Should Vancouver build over the 1200 ft development limit?
 

Currently, all lands above 1200 feet (the Upper Lands) in West Vancouver are dedicated as land under a 'Special Study Area' by West Vancouver and Metro Vancouver. Theoretically, if 50% of the MVRD Board agrees to the change (and West Vancouver wants it), the Upper Lands could be rezoned for housing. This as been a key sticking point for West Van to both agree to the RGS- this is despite their own studies recommending against the idea. https://westvancouver.ca/sites/defau.../15jun22-5.pdf
Map of the area (the Upper Lands are the massive area in red in West Vancouver):
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vD0M39X_gA.../RGS%2BMap.png

The reasons for not developing the area are largely environmental, but there's also a significant impact on the views of the NS mountains. https://i.cbc.ca/1.3886544.148116002...-mountains.jpg
The suburban section could potentially go all the way up to the beginning of Cypress Mountain's plateau peak- or about 800 meters above sea level. (The ski resort is at 1000m) Most of the treed section in the image may be removed if development is allowed up to Cypress Provincial Park.

On the other hand, the amount of land up there is enormous.
But the maximum possible amount of land (including Eagle Lake and any other new potential parks) is about 17.97 sq km or about 4440.5 acres. To put that in perspective, that's larger in area than New Westminster. Additionally, much of it is still owned by the British Properties, making turning the entire thing into a park require a ton of money- if they even want to sell, rather than keep whispering into West Van's ear to develop it. They've been holding for nearly a century at this point.

It would reduce land pressures on the agricultural, rural, and industrial lands in the Fraser Valley- which was actually why some early Vancouver planners wanted to develop up the mountains- to leave the Valley pristine (impossible to do that now, but still, the point stands). If densification can't proceed fast enough (something Vancouver isn't great at), Vancouver is going to inevitably gobble up more of the Valley outside the Containment Boundary. Is sprawling up Stave Lake or Silver Valley that much worse?

It's also important to note the 1200 ft boundary seems to be an unofficial limit for Metro Vancouver as a whole. If the Upper Lands get developed, expect the precedent to change- and other areas above 1200ft outside parks to get developed eventually (like Mount Fromme and parts of Eagle Mountain)


So should the area be developed? Part of it? Or should the area be kept as undeveloped parkland? Is that even likely?

I'm usually pro density but it already takes a long time to drive up there filled with a bunch of loops and I feel like West Van lacks a lot of the restaurants and jobs needed to support more people (bridge traffic!). Until we increase infrastructure or shift jobs to West Van more housing in West Van seems problematic.

I would be open to perhaps a vacation/cabin resort or restaurants up there? Something that doesn't screw with traffic.

West Vancouver has tons of empty homes owned by offshore money. Why would they need more housing when they haven't filled what they already have?

Marketing-wise it would be disastrous for Vancouver's brand to have suburban sprawl climb further up the mountains.

Typical West Van - first they shut down the B-Line over ten parking spaces, now they want to sprawl up Cypress until they reach the ski lift. Note that everything below the treeline is still SFH.

The mountains look nice with trees.

There is enough room on a typical vancouver lot for 2 family sized, ground oriented homes, in the form of row-house. Outside of the CoV, lots are 50 to 60 feet wide, and have an average sized detached home sitting on them. Those huge lots could accommodate 2 detached homes.

There is no reason why we would need to take the drastic measure of developing further up the mountain.

Let's improve and densify what we already have rather than extend up further into the mountain only to make a bigger mess. There are so many open surface parking lots that can be developed not to mention spaces that are underutilized or schools with low enrollment that with some gentle density could mean better utilization of existing resources. The idea is just plain :yuck:

Problem being that West Van residents would prefer to chop trees (or their own arm off) than give up parking or add density.

It's ironic that the City of Vancouver wants to preserve viewcones - to emphasize the natural photogenic beauty of the mountains. Yet the North Shore jurisdictions want to build on the thing that makes the region look so photogenic.

Low density buildings on the mountains just means that masses of expensive infrastructure need to be developed for just a handful of people to enjoy. Whether they can afford to pay the taxes or not, it's a waste of resources. I'd rather the sub-1200' areas get densified and communities develop.

Speaking of utilities, isn't there a problem supplying water so high up the mountain?

