The Minimum Densities of Willoughby
And the flaws of the suburban planning model.
Strong Towns talks a lot about how suburbs often get stuck in a pattern of prioritizing near-term growth, without thinking about the long term consequences. I think many residents of Langley have observed the rapid growth in the Yorkson neighbourhood in Willoughby, along with gaps in the supporting infrastructure, and felt this might be symptomatic of some kind of attempt to accelerate growth to increase revenues.
Earlier this year, I finalized the Growth Ponzi Scheme video for our Strong Towns Langley Youtube channel, which explored this in depth. As part of that video I dug through old developer cost charges bylaws, and spoke to a couple of former Township of Langley mayors on the phone and by email, to try and understand a more complete picture of the financial history of the Township of Langley.
After doing this research it became clear that between 2007 - 2019, developer fees were effectively frozen at a very low rate, and I shared my findings in the video. After shining a light on this apparently scandalous failure to collect adequate fees, this policy was mentioned in Mayor Eric Woodward’s State of the Township address, as part of his criticism against the previous administration.
However I never pinned down a clear admission or explanation for the reason why this happened. In the video, I speculated that this may have been to accelerate development during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, as part of an effort to increase property tax revenues, but there might be another, more charitable, explanation.
When I spoke to former Mayor Kurt Alberts (1999 to 2008) he mentioned that Willoughby saw the introduction of minimum densities. The reason given was that municipal staff at the time learned that even with the higher allowed densities in the official community plan (OCP), developers just wanted to build single family homes, so even if a parcel was planned for townhouses, it would be filled with detached houses instead, which isn’t the kind of community they were aiming to create in the community plan. The Willoughby Neighbourhood Plan for Yorkson document outlines that it is supposed to be more like a traditional town, with townhomes and other building types.
Yorkson was planned in this way likely as part of the growing New Urbanism movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to try and create more housing types and a more livable community. We saw this in places like East Clayton in Surrey, and even to a small extent in the Discovery Town neighbourhood in Walnut Grove.
The problem is that cities don’t form or grow this way. As Strong Towns explains, cities develop when businesses and individuals make “bets” on their town. If the town or city is successful, people are willing to make larger and larger bets, in the form of investing more energy, time and money into developments, which typically manifests in larger, taller and denser forms of construction.
From this perspective, it makes sense that the developers looking to build in the area would want to build single family homes. This is a safe bet that doesn’t require too much investment or risk in an unproven neighbourhood. It is the first “increment” form of housing.
Interestingly in a hypothetical scenario where there were no minimum densities, the land use plan likely would have allowed future rezoning and/or densification, unlike a typical neighbourhood which prevents this with single family zoning. But in a brand new neighbourhood, it takes many decades before those homes become old enough where it would make sense to replace them with a denser form of housing, even if it was permitted and the neighbours supported it.
Additionally, under the suburban planning model, infrastructure capacity is planned based on creating neighbourhood plans down to the parcel level. I will likely go into more detail on this topic and why it is such a bad idea in a future post, but suffice to say, it’s likely that there were also concerns that if developers didn’t conform to the plan it would undermine attempts to predict infrastructure demand.
The solution drawn up was minimum densities - now developers have to build townhomes and apartments instead of houses. Problem solved right?
Well… no. The problem with minimum densities that you now have forced developers to make their first bet on a neighbourhood a much, much larger, and riskier, bet. So now they might not build at all.
So how do you solve this second problem? By subsidizing development. Keep the development charges low, heck, let developers waive charges if they do the upgrade themselves at the end at the lowest price they can find, and now you can attract development again, and they will even build higher density from day one.
And to be fair, this did actually work. Langley was one of the fastest growing areas in the province in the 2022 census, and we addressed a significant housing shortage in the region. The problem is from a financial standpoint it’s unsustainable - the current council is now having to go into debt to fix the missing infrastructure and facilities caused by keeping developer fees low for so long. We cannot afford to do this again.
Today, development charges have been raised significantly, so we have reached the end of this experiment. So what’s next, how does the local government intend to keep greenfield developers building density instead of houses?
