11 ms·

Incredible map, I've never seen this before and I grew up here. Zoning decides so much of the vibe of a city/neighbourhood. Changing zoning is pretty short sit

Incredible map, I've never seen this before and I grew up here. Zoning decides so much of the vibe of a city/neighbourhood. Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. Having lived in 6 other cities, other things Vancouver does well that aren't obvious on this map: - Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets) - No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space) - Grass on both sides of sidewalk and trees on every street. - Extremely high park density. - Protected bike lanes everywhere. - Side streets with random dead ends. - Commercial streets every ~4-6 blocks that allow more traffic + bus routes. - Rectangle structured blocks with numbers 1 direction and names the other.

MikeSchurman 4y ago
They also have view cones, which are: "a policy enforced by the City of Vancouver that limits the heights of the buildings to protect sight lines of the North Shore mountains from a number of arbitrary perspectives" Interestingly the 1st image result of view cones is how they could be a bad thing for Vancouver: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economic-potential https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economi...
- Tiktaalik 4y ago
  Seems like view cones are a frequent criticism of certain pro-housing activists, but I think we can see from this Vancouver Zoning Map is the real low hanging fruit for more housing development is the vast swath of land zoned exclusively for single family homes. Personally I can't understand the hate for the viewcones that I sometimes see. Talk with any newcomer to the city and they absolutely love the mountains. The mountain views are one of the selling points of this city. It would be utterly mad to block them.
  - ripley12 4y ago
    Depends on the view cone, I think. I agree that view cones aren't public enemy number 1, but some really are bad. I live near one in East Van that is utterly useless; it's defined as starting in the middle of a road, and the view is blocked by tree foliage most of the year anyway. And yet because of it, multiple proposed apartment buildings have been cut short.
    - Tiktaalik 4y ago
      There's a few that are pretty marginal I agree. The one from the top of Queen E Park is also weirdly low. Like you could almost double the height of the towers downtown and you still wouldn't be blocking the view of the mountain from this viewpoint, so the view is really damn odd.
  - eps 4y ago
    That's the thing - it's the _newcomers_ who absolutely love the mountains. Everyone else are perfectly content with knowing that they exists and don't need (or want) to see them every day from their window. It's a good perk, but it's no more than that.
dleslie 4y ago
> No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space) The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.
- thinkingkong 4y ago
  It doesnt cut through what most people would consider the “city” part of Vancouver which is the denser part of downtown. It’s also not really like a highway that most people refer to. It’s nothing like the 400 series in Toronto, or the I5 in Seattle.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    It's interrupted in its path by the viaducts, but the highway begins again to cut through Stanley Park and cross to the North Shore. Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by office districts and bedroom communities, linked with stroads, like many North American cities. Glad I left.
    - cameronpm 4y ago
      what cities do you consider well designed and why?
      - dleslie 4y ago
        There aren't any, really; because we didn't spend the 20th Century thinking of alternatives to commuting via personal automobile from bedrooms to offices.
        xyzzyz 4y ago
        A true well designed city have not been tried yet.
        4y ago
dangwu 4y ago
It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue, trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph isn’t fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.
- dleslie 4y ago
  It's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion nightmware between them.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    Not really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that scar the landscape of so many North American cities.
    - dleslie 4y ago
      You can walk across Lougheed Hwy as a pedestrian; it doesn't make it any less of a highway.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  I feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.
- rtlfe 4y ago
  > but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Matthias247 4y ago
> - Protected bike lanes everywhere. As an avid biker in Vancouver, I can unfortunately not confirm that. There's a few strategic ones, but it's far from everywhere. https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf has the overview. It unfortunately doesn't cover the extended area, but already shows that outside of downtown only a small amount of fully protected lanes exists - like Arbutus Greenway.
- cameronpm 4y ago
  Another great map. Yea, in comparison to Amsterdam we suck. I hope we keep making them. I find the sidestreets on pretty safe, due to low car traffic.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    I mean, sure, in comparison to the best biking city in the best biking country in the world, anyone would suck. Vancouver is consistently ranked among the most bike friendly cities in the world: - https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-friendly-cities-in-the-world-according-to-copenhagenize-2019 https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-friendly-c... - https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-cycling-ranking-2019 https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-cycling-ranking-20... - https://www.momentum-biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-most-bike-friendly-cities https://www.momentum-biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-...
