Westside Backyard

Douglas Todd: Jarring 18-storey tower on leafy Vancouver street a sign of the out-of-scale times About 10 steel-and-glass highrises, much like the one proposed for Yukon and 14th, are set to arise among character homes within the Broadway plan zone. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-18-storey-tower-vancouver-out-scale-times

Douglas Todd: Hundreds of quiet east Vancouver side streets upzoned for six-storey apartment blocks Some residents in the vast Rupert and Renfrew area did not know their pleasant side streets had been upzoned for six- to eight-storey apartment blocks. It calls into question the city of Vancouver's murky "engagement strategy." https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-hundreds-of-quiet-east-vancouver-side-streets-upzoned-for-six-storey-apartment-blocks

'Monstrosities' or the evolution of housing? Multi-unit buildings on single-family lots gain traction in B.C. cities The number of multi-unit developments on single-family lots is increasing in B.C. neighbourhoods dominated by single-detached houses. Opinions vary over what these changes will mean for communities. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/multiplex-feature

Anakin/Padme meme I oppose this building because it's too tall It's just this building, not all new housing? You are not against all new housing, right?

A storey in four acts as captured by local news media:

18 storeys is too high, we’d be fine with 4-6 storeys

6 storeys are too big, we'd be fine with multiplexes

Multiplexes are monstrosities, we are fine with existing post-Second World War bungalows

...

[Pitching to BC Green Party]

"As you can see, many of our Rental Rain Forests, as in Vancouver's West End, have grown quite tall. But others were clear cut by downzoning in the 1970s, and are only now starting to recover."

🔈

The multi-level play structure in Rainbow Park

There's a reason play structures have signs not to climb the outside

(It's me, hi. I'm the problem, it's me)

Some public speakers said they were opposed to the rooftop play area "for the sake of the children", as if the kids wouldn't think it's the coolest fuckin' thing.

Who *didn't* want to climb onto the roof of their school as a kid?

Someone go cover the development notice signs with balloons and streamers

19 years after it was first conditionally approved, all levels of government have finished signing off on the necessary steps to build a school in Vancouver’s Olympic Village.

A final year of debate and planning was required to raise the number of floors for the school from 3 to 4.

It seems like it depends on how many people that voted superficially for cops and nurses last time will think it's not worth voting Sim again. They're probably not paying attention to or swayed by this news, but also less likely to buy that Sim has done well when the general vibes are not good.

They've voted the party line, including on the supportive housing ban that caused Bligh's exit.
This could be an opportunity for a pivot, but would they be willing to - and would Bligh/Allam/the public buy it? They might need to go independent and distance themselves from ABC a bit first.

🤔 Before this they were maybe safe enough as incumbent councillors that they were willing to wait out Sim getting ousted, then change the party's direction.
Are they eager enough to jump right now, or will they try to wait this out hoping it doesn't stick as a scandal?

We need to stop reinventing the wheel we know how to build stacked, larger, family sized homes on a single lot. No need to get more creative, or overthink this. Just build what we always have. They’ll sell, they are beloved, they need to be allowed again

There was a pair of dogs wearing red cat-eye glasses 🥺

My sunset too warm, the park dogs too cute

AR did already get their Safeway redevelopment, the discourse usually just is on upzoning Shaughnessy and WPG, that AR gets forgotten about like a middle child amongst the west side neighbourhoods.

It's hard for me to stay negative when Vancouver is sunny. Oh no, my oceans too blue, my mountains too high.

There's a mix of houses built in each decade of the last century, and I think it exemplifies that neighbourhoods will change even if the typology doesn't.
I don't think any house when it was built was ever cheaper than one from the decade before.

A house with a tree-filled front yard enclosed by a fence with stone pillars and decorative panels with a tree motif that don't obstruct visibility into the yard. An arched trellis on the verge leads from the street to the front gate.

A modern house. The front yard has a mature tree and low garden beds with stone borders. A matching garden bed is on the verge between the street and sidewalk.

A few did stand out by having yards that look like someone would actually spend time there, and adding features that extend across the sidewalk.
A little bit of an invitation to a shared space as you pass through, rather than an implicit or explicit distance between public and private space.

A single family home with slightly recessed front entryway. The front yard is a bare lawn with a few small hedges against the house.

A new looking two storey house. The rather plain looking front yard has a row of tiny hedges across the front of the house and a single young tree in the lawn.

A large boxy house with a row of person-height hedges along the property line. The front entryway is enclosed with an iron gate.

A two storey house with a barrier hedges that reaches the second story

I'm not getting "neighbourhood character" or "interaction with the street" from this architecture & bare-ass front lawn, or barrier hedges & iron gate over the front entry.

I'm used to "20% below market is not enough; we don't need more market housing", so hearing "I'm stopping more affordable housing so there's as much market rate as possible" is wild

I walked to renew my driver's license, and pretty weird how suburban Arbutus Ridge felt

A terminator robot labelled "New towers in Kitsilano and West Point Grey" in the background as an anime girl labelled "Arbutus Ridge trying to not attract any attention" hides under a desk

I think in some cases pro-market voices are lumped in with YIMBY because they want to build or invest in development, when they are implicitly or explicitly NIMBY to new density or social housing that would affect them. They wouldn't call themselves YIMBY.

People buying new housing are probably doing pretty okay even in a shoddy economy - lots of people still do. Their housing choice might be determined by life changes that they've specifically lived in a cheaper place and saved in order to achieve.

This is 512 households on an island of 1M people.

Someone moving from a 1 to 2 bedroom because they're starting a family is an increase in rent, but a good thing for them.

Even if the rent on a vacated unit increased on turnover, it's a home that wasn't available at all to anyone else beforehand. Vacancy rate determines the trend in average rent.

The available data limits the length of moving chain they can trace, so there may have been some housing cheaper than 40% opened up.
Regardless of overall average rent prices, many people moved into homes that were affordable and suitable *for them*, while vacating cheaper homes.

For some the foundational belief is that everyone should live in cheap, modest housing - so vacancy control to keep rent low, never replace old with new, strict zoning to "discipline the land market", extract fees from new homes.
Then refuse to examine how rich people exploit those exact conditions.

Particularly frustrating when they also don't advocate building "luxury" apartments for rich people somewhere that it would still be cheaper than the existing housing, so that rich people stay in already expensive areas (and pay more taxes/acre to city services that help poorer people)

Our longtime volunteer @rhifaux.bsky.social was hit by a driver yesterday on the way home from a road safety workshop at city hall. She is home from the hospital and recovering with a broken wrist. We're grateful it wasn't worse, and outraged it happened at all. More to say soon.

I think it's a pretty simple match of posts that were liked by people who liked the same things as you, it just doesn't try to insert "novel" posts like the default discover feed or engagement bait like other platforms