Victoria’s New Official Community Plan
Well it isn’t here yet, but it is coming. This Thursday (tomorrow) is the public hearing for the new City of Victoria Official Community Plan (OCP). Essentially, the last opportunity that we will have to voice any concerns or thoughts about the document that will guide Victoria for the next 10 to 15 years. The last OCP was approved all the way back in 2012 and really has changed the way Victoria has been built since that time.
I thought I would give you a couple of the highlights that I have noted in the planned document and encourage you, if you have not already provided any feedback to City Council, to attend the meeting on Thursday to have your opinion heard. To read the plan and some of the back ground documents, you can visit the official site here. Or if you want you can go directly to the meeting documents for this item, scroll down in the agenda here.
But first, I suppose we should step back, what is the OCP and why do we have one? The OCP is a legislatively mandated planning document that every municipality in BC has to have. This one, supposedly looks forward to 2050, though I am sure we will be back drafting a new one long before then. Still, the idea is to have a high level guiding document that looks at how we want the city to develop over the next 25 years. Traditionally, the OCP has been mostly focused on land use, though this time around I would say that we are seeing a lot more policy pieces built into the document. As an example, the draft has an extensive rental protection plan in it, and yes while it is tied to the redevelopment of properties that currently contain rentals, that is not something I would have expected to see. While I believe protecting the interests of renters is a very important issue, it is not the focus topic that I looked at in the draft document. I was mostly interested in two areas, what is the envisioned urban form for the city; and what are the plans to improve how people move around.
The 2012 OCP was seen as a major coup for people like me that had been arguing for increased density and height in the city. For the previous couple of decades there were significant limitations on how high you could build (I want to say it was 43 metres but I am not certain) and on density (I am fairly certain it was 3.1:1 FSR). The 2012 plan blew those puny numbers out of the water and has started a trend towards more density in the city that was greatly needed. This is even more apparent now as we move deeper into a housing crisis. The 2012 plan was very prescriptive as to where you could build that density, which was essentially in Downtown and Harris Green. As the city government and the provincial government saw the deepening crisis in affordability over the past ten years we have seen many further changes that were not envisioned in the 2012 plan (Missing Middle Housing, banning short term rentals). It is things like this that make me fairly certain that the new plan will not see us all the way to 2050. The new plan does build on the previous one with housing density increases mostly in and around downtown and the core neighbourhood hubs (see below).
While the ‘Urban Core’ has certainly gotten much larger since the 2012 version it makes sense to me, especially when you read some of the more nuanced maps that show the different priorities in the different areas. One thing I am very happy to see is an acknowledgement of the importance and need to maintain and enhance the light industrial lands to the north of downtown. I really would encourage you to have a look through the document if any of this interests you as there is so much more than I could ever cover in a short blog post.
Of course my favourite subject is urban mobility and the plan certainly covers it. In early versions there was in my opinion not enough mention of sidewalk width, and while the new plan does not really get into specifics generally, it does say ‘wide sidewalks’ and ‘comfortable sidewalks’ quite a lot which is good. One thing that I am relieved to see is that there is a maintenance Downtown Core Area sidewalk width guidelines. As I mentioned in a recent article, I would love to see wide sidewalks mandated across the city, and I do think that the OCP could have expanded the areas that the Downtown Sidewalk Width Guidelines applied to. You can see the Downtown Sidewalk Guidelines below and read more on them here. I just think that for a ‘visionary document’ for the next 25 years to not mention expanding the sidewalks on all of our streets is a miss.
The plan does talk quite a bit about mobility as a whole and does set some impressive goals for reducing our reliance on cars. The plan wants 80% of trips around the city to be made through active transportation or transit by 2050 which would be a significant jump from the current approximate 50% of trips. Still I think very doable especially with a real focus on building transit and connections to transit. Again I encourage you to look through the plan and read more about this goal and some of the ways the OCP outlines for us to get there.
I will mention one other interesting addition to the OCP and that is the encouragement of ‘linear parks’. These are an enhancement on the greenways that we already have growing around the City. The linear parks will expand on those greenways, by repurposing space nearby to be used as a park. I have included the linear park map below. I am particularly excited by the big bullseye opportunity mark on top of North Park as I have said many times that you could easily create a number of parks in this area by just repurposing roadway and you could still have enough vehicle right-of-way in the area to maintain the current requirements.
The main thing is that if you have any time today, have a look at some of the related documents and if you want to express any opinion you have about the new OCP, tomorrow at council is the last chance you will have.
