That the Industrial Land Strategy Task Force receive a report entitled “The Changing Nature of Industry and Demand for Industrial Land in Metro Vancouver” dated August 29, 2019. Provide the Industrial Land Strategy Task Force (Task Force) with the Consultant's Report on the Changing Nature industries and the demand for industrial land in Metro Vancouver.
Introduction
Scope
Defining “Industry”
Conditions and Trends in Metro Vancouver Industrial Employment, Land
Structure of the Regional Economy
About 47% of all jobs can be classified as community-based and are mainly related to meeting the daily needs of the people living in the region. Industrial land is home to many of the skilled trades and blue-collar jobs that support middle-income households.
Industrial Employment Trends
These jobs are spread across several sectors that each account for 1% to 7% of total employment, reflecting the diversity of Metro Vancouver, which is not dominated by one or two major sectors. Industrial land hosts a large part of the region's economic base, contributes to the diversity of the economy and contributes to social and income diversity by providing a wide range of job opportunities for skilled workers.
Trends in Industrial Activity
PAGE7 Figure 2 shows the total number of jobs in industrial clusters from 1996 and 2016 in Metro Vancouver. Production of petroleum and coal products, chemical production, production of plastics and rubber products, production of non-metallic mineral products; Primary metal production; Production of fabricated metal products; Mechanical engineering; Computer and electronic product manufacturing; Production of electronic equipment, devices and components; Manufacturing of transportation equipment; Production of furniture and related products; Miscellaneous production.
Industrial Land Inventory
Because the lands controlled by the Port or YVR are designated for specialized uses related to the region's role as a gateway, only 57% of the total undeveloped (about 3,200 hectares) is vacant land that is available for general industrial development. Undeveloped land that is available for a wide range of potential industrial uses is at most about 75% of the total inventory, or about 4,200 hectares owned by the private sector, TFN or local governments.
Industrial Land Take-Up
Industrial Floor Space Trends
Industrial Land Values and Lease Rates
Trends in the Nature of Industrial Activity and the Form of Industrial Development . 22
There are still a few mills in the Lower Mainland, but most of the mills in the central area have closed down. Declining lumber availability is a big part of this, but many of the mills had old equipment and also saw opportunities to free up land value. False Creek Flats in Vancouver is a prime example of the increasing pressure on industrial land.
Some of the former industrial workplaces no longer exist, and some have moved to locations further east, where they are emerging as part of the uptake of vacant land. The brewery currently occupies a large and very valuable redevelopment site at the south end of Burrard Bridge. Based on these indicators, the inventory of vacant industrial land does not seem to be sufficient to last through the planning horizon of the regional industrial land strategy, which is the year 2050.
Factors That Could Alter the Outlook for Industrial Land in Metro Vancouver
The trajectory of vacant industrial land acquisition has been just over 200 acres per year. In addition, industrial land (developed and undeveloped) is lost due to conversion to other uses. The loss of "developed" land does not remove vacant land per se, although it is one of the contributors to vacant land absorption if industries move from developed to vacant land.
The total stock of undeveloped industrial land is about 5,500 hectares, before deducting parts used for other purposes and not allowed to convert to industry, minus losses due to transitions and redevelopment or taking into account the large proportion that is in small parcel sizes , could limit absorption. The consequence of this situation is that the undeveloped stock will be taken up in 22 to 28 years, assuming 100% of the undeveloped stock is available for industrial development in that time frame. If transitions from industrial to other uses continue to reduce the overall supply of industrial land, they will also put pressure on the stock of vacant land to accommodate industrial uses that move, although some or all of this trend is likely to have already been captured in previous estimates. absorption.
Factors Affecting the Supply of Land Available for Industrial Use in the Region
- Occupancy of Industrial Land by Industrial/Commercial Uses
- Occupancy of Industrial Land by Office Uses
- Redevelopment of Industrial Land for Residential Use
- Mixed Industrial and Residential Development
- Taking a Lower Mainland Perspective on Land Supply
- Finding “New” Industrial Land or Capacity
- Rising Sea Level and Flooding
- Implications
Much former heavy industrial land in the region has transitioned or been designated for residential development. Metro Vancouver's Industrial Land Inventory does not include the communities in the eastern Fraser Valley. PAGE 31 Unfortunately, the two largest industrial markets in the eastern Fraser Valley do not have a large supply of vacant industrial land.
However, it is clear that climate change is a risk factor that is likely to make the industrial land supply situation in the region more challenging. Competition for industrial land from non-industrial uses is likely to increase in the region as total population and non-industrial employment continue to grow. There are no easy solutions to significantly increasing the supply of industrial land in Metro Vancouver or the Fraser Valley.
