Monthly Archives: January 2013

Where is Yaletown?

January 27, 2013 By in Days Out, Planning and Development, Vancouver, City of Tags: Leave a comment

Pacific Boulevard, Vancouver

It’s a mark of success for an urban area when its boundaries expand in the popular definition.  White Rock, for example, has strict municipal borders, but you can’t see them on the street, and many residents of nearby South Surrey claim to live in White Rock.  “White Rock” sounds nicer.

Vancouver’s south downtown saw a residential construction boom after 2000, and many construction-site billboards invited buyers to invest in “Yaletown.” So where is Yaletown?  The City’s website is coy on the subject, affirming that the neighbourhood is popular without showing its location. Continue reading →

Rental housing: Vancouver stands alone

January 21, 2013 By in Housing, Real Estate and Property Taxes, Vancouver, City of Tags: Leave a comment

Rental housing starts in Vancouver, 1950-2000Just over a year ago we reported on an effort by the Metro Vancouver regional authority to push for a better federal tax environment for rental housing construction.  With the demise of Ottawa’s Multiple Unit Residential Building tax credit in the 1980s, and the retreat of senior governments from funding non-profit housing development, the rate of purpose-built rental housing construction has steadily slipped over time.  It’s clearly more profitable, under the current system, to build homes for sale.  The graph on the left, from a City of Vancouver document, illustrates the decade-by-decade trend.

This matters for a bunch of reasons. At the minimum, let’s say that 1) rental housing fills a need for low-income seniors, low-income workers, transient workers and young people, and 2) the existing stock is falling down from old age. Continue reading →

Holding the line in Central Lonsdale

January 15, 2013 By in North Shore, Urban Villages Project Tags: , 2 Comments

Shops, Fourteenth Street, North Vancouver

Bakery front, Lonsdale Avenue, North VancouverCentral Lonsdale sits east and west of Lonsdale Avenue, the “spine” of the City of North Vancouver. North and south, it extends from Upper Levels Highway down to 8th Street.  The area offers advantages as an urban village: good public transit,  independent shops and services, recreation and culture, and proximity to downtown Vancouver (with  Shopfront, Lonsdale Avenue, North VancouverBurrard Inlet serving as a buffer.)

But the neighbourhood and the city  government face development pressures, and  controversy came to a boil in December 2012. Onni, a major developer in the region, said it would withdraw an application to construct two condo towers (24 and 17 storeys, with 350 units), a six-storey office block and ground-floor retail space, citing “public abuse” and a “smear campaign” on the part of two members of Council. Continue reading →