It's official: Vancouver view cone relaxations for housing approved

It's official: Vancouver City Council approves view cone policy relaxations for more housing and job space

Mountain view cone informational signage by the City of Vancouver on the False Creek South seawall. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

On Wednesday afternoon, Vancouver City Council approved the greatest changes to the protected view cone policies ever since the guidelines that restrict building height and forms were first formally put in place in 1989.

These are the most significant changes to building development and housing policies made by the City Council during their current term, excluding policies mandated by new provincial government legislation.

Significant change are being made to the view cone policies. But as a whole, the view cone policies — intended to specifically protect northwards mountain views from select public spaces — have been largely retained.

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City Council approved City of Vancouver staff’s recommendations by voting for the amendments separately — including conducting standalone votes for a number of select view cone changes — and made amendments to incorporate other considerations and directions. But the main body of the recommendations was approved unanimously.

“There is no one silver bullet to address our housing crisis. We need to take a number of steps and have policies working together in synergy to achieve our goals,” said ABC city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung in her closing comments during today’s public meeting.

“I love our views, and I love our city. I also know that cities are not static. They are living and breathing entities that need to responsively adapt over time. The Vancouver of 1989 when these view cone guidelines were set is not the Vancouver of today, and nor do our residents have the same needs. Some have suggested the views will be gone, they won’t. They are just changing, just like our city. Some have suggested there won’t be any affordable housing, but there will be. Rental housing and inclusionary policies guide that.”

Currently, based on the 1989 view cone policies and subsequent additions over the decades, there are 38 public views, each originating from one of 18 origin points from a public space.

Following today’s approval, the new 2024 Public Views Guidelines reduce the number of public views by 14, from 38 to 24, amend 11 public views, and reduce the number of origin points by two for a total of 16.

2024 elimination of View Cone C emanating from the Laurel Landbridge. (City of Vancouver)

Some of these changes shift the emanating origin point of the mountain view cone at the public space, while other changes shifted the boundaries of the protected view, and eliminated the protected view entirely due to the view being obscured by tall trees and thick bushes and hedges or for other factors that have made it outdated. Some of the southwards view cones protecting views of the heritage City Hall building were also removed to open up transit-oriented development opportunities around SkyTrain’s Broadway-City Hall and Olympic Village stations.

“Change has happened, and cities do change. So if there’s a view that that has completely been diminished, or made obsolete by virtue of buildings that block that view as no doesn’t make sense to me to keep the view cone,” said Green city councillor Adriane Carr during the public meeting.

“I believe iconic views of mountains and nature will continue to be protected, and that is an important feature of what it is to be this internationally renowned city for its views. I also believe housing is a public benefit that we as Council have to also pay attention to.”

Maps of existing 1989 view cone policies, with previous amendments:

vancouver view cones public views guidelines map 1989

1989 view cone policies, with previous amendments included. (City of Vancouver)

Map of new 2024 amendments:

vancouver view cones public views guidelines map 2024

2024 amendments to Vancouver’s view cone policies (public views). (City of Vancouver)

For a detailed descriptive and visual breakdown of the view cone policy changes, see Daily Hive Urbanized’s previous coverage on City staff’s recommended amendments.

“For almost 40 years, we have operated under the policies that were well-intentioned at the time but no longer meet the demands of our green and evolving city. These not updated guidelines hindered our ability to deliver housing, job spaces, and community amenities that Vancouver desperately needs,” said ABC commissioner Lenny Zhou during today’s public meeting before voting.

“Today, we have an opportunity to change that. We must be bold, we must be visionary. Allowing more housing should be at the top of the priority list… We cannot afford to be constrained by policies of the past that sacrifice the future of the children and grandchildren.”

According to City staff, the changes could enable additional total building floor area of between 108 million sq ft and 215 million sq ft over 100 years, such as for market housing, rental housing, affordable housing, office space, hotel uses, retail/restaurant space, entertainment space, institutional space, and other uses. For the housing component, this could generate between 230,000 and 300,000 additional homes.

The potential development capacity over the first 30 years is between 8.1 million sq ft and 54,000 sq ft, including 15,000 to 75,000 additional homes.

