Vancouver council reviews draft goals and policies for 2045 comprehensive plan; debate focuses on pollution mitigation, universal design and sidewalks

City staff on April 7 told the Vancouver City Council they are close to completing the comprehensive plan and invited feedback on the draft goals and policies that will guide land use, climate, housing and economic decisions through 2045.

“My name is Dominique Martinelli, she/her pronouns. I’m a senior planner in our department,” said Dominique Martinelli, who opened the workshop and outlined the two-part schedule: the council reviewed four chapters on April 7 and will return in May to cover five remaining chapters before a public-comment draft is released this summer.

Why it matters: The goals and policies set the framework that staff and elected leaders use for rezoning recommendations, capital investments and grant eligibility. Staff said the draft contains roughly 35 goals and about 15–16 policies at the element level now, and that the public‑comment draft will present the complete set of policies for community review.

Rebecca, a staff planner leading the chapter walkthrough, summarized the elements and several policy directions. On land use she emphasized compact, “15‑minute” neighborhoods and policies to repurpose underutilized land and promote adaptive reuse. On climate she described policies to reduce vehicle miles traveled, address urban heat islands, and lower embodied carbon in buildings. On housing she said the draft includes production targets and programs aimed at affordable and permanently supportive housing.

“Homelessness is a housing problem,” Rebecca said, explaining the draft’s focus on producing a broader range of housing types and on strategic land acquisition and construction innovation to help meet targets. She told the council the draft included a production figure — “38,000 units in 20 years” — as a planning-level estimate tied to state requirements the city must address in its housing element.

Council members pressed staff on several drafting and implementation choices. One council member requested that staff provide a spreadsheet that maps each goal to its related policies so members can review them side‑by‑side; staff agreed to provide that format as a follow-up.

Policy wording and mitigation: Council questioned policy 29, which in the draft said to “avoid siting new housing near known stationary sources of air, water, heat, and light pollution.” Rebecca said the phrase risked blocking housing on transit corridors and suggested revising it to allow housing where appropriate mitigations are required. “We probably need to amend this to say ‘without appropriate mitigations in place,’” she said, recommending that mitigation or building‑system requirements be the way to reconcile housing near arterials or bus rapid transit corridors.

Universal design debate: Council and staff discussed a proposed policy to “require universal design principles in new housing.” Council members warned that a blanket requirement for all new permits could be cost prohibitive; Rebecca said state code updates focus primarily on energy and that the city could instead require universal design elements in public spaces and a share of new housing (for example ground‑floor units) or incorporate requirements where feasible. She suggested rewording the policy to require universal design in public spaces and to “incorporate them into regulations where feasible for housing and commercial development.”

Sidewalks and equity in annexed neighborhoods: Council Member Hansen urged the plan to address basic multimodal infrastructure in annexed, underinvested neighborhoods such as West Minnehaha and Walnut Grove, saying residents lack sidewalks and cannot wait for piecemeal improvements tied only to new development. “You are playing Frogger going up 40 Ninth Street,” Hansen said, pressing staff to craft a policy that prioritizes investments in neighborhoods that have not received consistent infrastructure funding. Staff acknowledged right‑of‑way, utility easement and cost constraints and agreed to draft language that recognizes those constraints while identifying priorities and standards for collector streets.

Other council feedback asked staff to use stronger, declarative vision language (for example, “Vancouver is …” rather than “we envision …”), to embed equity language across vision statements rather than confining it to a single section, and to clarify definitions for permanently supportive housing and emergency shelter (including how temporary programs such as safe‑stay and safe‑park pilot efforts would be classified in policy text). Staff agreed to follow up on wording, definitions and copyedits.

Next steps: Staff said they will return in May to review the remaining five chapters, refine the draft with community working groups, and publish the public‑comment draft of goals and policies this summer. The public‑comment draft will be separate from, but inform, the city’s environmental impact statement process and will present the full set of policies for community review.