Last Sunday as the World Cup final went into extra time, people started gathering on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.  As in past years, the crowd was starting to spill into the street for lack of room on the sidewalks in front of the myriad restaurants, cafes and bars offering the game on TV.  The excitement was building as penalty kicks seem to loom, and then Spain scored, to cheers and a few groans from Dutch fans.  Soon, the celebration began for those cheering for Spain.

The police had already shown up, not to stop festivities, but to facilitate them.  With no announcements or prior plans, they had closed a 7 block stretch of Commercial Drive to traffic.  And people danced, juggled soccer balls, and enjoyed mingling.

10 years ago, when I first moved to this neighbourhood, the post-Euro-2000 game celebrations involved cars driving up and down this same street, waving giant flags, honking horns.  The 2002 World Cup was the same. The police kept the crowds on the sidewalks, on the sidewalks, which really meant they had to leave onto side streets as it was crowded.  The road was for cars, people had to use whatever urban space was left.

This time, the street was for people and those in cars had to find a place to park if they wanted to join the fun.  And they did.

What was also really cool about this approach was that instead of being in a silo in a car, people mingled with both strangers and neighbours who had backgrounds from around the world, all having a good time (and no one seemed drunk).

Spontaneous soccer games erupted on the street.  Some drummers offered a samba-salsa beat with flamenco influences and dancing took place.  People in Netherlands shirts joined those in Spanish colours as well as many wearing Serbian, Mexican, Brazilian, Italian or Portuguese jerseys kicking around a ball.

Others sat in chairs sipping their cappuccinos, on the street, watching the show.  Kids road bikes and scooters. The gelato stores did well.

This spontaneous urban event lasted for several hours, and without incident as far as I could tell.

A great example how streets can be for cars and buses most of the time, but become great public spaces for certain occasions.

But to support those businesses, you need a dependable large supply of consumers.  Walkable places therefore tend to have higher housing density than less-walkable nodes.

Most cities and many urban residents believe that the only way to increase density in an area is to add high rise buildings.  Although perhaps a quick and efficient way to add people, high rises and even mid-rise structures often stand in stark contrast in an existing community of ground-oriented dwellings.

City planning departments and civic governments could do more to promote what I call stealth density.  That is, density that you can’t really see from the street–it flies under the radar, so to speak.   In Vancouver some older neighbourhoods evolved their stealth density quite by accident.  Big 1910 era houses in the 1970s and 1980s were converted into multi-suite houses with the garage often becoming a “coach house.”  Having a number of small units allowed more households to move in as well as created a variety of housing price-points to suit an economically diverse community.   Even as some gentrification has come, many of these homes retain multiple suites as the owners need “mortgage helpers” to cover Vancouver’s $million+ home prices.  San Francisco appears to have similar neighbourhoods of multi-household homes.

The result are communities with a high density of people supporting local businesses.  Ground-oriented neighbourhoods can have walkscores near 100 (my home is a 98).

To their credit, the city of Vancouver planning department is now encouraging multi-suite properties, particularly the installation of “Laneway housing” in some districts.  And in Seattle “Backyard Cottages” are being tried in some districts.

But, there is a lack of awareness about how much density this can actually bring.  If each city lot housed 2-3 households instead of one, you wouldn’t need to build as many high rises to achieve similar goals.  And there is something very community-oriented about having everyone having a front door near the ground (even if the suite stretches up 2-3 storeys).

Maybe a solution for the future in many communities lies in looking at spontaneous stealth density in the recent past.

Aside from their frequent auto-dependence, suburbs often offer the characteristic of “sameness.”

• Homes in each subdivision all tend to be the same, or at least very similar.
• The same type of people tend to purchase them–one subdivision will be popular with young native-born middle-class families while another will attract more immigrant families and still another older families or empty nesters.
• The nearby retail, chain-based big box or strip centers.

This is often contrast with life in many traditional inner-urban neighbourhoods:

• Homes reflect a variety of architectural styles, stemming from the different decades in which they were built.
• Because of the different eras when various owners bought into the neighborhood, a wide range of people live there.
• Retail also may have evolved gradually, with ownership fragmented into small units, often family owned, which tends to support more independent retailing and fewer chains.

