MODUS Blog Series: Trust, Transparency & the Urban-Rural Divide

The Perfect Storm: Why Planning is so Contentious Right Now

Part One of our three-part series on trust, transparency and the urban-rural divide.

If you’ve been to a council meeting or an open house lately, you’ve no doubt witnessed: planning has become increasingly contentious. There’s more on the table, more at stake, more people are paying attention and more often, the stories are making headlines.

We want to talk about it, from the eye of the storm. 

Throughout this short blog series, we’ll share what we’re seeing across the province, what we’ve learned from our own work, and explore ideas for building trust when planning gets hard.

We’ll start with the big picture, because a lot is happening at once.

Quick pulse: what’s affecting communities right now?

Housing rules on fast-forward

In late 2023, the Province passed Bills 44, 46 and 47. Together, they changed a lot about how BC communities plan for housing, and gave local governments roughly 18 months to catch up. Official Community Plans (OCPs) are now required to reflect population modelling to accommodate 20 years of projected housing need. Municipalities over 5,000 people have to allow small-scale multi-unit housing, like triplexes and fourplexes, on most single-detached lots. No longer is there room to debate “secondary suites” as they are now allowed, outright, in single-detached zones across BC. Areas near transit have minimum heights and densities. And public hearings can no longer be held for residential rezonings that are consistent with an OCP.

Most of this had to be in place by the end of 2025… which, given the pace, already feels like a long time ago. That’s a lot of change in a short window, for councils, staff and residents alike.

Climate in every chapter

Climate used to be an isolated chapter (or section of a chapter) in a community plan. Then it stood alone as a strategy to inform planning. Now often embedded, it runs through almost every part of an OCP or neighbourhood plan: emissions targets, sustainable transportation, emergency preparedness, farmland protection and food security, green buildings, natural assets and stormwater management. Land use planning has become a central tool in addressing how communities reduce their GHG emissions, stay safe, and practice resiliency, which raises the stakes on every decision. 

This is the natural evolution of Bill 27, the provincial legislation that passed in 2010, requiring OCPs to include GHG emissions reduction targets and policies that support those targets. And for good reason: little runway remains to prevent warming above the crucial 1.5°C threshold that is widely recognized as a tipping point for severe ecological collapse and human strife (source: IPCC special report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/)

Where will all the new homes go? 

For all we have come to understand about the contributing factors and differing opinions related to the current housing crisis, most BC communities face a common constraint. 

That constraint is our confined geography – between mountains and water, farmland and a 49th parallel – and it limits our room to easily expand. While obvious, this context forces our conversations about growth to assume change within established neighbourhoods where residents already feel a strong sense of community and attachment. 

As planners, we have largely embraced this context as a given. And, for the most part, community members have too. But it’s the solutions to the challenge (i.e. infill and growth within a contained geography) that are far from accepted and are a deep source of struggle in communities big and small, urban and rural. 

Where will growth go? Which neighbourhoods will change? Can we afford to lose farmland if we adjust a growth boundary? Can our systems – water, sewer, storm and forests, watersheds, aquifers – handle this growth? Regardless of community size and location, these questions are valid and we hear them almost daily.

The push for more compact neighbourhoods is logical. It promises to protect our farmlands and our ecosystems and to reduce the cost of new infrastructure and services, as we seek to also address a housing crisis. But at a local level, that logic is also unique and highly nuanced. In a future post, we’ll introduce the tools MODUS uses to unpack that nuance.

Life after the mill or the mine?

BC communities have deep roots in the resource economy. Many developed around industries like forestry, fisheries or mining. Now, often for reasons outside their control, many are working to diversify. Researchers Sean Markey, Greg Halseth and Don Manson describe this as a move from “space-based” to “place-based” economies, built on a community’s own people, culture and natural assets.

We explored this in our 2024 research on regenerative rural economies. The business owners, planners and community leaders we spoke with told us land use rules make a big difference. Outdated zoning can block value-added uses that transform our natural resources into useful products or services like on-farm food processing and secondary wood processing and manufacturing. Planning for the future can help these local economies grow in ways that fit the place.

Meanwhile, in the courts and at the ballot 

In case the above challenges aren’t enough… two bigger-picture shifts are adding to the mix this year. They sit outside planning itself, and they’re shaping how people feel about change in their communities.

