Coach house, Trafalgar Street, Vancouver

For decades, the City of Vancouver has pursued a strategy of creating new, densely-populated residential zones around unused industrial lands. (Yaletown is a good example.) Efforts to densify residential zones have generally been more cautious. When Council goes for the gusto, as with the multi-tower proposal for Kingsway and Knight, public opposition is often bitter.

Larch Street: two units accessible from the main floor, one from the ground floor.

Vancouver’s West Broadway area is an example of creeping densification, an approach  designed to improve housing choice without triggering civil war. It’s achieved mostly by placing new mini-homes on large properties (as shown above), or by dividing vintage homes into multiple units (as on the left.) Continue reading →