BC Business
The initiative is focused on streamlining the process for businesses and government alike.
Well, better late than never, one supposes.
The City of Vancouver first adopted its Zoning and Development Bylaw back in 1965. There have been thousands of amendments and other changes since then, but never a comprehensive review to update and modernize the antiquated rules.
In 2018, city council directed staff to start looking at how to do exactly that. The result was Regulation Redesign, which aims to make navigating regulations easier for the general public, homeowners and entrepreneurs who may not be well versed in what can be, in the words of City planner Marco D’Agostini, “a cold, hard and dense document to get into.”
Staff have begun to restructure the relevant parts of the City’s website to make them more accessible. “If you have a restaurant, for example, and want to know what zones you’re able to operate in, we’ve put them all in a table now and made them easier to access,” says D’Agostini, who has worked in the planning department for almost 30 years.
“Under the current format, it’s a lot harder. You have to read through whole bunch of stuff, interpret it—it’s not always clear and simple,” he adds. “Part of that is using tables and graphs and charts, as opposed to the current bylaw, which is just lots of words on white text and paper. Some of it is super basic, but so far, everyone is very supportive of the direction it’s going.”
D’Agostini expects his team of six to bring the full plan back to council in a year or so. Although that group has gained something of a reputation for being unpredictable when it comes to voting, thanks to its split along party lines, D’Agostini praises Vancouver’s councillors for their work on Regulation Redesign.
“It’s a great initiative in terms of the capacity and the way that council has allowed staff to tackle the issue,” he says. “Various industries, businesses, community groups and developers have long stated the confusion or conflicting policies and regulations. We’ve seen at the provincial level, too, there are similar initiatives around development application, process reviews, things going on. In a year’s time, we’ll see a really significant change to address those questions.”
Staff are also looking at reducing a backlog of permit requests, D’Agostini says. “There are a number of initiatives in the City to simplify and approve regulations, make them more modern, simplify them. A ton of improvements are coming forward for council’s consideration.”