West Van proposed building on the Upper Levels long before that stuff hit down. West Van NIMBYs (the people who fought against the transit improvements the most) are generally against the idea. I don't think West Van's government is much more anti-development than a lot of others, they're just appealing to their voter base. https://www.straight.com/article-381...-shore-forests

There's also plans for Cypress Village, a more densified mixed community (most of the units are actually condos, followed by townhouses, and a fairly small number of SFH- so something like you'd find in Willowgbhy) that's supposed to be a 'hub' for the area, so densification in the area seems to be limited by infrastructure and terrain more than willingness on either the part of West Van or the British Properties. http://cypressvillage.com/wp-content...-emailable.pdf

Presumably the cost would be covered by the British Properties, as with the schools they've built in the current area they're allowed to build on.

If they wanted, they could build a Gondola up to a new T. Center up there and make the developers pay for it as part of the deal. Maybe.

Well, considering NIMBYs...

There is mention of adding cabins in the area, since it would fit in with its history. At least that would probably be acceptable for most people, as long as you don't go too overboard.





I also added something to the OP. It would reduce land pressures on the agricultural, rural, and industrial lands in the Fraser Valley- which was actually why some early Vancouver planners wanted to develop up the mountains- to leave the Valley pristine (impossible to do that now, but still, the point stands)

Is sprawling up the mountains in this case worse than sprawling further into the Valley?

Both are horrible ideas... and both already happened for decades.

At certain neighbourhoods they would pump up water to a storage reservoir for usage. But it is a very non efficient way of getting water when so many places can be easily supplied by the current grid.

Most of the water would probably come from Eagle Lake which is either next to or below it.

https://www.canadianconsultingengine...tion-facility/

Let’s be honest, it’s not going to just stop because we want it to, even with more liberal regulations. There could be another Great Recession and there’d still be a booming RE sector due to backed up demand.

After Willoughby/Clayton/Port Kells, all the prime developable land will be gone, and that’s going to force people who are buying that land into more marginal land, go further into the Valley, or the ALR. Or all of the above. We’re already seeing Industrial land do that, since it has nowhere else left to go.

The only thing that’s stopping a lot of the North Shore and Ioco/Belcarra from being developed is bad road connections.

Doesn’t water have to be pumped up to Eagle Lake first?

Honestly how can things go down when we keep expanding? It’s insane to expect land values to go down now that Amazon is opening up HQ2 here, 10’s of billions of debt funded projects are about to enrich the pockets of many locals, immigration is at an all time with most stopping in Vancouver, and more schools opening/expanding which will increase international enrollment.

Not to mention on the federal side they are making it easier to take on more debt to buy a home.

Honestly instead of trying to reverse course the government needs to take action now and build rental towers by transit stations for all the working locals. We should aim for 10,000 rentals within a 2 block radius of every skytrain station by 2040.

As you see in most land constrained major cities worldwide towers are the key to allowing people to live and work nearby. In downtown Vancouver a lot of people are able to live without owning a car because food, work, clothing, etc. are all within a few blocks of transit.

Upzoning just pushes more cars on the road unless it’s near a transit station.

I mean, TOD in the Upper Levels is harder, but not impossible. The area past 800m is a flattish plateau, which should allow for a grid bus structure, connected to a gondola connecting to Ambleside.

Most of the areas not under either the ALR and not being developed are pretty far from any services to begin with (like Silver Valley and Stave Lake). My question is whether developing those places are worse than the Upper Levels. I guess from a Transportation perspective- but it’s still horrible in Stave Lake. Upper Levels is closer to Vancouver and existing services.

No it's filtered there it doesn't come from another dam.

Question is, why stretch West Van bus service even thinner than it already is, when the Hollyburn/Cedardale/Dunderave area (with existing upgradeable bus routes) would suit the same kind of lowrises and townhomes just fine?

I think we all know the answer, but it's worth asking anyway.

It would cost too much to acquire properties in those areas is the most likely answer for the kind of density they could develop.

That's not how that works. TransLink, not West Van, provides bus service (for all practical purposes, I know about the Blue Bus, but they're contracted for TransLink).

Same with development demand- people will live wherever they can buy a decent home they can afford, not just West Van.

