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For those not up to date on the developments here in BC, there are a number of interesting solutions being implemented currently: - Unification of residential

For those not up to date on the developments here in BC, there are a number of interesting solutions being implemented currently: - Unification of residential zones into a single zone with (marginally) higher density, which could make it easier to further increase density in the future - BC Ministry of Housing has brought forth legislation to upzone housing in concentric rings of decreasing density around transit stations, with allowable minimums up to 20 stories in the nearest ring, where in many cases single family homes currently stand. - Senakw development: native land still under control by a local native tribe is not subject to housing bylaws and is now being developed into several large towers (without parking requirements!) - An even larger development has been proposed using the same land rights on the Jericho lands just west of Senakw, which proposes around 10,000 new homes and a new subway station which would count as another transit station for nearby development of what is currently extremely underutilized land. - This new BC special, although I’ve heard it may not be automatically applicable to Vancouver because Vancouver has special privileges to enforce its own building code (?)

epistasis 3y ago
The ~Senakw~ Squamish Nation are literally my heroes. They are doing amazing things to push back on terrible reactionary planning in Vancouver that has made it unaffordable to entire generations of people, merely to satisfy a few people who want high property valuations and have an antisocial attitude of not wanting to see other people. Such people should simply choose to live somewhere other than a huge city, and should stop trying to prevent others from living as they wish to.
- lwansbrough 3y ago
  I would be very much in favour of returning more land back to our local tribes if this is how it would be used. Seems like a great loophole to get around offensively poor city planning.
- asploder 3y ago
  I couldn't agree more with your enthusiasm, but it's worth noting that Senakw is the name of the development, and the Squamish Nation are the people backing it. More details on the Senakw development are available from the Squamish Nation's website: https://senakw.com/ https://senakw.com/
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Oops, thanks! I've been following Khelsilem for a while but do not live near the area, and have only visited several times. Would love to live there eventually if prices fall a bit.
dagmx 3y ago
I’m really hopeful about the higher density housing around transit. Vancouver’s housing crisis is always juxtaposed by so many derelict Vancouver Special homes just sitting around , and swathes of area just being unused
- __turbobrew__ 3y ago
  Even today you can take the expo line from Metrotown to New west and there are vast swaths of single family homes around stations like royal oak. They just started building more density around there lately, but the expo line is 37 years old and the municipality is just starting to build up around the skytrain stations. It would be interesting if the standardized buildings could somewhat be pre-fabbed offsite, I would imagine that would significantly reduce building costs. That doesn’t fix the problem where a single city sized lot in Vancouver costs over 1.5 million dollars, but if you ammortize that over 3 separate dwellings the land cost becomes more affordable for professionals.
  - namibj 3y ago
    Or even just have the work (past-foundations) partitioned into 1~3 day long chunks, and bus the crews to the nearby construction plots/lots so that each worker gets through dozens of ~identical 1~3 day jobs at equally many buildings, doing the exact same tasks for each of those buildings. It's not a problem shuttling them up to an hour each way per day from their home to the site (and back), at least before efficiency improvements get overshadowed by the commuting overhead. And yeah, pre-cutting tasks to e.g. prep cable terminations for outlets, outlet holes in drywall, floor tiles/panels to fit perfectly, etc., should not be a problem to substantially automate in a factory, thanks to modern technology for mapping/ensuring mounting dimensions are spot-on as is required for all pre-cut things to correctly line up. Have the factory robots sort the pre-cut parts for shipping such that they get pulled from the pallet/crate in the order they're added (mounted) to the house, maybe with a QR code and/or RFID-sticker to search/check nothing got mixed up. Combine the tag with e.g. the cable-end-protector-cap that's stuck to the cable ends to protect the bare copper and also protect other things from getting poked/scratched, until the cable is pulled through the walls/conduits