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@reillywood 's account for posting bad takes about cities
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined August 2011
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Pinned Tweet
The majority of Vancouver's land is zoned for residential use but forbids apartment buildings.
http://t.co/mcfBLiNhuZ
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I'd like to issue a lifetime achievement award to this meme; in just months (?) it's done more to explain housing politics than all of our efforts combined.
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drawing an 800m line from Commercial-Broadway station... OMG did the province really just upzone all this suburbia!?!
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idk man. Vancouver's West End is largely ugly 1970s concrete towers put up without much design/planning oversight, and it's one of the best neighbourhoods in the country
Density without design excellence isn't liveable.
Design excellence without density isn't sustainable.
Density + design excellence is the urbanism sweet spot.
Mirvish Village gets both right.
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The charming little garden shop in my neighbourhood that that our planning says shouldn't exist (it's grandfathered, if they ever shut down for 90 days the whole property goes back to residential forever)
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Quick-and-dirty look at how the transit-zoning legislation will affect East Van. That's a lot more people who will get to live near Trout Lake with a 10 minute train ride to downtown 🥰
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A remarkable photo of Vancouver by u/cheerioface on Reddit:
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Vancouver council yesterday, Gregory Henriquez (prominent architect) on the balcony requirements staff tried to impose on his mass timber project: "This is something that isn’t written down anywhere, that has been pulled out from ex nihilo, from nowhere"
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Tokyo (23 wards) overlaid on Metro Vancouver. Tokyo is 9.3M people, mostly in lowrises. Don't ever tell me Vancouver is limited by geography
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This 17-unit Seattle building on a small lot (2700 square feet) owns. Before and after photos
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Uh, why is the Vancouver Sun publishing op-eds by a literal white supremacist?
Riley Donovan: The unintended consequences of Bill 44 are piling up
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A quiet Tokyo (Adachi-ku) neighbourhood. You can have density with lowrises, but not with huge streets+setbacks
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Things you could build on a 6000 sq. ft. West Side lot, exactly 1 century apart:
1912: a gorgeous 25-unit 3.5 storey apartment building
2012: a house
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Commercial-Broadway Station, Vancouver. Intersection of 2 SkyTrain lines, one of the busiest stations in Western Canada. So stoked that the province is finally forcing the city to allow apartments+condos around here
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I have now done 2 separate TV interviews with the same reporter in support of 1 local development, 4.5 years apart. We won WW2 in less time than it takes to get apartments built in Vancouver
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Vancouver has already figured out how to do attractive midrises with greenery and ground-oriented homes on quiet streets, now we just need to allow them in more than a handful of areas.
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Still think this is one of the wildest things Vancouver planners have done in recent years:
1. Allow a bunch of condos along a train line and arterial road
2. Write a unique zoning bylaw for every building... with commercial uses banned in every one
It is astounding that in Vancouver's new "corridor of urbanism," with thousands of condos, there is just ONE storefront business.
How many residents at 33rd and Cambie actually walk to shopping or services?
This lack of complexity leads to car dependency.
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An issue I have kinda been radicalized on recently: Vancouver planners make multifamily housing go through a subjective design review at the DP stage (i.e. even when there's no rezoning needed).
The feedback is not always especially actionable; it's often archibabble like this
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A modest proposal: turn some of Vancouver’s empty alleys near train stations into vibrant streets
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The usual anti-housing forces are lining up already; Andy Yan's doing his "who can say if we really need more housing?" schtick but I loved Eby's response:
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for your convenience, I have highlighted the bit that 90% of all Vancouver Discourse™️ is focused on
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My intuition for why single stair reform is good: more corner units (w/ light+air from multiple sides and better layouts)
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Commercial-Broadway is one of the best locations for transit in Western Canada, but much of the land nearby is planned as if it were suburbia
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"we banned small-lot buildings then made big buildings look like multiple small ones" is one of those things you can't unsee
Vancouver thinks "fine-grained" streetscapes means requiring assembly into large monolithic buildings, but then using "visual elements to break up the facade". (This is an example of one of the better versions of this, but it's still not great.)
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Another daycare just got killed by Vancouver planning staff. How's the daycare file going,
@LisaDominato
and
@MikeKlassen
?
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It’s remarkable how slow+broken the north-south bus routes in Vancouver are. On a recent weekday it was faster to walk ~25 min uphill from the Skytrain than wait for a
#3
.
