Out of character. Out of scale. Out of context.

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Susan Mackey-Jamieson and Dan Bilsker are bracing themselves for a jarring 18-storey tower set to go up next door to their three-storey fourplex in Vancouver. City council approved the tower on Jan. 22 for the southwest corner of Yukon and 14th.

Douglas Todd: Jarring 18-storey tower on leafy Vancouver street a sign of the out-of-scale times Back to video

Their pleasant neighbourhood, three blocks south of city hall, is replete with gardens, tall boulevard trees, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. Many are character dwellings, some are heritage homes. The concrete-and-steel rental tower will soar above it all, an anomaly.

In some ways, however, the residential tower will be typical of scores of highrises set to flood into the Broadway plan zone, an area of about 500 city blocks in Vancouver, since council gave it the green light in 2022.

More than 180 large buildings packed with almost 25,000 units, mostly rentals, have been either approved or proposed. Some will go on busy urban streets. Many more will replace three-storey rental blocks.

And about 10 more will spring up on an assembly of detached lots, like those at Yukon and 14th.

It is at the junction of two residential side streets, which include magnificent 100-year old beech trees.

One thing, however, that makes the Yukon and 14th project unique is the organized resistance to it.

In 2010, some of the same Mount Pleasant citizens who are questioning the new tower collaborated with city hall to usher in an entirely different 30-year plan, mostly for low rises, which is now being ignored. Instead, the new “top-down” Broadway plan, they say, rules everything.

In response, neighbourhood lawns around the site are now peppered with about 50 signs that say “Save 14th and Yukon.” They include an architect’s rendering of the isolated tower above a green canopy, with a link to a citizens’ website of the same name.

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The residents around 14th and Yukon have been accused of being NIMBYs who supposedly exemplify the attitude “not in my backyard.”

The story of 14th and Yukon is representative of others within the Broadway corridor, and across Metro Vancouver.

Metro residents are increasingly asking questions of civic politicians and the provincial NDP government about the towers they are pre-approving for quiet neighbourhoods, particularly within 800 metres of rapid-transit hubs. Yukon and 14th is five blocks from the SkyTrain station at Cambie and Broadway.

The city of Vancouver and the province of B.C. have mandated drastic upzoning of neighbourhoods in the past two years, a response to demand caused by rapid population growth, which has contributed to unaffordable housing.

But Bilsker, a psychologist, and Mackey-Jamieson, a retired psychologist, say population growth in Metro Vancouver, and Canada, has flattened. Statistics Canada reports growth, which has come almost entirely from international migration, is expected to moderate in the next two decades. As a result, housing and rental prices are easing.

Along with 28 B.C. housing experts who sent public letters to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier David Eby, Bilsker recommends the city and province take advantage of the population slowdown to build more mid-rise, wood-frame apartment blocks, which better suit the esthetics of older neighbourhoods.

“What kind of city do we want to become? A city of towers, with small expensive units? A city with no heritage? With little green space?” said Bilsker. “City council is basically saying it wants quantity over quality.”

For their part Mackey-Jamieson and Bilsker would be fine with a rental apartment building of five to eight storeys right next to them at 14th and Yukon. Perhaps it could be constructed of B.C.-produced mass timber.

Opinion polling suggests a tug of war over what residents want. Twenty-seven per cent of Vancouver residents told Leger in December they would prefer politicians respond to population expansion by concentrating “new housing in highrise towers near transit hubs.”

But more people — 47 per cent — said they want to “spread growth more evenly, in four- to six-storey buildings across neighbourhoods.” Another 14 per cent wish to “maintain existing low-density character, even if that limits growth.”

The tower slated for 14th and Yukon, which will have 134 units and parking spaces for about half of those units, is triggering a host of other concerns and objections beyond its height and bulk, many of which echo those reverberating across Metro.

Mackey-Jamieson, for instance, says they are not pleased that existing tenants in the multi-unit dwellings at the 14th and Yukon site are already being evicted. She and colleagues are also worried city council may allow developers to get out of their commitments to rent one of five of the units at below-market rates.

Mackey-Jamieson also emphasized additional worries expressed on the website save14thandyukon.com.

Will the company that had its project approved simply “flip” the property to take advantage of the windfall profits from sudden, blanket upzoning?

Where will the children who move into the new tower go to school? Many parents in the neighbourhood, she said, are already being forced to drive young ones to faraway schools because the closest one, Simon Fraser Elementary, is overcapacity.

Mackey-Jamieson said 16 mature trees are going to be chopped down to make way for the highrise. And it will be a miracle, she said, if the developer can excavate for its foundations without killing the roots of the boulevard beech trees.

Council’s Jan. 22 vote approving the 14th and Yukon project passed with a minimum quorum: only six council members. Councillors Pete Fry, Sean Orr, Peter Meiszner and Rebecca Bligh, some of whom had met earlier with residents, were absent. And councillor Brian Montague abstained, declaring a conflict of interest. Montague could not be reached.