Yes, NIMBYs, but the thing is that densification and sprawling out isn't likely an either/or. (One of TransLink's Transit 2050 Scenarios (Automation-Derived Growth, I think it was?) has the population growing by 90% by 2050 (unlikely, but that's pretty much the upper possible boundary- after that I'd be worried about genetic engineering, but I'm getting off track) - and I'd like to point out that Vancouver is already falling vastly short of previously-made dwelling construction projections.
https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.ne...s_actual-1.png
https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog...n-projections/
My worry is that something WILL break and the current Urban Growth Boundary isn't enough to keep Vancouver's RE situation turning to SF levels of bad.
I may be wrong, (I live next to Willoghby, and have witnessed its transformation first-hand - just off Google Earth Historical View I'd suggest we've eaten through 2/5th of it since 2003, without doing any measurements)

Redevelopment is most likely to be focused on Ambleside due to the "Grand Bargain" problem (and as West Vancouver is planning). For West Vancouver, distrupting the hornet's nest too much could kill the YIMBY goose, so you have to be careful to only step on the ones that provide the most cost-benefit ratio.

If Point Grey accepts Townhomes and Lowrises in the future city-wide plan outside the arterials, I will concede that the NIMBY parts of the North Shore may be worth a 2nd look.
Yeah, you're right. You learn something new every day. The plant would have to be shut down if development encroaches on the Eagle Lake watershed. Maybe they could build a new park to encompass the Lake and watershed (about 1.71km2), considering the steep land it encompasses, but building up that far would inevitably bring some people in.

"West Van bus service" as in "bus service for West Van overall" - doesn't matter if it's TransLink, Blue Bus or CMBC, there's always going to be a finite amount of buses and/or drivers. Headways beyond Dunderave are only every 30 minutes as it is.

A big part of TOD is being on the way: the main transit corridor is Marine, so build on Marine and gather more and more ridership until there's cause to expand to 7-15 minute service. The new suburb can be as transit-friendly as possible, but it won't matter so long as it requires TransLink to waste resources on brand new Upper Lands lines instead of improving Marine... and then everybody is stuck with crappy 30-minute service.

Well, at least Point Grey has actual growth - it's a certain kind of achievement, being the only municipality in the metro to be shrinking in the middle of a housing crisis.
I'd argue that the Lower Mainland's sprawled as much as it needs to for the next century, that West Van's hardly going to make or break the supply problem on its own, and that by the time Ambleside's all built out and we have even 145% of 2020's population (let alone 190%) many of the NIMBYs will no longer be with us.

The reasons for West Van shrinking have a lot to do with electoral attitudes. City Council doesn’t really want to keep the city shrinking for obvious reason, and that was part of what spurred Cypress Village- it’s either accept a city without a long-term future, or go against your own people to try to build one.

Well, a piece of land ether size of New West is not small.

I would be sceptical that they NIMBYs would all die out and don’t just get replaced with new ones. Maybe reduce. Willowgbhy as a whole is about as large (~15 Km2), so it’s not exactly not going to make a dent either. I don’t think the housing situation would be any better if not for Willowgbhy.

Maybe there is the potential for a Density Only solution, but I don’t see it. Even Tokyo sprawls out slightly. http://atlasofurbanexpansion.org/cities/view/Tokyo

I guess East Maple Ridge and Silverdale are ‘in the way’ of bus services and WCE to Mission, as few as there are. But the distances are also much greater both to Vancouver and to anywhere else, with the developable area spread out between ALR land. Unless we get rid of that.

Pretty much nowhere else significant is really ‘in the way’.

Sometimes leadership involves making unpopular decisions. While I can sympathize with the politicians for once, politically convenient decisions like density in the mountains will cost the town (I hesitate to call it a "city") in the long run.

It's entirely possible that NIMBYs are recycled instead of replaced, but it's worth noting the vocal minority of West Van's young adults that came out in support of the B-Line. Whether they keep that attitude or they turn into senile reactionaries over time is anybody's guess, but there's hope.

Yeah, but Tokyo's also got the population of all of Canada. Personally I'd wait for the 3.5M or 4M mark (or at least a North Shore SkyTrain) before we consider building up the mountains.

I wouldn't call either suburb "transit-oriented." Cypress Village planners may be using TOD as a selling point, but that's not going to work in practice - the geometry is all wrong for buses and trains. Maybe a gondola.

