Part 5 from a discussion guide, Density in a City of Neighbourhoods – my perspective of a journey from the earliest years of land-abundant settlement to the towering glass city of 2012 – written for Carbon Talks at SFU.
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THE END OF OPEN LAND
In the 1950s and 1960s, the last of the CPR land grant was being filled in with split-level ranchers in Oakridge. In the south and east of the city, at Renfrew Heights and Fraserview – open spaces were devoted to whole new subdivisions of curving streets.
By the 1970s, Vancouver had used up almost all its residentially zoned vacant lands. Save for a few city-owned tracts, any new housing in the City would require the demolition of something already there.
This was highlighted by geographer and city alderman Walter Hardwick, who wrote:
The real inflation in house prices started in the 1960’s … when Oakridge was filled in. Up until that time people believed that there was always new land to build on so there was no scarcity psychology.
The pressure for housing, however, found relief as new bridges 
were constructed across the Fraser, giving access to farmlands, fields, and forests for vast tracts of subdivisions to house the families of the Baby Boom. The City of Vancouver no long provided the majority of new housing units.
The recession of the early 1980s again brought development to a halt as neighbourhoods continued to age in place. The period from 1972 to 1986 seemed on the surface to be a time of little change, but just as the Depression and World War II had inexorably increased pressure on demand but provided little in the way of new housing, pressure was again building. Port Mann Bridge under construction.
In fact, the city’s single-family neighbourhoods were adding density throughout the late 1960s and 1970s by accommodating illegal secondary suites, and on the east side by the construction of Vancouver Specials – purpose-built, simply constructed two-level houses that maximized allowable density but which could easily be converted into duplexes. Regardless of zoning, this was de-facto densification.
More here on Vancouver Specials.
In the 1970s, the City government was able to use new tools and senior-government funding to experiment with housing forms at higher densities – most notably on the South Shore of False Creek.
Heavy industry was replaced with a mix of housing types, from market condo to non-market co-op, a model replicated in Champlain Heights in the southeast corner of the city, using the last large piece of city-owned vacant land. There was nary a highrise to be seen.
There was, however, a shortage of rental housing stock. Low vacancies and a spike in rental rates led to more government regulation, along with new construction stimulated by federal tax incentives.
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Part 3: The Beginning of Densification
Part 4(a): The Modern Era – Transition
Part 4(b): The Modern Era – A Decade of Highrises
Density in a City of Neighbourhoods (full document)
