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.
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.
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!
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.
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).
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…
> 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).