Viewcones

[spaceprobe]

https://vancouversun.com/business/lo..._autoplay=true

[Vin]

A petition is in order for those who support taller buildings?

[officedweller]

Opinion: Arbitrary view cone height restrictions are strangling Vancouver's potential
http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vanco...omic-potential

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Opinion: Arbitrary view cone height restrictions are strangling Vancouver's potential
http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vanco...omic-potential

LOL, the argument he uses his ridiculous:

..At times, it even amounts to an affront to common sense, especially when the city is facing an affordability and supply crisis with office and residential space...

We are at the start of an epic real estate bust. The notion that we can build our way to affordability with viewcone-busting towers will seem like a quaint relic in a couple years.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by whatnext

LOL, the argument he uses his ridiculous:

..At times, it even amounts to an affront to common sense, especially when the city is facing an affordability and supply crisis with office and residential space...

We are at the start of an epic real estate bust. The notion that we can build our way to affordability with viewcone-busting towers will seem like a quaint relic in a couple years.

While I actually agree that we are finally on the cusp of a bust...

...

This isn't the first time that it has seemed this way over the last 18 years, only to rally up to new highs in the subsequent years.

It also missed the big picture - maybe a bust comes, but how do we solve this issue long term, 10, 20 years out?

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by whatnext

LOL, the argument he uses his ridiculous:

..At times, it even amounts to an affront to common sense, especially when the city is facing an affordability and supply crisis with office and residential space...

We are at the start of an epic real estate bust. The notion that we can build our way to affordability with viewcone-busting towers will seem like a quaint relic in a couple years.

He also mentions office first, which does have a supply crisis artificially made worse by the viewcones limiting tower heights in the heart of the CBD. 1133 Melville looks to become the poster child of this problem.

[Vin]

Nowhere in the world, especially in North America, can you find secondary cities growing so much within such a short period of time that even the tallest towers are going to be built in adjoining secondary cities. Vancouver is really pushing opportunities away from its core. It says a lot about the backward mentality of Vancouver residents/City council and their support of viewcones and other business-busting policies. Everything is out there, stark for people with opened eyes to see.

[logan5]

Burnaby or Surrey or anywhere else is gaining absolutely nothing by having the tallest towers in the Metro region. In fact, tall towers make housing more expensive.

These towers could be built in 12 to 20 story mid-rise forms, such as what we see in Chinatown where the net densities are actually higher than what you see in Brentwood and Metrotown. It's absurd that people are expected to pay half a million dollars for a studio size apartment in Metrotown. It's also interesting to note that these studio apartments, located on the lower floors tend to be more expensive (per sq ft) than the larger suites located on the higher floors. Makes me think that the studio owners are subsidizing the cost of the larger units with a better view.

All in all towers are a rip off, and in most cases, completely unnecessary. Start building ground oriented units now and save consumers 100's of thousands of dollars.

[jlousa]

Wow i agree with Logan. Let the suburbs have their tall towers, they aren't better for it. Richmond has easily the best built form of all the burbs (don't confuse the other issues that plague Richmond with it's built form). The citizens have spoken and for better or worse they want the view cones. Sure some of them don't make a lot of sense now, but we literally just revisited this subject and only slight changes were made. We can still build a great city around them, heck I'll go as far to say that we can build an even better city with them in place.
The city should concentrate on building out the rest of the city and using midrises/stacked townhouses/row houses is going to be the answer, not pockets of towers like they've been doing. Hope the next council can start that push.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Wow i agree with Logan. Let the suburbs have their tall towers, they aren't better for it. Richmond has easily the best built form of all the burbs (don't confuse the other issues that plague Richmond with it's built form). The citizens have spoken and for better or worse they want the view cones. Sure some of them don't make a lot of sense now, but we literally just revisited this subject and only slight changes were made. We can still build a great city around them, heck I'll go as far to say that we can build an even better city with them in place.
The city should concentrate on building out the rest of the city and using midrises/stacked townhouses/row houses is going to be the answer, not pockets of towers like they've been doing. Hope the next council can start that push.

You must agree though that limiting office tower heights to 7 floors at what will become one of our busiest transit hubs (Cambie and Broadway) is not the best use of that location. One would think that having as much office space directly next to a major transit station as reasonably possible is a more environmentally friendly approach. Also as we all know unlike housing offices tend to prefer to cluster together due to work interactions between companies.

Hence why even in many older European cities we still see office districts that are taller than anything we have in Vancouver.

For residential towers I can understand the argument for more mid rise density over greater portions of the city, but I am against arbitrarily limiting office tower heights, especially near our major transit stations / hubs.

Or, simply put, if the downtown peninsula ever builds a new tallest tower, I hope it is an office tower. The higher buildings policy really seemed to hint towards that, which made me happy, but now what angers me is that these higher building sites seem to be undercut now by new park shadowing policies. So that view cone review / higher buildings policy, domed skyline plan seem to have been a waste of time and money now.

