[cameronpm]

Incredible map, I've never seen this before and I grew up here.

Zoning decides so much of the vibe of a city/neighbourhood. Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

Having lived in 6 other cities, other things Vancouver does well that aren't obvious on this map:

- Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets)

- No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space)

- Grass on both sides of sidewalk and trees on every street.

- Extremely high park density.

- Protected bike lanes everywhere.

- Side streets with random dead ends.

- Commercial streets every ~4-6 blocks that allow more traffic + bus routes.

- Rectangle structured blocks with numbers 1 direction and names the other.

[lwansbrough]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

NIMBYism. I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than 1/6th the homes owned by the richest people in the city who _really love it._

You can design beautiful neighbourhoods that are much much denser than they are now.

Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis.

[rtlfe]

> I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than

Not to mention the huge positive impacts this would have on walkability, transit, climate change, etc.

[akhmatova]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

NIMBYism.

Name calling as an argument technique.

You can design beautiful neighbourhoods that are much much denser than they are now.

In theory. Sometimes it actually happens in reality, too.

Most of the time though, when developers and their paid servants (aka your elected representatives) get together, something rather different from this glossy vision you seem to have ends up happening. In most cases the end reuslt is not at all beautiful, and (when you actually crunch the numbers) not all that affordable, either.

Not too infrequently it devolves into outright shenanigans, with profound betrayals of trust, and huge swaths of development opportunity more or less handed out to connected donors and/or other political kingpins (in exchange for who knows what votes or other favors they have to offer).

That's how it goes, and like the Leonard Cohen song -- everybody knows.

I agree that zoning has its pros and cons. And just because we did things a certain way 50 year ago, doesn't mean we have to keep doing it that way.

But the attitude you're presented sounds (to these jaded ears) well - saccharine. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be fundamentally circumspect about the promised benefits of many (if not most) proposed zoning changes. There's no need to assume that anyone who doesn't share your own enthusiasm for such changes is (as you imply) just fundamentally self-centered - or filthy rich.

[cameronpm]

Great response, I agree 100%.

[hyperhopper]

> Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis.

What about people that want to have a party on a Friday, but NIMBYs in an apartment complex throw the book at anybody that has fun past 10PM?

[jseliger]

Abolishing mandatory single-unit zoning is different from saying no one can have such a unit. People should have a wide variety of housing options available based on their needs and price points.

[zaptheimpaler]

It seems like we really should be able to make soundproof apartments today. I’m definitely not an expert but it’s hard to believe that we can’t we make thick walls with the right material between apartments.

A lot of construction and transportation seems like it’s needlessly bad due to underinvestment and old equipment. I think we can make almost noiseless EV cars like Teslas today, no-compromises high density housing, quieter construction equipment and so much more.

[VintageCool]

We definitely can. The apartment I lived in from 2018-2019 was ghostly quiet. For the first five months, I could easily have been convinced that we were the only people that lived on our floor.

[imtringued]

Sound proofing is absolutely trivial to install and its benefits by far exceed its costs... It should be absolutely mandatory on any multi-family building.

[sbarre]

I see you have also lived in Funcouver!

[0ldskool]

Require multi-family complex's to have an indoor party room available for booking?

[Matthias247]

> - Protected bike lanes everywhere.

As an avid biker in Vancouver, I can unfortunately not confirm that. There's a few strategic ones, but it's far from everywhere. https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf has the overview. It unfortunately doesn't cover the extended area, but already shows that outside of downtown only a small amount of fully protected lanes exists - like Arbutus Greenway.

[rtlfe]

The "local street bikeways" tend to actually be pretty good though. There are plenty of traffic diverters and other calming elements, unlike most North American cities that just paint sharrows and pray for the best.

[Matthias247]

Fully agreed. I would feel safe on most of the "green" streets on the map. The intention was definitely not to state that overall Vancouver has a bad infrastructure - it's certainly better than average. But just to clarify that the amount of fully separated lanes is not that high.

Also it gets a bit worse in suburbs like North/West Van, New Westminster, etc.

[omosubi]

Yeah anyone who thinks that Vancouver bike infrastructure is bad is delusional - it's not perfect but no city is (especially in north America) and you can get basically anywhere in the city on a safe side street

[cameronpm]

Another great map. Yea, in comparison to Amsterdam we suck. I hope we keep making them. I find the sidestreets on pretty safe, due to low car traffic.

