The Site:

The Lower Mainland Region of British Columbia as seen from space(this and all other plan views in this document shown with north up).Heavily urbanized areas appear grey, The City of Vancouveroccupies the peninsula at the extreme left, bounded by the BurrardInlet on the north and the Fraser River on the south. The FraserRiver divides the urban area, Vancouver and Burnaby on the northshore while Delta and Surrey are on the south shore. Surrey’s mostpopulated area appears as the grey region just south of where theFraser River turns to the southwest. The site is at the south end ofthis expanding urbanizing area and is identified by a red dot. Largeun-urbanized zones lie to the east and to the south of the study site;these are the flood plains of the Serpentine and the Nicomekl Riversrespectively.

The Purpose of This BookThis book is about how to make our newneighbourhoods more sustainable than theyare now. By sustainable, we mean themaintenance of the ecological health of ourneighbourho6ds and the provision of equitableaccess to affordable housing for our children.We hope that this book will be of interest toeveryone; from the public officials and privatedevelopers who participate in developing andmanaging the urban landscape today to thesecondary school students who will shoulderthese responsibilities tomorrow. The bookincludes four different designs for the same400-acre site in Surrey, British Columbia, eachdesign having been produced by a team ofarchitects and landscape architects, working“en charrette.”

Each team had a clear goal: to illustratea vision of what our communities could be likeif they were designed to conform withemerging regional, provincial, and nationalpolicies for sustainable development. Cur-rently, there are very few examples, orillustrations, of what more sustainable urbanlandscapes could be like. In British Columbia,many ministries and other sectors of govern-ment are developing policies and legislationaimed at enhancing the sus- tainability offuture developments. This project was the firstin British Columbia to illustrate the changesthat these policies might bring to the textureand pattern of the urban landscape, shouldthey be carried out. We hope that theseillustrations will enhance public discourse byallowing citizens and decision-makers achance to assess for themselves what a moresustain- able urban landscape might look like.

The James Taylor Chair in Landscapeand Liveable EnvironmentsThis charrette project is the first in a seriesof related projects sponsored by the Univer-sity of British Columbia’s James Taylor Chair inLandscape and Liveable Environments.

INTRODUCTION

PATRICK M. CONDON UBC formed this endowed chair in response tothe 1987 United Nations World Commission onEnvironment and Development. In its assess-ment of the state of the global biosphere, thecommission argued that the solutions to globalenvironmental problems lay largely at the locallevel and, particularly, at the site-developmentlevel. Members of the Landscape ArchitectureProgram at UBC realized that most ongoingresearch in landscape sustainability wasbeing done at the ecosystem scale (land-scapes larger than 3,000 square kilometres)and that very little work was being done at thesite scale (landscapes of less than twosquare kilometres). In 1990, the LandscapeArchitecture Program presented a proposal foran endowed research chair in sustainable sitedesign. In 1991, during the UBC’s ‘World ofOpportunity” campaign, the university receiveda gift to endow the James Taylor Chair in“Landscape and Liveable Environments.” Acentral principle that informs all the chair’sactivities is this: the individual site, and eventhe individual house and yard, are to thelandscape region what the single cell is to thehuman body. Just as the health of the humanbody is dependent on the health of all of itscells, so the ecological health of a landscaperegion is dependent on the health of itsindividual sites.

A Brief History of Design CharrettesMost people are not familiar with the word“charrette.” A charrette is a design activitywhere the participants are assigned a verycomplicated design project and are expectedto bring it as close to completion as possiblewithin a very short time. Members of theSchool of Architecture at the Ecole desBeaux-Arts in Paris coined the word at theend of the last century. The faculty in thatschool would issue problems that were sodifficult, few students could successfullycomplete them. When the allotted time hadelapsed, a pushcart, or, in french, a

charrette, trundled past the drafting stations.Students would throw their drawings into thecart at various states of completion, as to missit meant an automatic grade of zero. It was in asimilar environment that the participants in theSustainable Urban Landscapes DesignCharrette produced the designs and illustra-tions contained in this book. We gave themonly four days to design a hypotheticalcommunity for I 0,000 persons in Surrey,British Columbia. The “cart” came by at 7:00AM on Friday, 15 September 1995, the morningof the presentation, and the designers threwtheir drawings into it. Those drawings are theones reproduced on the following pages.