[jlousa]

Sure 7flrs might seem small next to a hub, but 7flrs only tells part of the story. If it's 7fsr that's quite a bit of density if it's only 3fsr then I agree we should be building more density. We tend to lose sight that we can't just bunch residential and commercial density at every station as much as we think we should. The lines were built to transport people from the region as a whole, the system is build to feed these lines, Not just the cluster of towers popping up around some of the stations.
Ideally we'd actually see the Metro vision of multiple centres come to fruition and then commute patterns would be more distributed making better use of the existing roadways and transit infrastructure. Problem is the the town centres are more focused on building residential and less on commercial.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

You must agree though that limiting office tower heights to 7 floors at what will become one of our busiest transit hubs (Cambie and Broadway) is not the best use of that location. One would think that having as much office space directly next to a major transit station as reasonably possible is a more environmentally friendly approach. Also as we all know unlike housing offices tend to prefer to cluster together due to work interactions between companies.

Hence why even in many older European cities we still see office districts that are taller than anything we have in Vancouver.

For residential towers I can understand the argument for more mid rise density over greater portions of the city, but I am against arbitrarily limiting office tower heights, especially near our major transit stations / hubs.

Or, simply put, if the downtown peninsula ever builds a new tallest tower, I hope it is an office tower. The higher buildings policy really seemed to hint towards that, which made me happy, but now what angers me is that these higher building sites seem to be undercut now by new park shadowing policies. So that view cone review / higher buildings policy, domed skyline plan seem to have been a waste of time and money now.

Here we go again. London's busiest tube station is Kings Cross. Here's the surrounding neighbourhood, not a tower in sight:

[IMG]kingscross by whatnextyvr, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Metro-One]

Haha, yep, no towers in London.

Oh wait, there are 19 towers (many of them office) taller than Vancouver’s tallest in London (complete / UC / proposed) many of them in the financial districts also near major transit stations. Including 2 supertalls.

And while we are at it, London currently has 43 towers over 150 metres Completed / UC / proposed.

So yeah, taller towers really must have no merit even though so many can be found in a a 2000 year old classical European city. Vancouver doesn’t have be old world built form excuse.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Haha, yep, no towers in London.

Oh wait, there are 19 towers (many of them office) taller than Vancouver’s tallest in London (complete / UC / proposed) many of them in the financial districts also near major transit stations. Including 2 supertalls.

And while we are at it, London currently has 43 towers over 150 metres Completed / UC / proposed.

So yeah, taller towers really must have no merit even though so many can be found in a a 2000 year old classical European city. Vancouver doesn’t have be old world built form excuse.

And yet your dictum if “it’s a busy transit station there must be tall towers” doesn’t apply there.

[Metro-One]

IMO it is the best general use of land around a major transit station / hub, yes, especially in a city / area that doesn't have centuries among centuries of existing built urban form.

Is there any urban form that is universal throughout the world? No. There are major cities without subways / skytrains even though in general they are a good aspect of urban built form.

I have been to many a major transit hubs where they do crowd large office towers / complexes / residents within the vicinity. Is this a 100% rule? No. But it really feels that you are pulling out a straw man argument here.

Arbitrarily limiting building heights around the future Broadway / Cambie transit hub simply to protect views of the mountains from City Hall is an illogical over-bloated bureaucratic policy IMO.

Also, not everything that a European city does at every location is necessarily ideal. Believe it or not but the idea the European cities are perfect urban utopias without any flaws is a fallacy that needs to die.

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Haha, yep, no towers in London.

Oh wait, there are 19 towers (many of them office) taller than Vancouver’s tallest in London (complete / UC / proposed) many of them in the financial districts also near major transit stations. Including 2 supertalls.

And while we are at it, London currently has 43 towers over 150 metres Completed / UC / proposed.

So yeah, taller towers really must have no merit even though so many can be found in a a 2000 year old classical European city. Vancouver doesn’t have be old world built form excuse.

Exactly.

Just came back from London, and what they've got going on tower wise is impressive. In London, they are limited by having to protect some buildings from Roman times, but yet still manage to construct some really impressive districts with some impressive buildings in and around them, so if they can do it Vancouver certainly can with their buildings dating WAY back to 1945

[rofina]

Originally Posted by EastVanMark

Exactly.

Just came back from London, and what they've got going on tower wise is impressive. In London, they are limited by having to protect some buildings from Roman times, but yet still manage to construct some really impressive districts with some impressive buildings in and around them, so if they can do it Vancouver certainly can with their buildings dating WAY back to 1945

The issue in Vancouver, was, is, and will continue to be the countless blocks of single family homes within minutes of the core.

Its a joke and an affront to the densification push.

[Chikinlittle]

I likely have missed it somewhere in this thread, so I apologize if it is written somewhere above, but what is the case being made that has made the City of Vancouver breach its own view cones policy that was just recently revised after thorough consultation?

Does PavCo as a Provincial Crown Corp have anything to do with it?

[Metro-One]

That is kind of a special case along NEFC.

Essentially it goes like this, the city has proposed a few taller towers as part of the NEFC essentially because the cost has skyrocketed north of 500 million and with so much of the land being put aside as parkland they need a few taller towers to help recoup costs.

At the same time PavCo proposed their own tower of similar height adjacent to where these taller towers will stand, which has been approved as long as it is all rentals.

That issue is separate from what we were discussing above.

[whatnext]

So Council approved this despite the overwhelming opposition but only after Councillor Louie made a motion that the building must be 100% rental:


http://www.vancourier.com/real-estat...ews-1.23378937