Factors Affecting the Demand for Industrial Land in the Region
- Global Economic, Demographic, and Physical Changes
- Changing Structure of the Regional Economy
- Changing Nature of Industry
- Technology
- Changes in Consumer Behaviour
- Land Values
- Population Growth
- Implications
Overall, Metro Vancouver's role in the global economy is likely to maintain or increase the need for industrial land. Changes are occurring in industrial business clusters, which also affect the form of industrial development, the location of industrial use and the need for industrial land. This is an important factor in regional industrial land policy: good economic policy is not just about considering the need for large, vacant, highway-accessible industrial land in remote parts of the region.
However, it seems likely that such vehicles will influence the construction of cities by 2050 as part of a regional strategy for industrial land. It is possible that there will be a new need for industrial land to park and maintain autonomous vehicles when they are not in service. But drawing a straight line between these technologies and the acquisition of industrial land is not easy.
Possible Futures
General Outlook
PAGE44 Countering some of these trends, certain types of technology (e.g. robots, AI) are likely to mean that the number of industrial-type jobs may decline even as production volume increases and demand for land continues be strong. Because the supply of industrial land cannot increase significantly (barring significant changes in regional and provincial land designations), the scenarios for the future differ only in terms of the pace of land acquisition. Metro Vancouver has about 5,500 hectares of undeveloped land, but only about 3,700 of that is vacant and the balance is used for a non-industrial purpose and could be converted to industrial use.
It is also likely that some industrial land will continue to be earmarked for non-industrial use. To illustrate, we use an estimated “work inventory” of 4,500 acres as the amount of land available to accommodate new industrial growth (that is not accommodated by redevelopment and densification) in Metro Vancouver. Additionally, the Fraser Valley has approximately 420 hectares of available vacant land, but this is being depleted and would only take up industrial land in Metro Vancouver for about two years at least.
Present Trends Continued
Facilitating industrial development will therefore help maintain the diversity of the regional economy, but may not provide the same degree of support for employment diversity. It is highly unlikely that all the land currently classified as undeveloped will actually become available for new industrial development. While the uptake of land by new development is likely to continue, it is possible that conversion to other uses may slow in response to concerns about the supply of industrial land.
It is also possible that some conversions to other uses are offset by the required inclusion of ground floor industrial space in new higher density projects. Therefore, we use an average of 225 hectares per year as the current trend of the ongoing rate of undeveloped industrial land acquisition. If the working inventory is 4,500 hectares and the average annual take rate is 225 hectares per year, the land inventory will last for about 20 years.
Slower Take-up of Industrial Land
Increased Industrial Land Take-Up
Some forecasts already put the take rate at 250 hectares per year, so for a more aggressive scenario we increase this by 10% to reach 275 hectares per year. An increase in the rate of conversion of industrial land to other uses, leading to an increase in the displacement of existing industries to occupy vacant land elsewhere in the region.
Comparison and Conclusions
Policy Implications
Explore possible ways to intensify the use of industrial land without compromising the ability to accommodate larger production and logistics uses. Protecting the existing land inventory and encouraging denser and more efficient use of available industrial land will preserve and expand the ability to accommodate employment and acreage for certain types of industrial users. Only as long as the current inventory lasts – as shown in Section 7.5, this means that the inventory of green industrial land will be exhausted between 2035 and 2045.
On the other hand, it makes no sense to try to gauge the need for industrial land in, say, fifty years, because that is long enough for major changes to occur. If one accepts this argument, then it would be appropriate to expect the Regional Industrial Land Strategy to explore ways to fully accommodate projected industrial land absorption from the Lower Mainland up to the year 2050. Based on the scenarios in Section 7.5, mean it aims to identify approximately 2,000 to 4,000 hectares of potential new industrial land.
Estimate of Metro Vancouver Employment by Business Cluster
To provide the Industrial Lands Strategy Task Force (Task Force) with a summary of the Task Force workshop addressing the challenge of industrial land supply in Metro Vancouver. As part of stakeholder engagement in the development of the strategy, two workshops on dealing with the land supply constraint were held in the spring of 2019, first with regional stakeholders on 29 May 2019 and then with the Industrial Lands Strategy Task Force on 20 June 2019 There are many similarities between the Mentimeter results from the Task Force Workshop and the Stakeholder Workshop.
The development of the Regional Industrial Lands Strategy is part of the council's approved 2019 regional planning budget. Before the recommendations are presented as part of the draft Regional Industrial Areas Strategy, staff is requesting early feedback on a series of draft recommendations. This is the second of two meetings of the Task Force aimed at reviewing and discussing a range of policy options that will become part of the Regional Strategy for Industrial Countries.
Different minimum setback requirements between municipalities have also been cited as a challenge to the development of some of the region's industrial areas. The Regional Industrial Areas Strategy is being designed to provide a coherent vision while encompassing a set of principles to be adopted by the region, its member jurisdictions and other members of the Task Force that will guide its development.
