Downtown living works in Vancouver, B.C. -- but will it translate?

By AUBREY COHEN
P-I REPORTER

In March, the school board said "unprecedented growth" had overwhelmed space at its two-year-old downtown elementary school.

"Elsie Roy (Elementary) is unable to accommodate the rapid increase in population in the downtown area," district officials wrote in a notice posted on the school's Web site. The need for a new downtown school and short-term alternatives were being discussed, they wrote.

		AP
	Apartments and condos make up this part of the Vancouver, B.C., skyline. Many families live downtown.

Of course, Elsie Roy is in Vancouver, B.C. Seattle has no downtown public school, and Seattle is closing schools for lack of enrollment. Vancouver is an example of a Western city that has managed to create downtown living that includes families.

Gordon Price -- who was on the Vancouver City Council from 1986 to 2002 and is director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, which focuses on urban planning and living issues -- said his city has a long-standing culture of families living in apartments and condos in downtown's West End. He said many of Vancouver's more recent arrivals came from Asia and Eastern Europe, where more people live in apartments and condos.

"You do have people who have been through several generations of raising families in high-rises," he said.

The city also had a large chunk of downtown land to plan around after the Expo '86 world's fair and set standards to make new residential development family-friendly, Price said. Requirements included making a quarter of apartments and condos suited to families with children, and including private play areas, community centers and sites for schools and child care centers.

That is all harder in the Seattle core, which does not have large areas that need rezoning for redevelopment, Price said.

Seattle Planning Director John Rahaim pointed to Vancouver as a downtown-living success story. But he also noted one huge difference between that city and his.

"I sometimes have to remind people, 'Hello, it's a different country,' " Rahaim said. "They have far more ability to demand amenities than we do."

Vancouver set aside three downtown school sites, but families moved into the area before the school board got around to building any of them, Price said.

"Parents said: 'We're here. We have our kids. Where's the school?' " he recalled. "Some kids were having to be bused to schools in other areas."

People will choose city neighborhoods if they are clean, green and safe and have good schools, Price said. "That's what they go to the suburbs for."

Price also thinks rising population and oil prices will change people's views.

"We had a wonderful period of human history of cheap gas, lots of land," he said. "Those conditions are all changing."