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Great news for the environment, everybody: Tsawwassen Mills (new car-oriented mega-mall outside Vancouver) is LEED Certified
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there's a funny thing about Vancouver breweries where by virtue of being in industrial zones, they can have patios that are dramatically more pleasant than restaurants/bars in commercial zones (which all have tons of cars speeding by, by design)
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Pleased to report that Fraser Street will soon have 121 new rental apartments, despite
@DonDavies
's attempt to block them
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Andy Yan (lol): “They can say that they get rid of parking - get rid of parking! I think what they’ll discover is that parking is needed”
New rules introduced by the B.C. government will set height minimums and lower parking requirements for developments near transit hubs like SkyTrain stations.
@AlissaMThibault
reports.
READ MORE:
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If I were an elected official with the power to change Vancouver’s bylaws, I would simply do that instead of blaming other people for following the bylaws.
“Vancouver councillors promise action after daycare's rejection”. Worth noting same Board of Variance who squashed 8 desperately needed childcare spaces due to regulations, had no problem ignoring regulations to allow multiple cannabis stores near schools.
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I want to get people excited about the untapped potential of Vancouver's laneways. We have an abundance of narrow, quiet, walkable roads and we just need to do something with them!
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I like photos of Vancouver from before the trees grew in, because they make you realize that making a neighbourhood look nice is like 90% adding the right plants and 10% how the buildings look
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The Vancouver Achievement (world's only transit-oriented Costco)
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Thinking about that one really long house in Strathcona, and how you’d never notice it from the street
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Hidden near the Expo Line platform at Waterfront Station: a 1989 poster advertising the extension to Columbia Station in New Westminster
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This tweet bothers me because Vancouver's zoning has explicitly+intentionally concentrated residential development on commercial streets for decades. Rebecca's one of the only people who could fix that, and instead she's scaremongering about provincial legislation.
While I agree w/ increase density around transit hubs, the provincial legislation could have significant unintended consequences.
Highest & best use (aka “air tax”) has crippled small businesses.
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breaking my promise to stop posting Burnaby towers poking out of the fog
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I just watched the UDP meeting chair ask that the Point Grey Safeway redevelopment "consider the history of the site in the creation of a greater sense of place and identity for the project"
There are 13 CoV staffers on this meeting that has gone on for 3+ hours
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thinking about this 1905 building and all the ways in which today’s zoning says “actually, this is is bad”
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I'd like to see more acknowledgment that house-rich cash-poor homeowners are one transaction away from simply being rich renters.
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This is a really good map of BC's recent transit upzonings. Quick thread of single-family neighbourhoods that now have to allow apartments, starting with King Edward Station (3 stops from downtown)
The TOA map now includes parcels for the 104 official designations!
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6 days of council+staff time on 1 social housing building. 6! It almost doesn't matter whether they vote yes, they can't address a housing crisis at this pace.
We should focus on reform at the provincial level, so we don't have to play this stupid game 1 building at a time.
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East 11th Ave just west of Commercial-Broadway station. Houses being replaced with houses, because after 36 years of SkyTrain we still haven't legalized apartments here
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What "Downtown Vancouver" means to me vs what it means to my suburban relatives. I think.
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unpopular opinion: if you could afford to buy a home in recent years, you can probably afford a 25% price drop
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1977: Jean Swanson (current Vancouver councillor) rails against federal rental incentives (Assisted Rental Program) , urges city to ban apartments in Grandview to keep ARP apartments from replacing older “family” housing.
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Vancouver Specials vs the houses that were built before zoning 😔
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@rebeccaleebligh
Councillor, could you remind me who is responsible for the zoning that puts nearly all new density on arterial streets (where businesses are)? Like, which elected officials would be responsible for fixing that?
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This seems too good to believe - massive, massive upzonings near SkyTrain stations. Please tell me there's no catch!
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visited Brentwood station last night... kinda wanted to dunk on the Amazing Brentwood™️, but then I came home to the miserable public realm that is Commercial-Broadway and now a big outdoor mall is sounding pretty good
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thinkin' about the hotel situation near BC Children's Hospital which provides services for the entire province (the situation: no actual hotels allowed)
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Vancouver froze its land use in amber in the 1920s; apartments were only allowed in areas that already had apartments. The details of our planning have changed since, but those broad strokes have been unchanged for nearly a century
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Covered sidewalk with shops+restaurants in Tokyo. It's weird how rain is a core part of PNW identity but we have so little covered outdoor space
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it's unfortunate that a guy whose main skill is problematizing everything and does not actually like cities is many reporters' go-to source for quotes
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New blog post: Why does Vancouver have 895 Zoning Districts?
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when serious Vancouver urbanists say “A big reason Shaughnessy is not becoming more dense is that wealthy people have the money to keep it that way”, I wonder if they’ve looked across the street
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@SeanFraserMP
Thank you minister; I really, really appreciate the feds pushing our cities to do better. They can't be trusted to fix the housing crisis on their own.