to the termination boxes. Check at each end if the cable belongs there, right before peeling the cap off for reuse at the factory (just a fresh sticky bandage or such needed). Running such an approach ought to yield a lot of experience in the automation/organizing/design-for-manufacturing "residential/office construction engineering/architecture" areas, which is naturally local talent due to site visits and hands-on (factory) process debugging needs. Thus having that talent should be a competitive advantage due to it making further projects like it significantly easier, massively reducing the burden of "construction takes time and skilled manpower" on their city's desires to outpace competitors with advanced city/neighborhood design: keeping up with demand for walkable-distance dwellings around new transit stations cuts the time-until-ROI for that transit infrastructure. And more critically, it speeds the feedback loop for the design of such infrastructure, as newly constructed (according to updated designs) transit stations in places without "dense city" in the way quickly rise to nominal (pedestrian) utilization. 2 years vs. 5 years changes whether after 10 years you build the second generation, or already know how the 4th generation performed. Of course these are just what-if speculative examples to illustrate how impactful/enabling some of these changes/approaches can be.
voisin 3y ago
> Unification of residential zones into a single zone with (marginally) higher density, which could make it easier to further increase density in the future Isn’t it going to be BC-wide (except for towns below 5,000 people, or where the vacancy rate is above 5%) that every lot will now “as of right” allow for a minimum of 3 dwelling units per lot, growing to 4 when the lot is a certain size, and then up to 6 if the lot is even larger? To me that’s a big step up (3-6x current density!).
- bardak 3y ago
  Yeah it is almost entirely province wide and pretty much every lot is going to be allowed to have 4 dwellings on it. Only the smallest lots (<280m^2 or <3000sqft) will be limited to 3 dwellings. The 6 dwelling regulations are still to come but I am optimistic they will be pretty permissive. The other thing that I think a lot of people are glossing over is the requirement for the municipalities to plan and rezone for 20 years of growth every 5 years. No more having to apply for rezoning for a project that is in line with what the cities have planned.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
For the developments on First Nations lands, will those housing units be open to all or just band members? If the former, how do the legal aspects work for those who are not members of that band? I always got the impression that First Nations land, even inside of cities, were mainly populated with members of that band.
- bardak 3y ago
  I believe that the units will all be market rentals but it is not uncommon for urban first nation bands to sell leasehold housing on their land as they cannot sell the land outright as per the Indian Act. It gets a lot more complicated when you delve into bands such that the Tsawwassen First Nation who have new modern treaties and don't fall under the Indian Act but they are more of an exception.
- lwansbrough 3y ago
  In terms of rentals, yes. If there is any sales it is usually leasehold as the other comment mentioned. You typically also see a portion of units allocated for non-market accommodations for first nations people, as is this case for Senakw if I recall correctly.
bawolff 3y ago
> Senakw development: native land still under control by a local native tribe is not subject to housing bylaws and is now being developed into several large towers (without parking requirements!) Huh, interesting. Is the plan that people who live there just won't have cars?
- owenwil 3y ago
  Ideally, yes—it’s very close to downtown and accessible by public transit. A lot of people in cities don’t need or want cars, and this type of development will attract them because it’s likely to be cheaper than an equivalent with a parking space. People here might own cars, but it’s up to them to find parking and pay for it themselves, rather than building it into the cost of buying/renting for everyone in these buildings—building without minimums means much cheaper building costs. It’s working in other cities where it’s being deployed and is a great way to incentivize cities to invest in car alternatives.
namibj 3y ago
"allowable minimums of up to 20 stories in the nearest ring"? Does that mean at least 20 stories of the building won't be permitted? Or does it mean that buildings up to and including 20 stories can't be rejected with "too dense" as the reason given to the permit-requester?
- bardak 3y ago
  The latter. It is the minimum the municipalities can restrict density to. They can allow higher densities but can't restrict density below the minimum.