They don't have to if there are better policies to upzone many of the current lower density neighbourhoods. West Vancouver is particularly notorious for stubbornly not changing their current zonings.

I don't think it should be developed, environmental concerns not withstanding, have any of y'all ever lived or driven through mountains? It's extremely time consuming, dangerous and higher altitudes have more miserable weather.

Where I used to live at one one point in the Kootenays, driving up or down one of the benches (basically places where the river used to crest back in the ice age) had a steep grade, and (school buses) had a hard time climbing them, totally gutless propane buses eventually got replaced with Diesels that could climb the hill at more than 10km/h. When it was snowy, entire portions of the bus route would just be skipped because it was too dangerous or difficult for the bus driver to go down the mountain.

To put it another way, there are plenty of other spaces that should be developed "upwards" before even considering this. We don't have 110 story towers in Vancouver, we have no reason to to consider more sprawl. Surrey sprawls because it's goal is to be "bigger than Vancouver" without the services of Vancouver. One major sign that a city is doing something very wrong is that there are any portable classrooms. Vancouver has vacancy problems causing them to consider closing the schools. Gee I wonder why that is, maybe because couples who want to have children have been priced out of the city.

Building up the mountain doesn't solve that. You'll be adding an additional hour to drive, and emergency services will simply not show up if the roads are treacherous.

Considering not that many Asian Cities are Vancouver's size- other cities with >2-3% sprawl per year that are fairly dense already:
http://atlasofurbanexpansion.org/cities/view/Vienna
http://atlasofurbanexpansion.org/cit...int_Petersburg


Well, neither East Maple Ridge nor the Upper Levels can be called places with decent services as is. I guess my main question would be what the worse poison would be. Closely-spaced homes on an area with likely inevitably windy roads or father-spaced ones with a better grid system and father from the city center?
Unless I guess you start dezoning ALR the underused/subdivided East Maple Ridge ALR parcels (most of them).

West Van still has a bit of (admittedly really low-quality land) above Horseshoe Bay. It might be a good enough Western Anchor to justify a Town Center on... Maybe. I don't even think the land is quality enough for that though, REALLY rugged.

See my earlier posts. I just don't believe Vancouver isn't going to sprawl at all now, or at 4M people. Maybe the Upper Levels are too important to remove (the viewcones exist for a reason...).

@Kisai: Surrey and Langley are sprawling and densifying in their town centers at the same time. Take a look around at the gentrification measures and new Apartment blocks in Langley City, or towers and SFU in Surrey Central.

Bad services very often happen in areas being densified. When are we getting that OV Elementary School? Remember how long it took to get a new school in International Village?

Vienna's half the area of Vancouver though, and Saint Petersburg's over twice our population. Again, not saying we won't need to grow out ever, just not anytime soon - if we do, it'll be a want, not a need, and it'll mean that somebody goofed.

Option C: rework the windy streets and develop from there. Surrey's in the process of straightening out their road network as they redevelop (Richmond too, though less intelligently); it's at least physically possible to convert Hammond or Cottonwood into a grid full of townhomes, if not politically.

Yeah, there's not a lot of good options for West Van if they don't want to take the nuclear option or wait the boomers out. But they have to know that building towers further and further up the mountains is worse than doing nothing.

Yeah, it’s not really feasible to find something that’s a perfect analogue for Vancouver. My point is that it’s not uncommon for major amounts of sprawl to happen even if you densify.

The RGS never tried to stop sprawl entirely, only slow it and redirect it. They keep moving the containment boundary outwards. http://www.metrovancouver.org/servic...mendments.aspx
But the RGS is overall very pro- density.


Yes, but now you’re ignoring my question. I’m not disagreeing with you that we should densify further. I’m asking what’s the worse poison.

Sure, but that's because Vienna and St Pete are relatively full; Vancouver isn't.

Think I'm looking at the motions wrong, because I'm seeing a lot of rezoning of existing space inside the boundary; the overall ALR and greenspace bordering the metro is still intact.

Re: Maple Ridge, that was my answer to the question - nobody should need to pick poisons at all. It's entirely possible to rebuild the town with grids near the centre AND further out.

Yes, yes you are. There's maps in the actual reports if you need something more visual. The expansions range from very small to fairly large.

That's just 3. There's more as you go down, but you get the idea.

