[HN Gopher] Vancouver Zoning Map
___________________________________________________________________
Vancouver Zoning Map
Author : lbrito
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-04-08 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maps.nicholsonroad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maps.nicholsonroad.com)
| munk-a wrote:
| Ah darn - it isn't extended out to Surrey and Richmond - a lot of
| areas east of the city itself are extremely livable due to highly
| opinionated zoning decisions.
| baybal2 wrote:
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| Here is one for Metro Vancouver, so it stops at Langley:
| https://mountainmath.ca/zoning_map
| reggieband wrote:
| I wish the popup would link to the actual zoning by-law
| documents. I haven't read the ones for Vancouver specifically but
| generally they are pretty readable and interesting.
|
| One minor bug I noticed was the popup title bar color usually
| matches the map zoning coloring, except for zoning district DD
| where the title bar color matches CD-1 instead. At first I
| thought I was misclicking but it is just a display issue.
| ripley12 wrote:
| I've read way too many Vancouver zoning bylaws and I can tell
| you that they're generally not very readable and not very
| interesting :)
|
| But if you do want to read them, here you go:
| https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/zoning-and-la...
|
| The "CD-1" zoning is notable in that it's actually 800+ unique
| zoning districts:
| https://cd1-bylaws.vancouver.ca/ByCD-1Number.htm
|
| For a variety of depressing reasons, the Vancouver planning
| department is quite reluctant to use broadly-applicable zoning
| districts; a lot of new development happens with new unique
| zoning districts that apply to one lot only.
| munro wrote:
| Wow, the UX on this web app feels really slick on mobile. Better
| than Google Maps on mobile web. Nice work!
| lbrito wrote:
| I'm not the author btw; just found it interesting :)
|
| Kudos to author https://twitter.com/rbrtwhite!
| randyrand wrote:
| I'm really impressed on Desktop! I love the 'shift + drag =
| zoom to rectangle' feature
|
| And considerably more responsive than the Google Earth mobile
| app.
| woah wrote:
| Wow, it's 90% single family homes. I thought Vancouver was a
| Hong-Kong style concrete jungle filled with skyscrapers of vacant
| luxury 1 bdrm apartments owned by foreign real estate
| corporations.
| brailsafe wrote:
| That's just downtown and some other places that have built a
| lot of skyscrapers. There's an artificial scarcity of condos in
| part for that reason, and there's an artificial scarcity of
| condo buildings/higher density buildings because of the single
| family zoning among some other anti-density initiatives.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| And people wonder why real estate prices and rent are through the
| roof in these cities. If you replace all that SFH zoning with 6
| floor apartment complexes density instantly goes up something
| like 10x. If you build like China with 50 floor towers then
| density goes up something like 100x.
| deanCommie wrote:
| They're working on it:
| https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-fumano-the-e...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Chinese apartment towers are mostly limited to around 30
| stories using low skilled labor concrete construction
| techniques that aims to employ as much rural migrant workers as
| possible, India is the same. Incidentally, such 30 story
| apartment blocks are significant exports to the Middle East and
| Singapore that heavily use Indian and Chinese labor.
|
| But I'm not sure China is a good model for North America, they
| have a lot of density but an even worse property bubble, many
| bought apartments aren't even renovated to be rented out (so
| actual density is much less than the capacity of these
| buildings). Such speculation was exported to Vancouver as well.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The hypothetical density instantly goes up, though actual
| development might take a tad longer.
|
| Not arguing your point that this rezoning should take place,
| but just pointing out that housing development is a physical
| process and that even if Vancouver and British Columbia
| politicians do get their act together around land use policy,
| we're in a painful housing shortage hole that is going to take
| years to build our way out of.
|
| All the more reason to act sooner than later!
| lbrito wrote:
| Right?
|
| To me as a foreigner living here its glaringly obvious that the
| affordability problem is at least in great part due to SFH
| zoning. I think basically anyone not native to the US or Canada
| immediately understands this.
|
| I'm glad to see this topic being increasingly discussed among
| locals instead of just the usual boogeymen (foreign investors
| is #1).
| danbolt wrote:
| As a Canadian, I think a big part of it is that elections
| (both federal and provincial) can often be battles for the
| suburbs surrounding metropolitan areas. Suburbs often end up
| being kingmakers (see 2015, 2019, and 2021 federal elections
| or BC's 2020 election) so their priorities are often
| continually represented.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Sadly, every layer of every government in Canada is
| determined to do explore literally every other possible
| option before allowing homes to be built. And realistically,
| fixing the problem will take _decades_.
|
| Years before governments come around.
|
| Years more before they finish their endless studies and
| legislation and actually legalize housing.
|
| Once housing starts getting built, it will be a knock-down
| battle to _keep_ the changes. At the same time, we won 't
| have the capacity built up yet to build it, so years more for
| new industrial capacity to come online - more companies, more
| trained personnel, more equipment.