The charrette recorded in this book is notthe first one since the nineteenth century,rather, it is one in a long series of charrettesheld since the tradition began. In our ownGeorgia Basin Region, the University ofWashington’s Department of Architecture hasbeen conducting major design charrettes formore than a decade. In these charrettes, manydesign topics have been explored, from thereuse of de- commissioned military installationsto the design of portable water closets forSeattle’s homeless. One of the publicationsemanating from the Seattle charrettes that hasinfluenced urban designers around the worldis The Pedestrian Pocket Handbook, edited byDoug Kelbaugh and now in its fifth printing. AsProfessor Kelbaugh had organized all of theSeattle charrettes, we asked him to act as ouradvisor for this project and to participate as ateam leader in our first charrette.

Early in our planning, Professor Kel-baugh cautioned us that the results of acharrette are always unpredictable. He told usto hope for the best but to prepare for theworst. He also encouraged us by stress- ingthe one great advantage of thecharrette model: it is the best way to getthe most creative proposals for addressing themost difficult problems from the most accom-plished designers in the most com- pressedperiod. In no other way would (or could) theseindividuals come together to stimulate eachother, teach each other (and their studentpartners), and compete with each other toproduce the best possible answers to a givendesign problem. An important cautionary pointmust be made, however. Given the short timein which they were accomplished, no oneshould think of the designs produced at thischarrette as complete. These designs arebeginnings, not ends. They provide a point ofdeparture for later contemplation and elabora-tion. In short, they provide the pic-

pictures of what a more sustainable futuremight be like – nothing more.

The Specific Goal of ThisDesign CharretteThe goal of this project is to demonstrate whatour neighbourboods and communities couldbe like if they were designed and built toconform with emerging loco/, provincial, andfederal policies for sustainable development.

We expect these policies will emerge anddevelop a great deal more in the future, as welearn more about the possible avenuestowards increased landscape sustainability;but the first step towards a sustainable urbanlandscape is to accept and to work with theseemerging and existing policies and to drawpictures of what it would look like. We do notbelieve that these policies by themselvesguarantee sustainability, they do not, but it isclearly worthwhile to make the first step byillustrating their potential benefits.

The above-stated goal suggests thefollowing more specific objectives:

1. To produce sustainable community designmodels for real British Columbia urbanlandscapes

2. To illustrate the design consequences ofmeeting disparate and often contradic-tory sustainability policy objectives

3. To illuminate the connection betweensustainability and livability

4. To show how sustainable design objec-tives are influenced and/or impeded bytypical community subdivision and siteand traffic engineering regulations

5. To create a setting in which leading Brit-ish Columbian designers can exchangeideas and viewpoints with outside ex-perts in the field of sustainable design

6. To produce design proposals that mayprovide patterns, processes, and proto-types for other Georgia Basin communi-ties

7. To broadly distribute the results of thecharrette through a variety of means andvenues - to citizens, elected repre-sentatives, policy-makers, students anddesigners - and thereby influence futurepublic policy and legislative initiatives

The Process of Choosingthe Charrette SiteEarly in the planning phase of this project wepresented the charrette idea to participants atthe November 1994 meeting of the GreaterVancouv Regional District’s’ (GVRD’s)Technical Advisory Committee, which iscomprised of the senior planners from GVRDcommunities and other com-

munities in the region. The committee alsoincludes representatives from the relevantprovincial ministries and Crown corporations.We invited the participants to submit candidatesites from their communities for consideration,and five different Lower Mainland communitiessubmitted a total of thirteen potential sites.

The Sustainable Urban LandscapesDesign Charrette Advisory Committee thenreviewed these thirteen sites. The commit- teeselected the 400-acre site in the SouthNewton District of Surrey because it hasseveral physical and cultural characteristicscommon to many other communities in theregion. The committee also felt that Surrey’sleading elected officials and its citizens werecommitted to preserving the natural beauty andecological integrity of their city as it grew. Thecombination of physical site characteristicsand an interested public made the 400-acresite in Surrey a logical choice for the firstcharrette project.

