Flying? DON'T BE RIDICULOUS!
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Shocked, shocked to discover that these people were simply concern trolls and contemptible hypocrites all along

Just dragging the goalposts around in circles like a parade float

I was happy to get the chance to talk about yesterday's Commercial-Broadway public hearing and to say "housing is good" on CBC's The Coast with Amy Bell this afternoon!

www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

They did not "have concerns" or "feedback" or "local knowledge to share", they simply wanted it not to happen, or if it did, to be as tiny as possible.

I forget the building now, but it was some west side thing that passed and afterwards I was reading comments in a Facebook group of opponents and there was this one that went something like, "All that work and all we got was 4 storeys less?"

This gets to the feeling I get whenever someone tries to slightly scale back a building, as though the naysayers are meaningfully appeased by a 15 storey building than an 18 storey building. It’s an attempt to reason with the unreasonable

interesting argument - TLDR the claim is that the emissions from concrete production and transportation are wildly overrated

lol

At no point did I say that it was a magic bullet. Only that it was a large factor, that fixing it costs public nothing, was worthy of dealing w/so that govt can be focussed on those other factors rather than endlessly litigating whether it's ok for a building to be 35.5' tall or 35.6' tall

Look into any "luxury" condo in your city and I guarantee it's just a normal apartment made of wood, concrete, drywall, some nails etc. Then look in a different city and you'll find the same or better quality condo for 50% off. It's got nothing to do with luxury and everything to do with scarcity.

You can have the same scenario under socialism. The only way to bring the waitlist down is to build a fuck ton. But while you are building, randos will say, "Why are you building housing with long wait lists, we need housing with short waitlists, this is pointless"

But outside of housing, it is how it works.

The only way housing gets cheap is if the people who own it (homeowners & landlords) can't find buyers/tenants and face bankruptcy if they don't lower their ask. The only way to get there is to built a lot.

Food permits are abt the public good, not quantity. Your food permit is not about limiting the quantity of bread baked, only that it is safe.

We should treat buildings like that - build as much as you like, so long as it's safe and you don't evict anyone - but we don't.

lol

Food permits are abt the public good, not quantity. You can bake as much as you want, as long as it's safe.

Zoning is about status, class & exclusion - segregating the ppl who cannot afford detached houses away from ppl who can.

Whoever builds big, bright apartments with balconies over looking parks instead of car sewers is going to get a lot of votes.

This is a welcome shift.

In housing markets in the cities where people want to live, every square inch of interior floorspace requires political approval. By contrast, there is not one bakery in the country that has to ask for political approval to bake an extra loaf of bread.

lol

It's not the only relevant factor but it is a very large relevant factor, a factor totally under govt control, and a factor that costs $0 in public funds to resolve. So it's worth dealing with so that govt can work on the other smaller but more complicated factors.

“If more localities…allow for a wide variety of housing types, people who want to trade private space for community amenities would have the choice to do so. And, as more families choose city living, those who prefer a big house in the suburbs will have less competition for existing homes.”

The thing about institutions that aren't subject to any competitive pressure is that they decay.

Here in Vancouver we talk about Shaughnessy a lot, where a giant chunk of central land minutes from downtown, is reserved for $5M+ mansions. But the problem is actually a whole lot worse and widespread.

In the years ahead, the province, school board and the city will be part of ribbon cutting events for the final design, rezoning, groundbreaking and completion.

They will congratulate themselves for what they've done.

Politicians will applaud at each other.

23 years for 1 school.

Fun comparison - from 1941 and 1951 census we can see that elementary age children in CoV increased by 9000 in 10 years, or about 14 OVE's worth. At 18 years of process per 630 additional capacity, it would take today school board 257 years to handle it.

The Vancouver School Board creating a graphic showing how it's going to take 23 years to build a single school for a centrally planned neighbourhood in the heart of B.C.'s biggest city serves as a hilarious indictment of how planning happens here

(credit to @city-duo.bsky.social for flagging)

housing affordability is one of the few issues where i feel like the median lefty is just wrong in their diagnosis of the problem.

Mayor says D.C. Streetcar is going away, ‘next generation streetcar’ is coming The streetcar that took more than a decade and $200 million to launch will shut down in two more years.

"Rails in the street make a service permanent," -- every urbanist but me circa 2000.

www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

“The fact that the government has to ignore its rules if it wants to do something important ought to raise the question of why those rules have to be followed the rest of the time.”

Back to land use & pollution - If someone wants to build an office building w/no generator & no parking, I think they should be able to build it basically anywhere, inc next to leafy mansions. But if they want a giant generator & they aren't a hospital, banish it to the industrial zone :)

As someone living next to an office building with such a generator which is tested regularly, spewing diesel & noise into my building, IMO we should not give such externalities any special exceptions.

We should regulate pollution directly instead of indirectly with land use policy because the latter approach guarantees that polluting land uses will be located exclusively in marginalized communities with less power to block them.