An interesting factoid in the report described below:
Th e study found Vancouver has existing or planned capacity for enough new multi-family development for 20 years at the recent pace of development, although that depends on what locations are attractive to the market.
“There is room for 25,700 units on lands that are already zoned for multi-family and for which no CAC is required. In addition, rezonings over the last five years have added capacity for about 15,137 units, of which very little has to date been completed.”
Portland has a similar problem: sure, we’d love to allow BC-style glass towers in the auto-oriented Gateway district but sorry, you can’t build anything but houses with driveways and lawns in most of the single-family zoned land between Gateway and downtown.
Guess what? Nobody wants to pay $2000 a month for a one-bedroom in Gateway, even if it’s 400 feet in the air. Meanwhile people are falling over each other to pay $1200 for one-bedrooms in the pre-automotive neighborhoods where destruction of freestanding houses for low-rise apartment buildings or even townhouses is forbidden.
Over the long term it is generally it is very difficult for planners to predict the specific timing and/or exact location of an individual development application as that is determined by the private land owner. It is completely normal to designate significantly more potential development capacity than is projected to be built-out in the anticipated time frame. This allows for growth to occur following local market conditions while ensuring that you still can meet your population growth targets.
If anything there might not be enough planned capacity in Vancouver given the high prices and shortage of housing.
Most of the area bounded by Commercial Drive, Clark Drive, Grandview Highway, and Britannia School is zoned RM-4. The is quite a lot of the area that has not been built up to that. Looking at the building ages you can see that there was a lot of multi-family construction during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but very little has taken place since.
https://mountainmath.ca/map/assessment
It seems to me like the problem is that the land has become much more expensive in the area, and if you can’t divide that cost between enough units then you won’t build anything. Each unit would have to be too expensive to sell in order to cover your costs. So while there may be lots of zoned capacity in Vancouver, does it really matter if it doesn’t pencil out with current land prices and zoning?
Much of this capacity is in C2 zones along arterials. However, not everyone wants to sell their house and move into an apt above a restaurant on a busy street. It’s also difficult to assemble many smaller commercial properties and the economics are challenging.
Now, equally important, can you find me ONE, just ONE site on the westside of Vancouver where I can build townhouses without rezoning? Cheers
The problem is that if you let developers build townhouses off arterials they just luxe them up with granite countertops and private garages and they end up costing too much for most families.
In North Vancouver (District) many townhouses are being built. Most along or near Mount Seymour Parkway, some in Lynn Valley. In the 70s the same areas had lots of condos and townhouses built. The new townhouses replace single-family homes.
If you are looking for sites on the westside of Vancouver, just click the nice map (I might be biased….) linked by Matt above, select the zoning layer and zoom into Kits or Kerrisdale for example. Lots of RM zoned areas. Check the ‘building to land’ layer to map the ‘teardown ratio’, basically anything where building is less than 5% of land is an obvious choice to re-develop. The biggest obstacle to redevelopment might be the difficulty of assembling enough properties to build something bigger. But there are some blocks where almost every house is ready to be torn down, for example the one between 5th and 6th east of Arbutus zoned RM4.