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The province is likely going to push municipalities to do better on housing. I can't overstate how important it will be to support these measures; the housing crisis doesn't stop at municipal boundaries and we can't fight the same battle in every single city.
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visiting family in Maple Ridge and man, we just keep sprawling out into the forest huh
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Really hard to exercise tweeting restraint when gorgeous no-setback midrises are dime-a-dozen in central London
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imo BC Children's Hospital should be able to build healthcare facilities and daycares without jumping through Vancouver's 1000 hoops
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I appreciate seeing this (correct) take so clearly stated. It paints a pretty dismal picture of municipal governance!
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@MikeKlassen
Councillor, this was an *appeal* to an independent board. Before that, the daycare was rejected by the Director of Planning - and YOU control the zoning that forces daycares to get her approval.
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The best lil' apartment building in Strathcona (Vancouver).
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In which the CBC calls Bill Tieleman a "critic" and "organizer" without noting that he is being paid to oppose housing. Not great.
A rally was held in Vancouver Saturday opposing the city's draft plan that would add density to a centrally located 860-hectare area of the city.
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Andy Yan: it's concerning that the province is making cities build more, maybe the new construction will be in low-income neighbourhoods
Also Andy Yan: it's bad that West Van and Oak Bay are included
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This 1974 East Van home on a 13’ lot owns. We should have allowed these everywhere.
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This is a classic Vancouver move: you (a politician) get to say you allowed X, but you allow so few that there's little risk of political blowback.
Worked for laneway houses, duplexes, and now multiplexes
Big glaring problem with Vancouver's proposed multiplex policy is its profound lack of ambition.
Proposes only a 16% increase in allowable housing floor space and is intentionally calibrated to ensure uptake is slow.
Obviously we need *way* more than 150 multiplexes per year.
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I hadn't realized until yesterday that Vancouver's Climate Emergency Action Plan emission targets are *not* per capita. That means a house with 1 family is better for hitting our targets than an apartment building with 10 😵💫
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I think a lot about how literally everyone wishes they had more floor space and limiting floor space is one of our main planning tools
Debating with friends over whether this city is uniquely bad at having indoor mingling spaces for a group of, say, 8-15 people.
Like when you want to do drinks/food/board games with a bunch of people, but nobody has enough space because you're a Millennial in Vancouver.
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I want to show you a *big* reason why Tokyo is so affordable relative to other world cities (h/t
@alexcecchini
)
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To be clear, there is high-level policy that requires balconies... but it does sound like staff made up the exact numbers. Was an interesting hearing, Henriquez was clearly pissed at planning staff
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Vancouver needs to stop patting itself on the back for allowing a trickle of bespoke, awkward, expensive-to-build laneway houses when things like this are possible
Case Study-Jansen Court by CAST architecture
Single stair, 4 story (1 down) 10 unit studio apt, developed on the back half of a 30' lot.
The complexity of regulations are magnified on a small project, making it quite the puzzle. We are right up against nearly every code limit.
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These aren't even towers, just small+short apartment buildings. You should be able to build one by following written rules, but instead you have to play the "what do staff feel like today?" game.
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World's tiniest crane building a no-setback no-parking building on a narrow street. Koenji, Tokyo.
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sometimes I consider updating these maps but they look basically the same today so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vancouver allows so little housing next to the biggest university in Western Canada.
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Starting a thread of cool tiny-but-dense buildings in Tokyo. Play along by counting all the regulations (parking, minimum lot size, FAR, height...) they break in your city. Great tile facade near Yoyogi-Hachiman station:
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Man, my entire home uses ~300 sqft of land and people are losing it over the prospect of paying $42/mo for ~200 sqft to store their (new, polluting) cars
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I see the NIMBYs in my neighbourhood (led by a former prosecutor) are using "no daycare" as a talking point to oppose this when the daycare was removed as part of the "appease the NIMBYs" changes
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I don’t particularly want to do housing activism anymore, but these chuckleheads fighting rental apartments next to 2 Skytrain lines are probably going to drag me back in
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Feeling better about housing than I have in the last decade. The BC NDP are killing it lately.
Simply put, there aren’t enough homes for people in BC. While some argue government should get out of the way and do nothing to get housing build, I disagree. New measures brought in this fall are predicted to bring in approx 250,000 new homes over the next decade.
(1/2)
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@LauraMMowbs
@iamkennethchan
@DailyHiveVan
Can't wait for the West Side to finally allow new housing! They've been able to ban apartments for a century, great that an adult will finally step in to fix that.
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I still think about this at least once a week
if u die in vancouver u respawn at the hot dog stand outside london drugs on granville
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house that uses thousands of square feet of land: humble, normal, middle-class
condo that uses hundreds of square feet of land: opulent, yuppie, gentrifier
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