Also:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/metro2...s/default.aspx
(though it somehow also contains large portions of the Upper Lands... :sly:)

But I guess, if you had to? :shrug:

Sometimes I wonder if anyone here ever lived in Vienna or a European city. Vienna has large sprawl, the city is only just over 400 square kms but the metro is significantly larger and the city in the 21st century stretches much much further then the metro. Half or more of the people who work in Vienna actually live in detached or row houses. Vienna has a fantastic transportation network that gets you to the city from upto 150 kms in any direction in a hour or less. Deffenitly within a 100 kms of Vienna those are all defacto suburbs and even crossing borders there is alot of back and forth movement. Those are the Surreys and Maple Rdges. Only difference is that Maple Ridge is a hour plus from downtown but only 35kms. Vienna stretches with its network and connects people 3 to 4 times as far in equal or less the travel time. There is a huge amount of villages and towns and cities that link to Vienna via rail and highways. These towns and cities and villages ARE the sprawling suburbs of Vienna and where many live. Yes Vienna is dense and has a lot of of apartments, but there is way more to Vienna then the core city. And that's the case for most European cities.

Got it, thanks. Though that same infographic goes on to say that "The Remaining Urban Lands in West Vancouver have limited development potential due to topographical constraints," so they aren't seriously considering the Upper Lands either.

At any rate, 20% of 1.1+ million (growth projected by 2040-50) is 220,000 people, or about 80-100k units/homes built on greenfield; Fleetwood or Cloverdale on their own have about 60k each. Sure looks like infill in Langley, the DNV, et al would be more than enough.

Farmland, small towns and interspersed woodland =/= North American suburbistan. Roughly half of metropolitan Vienna's population is within the city limits, as compared to a quarter of Vancouver's.

I know, except the 'Special Study Area' marker means they ARE seriously considering the idea. That's the point of being a special study area. It's just kind of interesting how that piece of land got there. One'd think they'd remove it and thus prevent it from bonking up their 'remaining land' numbers.

You forget that Fleetwood and Cloverdale by Surrey (I assume that you got your information from Wikipedia) are different than what the neighborhoods are usually defined as.

A better estimate is from the Metro Vancouver infographic page. Extrapolating the loss of remaining Urban Lands (and removing West Van's remaining lands, because other than Cypress Village, most of the Land is either undevelopable due to the 1200ft limit or very low quality- technically developable but likely low density only-ie. I don't trust them), there's 2570 ha left by 2050, assuming their numbers are correct, or about a 3rd.

That doesn't even account for the composition of those lands. Much of the Surrey Lands are reserved for industrial, for instance, or are extremely difficult to access (Maple Ridge, Brookswood).

Either way, you're starting to get to the point where by 2050, you want to probably start making big expansions to the UGB going forwards to keep things under control.

Side Note: The City of Vienna is also 4.5x the City of Vancouver in Area. It's actually LESS dense (4,326.1/km2 vs 5,492.6/km2 for Vancouver) because of that.

As I said Vienna stretches farther then its "metropolitan area". The fact is they have all housing forms and they have sprawl. It's not just Vienna city or Vienna metro, it's a much larger connected economic region thanks to continually improving infrustructure that brings more and more people closer together without changing the distance.

People always bring up some European city or Vienna and try to use it to support some view and ignore the fact these regions are much larger and very different from North America. There is more to them then the cities, more to them then the metros.

It's an infographic - give all the information, even the irrelevant stuff. Pretty sure that part is basically just "well, there's technically land available, but we don't recommend it."

What makes Fleetwood or Cloverdale different from other 'burbs? I'm not talking about zoning or definitions, I'm talking about how that is literally the land area required for a hundred thousand houses - and stuff like the DNV's Innovation District isn't even limited to SFHs (still think it's a bad plan, but what the hell, looks like the woodlands are goners anyway). Whether that and Langley's expansions - Walnut Grove, etc - count toward the 7,330 hectares or have already been subtracted, I do not know, but put them all together and you more or less have something the size and population of one of Surrey's towns.

True, Vienna's not really a 1:1 comparison; seems like it'd be what would happen if you kicked everybody out of the North Shore and SoF and shipped them into Richmond or Burnaby. Point remains, it's a whole lot more compact than what we're used to.