[mynameisvlad]

I mean, sure, in comparison to the best biking city in the best biking country in the world, anyone would suck.

Vancouver is consistently ranked among the most bike friendly cities in the world: - https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-friendly-c... - https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-cycling-ranking-20... - https://www.momentum-biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-...

[ripley12]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

This is such an odd statement; it's "not even wrong."

Vancouver zones most of its land for low-density suburban houses that accommodate very few people. It also has many examples of zoning districts that accommodate a lot of people in urban neighbourhoods that people love to live in. You can just change one zoning district to another proven one!

[aspenmayer]

For those who may have not heard the term before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

[Pxtl]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

Well, avoiding changing zoning has created areas that nobody can afford to live in, so they don't really have a choice at this point. Vancouver's affordability crisis is generally considered by economists to be the worst in North America.

[cameron-p-m]

Is it a supply or a demand problem? They do have a choice, zoning is just one tool among many.

[rtlfe]

> zoning is just one tool among many

Not really. If you don't build more homes, you have to limit how many people can live there. The latter is currently accomplished by money, but could be shifted to lotteries and waitlists if there was strict rent control or all housing was public. Both of those are significantly worse than just building more.

[epistasis]

Worse for who, though? The traditional political power base of cities is homeowners, particularly those with enough wealth and free time to get involved with politics.

By owning homes, they don't care about the iniquity caused by wait lists, lotteries, or rising prices. In fact, they benefit greatly from rising prices. And if they can keep people out, they don't have to worry about change causing any discomfort to what they currently enjoy.

[jjav]

> In fact, they benefit greatly from rising prices.

Maybe. If they are able to sell at the peak. A house isn't a share of stock you can sell when the market is up. Typically you hold until the kids move out and you retire and then sell, so the timing is handed to you by life. If housing market is down the year you retire, bad luck.

Meanwhile all those years they are living the house instead of selling, rising prices hurt the homeowner because it means taxes go up.

As a homeowner I sure wish the estimated value never went up. I'd rather be paying the same taxes as when I bought it instead of a lot more.

[epistasis]

Compare your financial setting from massive financial gain versus not having it: you are immeasurably better off than the person that did not own a house during the same time period. You are also immensely better off than anybody who was born later and doesn't have massive family resources for the down payment.

The rise in prices is the predictable (and desired) form of demand-side management thay results in market-based pricing of homes.

In another comment you express the desire that people should live places other than Vancouver. That rise in prices gives you both financial power and the displacement of others that you desire. I think it's wrong.

[rtlfe]

> Maybe

Good luck explaining that nuance to everybody in the neighborhood who thinks their home value is the most important thing.

> rising prices hurt the homeowner because it means taxes go up.

That depends. Idk how other places do it, but where I live there's a fixed amount of total tax for the year and it's distributed to each home based on its value. So if all the homes in the city go up equally you're paying the same tax every year, but if your neighborhood goes up faster than others, then you're paying more.

[epistasis]

What sort of demand side solution are you considering? Housing is a basic necessity of life. Perhaps by reducing demand you mean that instead of one family living in a single family home, demand for living space is reduced so that two families live in the same space?

[jjav]

> Housing is a basic necessity of life.

It certainly is and should be a fundamental human right.

However, living in Vancouver specifically isn't a necessity. There are more affortable places.

In my 20s my dream was to live in Manhattan, I wanted it so bad. Never made it, way too expensive. Had to give up that dream. A couple decades later I still occasionally wish it could've been, but never was. I have a nice house and built a nice life elsewhere.

Not to take away from efforts to build more and affordable housing in the big cities, which is good and necessary. But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. Often the most pragmatic solution is to find a different city to live in.

[epistasis]

> But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either.

This is a common NIMBY trope: "everyone" wants to live here and that's impossible, so we shouldn't try.

It's false in that not everyone wants to live in Vancouver/NYC/SF, far from it. But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places. In another comment you expressed the desire to keep your place in the city, without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains. Why should you get that, but not somebody else? On what basis do you privilege your own basic needs over others? That's no way to run a society, saying "got mine, forget all the rest of you."

