New urbanism outlook generating controversy over office space and other city amenities
In the 1960s, pop artist Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would be world-famous for 15 minutes; in the 2020s, urbanist Carlos Moreno has proposed that everyone in cities should have access to all the services they need in 15 minutes.
That elimination of traffic-driven urban vibrancy, Diaz argues, is bad for city business. Moreover, he writes, it is bad for human interaction. Regan says that the new urbanism at the heart of FMC planning dates to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit: “When we started talking seriously about sustainability.”“Having access to parks or health-care services,” Regan says, “or just having a walkable city, where you can get out and ride your bike somewhere safely and use different non-automobile modes of transportation.”
Fair enough, but how practical is it? Would it work in Metro Vancouver? What does it mean for businesses and their offices?The City of Vancouver, for example, has better FMC potential than other Lower Mainland municipalities, says Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program. Challenging for residents and urban redesign initiatives, but also challenging for businesses, employees and office building economics.
Finding workers who could afford to live 15 minutes from those businesses would make staffing even harder. But the practicality of repurposing office space in downtown cores varies depending on the economic state of those cores.Calgary’s downtown office space vacancy rate has been hovering around 30 per cent since late 2021; Vancouver’s was closer to 10 per cent in 2023’s first quarter.
Regan also points out that balancing employee remote work demands with office leasing costs is challenging. Adjusting municipal land-use zoning to make it easier for offices to be built in residential areas, he says, could be one way to achieve a workable balance.
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