More recently, to combat sprawl, many cities are re-zoning large swaths of industrial or commercial land into high-density residential.  But what gets built in many ways resembles the suburbs in character.  Buildings and units look very similar; everyone buys in at the same time so will tend to be of similar backgrounds; and the large retail chains scoop up the retail spaces.  Put all this together and you get a suburb in the city, even if the residents take transit to work and live in condos.

My question to urbanistas is whether this matters?

My thought is that it  could. Recent research on Generation Y suggests that this cohort group prefers to consume from smaller, independent businesses and organizations.  This new generation of talent may not be as attracted to vertically-oriented suburbs as they are to more authentic neighbourhoods.    Moreover, if the knowledge economy really needs creative inspiration, are you going to get it in these new milieus?

On the other hand, this style of development may be the only way to quickly offer more housing options in the city. Perhaps it’s not ideal, but it’s the way cities will develop.

In my childhood, this was a dirty, aging heavy industrial zone dumping who-knows-what into the water.

No one alive here today seems to recall seeing a healthy whale swimming in urban waterways, although presumably whales visited occasionally before industrial development polluted the water.  The whale in 2010 was a miraculous site.

Environmentalists at the David Suzuki foundation believe the whale visit resulted from efforts to cleanup the False Creek waterway that were undertaken as part of the LEED-Platinum Olympic Village sustainable housing development.  In addition to building a zero-emission community, the inlet was cleaned up and a “Habitat Island” added to provide a home for marine-oriented critters from ducks to fish as well as small mammals.  A whole eco-system including food for whales seems to have evolved in just a few years.

This provides another example of how reducing emissions and pollution in our cities (including their waterways) is the right thing to do, regardless of whether it helps the planet in the long term.  It improves our quality of life–now, today.  Everyone who saw the whale felt enriched.

It’s unfortunate that questionable science about global-warming is what is motivating many policy and behavior changes, but I’m glad something is, and that we can see almost immediate results.  The whale doesn’t lie.  Nor do statistics about reduced hospital admittances for asthma when driving is drastically reduced.  The quality of life is better in cities when the air and environment is cleaner.

I would argue that high rates of home renters (vs owners) is a sign of a dynamic economy, rather than the cause.  Places like New York, San Francisco (and in Canada Vancouver & Toronto) are places with jobs, especially “creative” knowledge and service/experience economy jobs.   These cities attract tens of thousands of both national migrants and international immigrants annually to work in and experience the dynamic financial, high-tech and artistic clusters (these are typically well educated immigrants and migrants).

Newcomers to cities (almost any place, actually) have high propensities to rent–especially in expensive places, which these cities are.

Many of these migrants are probably not intending to stay when they relocate to these cities.  They are coming to experience them.  Creative, smart people are attracted to these dynamic cities because they are full of other creative, smart people (interacting with other smart people makes you smarter [Ed Glaeser]).  They are also full of great amenities and interesting — even unique — clusters.

Young, smart people go with the idea of experiencing the jobs and amenities for a few years, and then perhaps moving “back home” or at least closer to family.  Therefore renting is ideal.

A concern for the future: 

In the past, if they did decide to stay, they might have bought a place in nearby suburbia, or perhaps a condo or townhome closer in.  This made room for more newcomers in the rental, which helped to keep these cities’ economies humming.

If suburbia becomes less appealing, because of fewer amenities and poor transit and automotive congestion, will these newcomers along with born-and-raised residents end up renting for much longer periods of time?  Even if they want to buy a small urban home, this will not be cheap.  Tighter mortgage lending rules may mean saving for much longer before buying, or making it impossible for some.

This will mean fewer rental spots for newcomers, which might end up serving as a break on economic growth in that city. It will also drive rental rates up further, creating an additional social, political and economic challenges.

What other challenges will the rental society bring?

Since coming into widespread use in the 1970s, the Pill has allowed women to choose when or whether to have children, and how many.  This in turn has allowed women to imagine themselves in professional careers–and to fulfill those dreams.