[jjav]

> without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains

I clearly did not say that. I said that as a homeowner, I'd prefer that the value didn't go up at all. I don't want massive paper gains.

> But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places.

History is showing us it isn't very easy, so I'm curious what is the plan to make it easy?

[MikeSchurman]

They also have view cones, which are: "a policy enforced by the City of Vancouver that limits the heights of the buildings to protect sight lines of the North Shore mountains from a number of arbitrary perspectives"

Interestingly the 1st image result of view cones is how they could be a bad thing for Vancouver: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economi...

[Tiktaalik]

Seems like view cones are a frequent criticism of certain pro-housing activists, but I think we can see from this Vancouver Zoning Map is the real low hanging fruit for more housing development is the vast swath of land zoned exclusively for single family homes.

Personally I can't understand the hate for the viewcones that I sometimes see. Talk with any newcomer to the city and they absolutely love the mountains. The mountain views are one of the selling points of this city. It would be utterly mad to block them.

[ripley12]

Depends on the view cone, I think. I agree that view cones aren't public enemy number 1, but some really are bad.

I live near one in East Van that is utterly useless; it's defined as starting in the middle of a road, and the view is blocked by tree foliage most of the year anyway. And yet because of it, multiple proposed apartment buildings have been cut short.

[Tiktaalik]

There's a few that are pretty marginal I agree.

The one from the top of Queen E Park is also weirdly low. Like you could almost double the height of the towers downtown and you still wouldn't be blocking the view of the mountain from this viewpoint, so the view is really damn odd.

[eps]

That's the thing - it's the _newcomers_ who absolutely love the mountains. Everyone else are perfectly content with knowing that they exists and don't need (or want) to see them every day from their window. It's a good perk, but it's no more than that.

[rtlfe]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

This implies that the current zoning was implemented for good reason. That's basically never the case. Most existing zoning was done either to increase property values or to keep out people that the elites don't want to be around.

[ripley12]

Yeah, Vancouver's zoning code has pretty awful origins; I wrote about it here a while back: https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zo...

In a nutshell, it was intentionally designed to keep apartment buildings and stores out of most of the city.

[jimbob45]

Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Supply issues aside, I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal.

Is there a compromise that you’d be okay with? Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing? Maybe wipe away rental properties so that you don’t have effectively vacant units for portions of the year?

[ryukafalz]

> Supply issues aside, I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal.

I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that.

https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-...

[quantumwannabe]

No need for inferred preference, actual preferences of where Americans would prefer to live are 19% urban, 46% suburban, and 35% rural [1]. 71% of urban residents who would like to move want to move to a suburban or rural area, in contrast, 23% and 20% of suburban and rural residents who would like to move respectively want to move to an urban area [2]. Contrary to what your blog post implies, most people have some idea of what each type of living condition is like, and they are making an educated choice.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/what-un...

[Schiendelman]

Those are stated, not choices made. Since we know how much people ACTUALLY bid, we know those statements are inaccurate.

[quantumwannabe]

There are cheap high-density areas and expensive low-density areas. According to your and that blogpost's logic, Silicon Valley's high housing prices in single-family neighborhoods and the fact that people want to move there are proof that people ACTUALLY want a suburban lifestyle, not an urban one.

Looking at where people live and where they want to live is a better source of their actual preferences than looking at housing prices in a handful of expensive neighborhoods and guessing what the average person wants.

[rtlfe]

> Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic?

Not even a little bit. Go read about exclusionary zoning in general or see your sibling comment's link for some reading on Vancouver specifically.

> Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in?

Is it considered ideal? Maybe. Is it actually ideal? No.

Aside from the huge negative impacts on pricing and equality that we've already discussed there's the environmental impact, isolation, car dependence, etc, etc.

> I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal.

This is unfortunately true for Americans and I'd guess Canadians as well. I think this is due to some combination of:

- The absurd "American dream" vision that's been pushed by car manufacturers and other companies for many decades.

- Most American cities aren't actually very good, so most Americans have never experienced the alternative.

- Fox News and other conservative media pushing the narrative that cities are infested with criminals, terrorists, etc.

> Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing?

