Evil Developers and How They Got So Evil
If you opened this article with the hope of finding out truly how all developers got so evil, you might be a little disappointed. While I am planning on giving you my thoughts on why so many people seem to universally think this to be true, I don’t actually believe developers are evil. In fact I think that most developers are in the job for the same reason someone might want to be an urban planner or an architect they want to make positive and concrete improvements in the built form and just like those other professions, you get paid to do it. The bonus for all of the rest of us is that healthy collaborations with developers will result in better communities than we currently have.
Over the years I have seen so many great projects come forward (I have seen quite a few terrible ones too) and with nearly every single one, I have heard those opposed say things to developers that you would never hear directed at almost any other professional. The developer comes to the table already painted as the problem that needs to be dealt with by the community. They are the door to door salesman with the suitcase of asbestos. It isn’t just me that has noticed this, there are actually some academic studies that look at this.
In 2018, a study out of UCLA found that the single most powerful reason for someone to oppose a development is if they find out that the developer will make a significant profit off the project. The motivation to oppose a project is stronger for this piece of information than for all of the other potential negative impacts a development could have on their home or if they don’t like the design of a project. If you don’t want to dig into a study, this article and this one both cover off the main premise and findings, while also expanding on the issue.
I know that I have heard comments at council meetings about greedy developers and that they are just in it for the money. Sometimes the naysayers try and one-up themselves if they can combine one of those comments with calling them a Vancouver developer. This instant animosity is really quite odd. We don’t generally get up in arms about the potential for restauranteurs or grocery store owners to make a profit, but when it comes to someone building homes, we do? I asked Luke Mari, the development lead at Aryze about this and he said, “A lot of the negativity seemed to be driven by the fact that developers profit off housing. For-profit doesn’t preclude us from having good intentions or well thought-out guiding principles.”
The thing is that if you are in your home in Victoria right now, then chances are very good that it was built by a developer, even if it was built in 1912. That said, while the profit motivation to oppose is strong, many will look to almost any reason to find concern with a building and those behind it, even if the truth of it is they just don’t want to see change. Some of the most common in Victoria are concerns about height (and those pesky shadows) and of course traffic.
So we don’t like developers making money but where does this feeling come from? It is such a common trope that is must have some beginning points. I would definitely recommend having a read of this New York Times article from last year which points to a few areas that may have caused it and most I would certainly agree with. My best estimates about our basis for this deeply held belief after reading these articles are the following:
Early Tenement Housing and Redevelopment - When you look to many older books and stories the rich evil person is usually involved in housing and of course not any housing but tenement housing for the poor and to top it off they not just profiting of the current rents but plan to also double down and destroy the tenements usually for building a new development that they can profit off even more. I am not sure how prevalent this actually was but movies would have us believe that it was ubiquitous.
Suburbanization - With the move into this middle type of housing, not urban and not rural, we saw developers put up millions of homes across North America in record time. Many of these communities were without the soul of the cities and towns we had before. The centres were replaced with strip malls and much of this ugliness and sprawl was blamed on developers and not the automobile or the municipalities that allowed this type of place to exist.
Race to Luxury - Certainly a common refrain here in Victoria is that new developments are only for the rich. What the NYT article says is that in some ways we create the circumstances for the projects to be expensive. Apart from dealing with already high land costs, the City of Victoria layers expensive process and requirements onto a development, then come the negotiations with the community and those opposed to try and provide amenities that will allow a project to proceed. What happens when these expenses are layered onto a project is that it either becomes so expensive that it does not proceed (perhaps the outcome some are trying to achieve) or the costs are passed onto the new residents of the building which in turn means that they will be targeted at more affluent people. In essence, we complain that developers only build for the rich and therefore demand lots of things which create costs that only allow developers to build for the rich.
Evil Developers? - Well I am not sure that there are any evil ones in Victoria but one interesting point that is made in some of the articles that I have read is that the system we set-up actually creates a process where only the most ruthless developers can succeed while the more altruistic of developers get left behind as they become mired in process. This is an interesting point though I feel like it might be unfair to the many simply intelligent and diligent developers that managed to make there way through the challenges without resorting to anything untoward.
To be clear I am not open to any project anywhere though I am in favour of urban development and when it comes to downtowns, I think that we should be building dense and not fear having some height either. I know that many people don’t share my opinions, but when it comes to Victorians, I am always hoping there will be more of them and the more people that we can have living on less land the better for our city in many ways (environment and vibrancy are the biggest ones). To achieve that vibrancy that comes through people we need to try and step back from that deeply seated reflex to oppose all developments and we also have to get okay with a developer being able to build something nice and maybe put a few dollars in their pocket at the same time because I mean when it comes down to it, it’s just their job. Mari from Aryze said it well from the developer perspective with this:
Our development philosophy is simple: We believe that every neighbourhood should have diverse housing types and tenures for all incomes and demographics. A densified, compact, walkable lifestyle is critical to solving our climate and housing crisis all while creating more livable and healthier communities.
This is truly what I believe, our communities will be better off if we keep improving on them and in the absence of buildings growing out of the earth, we are going to need developers to keep building more buildings.
I would love to hear your thoughts on development and developers and how we can more closely work with them through the development process so that we can see nearby residences and businesses support the new buildings and at the same time have developers be able to move through the process a little faster so maybe we can shave a little bit of that price off the top. Also if you have any ideas on where the “evil developer” idea came from and I didn’t cover it above, I would really like to know.