Well Langley isn’t the same place it was 20 years ago. Many developers are now happy to make bigger bets, now even proposing high rise towers, so it could be argued that minimum densities and low fees were successful in “jump starting” a denser development pattern in the area.
But its reach is limited. Around 10 kilometres away in the Brookswood neighbourhood, developers have zeroed in on building the lower density, lower risk portions of the neighbourhood plans first. That’s also why the idea that the province’s multiplex legislation will lead to thousands of multiplexes in Brookswood is not really accurate. Multiplexes, like other denser forms of housing, are higher risk bets and only come later to more established and developed areas.
It appears as though the new approach is to leverage a new Bus Rapid Transit system, or BRT, on the 200th Street corridor as a new incentive for denser development. Instead of a development subsidy this approach reassures developers to make larger investments based on the desire to live closer to transit hubs. Only time will tell if this will work, but with the current plans forecasting a 100,000 new residents along the corridor, it seems as though planners are confident it will.
This shift from direct development subsidies to infrastructure-based incentives represents a different approach to encouraging density, but it's important to recognize that major transit investments like BRT are also a form of subsidy. It does have the benefit of distributing the costs to higher levels of government, and provides significant public benefit to a wider area, but ultimately it still relies on substantial public investment to shape development patterns.
While either of these approaches may succeed in attracting development, the underlying highly regulated planning model means that in the long term these communities often lack resilience and adaptability.
Despite appearing urban, Willoughby is just as inflexible as other suburban neighbourhoods. There are no provisions allowing areas of houses to densify, no way for people to change the use of all or parts of their homes to neighbourhood businesses, and it is still a very car-centric community. It is, like other suburban neighbourhoods, frozen and cannot easily grow or adapt over time.
So what is the Strong Towns answer to city growth? Is there a more scalable, cost effective way to do it?
The answer is how cities and towns have always grown prior to becoming stifled by regulation during the middle of the 20th Century. They grow by continuing to build upon the desirable and successful places they have. Those well established communities where people want to live are where we need to permit growth and investment. There are many ways this could be accomplished, there are older single family homes in suburban areas with city-grade services sitting on lots that are half an acre, or more, and there needs to be a pathway for people to subdivide or intensify the use on these lots currently restricted with zoning. There are people who want to open up a neighbourhood restaurant, cafe or retail store but cannot because again, the zoning doesn’t even allow mixed-use. There are houses that are already decades old on corner lots that could be replaced with low-rise apartments.
The benefits to this approach:
Individuals and businesses are more willing to make large bets in successful and established places, so there is less of a need to incentivize development.
Where infrastructure already exists it can be upgraded at a lower cost instead of built-new. Developer costs should reflect this, and can remain lower without subsidy.
Less new infrastructure liabilities to maintain over the long term, such as road resurfacing and repairs.
The community and local economy can respond better to market demand for housing, commercial space, and more, instead of land use being dictated and limited by local government.
Under the current suburban planning model, individuals and businesses and developers are often forbidden from making larger bets on established communities due to zoning and other restrictions. Those communities are considered “complete” or “finished”, when in fact much opportunity for housing and economic growth remains.
Where we allow development and change is usually unproven and tightly regulated, so much so that a subsidy is often required, either (as demonstrated in Willoughby) in the form of lower development charges, or (as with 200th Street) huge infrastructure investments like rapid transit. It doesn’t need to be this way.
We need more types of housing (and more housing in general) and more local businesses, and we can have them without stressing government and taxpayers with subsidized low development fees that create an infrastructure deficit, or stretching future homebuyers with high developer fees impacting the selling price of the home. All we need to do is take some small steps to allow neighbourhoods to evolve and grow organically.
Strong Towns Langley is a community group dedicated to making Langley, British Columbia a better place. We advocate for incremental development, sustainable transportation solutions, housing accessibility, public spaces, and responsible growth strategies. Our group is part of the larger Strong Towns movement, focusing on creating financially resilient and people-oriented communities.
To learn more visit https://strongtownslangley.org