Great. This is what would happen if there wasn't zoning.

[jjav]

> > Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in?

> Is it considered ideal? Maybe. Is it actually ideal? No.

Ideal in what? Ideal has to be measured by some metric, so which one or which ones?

What makes these discussions interminable is that some of the metrics are objective but some are subjective so there can't be any one ideal answer.

An objective measure is housing units per square km. Easy to measure, it's just math. Obviously high-rise apartment buildings maximize that metric. So is that the only metric that should ever be considered? Or the most important one?

Then there are also the subjective metrics of niceness. While many people might be happy living in those high-rises, many people won't do it.

Should the density maximizers be the only people who get a vote in these matters? If so, why is that? Why are they more special citizens than others? That sure doesn't sound fair.

Or should they get no vote? Well that's not fair either.

So clearly there can't be one ideal answer, it's compromises all the way.

Many people will have legitimate preferences that differ from yours, that in no way makes them "absurd".

[rtlfe]

> Many people will have legitimate preferences that differ from yours

If your preference means that teachers can't afford homes within city limits, emissions won't improve, infrastructure can't be sustained [1], cars are the only viable transportation, etc, etc, then your opinion should really be discarded by decision makers.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-04/how-subur...

[ska]

> Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in?

Not really, no. It's the choice a lot of people make in north american metros from what they are offered, but that's not what ideal means.

[imtringued]

>Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in?

Who is saying that? The zoning bureau that is forcing this lifestyle upon you against your will?

[bombcar]

A suburb can be significantly denser than another, even just allowing duplexes or front/back lots can double or more the carrying capacity of a suburb.

[dangwu]

It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.

From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue, trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph isn’t fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.

[ripley12]

> many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere

Yeah, this is an unfortunate aspect of Vancouver's city planning; our zoning forces nearly all shops and restaurants onto busy, loud, polluted arterial roads. Changing this isn't really on the political landscape right now, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

[rtlfe]

> but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.

Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.

[nfca]

Driving is just one mode of transportation. Buses can take 3 or 4 times as much time to reach any destination, which is far too much to be a viable alternative to people with a choice.

Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car

[rtlfe]

> Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car

Ask yourself how the options would be different if cities weren't so focused on cars.

Edit: To be less vague - my choices to get to work are 20 minutes on bike basically for free, 25 minutes via metro for ~$100 a month, or 40 minutes by car for about $500 a month in tolls and parking plus thousands a year for the car itself and maintenance. There's no reason this can't be the norm in the US aside from local politicians deciding they don't want it.

[DocTomoe]

> my choices

You are a very lucky person then, and your situation is by far not the norm, regardless of which city (or country, for that matter) you live in.

[rtlfe]

> your situation is by far not the norm

Yes I acknowledged this in my previous comment. But it could be normal for every city with some pretty simple changes that no mayor is willing to make.

[pgodzin]

If a full lane is dedicated to buses instead then that bus would be much faster than the cars stuck in traffic, while moving significantly more people.

[klyrs]

Public transit is significantly slower than driving, unless both endpoints are immediately close to a skytrain station.

[rtlfe]

Idk if you think that statement somehow refutes my point, but it certainly doesn't.

[klyrs]

In general, I agree with you. In specific, I drive almost everywhere despite being a supporter of public transit, because I can't afford to live near a skytrain station and the 'last mile' adds an hour to a trip. If we had more buses, and most routes had dedicated lanes, sure. But since we're half-assing it all, more gridlock is just more gridlock. Which, among other things, means more pollution.

edit: compare to a city like Seattle, which has similar weather, hills, density, etc. A notable feature of the transit centers there is a Park & Ride: a place where folks can park their cars (for free, when I lived there) and get into transit. Vancouver does not have anything of the sort. If you want to park somewhere and take transit into the downtown core, there are extremely limited options. So you get too many drivers. Disincentivizing cars usage is great when there is a viable alternative -- in the absence of such an alternative, it's just flagellation for its own sake.

[rtlfe]

Sure, you're making a reasonable choice given the current reality. But it doesn't have to be that way. When I say driving should be difficult, I don't mean just make the roads worse without any other changes. I mean improve active transportation, transit, and housing density/affordability. In the short term, each improvement here will cause some pain in making driving slightly harder, but after sufficient time the other options will be good enough that nobody will miss driving.

