[a very long weekend]

The mayor and council has all the power they want to exercise, but for a variety of reasons, all parties (NPA/COPE/VISION) have chosen not to exercise that power, to preside over the current system and let Planning run the show. Some of the reasons: it's a well oiled machine that sees developers pop money into campaign accounts, the system gives incumbent home/land owners massive (and growing) property values and this is very popular, the beneficiaries of system vote disproportionately, the current system keeps most neighborhoods completely free of intensification and this is popular with incumbent residents whether they own or not and, overall, the negatives of Vancouverism are not well-known because of short term thinking and a very low level of economic literacy among even housing activists.

The zoning system (which isn't just heights, but also parking minimums, minimum setbacks, minimum open space, etc.) - that is, the artificial land shortage that anchors the current system - forces most development to be expensive concrete mid/highrise and, thus, to come to market as condominium, so it's necessarily expensive. If land were cheaper because there were no artificial land shortage, then 'mom and pop' developers could buy a Vancouver special in southeast Vancouver, tear it down and throw up a parkingless 6 story woodframe building that could house 30-50 people. Rinse and repeat across the city to finally arrest the upward spiral of housing costs.

It would take a crusader to have any hope of doing this at the city level - all the incentives run the other way - but from the macro perspective of the province, housing costs are genuinely knee-capping provincial growth.