epistasis 3y ago

The ~Senakw~ Squamish Nation are literally my heroes. They are doing amazing things to push back on terrible reactionary planning in Vancouver that has made it unaffordable to entire generations of people, merely to satisfy a few people who want high property valuations and have an antisocial attitude of not wanting to see other people. Such people should simply choose to live somewhere other than a huge city, and should stop trying to prevent others from living as they wish to.

lwansbrough 3y ago
I would be very much in favour of returning more land back to our local tribes if this is how it would be used. Seems like a great loophole to get around offensively poor city planning.
asploder 3y ago
I couldn't agree more with your enthusiasm, but it's worth noting that Senakw is the name of the development, and the Squamish Nation are the people backing it. More details on the Senakw development are available from the Squamish Nation's website: https://senakw.com/ https://senakw.com/
- epistasis 3y ago
  Oops, thanks! I've been following Khelsilem for a while but do not live near the area, and have only visited several times. Would love to live there eventually if prices fall a bit.

dagmx 3y ago

I’m really hopeful about the higher density housing around transit. Vancouver’s housing crisis is always juxtaposed by so many derelict Vancouver Special homes just sitting around , and swathes of area just being unused

__turbobrew__ 3y ago
Even today you can take the expo line from Metrotown to New west and there are vast swaths of single family homes around stations like royal oak. They just started building more density around there lately, but the expo line is 37 years old and the municipality is just starting to build up around the skytrain stations. It would be interesting if the standardized buildings could somewhat be pre-fabbed offsite, I would imagine that would significantly reduce building costs. That doesn’t fix the problem where a single city sized lot in Vancouver costs over 1.5 million dollars, but if you ammortize that over 3 separate dwellings the land cost becomes more affordable for professionals.
- namibj 3y ago
  Or even just have the work (past-foundations) partitioned into 1~3 day long chunks, and bus the crews to the nearby construction plots/lots so that each worker gets through dozens of ~identical 1~3 day jobs at equally many buildings, doing the exact same tasks for each of those buildings. It's not a problem shuttling them up to an hour each way per day from their home to the site (and back), at least before efficiency improvements get overshadowed by the commuting overhead. And yeah, pre-cutting tasks to e.g. prep cable terminations for outlets, outlet holes in drywall, floor tiles/panels to fit perfectly, etc., should not be a problem to substantially automate in a factory, thanks to modern technology for mapping/ensuring mounting dimensions are spot-on as is required for all pre-cut things to correctly line up. Have the factory robots sort the pre-cut parts for shipping such that they get pulled from the pallet/crate in the order they're added (mounted) to the house, maybe with a QR code and/or RFID-sticker to search/check nothing got mixed up. Combine the tag with e.g. the cable-end-protector-cap that's stuck to the cable ends to protect the bare copper and also protect other things from getting poked/scratched, until the cable is pulled through the walls/conduits to the termination boxes. Check at each end if the cable belongs there, right before peeling the cap off for reuse at the factory (just a fresh sticky bandage or such needed). Running such an approach ought to yield a lot of experience in the automation/organizing/design-for-manufacturing "residential/office construction engineering/architecture" areas, which is naturally local talent due to site visits and hands-on (factory) process debugging needs. Thus having that talent should be a competitive advantage due to it making further projects like it significantly easier, massively reducing the burden of "construction takes time and skilled manpower" on their city's desires to outpace competitors with advanced city/neighborhood design: keeping up with demand for walkable-distance dwellings around new transit stations cuts the time-until-ROI for that transit infrastructure. And more critically, it speeds the feedback loop for the design of such infrastructure, as newly constructed (according to updated designs) transit stations in places without "dense city" in the way quickly rise to nominal (pedestrian) utilization. 2 years vs. 5 years changes whether after 10 years you build the second generation, or already know how the 4th generation performed. Of course these are just what-if speculative examples to illustrate how impactful/enabling some of these changes/approaches can be.

voisin 3y ago

> Unification of residential zones into a single zone with (marginally) higher density, which could make it easier to further increase density in the future Isn’t it going to be BC-wide (except for towns below 5,000 people, or where the vacancy rate is above 5%) that every lot will now “as of right” allow for a minimum of 3 dwelling units per lot, growing to 4 when the lot is a certain size, and then up to 6 if the lot is even larger? To me that’s a big step up (3-6x current density!).

bardak 3y ago
Yeah it is almost entirely province wide and pretty much every lot is going to be allowed to have 4 dwellings on it. Only the smallest lots (<280m^2 or <3000sqft) will be limited to 3 dwellings. The 6 dwelling regulations are still to come but I am optimistic they will be pretty permissive. The other thing that I think a lot of people are glossing over is the requirement for the municipalities to plan and rezone for 20 years of growth every 5 years. No more having to apply for rezoning for a project that is in line with what the cities have planned.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

For the developments on First Nations lands, will those housing units be open to all or just band members? If the former, how do the legal aspects work for those who are not members of that band? I always got the impression that First Nations land, even inside of cities, were mainly populated with members of that band.

bardak 3y ago
I believe that the units will all be market rentals but it is not uncommon for urban first nation bands to sell leasehold housing on their land as they cannot sell the land outright as per the Indian Act. It gets a lot more complicated when you delve into bands such that the Tsawwassen First Nation who have new modern treaties and don't fall under the Indian Act but they are more of an exception.
lwansbrough 3y ago
In terms of rentals, yes. If there is any sales it is usually leasehold as the other comment mentioned. You typically also see a portion of units allocated for non-market accommodations for first nations people, as is this case for Senakw if I recall correctly.

bawolff 3y ago

> Senakw development: native land still under control by a local native tribe is not subject to housing bylaws and is now being developed into several large towers (without parking requirements!) Huh, interesting. Is the plan that people who live there just won't have cars?

owenwil 3y ago
Ideally, yes—it’s very close to downtown and accessible by public transit. A lot of people in cities don’t need or want cars, and this type of development will attract them because it’s likely to be cheaper than an equivalent with a parking space. People here might own cars, but it’s up to them to find parking and pay for it themselves, rather than building it into the cost of buying/renting for everyone in these buildings—building without minimums means much cheaper building costs. It’s working in other cities where it’s being deployed and is a great way to incentivize cities to invest in car alternatives.

namibj 3y ago

"allowable minimums of up to 20 stories in the nearest ring"? Does that mean at least 20 stories of the building won't be permitted? Or does it mean that buildings up to and including 20 stories can't be rejected with "too dense" as the reason given to the permit-requester?

bardak 3y ago
The latter. It is the minimum the municipalities can restrict density to. They can allow higher densities but can't restrict density below the minimum.