table of contents
 
 
SUSTAINABLE URBAN LANDSCAPES
The Brentwood Design Charrette
INTRODUCTION  
 
In August 1997, four design teams — made up of landscape architects, architects, and students in these disciplines — assembled to illustrate what a sustainable Brentwood Town Centre might look like. This document reports the results of that event. Divided into three sections this report includes: first, an introduction outlining the charrette process and an overview of the site’s economic, social, and physical geography; second, a detailed synopsis of the four team’s options and subsequent recommendations; and third, a discussion of three issues central to sustainable community design in sites like the Brentwood Town Centre. 
 
The Brentwood Design Charrette is a project of the University of British Columbia’s James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments. This Endowed chair was formed by University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1994 in direct response to the 1987 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, which, in its assessment of the state of the global biosphere, concluded that the solutions to many global environmental problems are to be found at the local level and, particularly, at the individual site-development level. Operated through the Landscape Architecture Program at UBC, the chair is dedicated to advancing both the scholarship and practice of sustainable design. The chair’s primary goal is to illustrate what our neighbourhoods and communities could look like if they were designed and built in conformance with emerging local, provincial, and federal policies regarding sustainable development. This goal is underpinned by the following important principle: the individual site, and even the individual house and yard, are to the landscape region what the single cell is to the human body. Just as the health of the human body is dependent on the health of all its cells, so the ecological health of a landscape region is dependent on the health of its individual sites.
 
The Charrette Process 
The term charrette was coined nearly 100 years ago at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Students enrolled in the School of Architecture were expected to meet strict deadlines for the completion of often impossibly complex design problems. When the deadline arrived, a small cart (in French, a charrette) was wheeled past students to collect their drawings. In its original context, the charrette represented the inevitable end of the student’s design process; in its current context, the charrette still represents an end, but the end of only the first step. 

Over the past few years, charettes have become an important part of the public planning process. The UBC charrettes are intended to illustrate the very real implications of written policy and to bring it to life through pictures. In this way, teams of designers, rather than drawing representations of their own particular and sometimes peculiar ideas, use democratically arrived at policies as the sole basis for their designs. 

Our charrette occurred within a very compressed time period and included a number of design disciplines. Because of this there was an intensity of creative energy, focus, and initiative that resulted in the hundreds of images that make up this report. 

As a cautionary point, given the short time in which they were produced, no one should think of the designs as complete. These designs are beginnings, not ends. They provide a point of departure for later contemplation and elaboration. In short, they provide the pictures of what a more sustainable future for this site might look like — nothing more. 

Goals and Objectives of the Brentwood Charrette  
The goal of this project is:    
To demonstrate what the Brentwood Town Centre could look like if it were designed and built in conformance with emerging local, provincial, and federal policies regarding sustainable development. 
The above-stated goal suggests the following more specific objectives: 
1. To produce sustainable community design models for the Brentwood Town Centre. 
2. To illustrate the design consequences of meeting disparate and often contradictory sustainability policy objectives. 
3. To illuminate the connection between sustainability and livability when redeveloping areas of this type. 
4. To show how sustainable design objectives are influenced and/or impeded by typical community subdivision, site, and traffic engineering regulations. 
5. To create a setting in which leading British Columbia designers and outside experts can exchange ideas and viewpoints concerning how first-ring suburban commercial areas might be retro-fitted. 
6. To produce design proposals that may provide patterns, processes, and prototypes for Brentwood and the many other similar sites throughout North America. 
7. To broadly distribute the results of the Brentwood charrette through a variety of means and venues — to citizens, elected representatives, policy makers, students, and designers — and thereby influence future public policy and legislative initiatives.
The Charrette Sequence  
The Brentwood charrette is the second in a series of UBC-sponsored charrettes focusing on sustainable urban landscapes. The choice of sites for the series is not based on any one single criterion but, rather, is informed by the confluence of several factors. These include a supportive political climate, a well developed policy framework, and the presence of diverse physical and sociocultural landscape characteristics common to many other communities in British Columbia and beyond, ensuring that solutions are transferable. 

The first charrette, held in the summer of 1995,1 focused on a 400-acre “green-field” site in the South Newton District of Surrey, located on the periphery of the expanding metroplex. A site with its natural systems more or less intact and relatively few constraints to development, it presented designers with a relatively clean slate. 
 

The second site, located in Burnaby, was selected to test the 
principles of sustainability within a 590-acre medium-density first-ring suburban commercial strip. Given that this site was already completely developed and nearing the end of its first economic life, the design challenge lay in accommodating projected housing demand and commercial capacity in a way that would establish transit-oriented, identifiable neighbourhoods while maintaining (or potentially enhancing) existing ecological systems. A strong factor influencing the choice of the Brentwood site was the existence of The Brentwood Town Centre Development Plan 2, which was completed in 1996 by the City of Burnaby in conformance with the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) "Livable Region" sustainable planning goals. 

