Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

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Vancouver has various restrictions just like any town, but in general it would be incorrect to state that they restrict construction or don't build high density buildings. Comparing a photo of 1990s downtown Vancouver to now it is shocking how many glassy residential towers there are now. Vancouver and its satellite cities are constantly building new condo buildings.

I suppose you can always argue that a city can build more, but I've seen more construction cranes in Vancouver than just about any city I've ever visited.

I think more dominant issues that have influenced the price of Vancouver housing is low interest rates, lax lending rules, government policies that promote home ownership and speculation, and the influx of foreign capital.

Actually, we do restrict construction particularly in the "view corridor" that is downtown. It's not that we don't build buildings, it's that they are all under 40 stories, whereas a typical city of our size would have buildings of the same type pushing 100 stories easy.

For a sense of scale, here is Vancouver's tallest building compared to the world leaders: http://i.imgur.com/YcCozCE.png?1

Right of course but my point is that view cones and other restrictions on the form of housing are not a dominant factor when you compare how much housing supply they would bring versus the level of housing being created elsewhere.

Vancouver is upzoning the entire corridor along Cambie street and is planning on building significant residential parcels at Oakridge (~2000 units) and Pearson Dogwoods (~3000 units). If you go out further to Burnaby, New Westminster and Coquitlam they're building tons. Burnaby just announced their long term plan for a redevelopment of Lougheed Mall that will create 11,000 units.

Basically adding further height downtown isn't really necessary and the gains are minor in comparison with the gains achieved by rezoning low density single family houses and low density commercial to higher density forms.

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