[Phrodo_00]

Huh? The only park & ride in Seattle is in Northgate that's pretty new. They're only really seen outside the city in the suburbs

[refurb]

Of course it does. Crappy for cars means crappy for buses which are public transit.

[rtlfe]

> Crappy for cars means crappy for buses which are public transit.

Not if you give sufficient priority to buses.

Cleveland has an excellent center-running BRT line: https://nacto.org/case-study/euclid-avenue-brt-cleveland-oh/

And NYC is starting to implement busways: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/brt/html/routes/14th-street.shtml

[Phrodo_00]

This is not an obvious thing. Cities can (imo should) give more priority to buses in the form of dedicated lanes and traffic signal priority.

[dan-robertson]

I feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.

[dleslie]

It's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion nightmware between them.

[Tiktaalik]

Not really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that scar the landscape of so many North American cities.

[dleslie]

You can walk across Lougheed Hwy as a pedestrian; it doesn't make it any less of a highway.

[ripley12]

> Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets)

That's an interesting one to me, because I'm generally bothered by how wide Vancouver streets are. IIRC most Vancouver residential streets are 33 feet wide, waaaaaaaay wider than in many European and Asian cities.

[sofixa]

From the other side of the pond, your list makes me sad. It appears we take a lot of urban design elements for granted here. I grew up in commie blocks, am now in Haussmannian urbanism, and most of those ( i mean there isn't grass and trees on every street, but it's pretty frequent) are just.. basic common sense here.

Like the fact that there's a term, "transit oriented development" used in North America. Here it's just common sense, nobody calls it anything.

[sefrost]

Where exactly do you mean by "the other side of the pond"?

I moved to Vancouver from the UK last year and it is significantly nicer/more liveable than most UK cities I've seen.

[sofixa]

Commie blocks in Eastern Europe and Haussmannian buildings in France.

And i didn't say those are better than Vancouver, just that OP's list about why Vancouver is better than most NA cities is common sense which can be said about most cities in Europe.

[cuddlybacon]

There are also a few bads, some that can be seen from the map:

- Quite a few stroads[0]: Granville around 70th, Granville around Broadway, Cambie around Broadway, 4th West of Burrard, most of Broadway, many sections of Kingsway, the section of W 41st Ave under the Kerrisdale label, and others.

- In general, getting East-West by vehicle is notably worse than North-South. While I 90% agree with your highway comment, this does make the situation frustrating at times.

- Vancouver is less bad than most of the cities that surround it, but it still has job areas a little too clustered in a few spots.

- Most land is low density in a city that has a huge housing shortage.

- Skytrain doesn't cover the majority of this map.

- Residential neighbourhoods have so much street parking that kids can't play street hockey these days. In general, there are too many cars in residential areas that kids can't play outside with the minimal supervision I had as a child.

I will add one more good:

- Grid designs tend to have a problem where local roads don't remain local roads and instead become side streets for cars. Vancouver has done a good job of using tools to keep these local roads serving just local traffic: narrow streets, tight visibility, forced turns, etc. Besides the benefit this provides to locals, it also helps with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

[0] - Stroad is a portmanteau of street and road. By trying to be both, if fails to do either. Stroads suck no matter what type of user you are:

Car perspective:

- For thru traffic they suck since they are "too busy", traffic usual goes slower than the speed limit.

- For traffic stoping at a local destination they suck because getting to your destination is difficult: the road is busy so you need to focus 110% on driving, but you also gotta find parking, places to turn around, etc. A lot of people put pressure on themselves if they block traffic while parking and that is a necessary aspect of driving to a business that is on a stroad.

- Unprotected left turns usually only allow 1 vehicle per cycle of the lights. There will be a lot of unprotected lefts happening in these areas.

- For locals they suck because your community has congested traffic all the time.

For pedestrians:

- The area is loud due to all the cars. God forbid if people start honking. And this is Vancouver. I've seen people honk at parked cars a few dozen times in the last 5 years.

- If you have to cross the street, it can be a real bother as you will have to wait for a crossing signal that may take a few minutes. When you finally get your turn, you have to deal with drivers who are desperate to make their left turn.