- rtlfe 4y ago
  The "local street bikeways" tend to actually be pretty good though. There are plenty of traffic diverters and other calming elements, unlike most North American cities that just paint sharrows and pray for the best.
  - omosubi 4y ago
    Yeah anyone who thinks that Vancouver bike infrastructure is bad is delusional - it's not perfect but no city is (especially in north America) and you can get basically anywhere in the city on a safe side street
Pxtl 4y ago
> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. Well, avoiding changing zoning has created areas that nobody can afford to live in, so they don't really have a choice at this point. Vancouver's affordability crisis is generally considered by economists to be the worst in North America.
- cameron-p-m 4y ago
  Is it a supply or a demand problem? They do have a choice, zoning is just one tool among many.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    What sort of demand side solution are you considering? Housing is a basic necessity of life. Perhaps by reducing demand you mean that instead of one family living in a single family home, demand for living space is reduced so that two families live in the same space?
    - jjav 4y ago
      > Housing is a basic necessity of life. It certainly is and should be a fundamental human right. However, living in Vancouver specifically isn't a necessity. There are more affortable places. In my 20s my dream was to live in Manhattan, I wanted it so bad. Never made it, way too expensive. Had to give up that dream. A couple decades later I still occasionally wish it could've been, but never was. I have a nice house and built a nice life elsewhere. Not to take away from efforts to build more and affordable housing in the big cities, which is good and necessary. But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. Often the most pragmatic solution is to find a different city to live in.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        > But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. This is a common NIMBY trope: "everyone" wants to live here and that's impossible, so we shouldn't try. It's false in that not everyone wants to live in Vancouver/NYC/SF, far from it. But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places. In another comment you expressed the desire to keep your place in the city, without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains. Why should you get that, but not somebody else? On what basis do you privilege your own basic needs over others? That's no way to run a society, saying "got mine, forget all the rest of you."
sofixa 4y ago
From the other side of the pond, your list makes me sad. It appears we take a lot of urban design elements for granted here. I grew up in commie blocks, am now in Haussmannian urbanism, and most of those ( i mean there isn't grass and trees on every street, but it's pretty frequent) are just.. basic common sense here. Like the fact that there's a term, "transit oriented development" used in North America. Here it's just common sense, nobody calls it anything.
- sefrost 4y ago
  Where exactly do you mean by "the other side of the pond"? I moved to Vancouver from the UK last year and it is significantly nicer/more liveable than most UK cities I've seen.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    Commie blocks in Eastern Europe and Haussmannian buildings in France. And i didn't say those are better than Vancouver, just that OP's list about why Vancouver is better than most NA cities is common sense which can be said about most cities in Europe.
99_00 4y ago
>- No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space) Why doesn't this result in cars simply traveling on regular streets and creating noise and danger in the exact same space as pedestrians, cyclists, and residents?
- ripley12 4y ago
  There are a lot of potential answers to that, but perhaps the shortest one is that cars drive much faster on a highway.
rtlfe 4y ago
> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. This implies that the current zoning was implemented for good reason. That's basically never the case. Most existing zoning was done either to increase property values or to keep out people that the elites don't want to be around.
- ripley12 4y ago
  Yeah, Vancouver's zoning code has pretty awful origins; I wrote about it here a while back: https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zoning_code https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zo... In a nutshell, it was intentionally designed to keep apartment buildings and stores out of most of the city.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Supply issues aside, I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal. Is there a compromise that you’d be okay with? Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing? Maybe wipe away rental properties so that you don’t have effectively vacant units for portions of the year?
  - ska 4y ago
    > Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Not really, no. It's the choice a lot of people make in north american metros from what they are offered, but that's not what ideal means.
  - rtlfe 4y ago
    > Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Not even a little bit. Go read about exclusionary zoning in general or see your sibling comment's link for some reading on Vancouver specifically. > Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Is it considered ideal? Maybe. Is it actually ideal? No. Aside from the huge negative impacts on pricing and equality that we've already discussed there's the environmental impact, isolation, car dependence, etc, etc. > I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal. This is unfortunately true for Americans and I'd guess Canadians as well. I think this is due to some combination of: - The absurd "American dream" vision that's been pushed by car manufacturers and other companies for many decades. - Most American cities aren't actually very good, so most Americans have never experienced the alternative. - Fox News and other conservative media pushing the narrative that cities are infested with criminals, terrorists, etc. > Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing? Great. This is what would happen if there wasn't zoning.
