[standeven]

I agree that scarcity is the main issue, but how do you address it in a city like Vancouver? There’s no more land and downtown is dense. Make artificial islands? Deforest the mountainsides and build on 40 degree slopes? Replace local farms with subdivisions?

[CountSessine]

As a developer, why can't I buy 5 or 6 detached houses, tear them down, and build row-houses/town-houses on the site? I could house 3x as many families and charge a lot more than 1/3 the price for those homes. Why can't I do that? That is an unalloyed good in 2022 with the benchmark home price in Vancouver approaching $2 million. It would make me money and it would be a tremendous social good.

I can't do it because it's illegal, that's why. And I would have to go to city council to have them change the law (rezone the land). And the neighbors will campaign against me and argue against density. I own the land - I paid good money for it and it's mine in every sense of the word, but the neighbors will argue that their preferences and whims outweigh both my property rights and the rights of other Canadians to have a home.

[ska]

Unless things have changed radically since I was last there, downtown is mostly not dense.

But even if it were, it wouldn't solve the real problem in these north american cities, which is the "missing middle".

The model of small area of highly dense towers aimed at 20-something urbanites with no kids surrounded by spaced out single family homes with a yard is just fundamentally unworkable at any real scale.

If Vancouver wants to solve it's problem and not become a suburban/exurban sprawl (typical failure mode these days in north american growth) it's going to have to build a whole bunch of mid density housing near to downtown, and it's mostly going to have to build that on top of areas that are currently full of single family detached. This is not going to make current denizens of those "nice neighbourhoods" happy, naturally.

[vkou]

Vancouver downtown (In large part, thanks to the west end) is incredibly dense. 23,838 people/km2 - the same density as Manhattan.

Once you leave the penninsula, though, it's surrounded by a lot of suburban sprawl, with small pockets of density around the SkyTrain stations. Unlike most North American cities, though, at least it has those pockets of density!

[ska]

This map (https://maps.nicholsonroad.com/zones/) from another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30960632), I think illustrates the problem.

If I understand "the pennisula" correctly, you are referring to something like 1/10th of the city proper (not the greater area, just the city of Vanc.). It is mostly zoned appropriately; outside of that it's a mess.

Everything in grey and yellow is part of the problem mentioned above.

[hello_moto]

> it's mostly going to have to build that on top of areas that are currently full of single family detached. This is not going to make current denizens of those "nice neighbourhoods" happy, naturally.

They're not happy with megatowers. They're ok with missing middle (townhouses).

There is a whole stretch of roads being bought out and converted to missing middle that leads to downtown. (Oak, Cambie).

[ska]

Small Townhouses aren’t really enough though , you need to go 4-5 stories at least in part. I’ve seen zoning fights about even duplexes, let alone anything bigger - not sure if Vancouver is more accepting of that than other places .

Is it the case there that people are ok/happy with mid rise places along busy corridors only , but want to maintain SFD on all the side streets? That really doesn’t work either , it’s just people making a noise etc. barrier on “their” neighborhood…

[hello_moto]

O ya, I agree with you that "small" townhouses aren't enough. Low rises helped though nobody wants to build "concrete" low risers (esp with the mandate from govt to set aside rental units, below market rental units, etc).

> I’ve seen zoning fights about even duplexes, let alone anything bigger - not sure if Vancouver is more accepting of that than other places .

Nobody has any issues with duplexes and townhouses.

It's a bunch of patch up jobs really.

I do agree that they should just bulldoze and start developing around Skytrain stations first. That way they have a starting point to sprawl a bit. It should be a give and take from both sides: govt and nimby. Govt needs to give nimby something to keep them happy (sad but what can you do) while telling them to F off when it comes to building towers around skytrain (first).