“Density is a Foregone Conclusion”: Charles Gauthier of the Downtown Vancouver BIA

01/29/19 • 55 min

They call him Downtown Charles. Okay, he calls himself that, but it fits. For the past 27 years, Charles Gauthier has led the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, one of hundreds of BIAs that sprung up across Canada (and the world) in the past 40 years.

Beginning in 1992, with a downtown business core saddled with double-digit commercial vacancy rates, Gauthier has helped usher in new programs aimed at stimulating greater public engagement in more public spaces. More promotional and support programs for downtown businesses. And with all that, sustained growth and livability in one of North America’s most densely populated and heavily commuted downtowns.

More tellingly, Gauthier has led the BIA — staff, Board and Policy Council — into tough conversations, many of them public, about policy issues once considered outside the purview of the business community. That’s because they’re issues at the core of what makes this city tick — bike lanes, transit, housing policies, and intersectional diversity and representation. First in traditional media, and now on social media, Gauthier has become a voice of reason (and in Gord’ view, “master of the segue”).

Today, just prior to yet another BIA renewal process, and as a new council votes on a number of important motions about active transportation and densification, Gauthier say’s he’s ready...to fight the NIMBYs.

Previous Episode

What Gets Measured Gets Managed — Design, Health & Public Policy, with Lawrence Frank

“Metaphorically-speaking, the clothes I put on fit me,” says Dr. Lawrence Frank, one of the most-published and highly-cited urban planners in the world.

Having started his career in landscape architecture, Dr. Frank’s 1985 thesis on transit mall design eventually led to a Masters of Civil Engineering Transportation Studies and a PhD in Urban Design and Planning, both from the University of Washington. Dr. Frank worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation and held faculty roles at Georgia Tech, but it was his research on the links between the design of cities, environmental impacts and population health — and the trove of data he found which helped make such connections known and understood — that was groundbreaking.

It was also comprised of a set of evolving concepts throughout the 1990s (“How the design of places affects behaviour and health, and health came later”), and over the past 25 years his work resulted in the publication of hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles and publicly and privately-funded projects on the subject, not to mention having influenced public policy shifts towards walkability, bike-ability and transit, and away from vehicular primacy.

Since 2002, Dr. Frank has held the role of Bombardier Chairholder and Professor in Sustainable Transport and the Director of the Health and Community Design Lab at the University of British Columbia, splitting his time between the Schools of Community and Regional Planning in the Faculty of Applied Science, and Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Frank is also President of Urban Design 4 Health, Inc., which develops evidence and tools to support healthy, sustainable and energy-secure transportation and land-use decision-making.

ULI Women’s Leadership Initiative — Excavating Inclusivity

Kate Lambert (IBI), Paige Ritchie (Intracorp), and Carla Guererra (Purpose Driven Development, Planning and Strategy) are members of the Urban Land Institute, an independent, nonprofit research and education organization with almost 40,000 members worldwide, over 400 of whom are based in British Columbia. They’re also founding members of the Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI), with a stated objective of supporting and promoting the advancement of women in all disciplines of the real estate industry.

Kate, Paige and Carla visited with Gord and the Price Talks team recently, in advance of this week’s special, sold-out lunch event with the City of Vancouver’s outgoing General Manager of Development, Buildings, and Licensing, Kaye Krishna.

In their conversation, they just barely scraped the surface of all the issues related to inclusivity, the inequity in roles for women, and how righting the imbalance matters in city building and real estate development. It’s not just about creating an equal playing field, but about building better developments, communities, and cities for everyone.