Building on the Water/ Reclaiming Land

[misher]

I've noticed that many major centres with expensive real estate will begin building on the water. An example is Hong Kong.

I notice that this has happened in Downtown somewhat but honestly not as much as it could and it seems like recently it has stopped.

Is there a reason we aren't pursing land reclamation more?

To be honest I always thought it would be better to just use old cruise ships to solve our homeless crisis

[logicbomb]

Probably because we still have plenty of former industrial lands and plenty of SFH's to upzone first.

[officedweller]

And the strict environmental regulations that apply.

I'm prettty sure the Vancouver Convention Centre West is built out over water
- with fish habitat below - rather than in-filling the harbour.

After Expo 86, the shoreline of False Creek was reshaped and some areas filled-in for the Expo were returned to water.

With Vancouver's shoreline being fronted by parks, there's little opportunity for building buildings on the water's edge or for in-filling.

At the Plaza of Nations redevelopment, the former BC Pavilion building will be demolished and the new building placed farther back from the shoreline to allow a continuous seawall pathway.

I'm not sure to what extent the shoreline will be modified at Northeast False Creek, but it will also have a seawall pathway at the water's edge.

[Vin]

The whole of Richmond, with the exception of Steveston (or perhaps that, too was reclaimed in the past), is pretty much reclaimed land, no? We have been doing this forever.

[officedweller]

Not really, it's a natural river delta.

[jollyburger]

Well the base of Main Street was all part of False Creek in the past if you look at old maps so there has been lots of reclamation. The Marine Building used to be next to the water so you can imagine everything new down there next to the water is on piles or over water. And Granville Island is all man made.

They built dykes to keep the water out of Richmond but I doubt there has been much land reclamation.



https://www.vancourier.com/community...ing-1.23101051

[EastVanMark]

We definitely could build out on to the water (and many cities have). However our decision to built tiny 2 lane (one way each way) horse and carriage roads in that area would be a problem. The other side of the down town peninsula is residential, and there would not be much room anyways, so that is out of the question.

[CanSpice]

A bunch of the land is also owned by the Port of Vancouver. There are also a ton of regulations surrounding protecting the environment of the Fraser, movement of vessels, and that sort of thing, that really scare off developers because that sort of thing takes time and costs money.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Don't forget the Stanley Park Causeway. We've done plenty of reclamation.

Question is, why new land for developments when we still have plenty of existing land? Once we're packed wall to wall like HK and Singapore, sure, but that's a long way away.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

Well the base of Main Street was all part of False Creek in the past if you look at old maps so there has been lots of reclamation. The Marine Building used to be next to the water so you can imagine everything new down there next to the water is on piles or over water. And Granville Island is all man made.

Yeah, but wrt man-made land created by in-filling, that was a different era
- when people didn't care about the environment.

All of False Creek Flats is in-filled tidal mud flats.
Look at the protest over expansion at DeltaPort that would affect the tidal mud flats (and the bird populations) down there.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Question is, why new land for developments when we still have plenty of existing land? Once we're packed wall to wall like HK and Singapore, sure, but that's a long way away.

Yeah I remember an interesting idea for China / HK (it was a long time ago) where they were talking about building a pyramid shaped structure on stilts over a harbour. It would become a small car-less city with housing, retail and offices. I'm guessing nothing came of it or we'd all know about it.

[Sheba]

Hong Kong is planning a $60 billion city in the sea nearly everyone opposes

Pesky environmentalists might say this isn’t the best time to build a gigantic new city in the sea—Hong Kong’s leaders would beg to disagree.

The local government wants to build a series of costly artificial islands totaling 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres)—the largest engineering project it has ever attempted—to house up to 1.1 million people. This development is slated to take place on and around Hong Kong’s biggest island, Lantau, mostly made up of country parks. A precious green lung of mangroves and forested areas, Lantau is a reminder of another kind of Hong Kong life, free of the high-rises clustered together in more cramped parts of the city, and home to small villages that manage to linger on.

The project is slated to cost about HK$500 billion (US$60 billion)—about half of Hong Kong’s fiscal reserves of HK$1.1 trillion (US$140 billion)—if it doesn’t go over budget in its quest to make room for more businesses, recreational centers and other infrastructure. While the idea is not short of ambition, currently it lacks pretty much everything else—including public support.