ripley12 4y ago
> Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets) That's an interesting one to me, because I'm generally bothered by how wide Vancouver streets are. IIRC most Vancouver residential streets are 33 feet wide, waaaaaaaay wider than in many European and Asian cities.
lwansbrough 4y ago
> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. NIMBYism. I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than 1/6th the homes owned by the richest people in the city who _really love it._ You can design beautiful neighbourhoods that are much much denser than they are now. Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis.
- rtlfe 4y ago
  > I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than Not to mention the huge positive impacts this would have on walkability, transit, climate change, etc.
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  > Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis. What about people that want to have a party on a Friday, but NIMBYs in an apartment complex throw the book at anybody that has fun past 10PM?
  - sbarre 4y ago
    I see you have also lived in Funcouver!
  - jseliger 4y ago
    Abolishing mandatory single-unit zoning is different from saying no one can have such a unit. People should have a wide variety of housing options available based on their needs and price points.
  - zaptheimpaler 4y ago
    It seems like we really should be able to make soundproof apartments today. I’m definitely not an expert but it’s hard to believe that we can’t we make thick walls with the right material between apartments. A lot of construction and transportation seems like it’s needlessly bad due to underinvestment and old equipment. I think we can make almost noiseless EV cars like Teslas today, no-compromises high density housing, quieter construction equipment and so much more.
ripley12 4y ago
> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. This is such an odd statement; it's "not even wrong." Vancouver zones most of its land for low-density suburban houses that accommodate very few people. It also has many examples of zoning districts that accommodate a lot of people in urban neighbourhoods that people love to live in. You can just change one zoning district to another proven one!
- aspenmayer 4y ago
  For those who may have not heard the term before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
cuddlybacon 4y ago
There are also a few bads, some that can be seen from the map: - Quite a few stroads[0]: Granville around 70th, Granville around Broadway, Cambie around Broadway, 4th West of Burrard, most of Broadway, many sections of Kingsway, the section of W 41st Ave under the Kerrisdale label, and others. - In general, getting East-West by vehicle is notably worse than North-South. While I 90% agree with your highway comment, this does make the situation frustrating at times. - Vancouver is less bad than most of the cities that surround it, but it still has job areas a little too clustered in a few spots. - Most land is low density in a city that has a huge housing shortage. - Skytrain doesn't cover the majority of this map. - Residential neighbourhoods have so much street parking that kids can't play street hockey these days. In general, there are too many cars in residential areas that kids can't play outside with the minimal supervision I had as a child. I will add one more good: - Grid designs tend to have a problem where local roads don't remain local roads and instead become side streets for cars. Vancouver has done a good job of using tools to keep these local roads serving just local traffic: narrow streets, tight visibility, forced turns, etc. Besides the benefit this provides to locals, it also helps with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox [0] - Stroad is a portmanteau of street and road. By trying to be both, if fails to do either. Stroads suck no matter what type of user you are: Car perspective: - For thru traffic they suck since they are "too busy", traffic usual goes slower than the speed limit. - For traffic stoping at a local destination they suck because getting to your destination is difficult: the road is busy so you need to focus 110% on driving, but you also gotta find parking, places to turn around, etc. A lot of people put pressure on themselves if they block traffic while parking and that is a necessary aspect of driving to a business that is on a stroad. - Unprotected left turns usually only allow 1 vehicle per cycle of the lights. There will be a lot of unprotected lefts happening in these areas. - For locals they suck because your community has congested traffic all the time. For pedestrians: - The area is loud due to all the cars. God forbid if people start honking. And this is Vancouver. I've seen people honk at parked cars a few dozen times in the last 5 years. - If you have to cross the street, it can be a real bother as you will have to wait for a crossing signal that may take a few minutes. When you finally get your turn, you have to deal with drivers who are desperate to make their left turn. - Walking distances are higher than they'd otherwise be on a proper street. For cyclists: - Commuting: Prepare to Die Edition For business owners: - While the traffic does get you some amount of visibility, a lot of that traffic will simply never stop at your business. There is also a portion who won't go due to the difficulty in driving in the area. - You probably get way more business from random people walking by than from random people driving by. The artificially high walking distances mean fewer walkers. - You have to soundproof your facade to deal with the noise. - Prior to the lockdown, Vancouver city council was quite against patios and balconies at businesses. These days, they are allowing more of them. These will necessarily be loud and there is nothing you can do. Customers will complain.

