage of new housing starts made up of single-detached dwellings approached 90 percent.
So far it appears that Winnipeg and Montreal are the only large urban areas (with over 500,000 in population) where a more land-extensive pattern development has become firmly entrenched.
Despite the dispersion of investment and the relative underinvestment in the core, even Edmonton shows some signs of a turnaround. For example, evidence of a slight resurgance in land-intensive development is suggested in the guidelines for increasing density in new sub-divisions and new measuring being considered for the densification of the city's mature suburbs. Here, as in the City of Vancouver's Zone of Asian Resetttlement, low-rise densification is becoming more noticeable. Just as with the suburban zone of the City of Vancouver, the adoption of postmodern zoning regimes to control site density, height and design features of infill and replacement housing in suburban areas of Edmonton provides evidence of this (Edmonton Journal 1997c). Furthermore, if ambitious plans for resettling downtown Edmonton are realized, further impetus will be given to high-rise and medium-rise densification in city. If this happens, it is possible that a bi-modal pattern of investment, that resembles what can now be seem in Ottawa and Toronto, might evolve here as well (City of Edmonton 1997).
Elsewhere on the Prairies, even in smaller centres like Saskatoon -- rising housing prices may limit the progression of land-extensive development, as housing prices Saskatoon have soared past Winnipeg's. Meanwhile, Regina is likely to move more in step with Winnipeg than Saskatoon or Calgary. With housing prices in Regina even lower than Winnipeg, and with up to thirty percent of all new residential development taking place outside the city limits the amount of dispersed development rivals what is taking place in Winnipeg (Regina Leader Post 1997a). As well, like Winnipeg, there is also a large and growing Native underclass in Regina, As with Winnipeg this hasprobably contributed to the exodus of middle-class residents from the core area of the city (Winnipeg Free Press 1997zc). Even so, although Regina appears to be a smaller scale version of Winnipeg, there are some differences. For instance institutional subsidies for land-extensive development appear to be less evident here. Indeed, some important differences in the institutional culture of each city suggest that more effort is being taken to arrest the flight of capital from the inner city in Regina. For example, with current subsidies adding up to as much as $9,000 dollars for the construction of new suburban homes in Winnipeg, there is a stronger institutional bias for dispersed development in Winnipeg than in Regina (Winnipeg Real Estate Board 1997).
Winnipeg is probably an anomaly in this regard. Unlike most other large urban centres, where developers and consumers increasingly have to contend with development cost charges on every new unit of housing ,in Winnipeg the opposite situation applies. Even though the city is reputed to have the highest property taxes in the country and one of the largest municipal debts, rather than levies being applied to shoulder some of the costs of new suburban development an array of subsidies are being provided by the city instead. With additional road infrastructure being built in the suburbs backlog on maintenance rises this pattern of growth has not only become inequitable, it has also become dysfunctional, as large parts of the housing stock in the core faces cannibalization and capital abandonment. The province has further aggravated this situation. Along with an inequitable tax structure for the region which penalizes the city while encouraging exurban development,subsidies given to highway construction, sewer and water utilities in the exurban parts of the region have produced a vicious cycle of dispersion. Not only is the core area of the region threatened by the bleeding out of capital investment and the dispersion of development, so too is the periphery of the region, as urban sprawl now threatens many productive economic activities that that exist within and help sustain the larger regional economy (E.g., Winnipeg Free Press 1997zd).
Market devaluation, housing abandonment and a general dispersion of activities on a scale that is only present in the most besieged American cities, like Detroit, mark the accummulation regime that now shapes investment in Winnipeg. Unless the province radically reconsiders existing policies and actively intervenes by either curtaining subsidies, pooling the costs and benefits of development for the entire region, or by formally limiting development, this dispersion is unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future. But this does not appear likely at the present moment, as the provincial government continues to subsidize exurban water and sewer infrastructure, and the city itself actively champions further suburban development. In the near term at least, that is why the institutional apparatus that frames and regulates the production of urban space will likey continue to encourage, rather than limit, dispersion in Winnipeg.
In addition to this, with the sharpest divergence between housing prices in the core and periphery in the country, the internal configuration of the property market is such that market impulses in Winnipeg are likely to remain quite resistant to the reconcentration of capital into the core of the region. Furthermore, with some of the lowest costs for operating an automobile and the second highest rate of automobile ownership in the country, this will make the generation of a more concentrated pattern of development all that more difficult. For as well as the institutional barriers, the continued subsidization of single-detached housing and the automobile in Winnipeg will continue to artificially lower the consumption costs of the two defining material artifacts of land-extensive development. This is why land-extensive development is likely to become more rather than less entrenched in Winnipeg over the next building cycle, further illustrating that the tale of development in Winnipeg and Vancouver is, indeed, a tale of two cities.
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