To the editor:
Re: "Newsmaker of the Year," Dec. 12.
Conflict of interest is the true newsmaker. The actual height of the 19-storey Rize Alliance rezoning at Broadway and Kingsway is more typical of a 23 or 24-storey building, making it by far the tallest to be approved in the Central Broadway Corridor where projects of this scale have not been permitted due to problematic shadowing of the public realm. Nor does the design con-form to the recently approved Mount Pleasant Community Plan in several key respects, including pedestrian permeability of the site and negative impacts of truck loading bays on residential Watson Street.
Numerous architects and urban planners, including former City of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»senior planner Nathan Edelson (UBC) and urban design specialist Lewis N. Villegas (SFU), spoke in opposition. Planner and urbanist Lance Berelowitz (an internationally respected advocate for livable densification) likened the proposal to "trying to squeeze a hippopotamus into a bathtub."
The Rize decision typifies a trend by our mayor and ruling Vision caucus on city council to approve projects that emphatically fail to meet Vancouver's urban design standards, proving that they, like the NPA, are in the thrall of an industry that contributes millions to their election coffers.
This systemic conflict of interest, which has recently swelled to obscene proportions, is the true newsmaker of the year; the upsurge in "neighbourhood dissent" is one of the symptoms.
Ned Jacobs, Vancouver