Why this Type of Site  
Like many other North American first-ring suburbs, Burnaby was originally an edge but is now a centre.In Burnaby, and in many similar cities, automobile-oriented commercial strip developments are nearing the end of their first life cycle and are poised for regeneration. Sites such as these have low net densities, with development dispersed across a relatively large land area. This under-utilized land resource presents an opportunity to meet local and regional goals through more intensified land use. At the same time, because of the tendency of these zones to be on or near flat land, they are often also on or near sensitive aquatic systems. Typically, these systems support many important terrestrial and aquatic species. 

A number of opportunities are inherent within such a site. Densification is typically less contentious here than it is in existing residential or older commercial areas, where concern for such issues as traffic, heritage conservation, and neighbourhood livability often become roadblocks to change. Moreover, as distance from the high-amenity metropolitan core increases, land values tend to decrease, making development more affordable. However, as they are still close to the metropolitan core, these areas typically have large population catchments that are able to support a more intensely developed town centre.
Site Context  
Geographically located at the centre of the Greater Vancouver Region, Burnaby encloses approximately 4 percent of the region’s land area and accommodates 11 percent of its population, giving it approximately three times the average density of the metropolitan region as a whole. Burnaby is located within the Burrard Peninsula, a subregion identified by largest share of the region’s anticipated growth over the next twenty-five years. 
Development Pattern  
Burnaby’s early development was governed by three things: the existing landscape structure, organic development, and the gridiron. The landscape structure is distinguished by a hill/valley/ridge terrain, which produces a strong east-west trail system and contributes to the concentration of development along the ridges. The lack of north-south transportation routes coupled with the existence of difficult soil conditions in the valleys, made a physical connection through the latter difficult to achieve, and these areas have remained relatively undeveloped. However, transportation linkages between New Westminster and Vancouver stimulated organic development along these routes and the 1860 parcelling of land into 160-acre lots produced a loose gridiron pattern. The development pattern that resulted balanced the relationship between the ordered grid and the natural physical underlay. 

Settlement patterns in Burnaby over the twentieth century have followed those typical of most North American suburbs. Rural settlement was followed by early urbanization during the 1910s and 1920s. During the postwar years, suburbanization occurred. In the past two decades Burnaby has become a more “complete community” and has been able to provide jobs for many more of its residents than it has in the past. With rural aspects, low- to high-density residential areas, commercial town centres, research parks, major postsecondary institutions, and rapid transit, Burnaby is positioning itself to become a regional focus for numerous functions.

The Livable Region Strategic Plan  
The Greater Vancouver Livable Region Strategic Plan (1996) states that a more sustainable region results from: protecting the green zone, building complete communities, achieving a compact metropolitan region, and increasing transportation choice.5  The establishment of thirteen “Municipal Town Centres” is the main strategy by which the livable region is to be achieved. One of these proposed centres is Burnaby’s Brentwood Town Centre. Located at the crossroads of two major transportation arterials — Lougheed Highway and Willingdon Avenue — and adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway, this area has already developed a significant commercial presence and is recognized in the livable region strategic plan as the locus of future sustainable redevelopment for Burnaby. 
The Brentwood Town Centre Development Plan 
The Brentwood Town Centre Development Plan anticipates the eventual addition of over 9,300 new dwelling units and over a million square feet of new office and commercial space. The Plan will provide jobs and services for thousands of those who live nearby or who live along the new transit line proposed for the Lougheed/Willingdon corridor.6 The new transit system will support higher density development, provide a modal alternative to conventional auto travel, and, ideally, form an integral part of the urban realm.
The Green Zone  
The total area of the site is 590 acres. The Brentwood Town Centre rests entirely within the Brunette Basin, a watershed region identified by the GVRD as a Green Zone and, therefore, endowed with special natural attributes that require protection. A highly residential urban drainage area, the Brunette Watershed drains into the Fraser River at New Westminster. Its upper catchments are primarily drained by culverted streams and storm sewer systems that outfall into open waterways and large open tributaries like Still Creek. Water quality has become a source of major concern for Burnaby, as increasing levels of “non-point” pollution threaten local water sources.7 Recent reports on water quality in the Brunette Basin suggest that rising populations, increasing non-permeable surface area, and traditional municipal wastewater management programs will eventually make urban stormwater runoff the primary source of pollution entering the lower Fraser River.8 Combined sewers and illegal sanitary connectors also contribute to water quality problems in urban storm run-off. Heavy rainfalls may result in runoff rates that exceed the capacity of the combined system, resulting in overflows that release stormwater and untreated sewage into natural bodies of water.9 

In Burnaby, increases in impervious areas, reductions in permeable surface area, decreased flood storage, culverting of streams, and encroachment of buildings near river banks have heightened the natural system’s sensitivity to development. Best Management Practices (BMPs) are being widely suggested as an on-site means of reducing water system contamination and mitigating the impacts of urbanization on stream corridor ecology. The benefits of BMPs can be measured by how well they replicate the natural hydrological functioning of the site through alternative stormwater management strategies. The incorporation of BMPs was considered essential to establishing a system of ecological infrastructure on the site and to reducing the burden on the Still Creek water system. A discussion of ecological infrastructure and specific charrette solutions is provided in a later chapter. 

