Quote:
Originally Posted by BaddieB
Vancouver is definitely going to surpass 1 million by 2050 with the rate of development with the Broadway Plan and new TOD zones (which will probably stay around even if they are scrapped provincially). Vancouver has been outbuilding Surrey for the past few years and this is a trend that will definitely continue as City Hall tilts more pro-development.
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Agreed. One thing that I started noticing is even in areas like East Van along 1st avenue, you can see old houses being torn down and replaced with multi-storey buildings. That can increase density super quickly in an area.
Part of the challenge in Surrey is the large amounts of spaces so a lot of the development is still townhouse/rowhome centric. We're only in the past 5 years starting to see a pick-up in low/medium/high rise development in areas like Surrey Central and Guildford with proposals in other areas finally.
So definitely if Vancouver maintains pro-development push to address the housing crisis, it will likely continue to grow faster than Surrey population wise.
A lot of people see % population increases and think that means catching up but that isn't always the case because it is % of existing. So Vancouver can have a much lower % of population increase but the actual number is > Surrey and other cities simply because they have more population.
For those confused, 10% of 100,000 (10,000) is a smaller number than 5% of 250,000 (12,500). Most people I find have no idea how to read statistics and go "10% > 5% therefore the first is growing faster."
Surrey still has a higher percentage of population growth than Vancouver by a fair amount, but Vancouver has a much higher base population so it's lesser growth number still translates to more actual humans and therefore faster population growth.
I was down by Vanier Park just on Sunday (first time downtownish area in honestly a few years since I live out in the Fraser Valley) and I was floored at the growth around Kits, Main near Science World, Broadway, etc. Like I said above, even driving down 1st Ave was pretty wow just in a few years.
Now if Vancouver can just solve it's ridiculous permitting and development charges that make all those units double or more the price of equal everywhere else in the region, then there'd be no excuses.
Then again, clearly there are some people on this planet that can afford $2 million townhouses I guess so what do I know.