Dear Editor:
I'm one of a growing number of City of North Vancouver residents who are concerned about the current process for renewing our official community plan via the CityShaping program.
This is a critically important endeavour which will affect the livability of our community for years to come. We need a blueprint for the future - one that serves the hopes and needs of the people who live here. Getting this right requires an open, transparent and honest public input process that reflects the true desires of residents.
But based on the initial launch of CityShaping, we are concerned that this will not be the case. Instead, we are seeing the start of a process that is being steered toward a predetermined outcome that may not actually reflect what city residents want for their community.
We believe the key issue is: What level of population growth and density are residents willing to accept? Everything hinges on this. Yet the CityShaping process starts with the assumption of ever-higher population growth and ever-increasing density, with no provision for an open discussion about what rate of growth city residents wish to see.
The CityShaping kickoff event at the Pinnacle Hotel on Feb. 16 featured a series of speakers all singing the praises of rapid growth and densification. Now residents are invited to participate by filling out online "workbooks" in which we're directed to choose from a predetermined menu of the planners' favoured options. Any alternative options we might prefer are confined to typing into the "Other" box, which guarantees that one of the planner-preferred options will always be "what the majority wants."
Higher population densities are bound to have impacts on quality of life. These include smaller living spaces, less direct access to outdoors, more traffic congestion, loss of job-producing industries, increased demand for services, and the steady erosion of single-family neighbourhoods. Yet there appears to be no way for residents to discuss the limits of growth. Do we want to become the North Shore version of Vancouver's West End? It's possible the majority would be fine with this prospect. But we are not being given the choice.
To turn around the movie cliché: If you don't build it, they won't come. We don't need to feel helpless to slow the tide of urban densification. We can, as a community, choose the rate of growth we are capable of handling. That should be the first item discussed in deciding the future shape of our community.
Fred Dawkins North Vancouver