The upper end of the potential additional development capacity, 215 million sq ft of building floor area, is equivalent to 179 Olympic Village neighbourhoods, 143 Bentall Centre office complexes, 430 Telus Garden office towers, 326 Living Shangri-La towers (Vancouver’s tallest building), 54 Senakw rental housing developments, 332 Hudson Bay Vancouver flagship store buildings, or 121 Metropolis at Metrotown shopping malls.

It is estimated that between 5% and 25% of the lots that will gain view cone relaxations will be redeveloped within the next 30 years.

Given the location of the view cones, all of this would happen within the central areas of the city — within and near the downtown Vancouver peninsula.

The single largest development capacity gain is from the adjustment of View Cone 3.0, emanating from the designated public viewpoint at the peak of Queen Elizabeth Park. This wide-sweeping view cone has been retained, but its bottom boundary has been elevated to enable a substantial increase in development opportunities along the Cambie Corridor north of the park, within the Central Broadway area, and parts of the downtown Vancouver peninsula. The amendment to View Cone 3.0 accounts for half of the total development capacity gains.

2024 changes to View Cone 3.0 emanating from Queen Elizabeth Park. (City of Vancouver)

Furthermore, special exceptions will be made to consider taller building proposals on a case-to-case basis that can extend into the view cones on “Exceptional Downtown Sites” — large continuous development sites of at least 1.98 acres in size, such as the future redevelopment of the 6.6-acre St. Paul’s Hospital campus on Burrard Street, after it relocates and closes in 2027. In addition to the minimum size requirement, such proposals must have a superior architectural design and contain a mix of uses — including affordable housing, commercial uses, and hotel and/or office space — and community amenity spaces, as well as extensive publicly accessible open spaces and a pedestrian-oriented public realm.

“The modernization of the view cone policy balances the need for more housing — with maintaining a liveable city that celebrates its unique connection to the mountains and ocean,” said ABC city councillor Peter Mesizner during today’s public meeting.

Today’s approved changes stem from City Council’s October 2023 approval of a member motion by Meiszner directing City staff to review the view cone policies, and report back on recommendations for amendments enabling more housing and job space.

Meiszner suggests the view cone changes will not only enable more housing and job space, but also generate new significant community amenity contributions (CACs).

“In addition to this important and desperately needed housing supply, the development of new housing and job space will also generate hundreds of millions in CACs over the next 30 years that will go fund important amenities like community centres, ensuring there are amenities and infrastructure to support our growing city,” continued Meiszner.

Additionally, City Council approved City staff’s recommended building shadowing guidelines for areas outside of the downtown Vancouver peninsula. Building shadowing guidelines are intended to reduce the duration of new building shadows on public parks, plazas, retail sidewalks, and key intersections.

The building shadowing guideline changes outside the downtown Vancouver peninsula simplify the policies to the spring and fall equinoxes from 10 am to 4 pm, which standardizes the approach first taken with the Broadway Plan. The new single policy applies to 85% of Vancouver’s land area, as opposed to the previous approach that highly varies based on location. But in many areas, this would represent an expansion of the hourly duration of building shadowing considerations.

In response, in addition to approving the recommended changes to the building shadowing guidelines, City Council passed an amendment to direct City staff to report back on the impacts of changing the sunshine access timeframe to a shorter period of 10 am to 2 pm instead of 10 am to 4 pm from the spring through the fall equinoxes. City staff will report back by early 2025.

Colleen Hardwick, a former Vancouver city councillor who ran for mayor under the TEAM party in the 2022 civic election, was among the public speakers who expressed their opposition to the changes during today’s City Council meeting.

“Listening to the staff report today, I’m glad I was at home, because I wanted to cry. First, the use of the term modernize is a mischaracterization and deliberate. View cones are not obsolete,” Hardwick told City Council via the phone.

“So why are we doing this? Because it’s all about profit. Profit. Promoting growth is about profit. In contrast, managing growth is about livability, balancing housing, mobility, community amenities and commercial activities. It’s not the City’s job to promote growth, nor is it the provincial government’s. For that matter, it’s the City’s job to manage growth in the best interests of its present and future residents.”

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