Here are four ways the Pill has been re-shaping urban life.1. The fertility rate has dropped from 4 children per woman in her lifetime in Canada in the late 1950s to 1.6 children per women in Canada (and likely similar in urban areas of the US).    Women working in all variety of professions (not just nursing and teaching), is one of the drivers reshaping North America’s cities.

2. The knowledge economy built on collaboration and communication; psychologists will readily tell you that more women than men tend to excel in these areas.  Can you imagine a knowledge economy company with no women working there?  Women now earn more than half of all Bachelor’s and Masters degrees, which has been key to many knowledge occupations.

3. Experience economy–increasingly people have become more interested in consuming experiences rather than goods.  People from most income backgrounds today will spend money on fine dining, the spa, travel, a concert, etc.  Having the spare money and time to indulge in these is a direct consequence of having children later in life and/or having fewer of them. This allows both women and men some disposable income and time with which to have experiences.

4. Apartment and condominium living in dense, walkable and amenity-rich areas has been growing in popularity.  Living in small spaces suits a family of 3 much better than it would suit 6 people.  Suburbia made sense when having 4 or more children was normal.  Plus, living in an apartment near where both parents work, allows for more family time instead of commuting.

In his book The Great Reset, Richard Florida describes a new urban geography emerging in response to the growing “creative” economy (just as suburbia emerged in response to the industrial age).  Unless I missed it in reading the book, he doesn’t mention the Pill as perhaps the greatest labour saving technology for women (pun intended)–having fewer children to mother means more time and energy for contributing to the knowledge economy and makes dense urban living work much better.

Is this a uniquely Vancouver experience, or the start of a broader urban trend in North America?

Here’s how it has happened in Vancouver.  A young couple together buys a condo in the downtown area (Yaletown, Coal Harbour, etc.), maybe a 1 bedroom unit.   They love living and working in close proximity and in the walkable, amenity-rich milieu that higher density neighbourhoods can offer.

A few years later they decide to have a child or children, and quickly the 1 bedroom unit is too small.  Suburbia and long commutes offer no appeal and really nor does having that suburban house (with lawns to mow, gutters to clean and other time and money sinks).  They like being able to get to-and-from work quickly, allowing for more family time.  Plus, they have lots of friends with children downtown–this is their community.

But, if they want another, larger, downtown unit, the costs of selling the one bedroom and buying a larger condo or a townhouse is quite high (in part because of market lift since they first bought in).  By contrast, the cost of renting that larger condo or townhouse is much less, especially when offset by the rental income they can achieve from leasing their owned 1 bedroom unit.  (For example, rent out the well-located 1 bedroom for $1700 and then rent a larger place for $2200/month; by contrast buying the larger place might cost $3200/month–or more–in mortgage and condo fees; if they moved to a slightly less expensive neighbourhood still near downtown, they might be able to rent a large 2 bedroom place for the $1700).

They keep owning the 1 bedroom unit, as an investment.  The rent covers most of the mortgage and carrying costs initially, and over time as they pay down more of the principle, the rent fully–or more than–compensates for the carrying costs.

This scenario allows the family the benefits of old fashioned home ownership where they have a nest-egg at the end of 25 years, or equity should circumstances change and they wish to buy a different home.  It also allows them the flexibility of renting in terms of being able to move should employment needs change or if they need to relocate for children’s schooling.

Owning the 1 bedroom is also an investment in the city, to which they are also contributing as citizens who work and play there.

So what do you think? Is this a bizarre Vancouver anomaly? A once-in-a-market-cycle phenomenon? Or something that is happening or could happen in many other cities going forward?

(P.S. I’m now on Twitter)

However, I’m not sure the solution is less home ownership on average than the historic norm in both countries of roughly 66% of households owning homes.  (addition: Florida himself suggests a 50% ownership rate, some of the media discussing his work have implied he suggests almost getting rid of it altogether, which is incorrect.)

