Why smaller B.C. cities are rewriting their growth plans

The provincial housing legislation of the past three years was drafted with a picture in its head: a transit station, a tower, a big-city planning department to argue about the difference. The more interesting story is happening in the cities the picture left out.

Vernon, Penticton, Kamloops, Courtenay, Nelson — mid-sized cities with no rapid transit and small planning staffs — are rewriting their official community plans this year, and several have quietly gone further than the legislation requires. The reason is arithmetic, not ideology: a city of forty thousand that permits four units on any lot has effectively re-zoned itself in one bylaw, without a tower debate, because nobody proposes towers there anyway.

The pattern the plans share is a bet on what planners call gentle density and residents call fourplexes-and-coach-houses: capacity added inside existing neighbourhoods, on existing pipes, at a scale existing streets can absorb. The bet's weakness is also shared: the infrastructure that was sized for one house per lot, particularly water and sewer trunks, and the provincial capital programs that still fund upgrades as if growth were optional.

The rewritten plans land at public hearings through the winter. The hearings will be long, and — on the evidence of the first three — better tempered than the big-city versions. It is easier to argue about a fourplex when everyone in the room has seen one.