Big questions about land and title

Most of BC is unceded First Nations territory, and very few treaties are in place. A 2025 BC Supreme Court decision recognized Aboriginal title over an area of Richmond that includes privately owned land, and it has left many property owners with questions. The decision is under appeal, and the law is still taking shape. Those legal questions will eventually be settled in the courts. In the meantime, we think it’s important to acknowledge it’s a big part of the conversation that has many residents worried about their largest asset. For MODUS, this only emphasizes the need to keep planning in good relationship with the First Nations whose lands we are on.

Two elections, one week apart

BC has gone to the polls twice this fall: local elections on October 17 and a snap provincial election on October 24. While nobody could predict the provincial elections, any election year turns up the volume on planning conversations.

Many planning decisions are now being adjudicated through the democratic process. While some may find electoral opportunity in opposing many of the changes that have been enacted since 2023, unless the provincial legislation changes, the same local frictions may still be in place. In fact, even if Bills 44, 46 and 47 are rescinded, the geographic constraints we noted earlier still stand. This means, we will still be planning for new housing in a challenging context.

So, how did we get here?

Planning hasn’t always invited people in. In the mid-20th century, it was mostly expert-led and top-down. It was the era of highways built through neighbourhoods with little or no say from the people who lived there.

A lot has changed since then. The Local Government Act now asks for more housing analysis, more planning for climate change and more documented community engagement. Planners have changed too. The IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation is standard practice across BC, and engagement is part of nearly every planning process.

However, because many decisions were once made without significant public input, many community members aren’t familiar with the content of their local bylaws and planning documents. When a change is proposed, it can provoke a strong reaction… not necessarily against the change, but also against the original regulation.

Closing that knowledge gap is what sets apart a good engagement process from a great one. At MODUS, we’ve spent more than a decade trying to push engagement further. We love a good open house, but we also run design charrettes, ideas fairs, community circles and interactive workshops. Unfortunately, these types of resource-intensive and involved engagement approaches are not always possible. Nonetheless, we believe good plans come from well-informed, deep-dive conversations.

Surfacing the Public Interest

So how are planners meant to plan when public input is sometimes (maybe often!) at a crosshairs with the legislation that guides their work? 

Registered Professional Planners (RPPs) have a duty to work in the public interest. How we define the “public interest” is key to how we do our work, and it’s not a simple or easy definition. It's an amalgam of various inputs weaved together. The Canadian Institute of Planners’ (CIP) Code of Professional Conduct explains that a planner shall:

• Practice in a manner that respects the diversity, needs, values and aspirations of the public and encourages discussion on these matters; 

• Provide full, clear and accurate information on planning matters to decision-makers and members of the public, while recognizing the employer or client's right to confidentiality and the importance of timely reporting; 

• Acknowledge the inter-related nature of planning decisions and the consequences for natural and human environments; and, 

• Provide opportunities for meaningful participation and education in the planning process to all interested parties.

It acknowledges that: “the public interest can be difficult to define and affirm given that there are multiple issues and views that the planner must address.” Nonetheless, we are beholden to first look at what our province’s legislation says. In effect, an ethical planner cannot serve the public interest without operating within the bounds of the legislation that dictates how to plan.

Ultimately, reasonable people may argue whether the provincial legislation on housing needs, planning for growth, GHG emission reductions, and other topics is good or bad for addressing our generation's greatest challenges. Planners, however, are mandated to apply them. They form the frame within which community engagement can take place. 

With so much engagement happening, we think people deserve to know what each conversation is for. What decision is on the table? What has already been decided, for example by provincial law? And how will your input be used?

Recent changes make that clarity even more important. Now that public hearings aren’t held for most OCP-consistent housing rezonings, the OCP stage is where community voices carry the most weight. So when we ask for your input on an OCP, we want you to know how much it counts and where your input can have the most impact.

Up next

In Part Two, we’ll dig into a question we often hear in smaller and rural communities: does a planning team from Vancouver really “get” our community? A small hint: we rarely work in the City of Vancouver itself! We’ll talk about the urban-rural divide, why plans can look somewhat similar, and why a more open process can sometimes look messier from the outside.