John Lennon once said: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
During the recent town hall meeting, two sharply contrasting views of Squamish emerged. While the director of planning for the district enticed the audience with the advantages of Sustainability Blocks, also known in the enviro-buzz of the day as "S-Block based density zones," the residents who flocked to the microphones painted a different picture.
Sustainability Blocks promise to showcase "leading edge" structures consisting of anywhere from 12 to 17 stories complete with onsite "food systems" to feed the multitude.
Conceivably, green plumed veggies will sprout from the rooftops and between every grassy knoll. Shorn of all the razzle-dazzle, the truth is the occupants of these buildings may have a limited amount of time to enjoy their new avant-garde digs because in all likelihood they will be commuting to North Van, Burnaby, or some other distant outpost, to feed their families.
It doesn't take a career intellectual to grasp this simple equation: the proliferation of high-rises downtown will result in more residents working farther away from home because local jobs will not be available for the rapidly growing population in their bedroom community.
The occupants of those towering paragons of sustainability will drive even more vehicles down the Sea to Sky Highway, disgorging pollutants into the Howe Sound air shed.
And while muni planners boldly put out feelers to developers to flood the market with high density towers, newly constructed condos sit vacant and unsold. Some of those developers have even requested elastic zoning regulations to suit the whims of the fickle housing market.
This innovative S-Block concept also skims over the potential for rising levels of social unrest in a densely populated downtown core.
Our police budget is already stretched farther than a bungee cord at full extension. Some downtown residents claim the area leads a Jekyll and Hyde existence.
At the midnight hour the pleasant banner strewn streets become a haven for booze and drug-fuelled mayhem that keeps the cops busier than a flock of hungry mosquitoes in a nudist colony.
In 2008 the Mounties laid 220 "intoxicated in public" charges. While B&Es have increased by a mere 12 per cent between 2007 and 2008, those two canary-in-the-mineshaft crime incidences, vehicle theft and theft from vehicles, have gone up 63 and 68 per cent respectively.
Empty lots, dilapidated buildings and unoccupied storefronts greet passers-by. Where the Hudson House once stood, there is now a pile of rubble, a highly conspicuous for sale sign, and a massive gap between two buildings.
To the west of the downtown core, along the Squamish Estuary, an archipelago of homelessness persists. Simply building high-rises will not necessarily remedy this blighted landscape.
We have always had a downtown waiting for the next big thing. Sustainability is the wave of the future and thinking big is good, but vision without foresight amounts to myopia.
Before we get too excited about our brave new S-Block future let's deal with the real world problems facing us on a daily basis.