“This is Hong Kong people’s money,” Jeremy Tam, a legislator of the opposition Civic Party, told Quartz. “Generations of Hong Kong people have built up healthy reserves. Which government puts more than half its total reserves into just one single project?” A poll conducted by Tam’s party found that 60% of respondents were worried the plan would exhaust the city’s reserves.

The proposal to expand on and around Lantau, a development plan long held dear by the Hong Kong government, has been floated vaguely since the mid-1980s. Then in 2014, the government came out with a project to reclaim 1,000 hectares near the island under the name East Lantau Metropolis, or ELM. A public consultation exercise was launched in 2016 after massive opposition to the idea, but the results of that exercise have not yet been made public.

Even so, in October, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam announced in her annual policy speech that she’s going to push for the creation of ELM under the name Lantau Tomorrow Vision, now nearly double in size. Lam said the new land development is needed for both population increase, and “to thin out” dense areas in a city known for expensive, small flats. The government plans to seek funding in the new year for feasibility studies.

Lam described the future of Lantau as a “Double Gateway,” connecting Hong Kong via a new bridge to the southern mainland, where Chinese authorities are trying to develop an innovation hub called the Greater Bay Area to rival San Francisco’s Bay Area (the other gateway is the international airport Lantau is home to).

...

[giallo]

HK is the poster child of a city that needs more land to build more housing. Their rental/homeowner crisis makes Vancouver's look cute.

Building around Lantau Island is a bad look though. HK is hyper dense, and its these rural parts of the city that keep people sane. As cool as the urbanity is in HK, try living in a shoebox in Wanchai for a couple of years.

[fredinno]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Hong Kong is planning a $60 billion city in the sea nearly everyone opposes

Removing the park on Lantau Island is a better idea than this massive megaproject. Because at least it won't cost $60 Billion dollars.

Also, isn't the HK housing crisis largely caused by the government scalping developers for land, since they own all of it?

[fredinno]

Originally Posted by misher

I've noticed that many major centres with expensive real estate will begin building on the water. An example is Hong Kong.

I notice that this has happened in Downtown somewhat but honestly not as much as it could and it seems like recently it has stopped.

Is there a reason we aren't pursing land reclamation more?

To be honest I always thought it would be better to just use old cruise ships to solve our homeless crisis

Large-scale reclamation in Vancouver means removing the banks, which would decimate migratory bird populations, so it's a big no-no. The Roberts Banks Terminal expansions are controversial enough.

Also, another thing people didn't mention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumas_Lake

"umas Lake (Halq’eméyle: Semá:th Lake, Nooksack: Semáts Xácho7, (Level Place Lake).,[1]) was a shallow freshwater lake surrounded by extensive wetlands. The traditional territory of the Sumas First Nation, a band of the Sto:lo Nation,[2] it was located between Sumas and Vedder Mountains, midway between the present-day cities of Chilliwack and Abbotsford, British Columbia. The lake supported sturgeon, trout, salmon, grizzly bears and geese. Its wetland habitat was a destination for migrating birds and a breeding ground for both fish and waterfowl. Flocks of white-fronted goose as well as whistling swan and Hutchins geese also used the lake. Its partially sandy banks also provided for sturgeon spawning grounds. The lake supplied food to the Sumas Band, and their life ways were intimately connected to it.[3] In the late 1800s, the lake drew the attention of various naturalists within the growing European populations engaged in the work of cataloging the flora and fauna of the New World.
Having been sold off to non-Indigenous settlers in the 1930s for $60- $120 an acre, the former lake bed[3] has now been transformed into agricultural, residential and commercial zones. It lay between Sumas Mountain and its American counterpart, Sumas Mountain, Washington, part of the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The lake extended into Whatcom County, Washington, necessitating a railway trestle of the British Columbia Electric Railway across it from Huntingdon to the foot of Vedder Mountain, which remains today as a dyke. "

[Tetsuo]

Bosa Pier in New West counts as building on the water, the flat parts of New West is largely filled in/reclaimed land, hence pile driving.