Vancouver City Council questions social housing exemption from shadow rules | Daily Hive

Vancouver City Council questions why only social housing is exempted from building shadowing restrictions

Example of building shadowing. (City of Vancouver)

Major changes to building shadowing regulations across the downtown Vancouver peninsula have been put on hold after Vancouver City Council unanimously directed City staff to conduct further consultation with the real estate industry.

These policies regulate new shadows cast on public spaces that are considered significantly important to preserve access to direct sunlight. To reduce shadowing on public spaces, such considerations limit the potential height and form of new buildings — sometimes even several city blocks away — and the resulting possible floor area density.

City staff had brought forward the proposed policy framework for the new “Solar Access Guidelines for the Downtown Peninsula” for City Council’s consideration and approval at today’s public meeting — the final meeting before City Hall’s summer break, which runs through early September. Instead, the policy will return for further discussion and a decision at the Sept. 17 public meeting.

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This delay will provide City staff with additional time not only to engage in more consultation, but also to refine their recommendations — offering greater clarity on the policy’s intent, and incorporating feedback from both City Council and industry stakeholders.

Kevin Spaans, a senior development planner with the City, told City Council during the deliberations that instead of the current building shadowing considerations between the spring equinox (March 20) and fall equinox (Sept. 22), the proposed policies are grounded on the shadowing created on the fall equinox only — one day in September, generally from 10 a.m. to to 4 p.m.

This timeframe on the fall equinox applies to 21 community, neighbourhood, and public parks, four public school sites, and Davie Street’s retail strip. For Robson Street’s retail strip, there is a slight variance from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

In addition to the broader considerations, there are are separate considerations for five “special case” public spaces — entailing no new shadowing anytime between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on the fall equinox for Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and Park and the south plaza (at the intersection of Robson and Homer streets) of Library Square, 11 a.m. on Remembrance Day for the cenotaph and circle at Victory Square, and the same guidelines under community, neighbourhood, local parks, and school sites for the “urban plaza” spaces of Robson Square and Jack Poole Plaza.

Vancouver Solar Access Guidelines for the Downtown Peninsula building shadowing

Public spaces under the Vancouver Solar Access Guidelines for the Downtown Peninsula. (City of Vancouver)

“Special case” public spaces under the Vancouver Solar Access Guidelines for the Downtown Peninsula. (City of Vancouver)

Spaans says the policy changes are generally intended to maintain the existing approach for shadowing considerations in the downtown Vancouver peninsula, create clarity by consolidating the different existing shadowing guidelines found for the area, and enable the consideration for providing shadowing exemptions for low-rise buildings, new developments with 100 per cent social housing uses, and projects with public benefits.

“The team that worked on this was the same team that worked on the view cones work… The existing policies that we have in place are applied very rigidly, and what we’re trying to do is override that and introduce flexibility where there isn’t right now,” said Spaans.

In developing the new policy framework, the City conducted some case studies, with such technical work in analyzing shadows set to be eventually replaced by a digital twin model of Vancouver.

“Our testing demonstrates that shadow impacts from new development can be reduced while maintaining project viability through a collaborative solar budgeting redesign process,” continued Spaans.

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. building shadowing on the fall equinox. (City of Vancouver)

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. building shadowing on the fall equinox. (City of Vancouver)

Vancouver Solar Access Guidelines for the Downtown Peninsula. (City of Vancouver)

However, City Council’s move to punt the consideration of the policy to September follows major confusion and concerns raised from many developers and others in the real estate industry — ever since City staff’s policy recommendations report was released last week ahead of today’s public meeting, based on their interpretation of how the recommendations were vaguely written. There are concerns that this could, in practice, significantly hinder new developments and offset the gains made by the recent protected mountain view cone relaxations.

“I’ve received so much correspondence in the last 24 to 48 hours around doing those now and working through to determine if it’s really just clarification and education, if there are any genuine concerns before Council adopts this report,” said ABC city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung during today’s meeting.

Jon Stovell, president and CEO of Reliance Properties and an outspoken critic of the City’s building shadowing policies in the past, told City Council during today’s meeting that “as [the policies] written, which is how we’ll be presented with these things years down the road with different staff, maybe even different senior leadership in planning, this is seen as a significant restriction, an increase in the difficulty in complying with solar access requirements.”