That's kind of the point. If Surrey and Maple Ridge were in Austria, they'd be ten little Aldergroves instead of Detroit.

If Maple Ridge would be in Austria it would have a 90-100kmph commuter rail and a 160-200kmph express line. You would be at Waterfront station in 15 min by express or 30 min by standard rail with 10 or more stops in between. Maple Ridge wouldn't be a far flung suburb, it would be just a extension of downtown and equivalent to say east Vancouver to live in. Mission would then be a suburb and Hope would be a Maple Ridge.

But anyways these comparisons bother me. Back on topic. I would much rather develop the ALR then the mountains which are a amenity to the growing region. Vancouver isn't self sufficient and never will be, the importance of the ALR is overblown even if I think not all should be developed. Having said that if you want to build up the mountain higher, I suppose go for it so long as you increase the accessibility to other similar areas (something that has absolutly not been happening for decades now). We doubled the people in the region but built almost zero trails and zero parking lots and zero access points to the near city parks/forests/lakes/mountains etc. Make them accessible. There is plenty of wild BC left that is nowhere near Vancouver and it will for ever be wild and hardly visited.

Make some gondolas too for people who can't walk. :rolleyes:

I mean, TBF, even the Provincial Parks Board wants to do that sort of thing to reduce overcrowding at the existing parks and infrastructure- the problem is money. Same thing with the Metro Parks Board. How in the world Surrey Bend still isn't anywhere near finished, and Pinecone Burke is actually LESS accessible than it used to be (due to trail degradation) is amazing.

But the issue is really money. I guess using some CACs for parks isn't a bad idea.

Ok, I can now make a proper response now that I've actually returned.

Thank you, someone actually gave a response I was looking for. I've already pretty much gave the response to the rest of the post before.

They're not that different (other that Cloverdale is horribly under-dense). The boundaries are pretty much layed out like Burnaby's Town Center Quadrants, though, and I didn't want to use the measurements because doing so doesn't account for things like Industrial Land Greenfield consumption (which will be a high portion of sprawl in terms of land area, and IS needed).

Why if the Innovation District bad again?

The # is updated for 2017, and the RGS was implemented in 2011. I accounted for that in my numbers.

Yes, but Vienna is also not a city with a perpetual housing crisis and difficulty fighting NIMBYs, both historically and nowadays. It also doesn't have the problem of an expanding Industrial Land inventory competing with everything else (which seems to be a problem largely unique to Vancouver in the developed world for the most part still).

SoF seem to have the most potential and actual expansion of industrial... and there's little to no motive for warehouses in the mountains.

Because we should be holding onto our greenfields, especially the ones with lousy transit coverage. We don't have any plans for a B-Line to Deep Cove in the near future... and the places that will get a B-Line are inexplicably untouched SFH.
If 20% of growth involves giving up more woodlands, then fine, but it should be a gradual process instead of a quick, opportunistic one.

Got it.

See above; I don't think West Van is a big factor in solving the industrial land shortage. And we're pushing back on the NIMBYs (many of whom will no longer be with us by 2040), so Vienna-like density isn't improbable for the metro.

Non industrial land sprawl dominates the current sprawl though in terms of
land so far, though, and making more room for that makes it much easier to prevent a Flavelle Mills 2.0 from happening.
More of the urban area of Brookswood, Ioco, or Port Kells could theoretically be converted to more industrial instead of the Upper Lands, and money from the Upper Lands transferred to them if they need more convincing.

Did I say it was going to be quick and opportunistic?

Well, If nothing else, San Fran would like to have a word with you about outlasting NIMBYs... and we’re going to have to probably still deal with them for the short to medium term.

Are you upset at Flavelle from an industry-->mixed-use perspective or from a controversial megaproject perspective? Either way, it's a large, abandoned site just six minutes from a SkyTrain station, so it's pretty hard to justify a factory/warehouse-only zoning.
I can see the other two, but Ioco - or anything beyond Eagle Ridge - is going mean a lot of industrial traffic on what amounts to residential side streets; that's not going to be fun for either party.

Did you? Don't think so - I'm just calling it as I see it.
Another good example is Keith and Mountain: mid/highrises next to an already choked interchange, on the opposite end from Phibbs. Plenty of run-down SFHs in-between that they could be redeveloping instead, but noooo. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of long-term thinking involved in West Van or the DNV, just cash grabs.