MikeSchurman 4y ago

They also have view cones, which are: "a policy enforced by the City of Vancouver that limits the heights of the buildings to protect sight lines of the North Shore mountains from a number of arbitrary perspectives" Interestingly the 1st image result of view cones is how they could be a bad thing for Vancouver: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economic-potential https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economi...

Tiktaalik 4y ago
Seems like view cones are a frequent criticism of certain pro-housing activists, but I think we can see from this Vancouver Zoning Map is the real low hanging fruit for more housing development is the vast swath of land zoned exclusively for single family homes. Personally I can't understand the hate for the viewcones that I sometimes see. Talk with any newcomer to the city and they absolutely love the mountains. The mountain views are one of the selling points of this city. It would be utterly mad to block them.
- ripley12 4y ago
  Depends on the view cone, I think. I agree that view cones aren't public enemy number 1, but some really are bad. I live near one in East Van that is utterly useless; it's defined as starting in the middle of a road, and the view is blocked by tree foliage most of the year anyway. And yet because of it, multiple proposed apartment buildings have been cut short.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    There's a few that are pretty marginal I agree. The one from the top of Queen E Park is also weirdly low. Like you could almost double the height of the towers downtown and you still wouldn't be blocking the view of the mountain from this viewpoint, so the view is really damn odd.
- eps 4y ago
  That's the thing - it's the _newcomers_ who absolutely love the mountains. Everyone else are perfectly content with knowing that they exists and don't need (or want) to see them every day from their window. It's a good perk, but it's no more than that.

dleslie 4y ago

> No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space) The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.

thinkingkong 4y ago
It doesnt cut through what most people would consider the “city” part of Vancouver which is the denser part of downtown. It’s also not really like a highway that most people refer to. It’s nothing like the 400 series in Toronto, or the I5 in Seattle.
- dleslie 4y ago
  It's interrupted in its path by the viaducts, but the highway begins again to cut through Stanley Park and cross to the North Shore. Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by office districts and bedroom communities, linked with stroads, like many North American cities. Glad I left.
  - cameronpm 4y ago
    what cities do you consider well designed and why?
    - dleslie 4y ago
      There aren't any, really; because we didn't spend the 20th Century thinking of alternatives to commuting via personal automobile from bedrooms to offices.
      - xyzzyz 4y ago
        A true well designed city have not been tried yet.
        4y ago

dangwu 4y ago

It’s nice that Vancouver doesn’t have a highway cutting it in half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue, trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph isn’t fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.

dleslie 4y ago
It's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion nightmware between them.
- Tiktaalik 4y ago
  Not really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that scar the landscape of so many North American cities.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    You can walk across Lougheed Hwy as a pedestrian; it doesn't make it any less of a highway.
dan-robertson 4y ago
I feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.
rtlfe 4y ago
> but it also takes longer to drive anywhere. Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Matthias247 4y ago

> - Protected bike lanes everywhere. As an avid biker in Vancouver, I can unfortunately not confirm that. There's a few strategic ones, but it's far from everywhere. https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf has the overview. It unfortunately doesn't cover the extended area, but already shows that outside of downtown only a small amount of fully protected lanes exists - like Arbutus Greenway.

cameronpm 4y ago
Another great map. Yea, in comparison to Amsterdam we suck. I hope we keep making them. I find the sidestreets on pretty safe, due to low car traffic.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  I mean, sure, in comparison to the best biking city in the best biking country in the world, anyone would suck. Vancouver is consistently ranked among the most bike friendly cities in the world: - https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-friendly-cities-in-the-world-according-to-copenhagenize-2019 https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-friendly-c... - https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-cycling-ranking-2019 https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-cycling-ranking-20... - https://www.momentum-biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-most-bike-friendly-cities https://www.momentum-biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-...
rtlfe 4y ago
The "local street bikeways" tend to actually be pretty good though. There are plenty of traffic diverters and other calming elements, unlike most North American cities that just paint sharrows and pray for the best.
- omosubi 4y ago
  Yeah anyone who thinks that Vancouver bike infrastructure is bad is delusional - it's not perfect but no city is (especially in north America) and you can get basically anywhere in the city on a safe side street

