Quote:
Originally Posted by misher
I would be against view cones and protecting detached housing if I believed we had close to maximized our existing density.
But I know we haven't, we still have a ton of areas where commercial is 2-3 levels. Even downtown you will see this.
Viewcones honestly do improve the views. If you've been to that restaurant in QE park it looks pretty awesome, so my personal opinion is why touch them when we don't have to (right at this moment).
Rather than fight the battles with the detached house and viewcone groups, I believe the best choice moving forward is to drastically increase FSR in places of low conflict and other things that while smaller will help like decreasing parking requirements. We have enough low-density land in East Downtown, along Hastings, along Kingsway, along Broadway, Marpole, etc. that we can keep construction occupied for the next 30 years+ without touching a single detached house or viewcone. I belong we could build towers ontop of much of our industrial land and maintain warehouses below in areas like Granview and South East Marine. Hell we could build towers ontop of all our car dealerships like is planned for the Toyota downtown.
Maybe this viewpoint is contentious, but for me if possible I'd rather 90% of the population be happy with our density choices than have a fight where 60% of it shove it down the other 40%'s throat. Someone is going to be unhappy no matter what is done, so lets set our goals (increasing density) and find the way to do it while making the least amount of people upset. We can look at what happened to Chinatown as an example of what happens when we try to densify and a significant minority opposes it. I think most of us would be totally fine with those 7/11's, ramen places, pizza by the slice, and others along major streets closing down for a few years while they build a tower ontop.
And instead of charging for extra density, I think the CoV needs to take a long look in the mirror and instead charge extra to any building that doesn't build enough density. Perhaps a new high density zoning carrying carrying a fixed charge to build based on the square footage of the land instead of variable based on density? That way developers are encouraged to build high while the city received a fixed amount from each lot that it can use to pay for social or rental housing.
Vancouver needs to start looking at the next 50-100 years. It makes much more sense to build high now in half of Vancouver and leave the low for later then build a ton of medium everywhere we will just have to down later.
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I agree with you for the most part, like with the viewcones. I think they could still cut them in half without much damage to the Skyline. If anything, a bit of cutting into the viewcones makes a more interesting view.
Except people complain no matter where it's put. The businesses in Broadway are complaining because they're being gentrified out due to the new Skytrain extension.
The areas of (relative) low conflict are pretty much mostly limited the commercial/public land districts, and parts of Cambie.
Vancouver can continue like this for probably the next two decades TBF, there's still some open land on Broadway and Cambie, but beyond that? Hastings is too far away currently from transit for intensive development. The rest of the prime land is on residential land that refuses to be vacated, like Commerical-Broadway.
In other words, the NIMBYism means we're running into artificial shortages of land (esp. residential) close to the City Centre, increasing prices, and forcing people to commute longer, from the more development-friendly suburbs.
This is a much less efficient transportation pattern.
Going mixed industrial is a great solution that is unfortunately mainly limited to Industrial/Commercial, and is limited to effectively medium density (otherwise lease rates on the industrial section would get too high). The only place I've seen where that's been done is Mt. Pleasant and the Flats, due to being located right next to Downtown and Skytrain.
Adding this factor means that there's actually a lot more room for commercial than residential, at least proportionally to the norm.
Developers are already maxing out (and sometimes going over) the viewcones. My worry is that your proposal would just result in 'walls' of glass buildings, rather than interesting variations of tower structures, small bits of parkland, etc.
When the
West End of all places, right next to the CBD, is zoned
4 stories, something is seriously screwed up in Vancouver.
Honestly, I wish Vancouver never merged with Point Grey. It's different culturally from Vancouver Central proper (along with South Vancouver, to an extent).
Point Grey was always supposed to be a higher-end district from its inception, and is a likely source of mush of the NIMBYism, which then manifests itself if the polls.
Or maybe the NIMBYism will largely end in 20 years after a lot of the boomers die out.
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