Another clip video from Tourism Vancouver (thank you again, Vancouver is Awesome):
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These video treats can be like a box of chocolates: individually irresistible, but sickly if consumed in excess.
Two things about this one: at 0.26 – blossoms!
At 1.26, that’s George Wainborn Park at Concord Pacific after dusk. Notice all the lights on. Or at 1:38, in Triangle West and Coal Harbour, same thing: not exactly ghost towns. Which is what some popular mythology would have it: thousands of empty suites with only the refrigerators running.
That never made sense to me, given even a casual observation of the skyline at night. A few buildings at the very high end, where the owners have condos and homes scattered around the globe, seem to remain empty for a good part of the year – but why would investors who have purchased about half the downtown condo stock over the last few decades leave the cash flow untapped and the suites unoccupied, even if waiting to cash in on the capital gain?
Any Yan’s presentation at Gesamtkunstwerk on Sunday affirmed the same thing: Maybe just under 10 percent of condos are unoccupied on a single day, before deducting sales in transition, vacations, etc. I doubt Vancouver is very much different than comparable cities.
But as most are agreed, there is a dismal lack of reliable longitudinal data – and that seems by design. We don’t really want to know.
The focus of the video is obviously the buildings, but the lack of street life is still an interesting choice. Closest is the waterfront station around one minute, but the car space still dominates.
Are there people who like the building at 36s and the viaduct view at 38s?