Pxtl 4y ago

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. Well, avoiding changing zoning has created areas that nobody can afford to live in, so they don't really have a choice at this point. Vancouver's affordability crisis is generally considered by economists to be the worst in North America.

cameron-p-m 4y ago
Is it a supply or a demand problem? They do have a choice, zoning is just one tool among many.
- epistasis 4y ago
  What sort of demand side solution are you considering? Housing is a basic necessity of life. Perhaps by reducing demand you mean that instead of one family living in a single family home, demand for living space is reduced so that two families live in the same space?
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Housing is a basic necessity of life. It certainly is and should be a fundamental human right. However, living in Vancouver specifically isn't a necessity. There are more affortable places. In my 20s my dream was to live in Manhattan, I wanted it so bad. Never made it, way too expensive. Had to give up that dream. A couple decades later I still occasionally wish it could've been, but never was. I have a nice house and built a nice life elsewhere. Not to take away from efforts to build more and affordable housing in the big cities, which is good and necessary. But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. Often the most pragmatic solution is to find a different city to live in.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      > But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. This is a common NIMBY trope: "everyone" wants to live here and that's impossible, so we shouldn't try. It's false in that not everyone wants to live in Vancouver/NYC/SF, far from it. But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places. In another comment you expressed the desire to keep your place in the city, without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains. Why should you get that, but not somebody else? On what basis do you privilege your own basic needs over others? That's no way to run a society, saying "got mine, forget all the rest of you."

sofixa 4y ago

From the other side of the pond, your list makes me sad. It appears we take a lot of urban design elements for granted here. I grew up in commie blocks, am now in Haussmannian urbanism, and most of those ( i mean there isn't grass and trees on every street, but it's pretty frequent) are just.. basic common sense here. Like the fact that there's a term, "transit oriented development" used in North America. Here it's just common sense, nobody calls it anything.

sefrost 4y ago
Where exactly do you mean by "the other side of the pond"? I moved to Vancouver from the UK last year and it is significantly nicer/more liveable than most UK cities I've seen.
- sofixa 4y ago
  Commie blocks in Eastern Europe and Haussmannian buildings in France. And i didn't say those are better than Vancouver, just that OP's list about why Vancouver is better than most NA cities is common sense which can be said about most cities in Europe.

99_00 4y ago

>- No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of space) Why doesn't this result in cars simply traveling on regular streets and creating noise and danger in the exact same space as pedestrians, cyclists, and residents?

ripley12 4y ago
There are a lot of potential answers to that, but perhaps the shortest one is that cars drive much faster on a highway.

rtlfe 4y ago

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. This implies that the current zoning was implemented for good reason. That's basically never the case. Most existing zoning was done either to increase property values or to keep out people that the elites don't want to be around.

ripley12 4y ago
Yeah, Vancouver's zoning code has pretty awful origins; I wrote about it here a while back: https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zoning_code https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zo... In a nutshell, it was intentionally designed to keep apartment buildings and stores out of most of the city.
jimbob45 4y ago
Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Supply issues aside, I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal. Is there a compromise that you’d be okay with? Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing? Maybe wipe away rental properties so that you don’t have effectively vacant units for portions of the year?
- ska 4y ago
  > Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Not really, no. It's the choice a lot of people make in north american metros from what they are offered, but that's not what ideal means.
- rtlfe 4y ago
  > Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Not even a little bit. Go read about exclusionary zoning in general or see your sibling comment's link for some reading on Vancouver specifically. > Is it fair to say that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live in? Is it considered ideal? Maybe. Is it actually ideal? No. Aside from the huge negative impacts on pricing and equality that we've already discussed there's the environmental impact, isolation, car dependence, etc, etc. > I would argue that most people would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other things equal. This is unfortunately true for Americans and I'd guess Canadians as well. I think this is due to some combination of: - The absurd "American dream" vision that's been pushed by car manufacturers and other companies for many decades. - Most American cities aren't actually very good, so most Americans have never experienced the alternative. - Fox News and other conservative media pushing the narrative that cities are infested with criminals, terrorists, etc. > Maybe sprinkle in some high-density apartments around to supplement the single-family housing? Great. This is what would happen if there wasn't zoning.

ripley12 4y ago

> Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets) That's an interesting one to me, because I'm generally bothered by how wide Vancouver streets are. IIRC most Vancouver residential streets are 33 feet wide, waaaaaaaay wider than in many European and Asian cities.