IIRC, most of California's problems also involve ignorant old people blocking everything; the new generations seem to alternate between supporting housing and protesting techies. Not only are we starting to ignore the boomers (in part because of what's happening in San Fran) in the short/medium term, but they're also starting to leave this plane of existence - I for one don't picture much of Kits Point living past 2035.

Sure, and their opposites usually bring up some Asian city as a justification as to why Vancouver needs to build over everything with monolithic skyscrapers. Equally unapplicable.

Yes, the former. The GVRD already made massive industrial dezonings in response to the Evergreen Extension before the Flavelle rezoning, basically covering all the land directly next to Port Moody station. Yes, it was 'abandoned'- ie vacated for a new tenant. The site is plenty large enough for a new, modern warehouse. If they want to play Concord and keep the site empty forever in hopes of a rezoning, no one's stopping them. That's my point though- Concord is tenacious enough to try that no matter the costs, but not many other developers. Waiting decades for a rezoning that never comes isn't cheap, and you discourage that by making it as unprofitable as possible. True, there are other ways you can do that.

It's also not 6 minutes, it's 10-15, though that's also partially because of the terrible connection to the other side of the rail tracks. But that's also why you shouldn't build on the other side of the rail tracks.

In my opinion, they should have done what was done at Sapperton and just left all the land on one side of the rail yard alone. Flavelle is next to an oil terminal and rail yard, for crying out loud. It's better as a buffer than a TOD.

I'd have used the Fraser Lands and Fraser Mills sites as the hills to die on, but those messes were made before the RGS, so I couldn't. Flavelle isn't that bad.



Ioco kind of has the problem where they literally can't develop anything on it right now aside from a couple of country mansions without new roads into the area. Problem is that extending David Ave (the preferred option) goes through a park... and industry isn't that job intensive for surface area. Thus, industry. Plus, there's a rail spur there. May as well encourage people to use it, and no one other than new industrial likely will. David Ave isn’t exactly a quiet residential street.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/port...road-june-2018


I don't get it. The Innovation District is light industrial-mixed offices-residential, something difficult to get on a redevelopment site (call me when they rezone SFH to industrial). 6-8 Stories is also unusually dense for greenfield.


Also, the Interchange area is actually part of a FTDA. Since the new interchange needed a lot of eminent domain to accomplish, I guess the idea was "Hey, since we have some land left over, may as well make money off it". The towers also seem to be moving south from the interchange, with new land assembly and demolition between Hunter and Fern. Can't confirm if it's a consistent trend without DNV providing good, up-to-date zoning maps, though. :shrug:

I was actually referring to this: https://newrepublic.com/article/1540...housing-crisis
The more things change...

There is one advantage for us though- there's not much land as accessible from the edges and people like living in cities and towers again. So you never know.

??? You mean Vin? That's not really so much opposite, though.

In that context, yeah, it's kind of opportunistic. Though I'd point out that without a rail spur or easy barge access, heavy industrial uses are limited anyway.

YMMV - I can cover about 100m a minute. And it's not like they can't build additional overpasses. And the oil terminal's separated by a mudflat. Much less than ideal, but not terrible either.
It's the same thing with West Van - the city wants to grow, residents don't, so the city takes the easy money and develops "empty space" instead. At least with Flavelle the plan calls for 178,000 square feet of light or creative industrial and 99,000 of offices.

David Avenue isn't exactly busy west of Johnson... and there isn't a route to the rail spur without removing houses or a salmon hatchery, either of which'd be a whole new can of worms. If they can widen Ioco Road and manage to only add SOV/semi traffic, then maybe.

Yet why on the greenfield? Especially when the B-Line ends at Phibbs; if the area around the exchange is an FTDA, that part should be the first to get converted to 6-8 floor light industrial/mixed-use.

Not the last time I checked. Seylynn Village ends at Fern, and there's only one or two developments near the exchange. One'd think there'd be For Sale signs everywhere like Cambie if there was a rezoning plan; an Innovation District on top of Phibbs would be much better, but it seems the DNV's also going for the easy money.

Absolutely. And at last check, most of San Fran's NIMBYism comes from people over fifty. Pushing back should get easier and easier over the coming years; they've got even less time than we do.

They can definitely get easy barge access. Rail Spurs can be built by the customer if and when they need it- Flavelle Obviously never did. It was an excuse.