The City of Surrey is very large, 126square miles, making it, physically, the larg- estof all Lower Mainland communities. It has apopulation of 294,000 and is growing by 4 to 6percent per year. If this rate of growthcontinues, Surrey’s population could surpassthat of Vancouver, presently British Columbia’smost populous city, in the year 2021. While aquick glance suggests that Surrey has asubstantial amount of land available forbuilding new neighbourhoods, closer examina-tion shows that almost half of its land lieswithin the boundary of the protected Agricul-tural Land Reserve (ALR). These undevelop-able lands are the low-lying flood plains of theNicomeki River and the Serpentine River. Aneven closer look shows that the ‘buildable’upland areas of the city are laced withprotected salmon-bearing streams, which arevery important to the ecology and aquaticproductivity of the region. In summary,although there are enormous demands forincreased development in Surrey, its re-maining land base is crucial for habitat andlocal food production. We hoped that par-ticipants, through presenting intelligentdesigns, would be able to demonstrate waysto mitigate this potential conflict. The 400-acrecharrette site includes upland regions and lowwet areas. As such, it provides a representa-tive cross- section of the surrounding city. Thesite is divided into sections by importantsalmon- bearing tributaries of Hyland Creek. Itis located at the edge of a recently urbanizedarea - the Newton District - and is one of thenext logical catchment areas for Surrey’spopulation expansion. The city

Left:

A topographic survey map showing the

study site in its context. The study site is

again located by a red dot. On this map,

presently urbanized areas are shown in

pink, forests in green, and agriculture in

white. The Serpentine and Nicomeki

Rivers, to the east and south of the site

respectively, are bordered by wide

agricultural flood plains. These flood

plains divide Surrey into three distinct

upland urban zones: (1) the Newton/

Whalley/Guildford urbanization, to the

immediate north of the study site, (2) the

Cloverdale District, ten kilometres due

east of the study site, and (3) South

Surrey, seven kilometres due south of

the study site.

Below:

The four-hundred-acre charrette site.

Boundaries of the study site are shown

with a heavy black line. This part of

Surrey is drained by the Hyland Creek

and its tributaries. The main stem of

Hyland Creek forms the northern

boundary of the study site. Several of

Hyland Creek’s smaller tributaries

dissect the study site. Hyland Creek and

its tributaries are clearly marked in the

photo by the long lines of forest

vegetation. King George Highway forms

the western border of the site. Sixty-

Fourth Avenue lies close to the northern

edge of the site while 60th Avenue lies

close to the southern edge of the site.

Left:Topographic model of the site as seenfrom the northeast. Vertical changehas been exaggerated by a factor oftwo for clarity. Stream channels areshown by the linear depressions.Ground- water emerges from manylocations near the base of the slope tofeed the streams. The high southernedge of the site is part of the muchlonger Panorama Ridge formation. Thesoils on the site are of glacial origingenerally unstratified depositscontaining a high percentage of clay.

is presently planning to “upzone”, or in-crease, the allowable density in the area toaccommodate this next wave of populationgrowth. Approximately 980 persons live in thearea today. Most of the site is privately owned,with parcels ranging between ten acres andone-quarter of an acre in size. Real estateinvestors own many of the parcels, and,generally, they are anxious to see the land“upzoned,” since this would dramaticallyincrease the value of their holdings. Residenthome-owners own most of the remainingparcels, and they generally enjoy the naturalqualities of the site and are not anxious to seeit change. The home-owners that we spoke tohad little doubt, however, that change isinevitable; but they hoped the city couldpreserve the qualities of the site that they mostenjoyed. Slopes on the site are quite moderateby local standards, ranging from 13 percent to1 percent. The site is an inward-focussedbowl shape, with ridge-top parcels enjoyingvery good views to the east and north. Ninedifferent threads of the Hyland Creek systemincise this site.

The Charrette Program BriefThe charrette planners derived each elementof the design brief’ by carefully culling thevarious sustainability policy statements of avariety of government or quasi-governmentsources published since 1990. If we felt that apolicy objective had clear implications for sitedesign, we used it to guide the designprogram. For example, we arrived at the10,000 minimum population after studying a setof

tecture and landscape architecture studentsfrom the UBC School of Architecture and theUBC Landscape Architecture Program. Half ofthe team leaders were drawn from the region,and the other half were invited from otherparts of North America. The leaders werechosen for their recognized accomplishmentsin urban design, their experience in similarvenues, their understanding and commitmentto the principles of sustainability, their capacityto work quickly and cooperatively, and theirability to work with students. With equalnumbers of architects and landscape archi-tects on each team, the design dialogue wasintensified.