Presently, few if any, water quality BMPs (such as retention ponds, grass swales, or infiltration basins) protect Still Creek. While this aquatic corridor, and its associated green spaces, provide valuable wildlife and fish habitat, it is impacted by the Trans-Canada and Lougheed Highways as well as by adjacent industrial uses. All of these factors combine to help make Still Creek one of most polluted drainage systems in the region.10 

Still Creek is appropriately named. Its shallow gradient produces a naturally slow-moving, meandering stream — characteristics that affect its ability to absorb urban runoff and to flush out contaminants. Very soft peat soils line both sides of the stream at depths of between five and forty feet, making this area difficult to build on and easy to damage. 

The Design Brief  
Using slightly modified land-use targets drawn from the Brentwood Town Centre Plan, the design program called for 9,300 new dwelling units on 194 acres of land, with a proposed community of 16,500 persons. A wide variety of housing types, appropriate for many family types but with a special emphasis on “ground-oriented” homes, was required. The provision of light rail along the Broadway/Lougheed corridor was assumed, as per the then current Provincial plans. The program required significant attention to the placement and design of a major transit node, as well as the placement, design, and frequency of connectors, via other modes of transportation, to this node. Overall, the goal was an integrated community, one in which people would be able to live, work, shop, and have access to transit within identifiable neighbourhoods. 
Three Special Concerns  
The above highlights the opportunities and constraints of the Brentwood site, many of which are typical of other sites in the Greater Vancouver Region and, indeed, throughout North America. These existing conditions, together with the design program, provided the framework within which charrette participants were to explore three very important questions: 
1.   How can we create strong, inclusive, and diverse neighbourhoods made up of medium-density ground-oriented homes?  
2.  How can we add density in a way that improves, rather than degrades, environmental quality.  
3. How can we creatively integrate light rapid transit into the fabric of the community in a way that unites, rather than divides, it? 

The designers were asked to pay particular attention to these three questions. We have aggregated their responses and insights in the concluding sections, where each of these crucial questions is taken up in turn. 

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Notes:   
1 Patrick M. Condon, ed. Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The Surrey Design Charrette (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments, 1996).  

2 City of Burnaby, Brentwood Town Centre Development Plan (Burnaby, BC: City of Burnaby Planning and Building Department, 1996).  

3 The Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) is a provincially enabled public agency that is, among other things, charged with coordinating growth in the Vancouver metropolitan region. Certain of the key documents informing the design program were produced under the direction of the GVRD, notably, The Livable Region Strategy (1990) and The Livable Region Strategic Plan (1996).   

4 Greater Vancouver Regional District, The Livable Region Strategic Plan: Managing Greater Vancouver’s Growth. (Vancouver, BC: Greater Vancouver Regional District, 1996).  

5 Ibid.  

6 City of Burnaby, Official Community Plan for Burnaby British Columbia (Burnaby, BC: City of Burnaby, 1987).  

7 At the time of the charrette, light rail was proposed along the Broadway corridor. In early June1998, the Province of British Columbia announced that it would abandon plans for surface light rail along this route in favour of an expansion of the Skytrain, or  elevated advanced light rapid trasit (ALRT), system. While the implications of this precipitous decision are yet to be fully understood, the images in this report provide a number of arguments that support surface light rail.  

8 Ron MacDonald, K. Hall, and H. Schreier. Water Quality and Stormwater Contaminants in the Brunette River Watershed, British Columbia, 1994/1995, Final Report (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Westwater Research Unit, Institute for Resources and Environment, 1997).   

9 Non-point source pollution is so named because it is pollution that enters waterways from no single, traceable, and regulated source (i.e., sewage outfalls, industrial waste) but, rather, flows over the land as a result of the varied by-products of urbanization. Contaminants from non-point source pollution include pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms), nutrients, metals, and debris. As point source pollution is increasingly brought under control, non-point source pollution is becoming the leading threat to water quality in urban areas.    

10 Reid Chamberlain, C. Guss, P. Unruh, and C. Williams, Best Management Practices Plan for Still Creek in the Brunette Watershed, Final Report (Burnaby, BC, 1996).  

11 City of Burnaby, The State of the Environment Report for Burnaby, (Burnaby, BC: City of Burnaby Environment and Waste Management Committee, 1993).   

12 The complete program is included in the appendix, and a careful review is recommended. 

Click image for detail
Team Four at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Charrette
TheSurrey Design Charrette
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Trans-Canada Highway.
 
 
 
Lougheed Highway looking west. 

 

 

 
Lower Mainland Region from space. 

 
The Brentwood site context. 
 

 
Aerial photo of the site.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Brentwood Town Center Development Plan
 

 
The Still Creek corridor.

 

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