Stovell asserts the recommendations amount to a new “significant restriction” by expanding the shadowing duration measured in some areas of the downtown Vancouver peninsula, and that the types of exemptions outlined are too narrow in range and go against many other City Council policies, including the recently approved measures to help catalyze new hotel developments by encouraging more mixed-use residential and hotel towers through added height.

Stovell asserts that these proposed policies would significantly reduce the possible building height of his company’s four future development sites in downtown Vancouver, including three proposals that are mixed-use residential and hotel towers. One of these sites is immediately west of Robson Square.

Multiple city councillors also asked City staff whether they performed a comprehensive analysis of how much additional building floor area could be created or reduced by the new building shadow policy guidelines, such as the previous analysis performed to support the rationale for the city-wide reforms to relax the protected mountain view cones, with those July 2024-approved changes enabling up to 215 million sq. ft. of additional building floor area development capacity.

But Spaans said such a similar development capacity analysis for shadowing is challenging, as it is “very, very difficult to predict what development in downtown looks like from one day to another. A couple of years ago, we wouldn’t have predicted that we would see an application for a thousand-foot-tall building in downtown,” referring to the recently submitted rezoning application to redevelop the Hudson’s Bay parkade on the 500 block of West Georgia Street.

“We found that outside of downtown and in known growth areas where we’ve got those metrics that we can rely on, it’s a little bit easier than in downtown, where it involves a much more site-by-site crystal balling. Our focus was more on ensuring that the types of city-wide or city-building types of developments we have that are the ones delivering those housing units have an avenue through which flexibility can go, not considering too much what the delivery could be from that,” continued Spaans.

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

hudsons bay parkade vancouver redevelopment observation deck holborn

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Questions were also raised about the specific exemptions only for 100 per cent social housing projects, with city councillors ultimately urging City staff to return back in September with a better picture of the tradeoffs being made for public benefits, housing, hotels, job space, and other uses and priorities. This includes clarifying what is considered a public benefit and providing more examples.

“I just don’t understand — shadowing is important, a critical planning principle. And this is the type of city we want to build for livability, except if it’s something different. A building is a building regardless of what’s inside it, whether it’s rental, social, or strata housing,” said Kirby-Yung.

ABC city councillor Peter Meiszner echoed, “What I’m struggling to wrap my head around is if it’s so important, why would we have an exemption for say 100 per cent social housing tower? Why would we say, absolutely no shadows on this park, but if it’s 100 per cent social housing, then we can put a shadow on the park?”

Spaans asserted this is due to existing City policies deeming social housing being an “exceptional circumstance” for additional flexibility and allowances, and as a result, “the unintended outcome is that it implies that they get a free pass” under City staff’s discretion.

More broadly, to justify the overall “solar access” policies, he emphasized the City will continue to give weight to direct sunlight access for public spaces — especially during the darker months of the year — to support mental and physical health, enhance the usability of play areas and sports fields, sustain healthy trees and vegetation, and help mitigate the urban heat island effect.

Josh White, the general manager of planning, urban design, and sustainability and the director of planning, said that with this delay to September, there is now an opportunity to refine and add detail to some of the clauses in the policy framework, and agreed with some of the concerns raised by Stovell.

“I think people understand it quite clearly when we’re explaining it, talking about it, the subtleties, [and] the nuances. [But] there is some worry about, okay, well, if someone’s reading this 10 years from now, are they going to read it the same way? I think that’s fair,” said White.

“There’s probably some work to do to add some clarifying language around its intent, but with any kind of policy development, we know we’re not going to get 100 per cent right from the outset. We want to live up to the standard of refining and having living documents that, you know, we utilize that feedback loop between live applications, feedback that we get from stakeholders, and we reflect that in the policy. That would be our intent here.”

Last year, the building shadowing guidelines were also changed for areas outside the downtown Vancouver peninsula, simplifying the policies to the spring and fall equinoxes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — following the same standardized approach first taken with the Broadway Plan. This single policy from July 2024 applies to 85 per cent of Vancouver’s land area, as opposed to the previous approach that highly varies based on location. However, the concerns relating to shadowing policies primarily centre on the downtown Vancouver peninsula.

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