ConclusionWe hope these designs enhance the discus-sion about sustainable urban landscapes. Webelieve that by drawing pictures of what amore sustainable urban landscape could belike, public officials, developers, and citizenswill be able to make more informed decisionsthan they do at present. The four designsincluded in this book all represent practicalways to make our urban landscapes muchmore sustainable than are our present ones.We feel that they are economical, safe, andattractive alternatives to status quo suburbandevelopment. We also feel that they accuratelyreflect how the urban landscapes will changeas the emerging sustainability policies for ourregion are actualized.

We hope, too, that this book illustrates theimportance of design in the quest for sustain-able urban landscapes. In

interrelated policy objectives, all of whichsupported relatively high-density development.These policies included goals such as“accommodating walking distance access toservices and transit,’ “creating affordablehousing,” ‘using developable land efficiently,’and so forth. This process ensured that thedesign illustrations would truly demonstratewhat our neighbourboods and communitiescould be like if they were designed and built toconform with emerging local, provincial andfederal policies for sustainable development.

In short, the program required the de-signers to find a way to house at least I 0,000persons on the 400-acre site, while preserv-ing or enhancing the ecological function of theland and the surrounding landscape. We knewthat it would be very difficult to fit that manypeople on the site and still preserve orenhance the existing ecology. We believed thatthis kind of challenge would bring forth thedesigners’ most creative responses, and wewere not disappointed. We also askeddesigners to provide unusually large amountsof commercial and light industrial space. Thedesigns would thus reflect ‘complete commu-nity” planning principles (i.e., they wouldprovide enough employment and serviceswithin walking distance to drastically reducethe time, energy, and money consumed bydriving).

The Composition of the Design TeamsTwo professional landscape architects andtwo professional architects led each team.Each team included an even mix of archi-

our charrette, it was design which firstrevealed and then resolved the contradictionsembedded in the sustainabilily policies used toguide the design brief. For example, the designbrief required that the community be bothdensely populated (to conserve energy) andecologically preserved or enhanced (to protectthe streams). Reason suggests that youcannot do both these things at the same time.Neither science nor planning,by themselves, can overcome this seemingcontradiction. Scientists agree that when asite is changed, even in the simplest way, theecological consequences are not completelypredictable; the relationships between thevarious systems are simply too complex. Asyou add urban uses to a site, the number ofvariables approaches infinity. Issues ofsustainability and ecology are thus inherentlycomplex, and science falters when confrontedby so many variables. Design, however, isquite at home with complex problems, for eventhe simplest design problem has manyvariables and many acceptable solutions.Often these acceptable solutions are pleasingand practical in proportion to the designer’ssuccess in balancing the contradictionsembedded in the design problem. Design maynot be able to find the absolutely correctsolution, but, when such a solution is notpossible, it can find a number of very goodsolutions. Four very good solutions to theproblem of urban landscape sustainability arebound between these covers.

One closing point: the solutions in thisbook may tell us how to move towards urbanlandscape sustainability, but they do not leadus all the way there. However, even movingtowards sustainability requires dramaticchanges to the status quo. If history is anyguide, it could take many decades to signifi-cantly change old ways of city-building. Butwe should at least begin. We hope that thedesign visions illustrated in this book will con-tribute to that beginning.

Patrick M. Condon, ASLAJames Taylor Chair inLandscape and Livable Environments

Notes:

I

The Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) is a

provincially enabled public agency that is, among other

things, charged with coordinating growth in the Vancouver

metropolitan region. Certain of the key documents

informing the design program were produced under the

direction of the GVRD, notably, The Livable Region

Strategy and The Livable Region Strategic Plan.

2

The complete program is included in the appendix, and

careful review of it is recommended.

Top:Aerial view to the east fromabove the western edge of thesite. The Public Marketbuilding, located at theintersection of 64th Avenue andKing George Highway, isprominent at lower left of thephoto. The charrette siteoccupies the foreground andthe middleground of the view.The flood plains of theSerpentine River and theCloverdale district of Surreyare in the distance.

Bottom:A typical view from within thesite. This view is to the northfrom the upland southern edgeof the site. The encroachingurban development of theNewton District can be seen onthe ridge in the middleground.The North Shore Mountains,thirty kilometres to the north ofthe site, are visible in thedistance.