Rezoning process will determine Concord's final payment for the biggest land deal in the province's history, and turn a rotting parking lot into a community of 5,000 homes
1. I am not sure that Manhattan is a great model for a future Vancouver. Nor would LA be. Perhaps we could devise a new urban form. I thought we began to with "Vancouverism." But with extra high buildings, ignoring view corridors, and failing to build transit quickly enough, we seemed to have abandoned it.
2. Where in the world has building up resulted in more affordable housing? I can't think of any place in the world. Densification creates unreasonably high land costs, which require denser and denser building, which require higher and higher construction costs.
3. While we don't have unlimited land we can build on in BC (too many mountains), there is lots of land in the Fraser Valley that isn't agricultural. Surrey. Langley, further out. Does it make sense then to put so much density in Vancouver? It makes sense for land owners in the central city to see the value of their holdings escalate. But from a public policy perspective does it? Centralization requires massive investment in transportation, great public pressure to build more roads (see Metro Toronto). Why not spread out development regionally?
Neale, there's an abundance of transit already adjacent to the site. I agree with much of what you say and really regret the demise of those view corridors. It would be good to know how much they were worth -- not a small sum. On the other hand, I think we've paid a big price for the absence of development here, a real crisis in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside while neighbourhoods next to the earlier phases have flourished.
1. I am not sure that Manhattan is a great model for a future Vancouver. Nor would LA be. Perhaps we could devise a new urban form. I thought we began to with "Vancouverism." But with extra high buildings, ignoring view corridors, and failing to build transit quickly enough, we seemed to have abandoned it.
2. Where in the world has building up resulted in more affordable housing? I can't think of any place in the world. Densification creates unreasonably high land costs, which require denser and denser building, which require higher and higher construction costs.
3. While we don't have unlimited land we can build on in BC (too many mountains), there is lots of land in the Fraser Valley that isn't agricultural. Surrey. Langley, further out. Does it make sense then to put so much density in Vancouver? It makes sense for land owners in the central city to see the value of their holdings escalate. But from a public policy perspective does it? Centralization requires massive investment in transportation, great public pressure to build more roads (see Metro Toronto). Why not spread out development regionally?
Neale, there's an abundance of transit already adjacent to the site. I agree with much of what you say and really regret the demise of those view corridors. It would be good to know how much they were worth -- not a small sum. On the other hand, I think we've paid a big price for the absence of development here, a real crisis in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside while neighbourhoods next to the earlier phases have flourished.