Bob Ransford, public-affairs consultant and Homes columnist in the Sun, did a nice piece on laneway housing that you can find here (if you’re a Sun subscriber.) He reports on the Karakas study I mentioned below:
Vancouver planning consultants Holland Barrs, a firm that has established itself at the leading edge of sustainability planning and design, is wrapping up a major research project on laneway housing in B.C.’s growing cities that they undertook for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
Their findings estimate that within the City of Vancouver there is the capacity to build out more than 48,000 infill units in the form of laneway homes.
They arrived at this estimate by doing a detailed analysis of two typical Vancouver neighbourhoods–a 12-block area in the Hastings-Sunrise community on the eastside and a 12-block area in the Dunbar community on the westside. Within the two test neighbourhoods, 74 per cent of the residential lots have the capacity to accommodate a laneway infill house.
Bob’s comments reflect the changing discussion about growth: sustainability and affordability are now the motivating arguments.