lwansbrough 4y ago

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. NIMBYism. I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than 1/6th the homes owned by the richest people in the city who _really love it._ You can design beautiful neighbourhoods that are much much denser than they are now. Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis.

rtlfe 4y ago
> I would rather have 6x more houses that people can AFFORD to live than Not to mention the huge positive impacts this would have on walkability, transit, climate change, etc.
hyperhopper 4y ago
> Single family zoning should be abolished in this city if we have any intention of solving the housing crisis. What about people that want to have a party on a Friday, but NIMBYs in an apartment complex throw the book at anybody that has fun past 10PM?
- sbarre 4y ago
  I see you have also lived in Funcouver!
- jseliger 4y ago
  Abolishing mandatory single-unit zoning is different from saying no one can have such a unit. People should have a wide variety of housing options available based on their needs and price points.
- zaptheimpaler 4y ago
  It seems like we really should be able to make soundproof apartments today. I’m definitely not an expert but it’s hard to believe that we can’t we make thick walls with the right material between apartments. A lot of construction and transportation seems like it’s needlessly bad due to underinvestment and old equipment. I think we can make almost noiseless EV cars like Teslas today, no-compromises high density housing, quieter construction equipment and so much more.

ripley12 4y ago

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in. This is such an odd statement; it's "not even wrong." Vancouver zones most of its land for low-density suburban houses that accommodate very few people. It also has many examples of zoning districts that accommodate a lot of people in urban neighbourhoods that people love to live in. You can just change one zoning district to another proven one!

aspenmayer 4y ago
For those who may have not heard the term before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

cuddlybacon 4y ago

There are also a few bads, some that can be seen from the map: - Quite a few stroads[0]: Granville around 70th, Granville around Broadway, Cambie around Broadway, 4th West of Burrard, most of Broadway, many sections of Kingsway, the section of W 41st Ave under the Kerrisdale label, and others. - In general, getting East-West by vehicle is notably worse than North-South. While I 90% agree with your highway comment, this does make the situation frustrating at times. - Vancouver is less bad than most of the cities that surround it, but it still has job areas a little too clustered in a few spots. - Most land is low density in a city that has a huge housing shortage. - Skytrain doesn't cover the majority of this map. - Residential neighbourhoods have so much street parking that kids can't play street hockey these days. In general, there are too many cars in residential areas that kids can't play outside with the minimal supervision I had as a child. I will add one more good: - Grid designs tend to have a problem where local roads don't remain local roads and instead become side streets for cars. Vancouver has done a good job of using tools to keep these local roads serving just local traffic: narrow streets, tight visibility, forced turns, etc. Besides the benefit this provides to locals, it also helps with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox [0] - Stroad is a portmanteau of street and road. By trying to be both, if fails to do either. Stroads suck no matter what type of user you are: Car perspective: - For thru traffic they suck since they are "too busy", traffic usual goes slower than the speed limit. - For traffic stoping at a local destination they suck because getting to your destination is difficult: the road is busy so you need to focus 110% on driving, but you also gotta find parking, places to turn around, etc. A lot of people put pressure on themselves if they block traffic while parking and that is a necessary aspect of driving to a business that is on a stroad. - Unprotected left turns usually only allow 1 vehicle per cycle of the lights. There will be a lot of unprotected lefts happening in these areas. - For locals they suck because your community has congested traffic all the time. For pedestrians: - The area is loud due to all the cars. God forbid if people start honking. And this is Vancouver. I've seen people honk at parked cars a few dozen times in the last 5 years. - If you have to cross the street, it can be a real bother as you will have to wait for a crossing signal that may take a few minutes. When you finally get your turn, you have to deal with drivers who are desperate to make their left turn. - Walking distances are higher than they'd otherwise be on a proper street. For cyclists: - Commuting: Prepare to Die Edition For business owners: - While the traffic does get you some amount of visibility, a lot of that traffic will simply never stop at your business. There is also a portion who won't go due to the difficulty in driving in the area. - You probably get way more business from random people walking by than from random people driving by. The artificially high walking distances mean fewer walkers. - You have to soundproof your facade to deal with the noise. - Prior to the lockdown, Vancouver city council was quite against patios and balconies at businesses. These days, they are allowing more of them. These will necessarily be loud and there is nothing you can do. Customers will complain.