Vancouver’s new chief urban planner Josh White wants to bring predictability and simplicity to the building permitting, planning and zoning processes to accelerate urban growth.
“We have a very complex and layered policy environment here that has happened over many years,” he said. “It makes it very difficult for the development community, communities and staff to understand what they’re doing and what the priorities are.”
Speaking at Buildex Vancouver, White said his goal is to streamline policy framework which currently has lots of complexities and conflicts.
“We have identified that we can potentially rescind up to 1800 pages of policy,” said White, who was previously Calgary’s director of city and regional planning, and co-chief planner.
A fundamental change White wants to bring to the planning system is to move it away from being “highly negotiated” where density is negotiated up for large scale projects in exchange for public amenities. The current practice of spot rezoning is a time-intensive process.
“Negotiation is unpredictable and slow. We want to introduce more predictability to our process where rezoning is city initiated,” he said, acknowledging there are acute cost pressures on developers. He noted, “The fastest rezoning that you can do is one that you don’t have to do at all.”
Another change is looking at area planning by typology across the city with new urban villages, allowing for streamlined approvals and housing delivery at scale with zoned land for up to 6 storeys with simplified zoning district schedules.
White said starting this summer, district schedules will be updated for areas like Rupert/Renfrew and in the Cambie Corridor and Broadway Plans.
White added he’s also looking at implementing concurrent building application processes, such as the zoning and development permit processes running alongside each other.
When it comes to building permits approvals, the city is undergoing a digital transformation to achieve council’s mandated 3-3-3-1 targets: 3 days for a renovation, 3 weeks for detached home, 3 months for multi-family and mid-rise projects, and one year for high-rise and large-scale projects.
“We are hitting our target 63 per cent of the time for three days on renovation permits out the door,” said Corrie Okell, general manager of development, buildings, and licensing. “We’re in a pilot phase right now for digitally submitting drawings. We’ve done lane way homes so far.”
For large developments, the city is still streamlining manually with staff focusing initially on using the new digital tools on low density projects.
Both Okell and White are new to their positions, joining the city in 2024, and said there are lots of expectations to deliver improvements. Okell said they are actively participating in ongoing engagements with industry and stakeholders to make sure they are on track.
Moving forward, the city is working on a new one-stop-shop portal and an external dashboard where the public can monitor the progress on the 3-3-3-1 policy. Okell said the city is also set to release a building bylaw code update later this year.
White concluded by saying he wants to make sure “our system will be faster, more streamlined, better and interactive.”
Cheryl Mah is managing editor of Construction Business.