- Walking distances are higher than they'd otherwise be on a proper street.

For cyclists:

- Commuting: Prepare to Die Edition

For business owners:

- While the traffic does get you some amount of visibility, a lot of that traffic will simply never stop at your business. There is also a portion who won't go due to the difficulty in driving in the area.

- You probably get way more business from random people walking by than from random people driving by. The artificially high walking distances mean fewer walkers.

- You have to soundproof your facade to deal with the noise.

- Prior to the lockdown, Vancouver city council was quite against patios and balconies at businesses. These days, they are allowing more of them. These will necessarily be loud and there is nothing you can do. Customers will complain.

[99_00]

>- No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space)

Why doesn't this result in cars simply traveling on regular streets and creating noise and danger in the exact same space as pedestrians, cyclists, and residents?

[ripley12]

There are a lot of potential answers to that, but perhaps the shortest one is that cars drive much faster on a highway.

[dleslie]

> No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space)

The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.

[deanCommie]

If you're speaking about the part on the map that is labeled "Grandview highway", it's just a name - it is a regular street interrupted with traffic lights, bordering "The Grandview Cut" which has both train tracks and metro ("Skytrain") tracks: https://goo.gl/maps/B9dTbxg4LhedP9C7A

If you're thinking of the Georgia Viaduct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Viaduct), it is slated for removal and is only about <1km

[thinkingkong]

It doesnt cut through what most people would consider the “city” part of Vancouver which is the denser part of downtown. It’s also not really like a highway that most people refer to. It’s nothing like the 400 series in Toronto, or the I5 in Seattle.

[dleslie]

It's interrupted in its path by the viaducts, but the highway begins again to cut through Stanley Park and cross to the North Shore.

Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by office districts and bedroom communities, linked with stroads, like many North American cities.

Glad I left.

[cameronpm]

what cities do you consider well designed and why?

[freeone3000]

Montreal is nice. Most people, even as far out as Outremont, have a grocery store within walking distance. Metro map could be improved but is decent for the core. Transit runs decently during peak times. Main issue is lack of bike lanes, but there's always a shortage of bixis so apparently people do cycle. Easy access to parks, I've got two within walking distance. Unfortunately the metro does stop at around 1a, so going on a downtown bar until closing means you're taking a night bus back.

[cameronpm]

I agree. Montreal is better than Vancouver. They have a really good mix of height limited multi family zoning and commercial streets.

[seanmcdirmid]

Tokyo does well. Ubiquitous public transit does wonders. Singapore is supposed to be pretty good as well, but I’ve never left Changi to tell.

[dleslie]

There aren't any, really; because we didn't spend the 20th Century thinking of alternatives to commuting via personal automobile from bedrooms to offices.

[xyzzyz]

A true well designed city have not been tried yet.

[Reason077]

> "It’s nothing like the 400 series in Toronto"

The 400 series highways don't go anywhere near Toronto's downtown either. The 401 skirts around Toronto's suburbs, far to the north of what anyone would consider the city.

The urban Toronto road you're probably thinking of is the Gardiner Expressway, which is owned and managed by the city itself, not the provincial government.

For decades, there have been calls to remove the elevated downtown section which cuts Toronto off from its waterfront. Something that would not only remove a source of blight and open up the development potential of some significant tracts of prime land, it would also save the city a fortune in maintenance costs!

[inasio]

It's also slated for removal (at least the upper viaduct), a very large park is meant to be built in its place (the architects that designed the High Line park in NYC were going to be designing the project, at least as of 3 years ago).

[dleslie]

Yup, and coincidentally there's basically no plan whatsoever to either move offices out of downtown or significantly improve transit options into downtown.

[laurent92]

Isn’t that because there is a 400-year tsunami of 60m high, and they’re trying to de-densify?

[novok]

That feels like such a waste compared to not making the super crowded b-line a train line sooner vs later.

[Tiktaalik]

They're literally digging up Broadway constructing the Broadway line skytrain right now.

[novok]

And it's not going all the way to UBC, which is the reason why the B-line is so crowded. You stop 1/3rd of the way there and then transfer to the B-line again.

[pshc]

They’re thinking about doing it. Hopefully the YIMBYs win.