The oil terminal's comparatively far from Flavelle as Flavelle is from Skytrain. The mudflat may or many not also become another issue for any potential residents, depending on mosquito density. :sly:

The CoV is preserving 'Less than Ideal' TOD industrial development sites from development, as is Burnaby and Langley (though forced in this case). But Port Moody? Free pass. :hell:

At least 2 of the houses in the area will have to be demolished upon any David Ave extension. It's literally 2 more. The fact David Ave isn't busy and yet an arterial is kind of why you want the extension in the first place. Again, the houses aren't the sticking point here and are miniscule compared to the problems relating to building through a park or widening Ioco.

...There's a RGS map with the FTDAs on the OP... North of Fern IS on the map. Problem is that it may be too good for the industrial there to survive on the long run without protection from the RGS (of which there isn't). They definitely should though- the area was actually originally zoned that way when the RGS was put in by the looks of things.
Yes, the fact that North Van won't bother trying to save the industrial land there and get an amendment to rezone it back is dumb. Though the answer is probably to do both, rather than just one or the other.

Also, putting new industrial near a TOD zone is kind of... not a great idea, even if you could here (you can't). Plus, if you wait too long, the nearby FTN might just try to snatch it from you. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/tsle...couver-reserve

The rest of the land is either just as far or is reserve or Port land.

Looks like spot rezoning, not mass rezoning.

The point was that the NIMBYs were recycled at least once before in San Fran, rearing their ugly head using different excuses.

Barge access is just fine - getting the barge to a depot like Second Narrows, that's going to be a problem.

Mudflats also attract things that eat mosquitoes, so it evens out. Fair point about relative distance (though SkyTrain accessibility can only improve), but overall it's still a useful mixed-use site; the River District's industrial neighbours haven't killed its desirability.

Fair enough, but I'd still question the need for additional heavy industry in what's practically the middle of nowhere when Surrey/Langley is both easier to build on and much better connected to the road/rail network.

Let's get this out of the way: light industrial is things like commercial printing, food packing, repair, carpentry and distribution centres; creative industrial is white collar like marketing, architecture, design, film/art/music studios and publishing.
Either way, you want that kind of industry near a TOD zone. That's why Vancouver/Burnaby/Langley is fighting to keep them; large factories like Molson are probably going to leave anyway, but there's a lot of smaller stuff important for a city that might stay if given enough protection.

I'm not contesting that Seylynn's part of the FTDA, I'm contesting the need to stop there and settle for spot-zoning low/midrises on the rest of it. Whether or not the Tsleil-Waututh get the greenfield and/or develop immediately (bad idea, given the lack of transit/amenities access), density could easily happen around Phibbs, but it isn't happening - if it were Vancouver or Burnaby, the entire area'd be either for sale, sold or under construction.

That's the case for the entire continent. First it was top-down racism, now it's bottom-up fear of change; this time around there's YIMBYism at the top AND bottom and a housing crunch.

?


The River District's industrial neighbors are both farther away and pretty inconspicuous. Warehouse/offices in Burnaby and light industrial trailer rental/repair and small ship repair (like Yachts and fishing boats) shops on the other side of the Fraser.


Brookswood is just as middle of nowhere. The problem with the lands that ARE easily accessible now, aside from Port Kells, is that they're pretty much already doomed or Indian Reserve (you can't make them do anything).

Problem is that there's no protection for the industrial/strip mall parts of Phibbs FTDA to be industrial under the RGS. That has to be secured first. The lack of mass rezoning in DNV is indeed a concern. That and the Marine Drive one is the closest they have to a DT zone, since I don't take Lynn Valley T. Center seriously. Interestingly, redevelopment is starting around their SFH districts first.

Langley I will reject and say that they wanted to remove all the industrial that was zoned in Willoughby due to the Carvolth Exchange, only to get slapped multiple times in the face by the RGS (TOL is responsible for a ridiculous # of proposed and completed RGS amendments and was one of the last to join the thing. It's the pissy child of the Metro Van club, and I say that as a person who lives in the thing. :shrug:)

Well, Seylynn (near the interchange or not) is part of the FTDA, all right. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/600-...eylynn-village

Yeah, San Fran is just the best case study because it's been best documented due to its infamy.