The solution may be a return to the old fashioned approach to home ownership, which had the following characteristics:

• You had to have a down payment, whether 25%, 20% or 5% (in the pricier places).  Saving up thousands of dollars required a level of personal fiscal discipline (almost like a test to pass to become a home owner)
• You had to have an income that would support a 25 year amortization, paying down the interest and the principle every month.
• Most home owners had a goal of paying off the mortgage as fast as possible–this represented freedom, and even upward mobility.
• As a result, equity in houses was not a cash machine it was something to treasure and hold on to.
• As a result, retirees had a nest-egg.  Even if property values only kept up with inflation, it was a forced savings plan.

Under this paradigm of home ownership, moving to another city was not that hard.  If you had significant positive equity in a home it meant that you could sell, move, and buy in the new place.

The recent housing over-building and subsequent price collapse destroyed this American dream.  It has destroyed the fiscal responsibility that millions of Americans displayed who did not treat their house as an ATM and responsibly paid down their mortgage every month.

Looking ahead, restoring this fiscally prudent mindset based on saving might be a path out of the current malaise.  America needs a higher savings rate.    And all it might take is tougher mortgage lending rules.

One of her famous lines was that to know a city, or to know a neighbourhood, you needed to walk it.

She died just a few years ago, in her adopted home of Toronto.  To honour her, friends in Toronto began the tradition of prompting people to host walks through their neighbourhoods, pointed out what they like, or what Jane might have liked.

In a recent interview that discussed neighbourhoods and Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida offers some reasons why we might love our home area:

So in essence a neighborhood is not just a set of individuals, but a set of relationships. I think that’s right. And the relationships are fluid. Some are longstanding and some you can plug into and play. And the places that enable those relationships to form are the places that do better.

Every time we come back to these neighborhoods that are exciting, that are great, there’s a long history behind them. 

A Jane’s Walk is a chance to learn more of the local history and relationships that made local history.

I’ve attended walks the past two years.  The experience of learning dozens of new things about your own city, and how cities work at the ground level is amazing.  This year I’ll also try the experience of hosting, and sharing some recent history of my own neighbourhood.

Find one in your city, or offer to host one… Click here for Canada or global cities. In the US try this direct link.  They will happen simultaneously across North America and around the world on May 1 and 2, 2010.

Neal Pierce recently penned an intriguing piece about supermarkets on Citiwire.net.

We perfected the buy-and-drive model from the post-World War II expansion onward. But is it necessarily the future?

No, asserts my Seattle friend and urban design planner, Mark Hinshaw. He sees a dramatically transformed role for supermarkets. They’ll actually become the anchors of new and walkable neighborhoods, he predicts in a Planning magazine article co-authored with markets analyst Brian Vanneman.

Why the shift? Americans’ high personal consumption levels were starting to wind down even before the Great Recession. Households have shrunk in size and the population is aging, with more taste for close-by shops and facilities. Many young people are eschewing the scattered suburban pattern in favor of denser urban living. Buying a house on the urban fringe, once seen as a ticket to wealth-building, now looks to be a big risk. Walking for health and weight loss has begun, for many Americans, to outshine the sedentary lifestyle of using an auto for every conceivable errand. And many people are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint.

Neighbourhoods that offer the option of walking to do one’s errands have grown in popularity for all the reasons cited above.  In some places this has resulted in homes (including town homes, mid rise and high rise buildings) now surrounding what used to be a more isolated supermarket with a massive, attached parking lot.

In these cases, it seems that turning this space into something more could be great for everyone.

• If additional small stores or service businesses were added to the space, it would attract more shoppers–great for business.
• If there was some public space like a small playground, or a sitting area to enjoy one’s coffee, people would come to connect with their neighbours and not just to shop.
• And if this space connected to other walkable–perhaps retail–streetscapes, more customers would be drawn in.

The owner of the supermarket and parking lot could also benefit through increased property values or options.  A redevelopment of the space might allow for the creation of office or residential space above.

To be sure, parking would still be required at these new versions–sometimes the groceries you need to get are heavy and the car is the logical option–but perhaps fewer spaces, or underground.

While many suburban supermarkets-and-parking lots will likely remain auto-centric destinations for a while.  There are places where density has grown up around these expansive uses and the whole community could benefit from the “accident” of having a big empty space that can now be used for community building rather than parking.