|
| And then even more years for the supply to finally catch up
| with the demand.
|
| My oldest kid is 14 and he's either he's living in my
| basement until he's 40 or he's going to have to move to
| Texas.
| haroldp wrote:
| > If you replace all that SFH zoning with 6 floor apartment
| complexes
|
| Or replace it with 2-6 story mixed-use, with commercial space
| on the ground floor, and density goes way up and suddenly you
| can survive without a car.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| Sure, but you dramatically change the character of a city or
| neighbourhood when you upzone with that intensity. Real estate
| prices and rents would also come back to reality if rates go up
| meaningfully and foreign investment is banned without easy
| loopholes. But since BC (and Canada at large) have built their
| flywheel for growth on a giant RE ponzi scheme, we're stuck
| debating supply side solutions to a fundamental demand problem.
| cameronpm wrote:
| This is a great point about trying to fix Demand side
| problems with a Supply solution. This is a recent paper
| talking about this todo with nutrition (Does access to
| healthy food actually make people healthier?):
| https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
| abstract/134/4/1793/549...
|
| Here is another example with calorie labels (Do calorie
| labels actually reduce calorie intake?):
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209007/
| mrmuagi wrote:
| Interesting. I'm kind of shocked at how much one-family dwelling
| there is. I would love to see expansion to Richmond, Delta,
| Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam as there is a ton of commuting
| population that ingress and egress to Vancouver.
| nayuki wrote:
| Indeed. At first I thought the gray areas of the map were
| inactive or had no data available.
|
| But upon clicking, the pop-up legend says that gray means "One-
| Family Dwelling", and "Zoning District" is RS-1, RS-3, RS-5,
| RS-6, etc.
| nickff wrote:
| Vancouver used to be the city with the highest proportion of
| single family dwelling zoning in North America. It was the
| example of SFH zoning in "Zoned in the USA", a very good book
| on the history of zoning in North America.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Why would Vancouver be used as an example of "Zoned in the
| USA"? Unless that was meant to be tongue and cheek?
| nickff wrote:
| Vancouver had the highest proportion of single-family house
| zoning in North America, and the book was really about
| Canada and the USA, not just the latter.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If it is not meant as a joke, they might be referring to
| the other Vancouver next to that active volcano.
| nickff wrote:
| I read the book, and that section was very clearly about
| Vancouver, British Columbia; Vancouver, Washington was
| not discussed.
| ripley12 wrote:
| North American zoning shares a lot of the same origins in
| both Canada and the USA; Vancouver's first zoning code was
| drafted by Harland Bartholomew who did a lot of American
| cities' first zoning codes.
| dleslie wrote:
| You've left a big gap for New Westminster. ;)
| munk-a wrote:
| New West is perfect as it is - don't change a thing... except
| maybe improve the sidewalks along Columbia St. and Royal Ave.
| those median strips are way too thin in places.
| dleslie wrote:
| It's far from perfect; I lived there for twenty years and
| only moved away last summer.
|
| For starters: it's gone quickly downhill in the last 5
| years or thereabouts because the street-level outreach
| services were placed within the downtown and high-density
| mixed use areas of the city; and so city promenades and
| parks have become unsafe for children and other vulnerable
| persons. I got tired of having to sweep the grass and sand
| for broken glass and needles before my kids could play; or
| having to explain why their favourite playground was
| closed/spray painted/burned down. My wife and neighbours
| didn't feel safe walking at night; probably because of the
| _numerous_ murders in the immediate neighbourhood.
|
| But more to zoning: the Queen's Park Heritage Community is
| an affront to affordability and heritage both! It secures
| and defends the white-favored, post-war housing that was
| constructed in the Queen's Park area that replaced the
| high-density housing that existed in the area pre-war. The
| tenements that were there prior would never pass the
| heritage committee now. Good luck trying to convince
| Queen's Park to build anything remotely affordable.
|
| The whole of Brow of the Hill is a low-income residential
| area that council, even the current self-declared
| progressive council, seems determined to completely ignore.
| It has some of the highest density of children, but parts
| of Brow are a half hour, or longer, walk from a public
| playground. There was a playground, 10y ago, but the School
| Board paved it over to put in parking for teachers.
|
| Last spring, I knew it was time to leave when I was walking
| my kids to day care at 9am on a sunny day and I had to
| divert their attention _yet again_ because a man was
| running down the street with knife wounds. It's funny,
| because when I first moved to town I did so because it was
| cheap; and one day leaving the Columbia Sky Train station a
| man lunged from a bush, covered in dried blood, and asked
| to use my phone. I let him, thinking he'd call 911, but
| instead he called his friends and ordered a hit on those
| who tortured him.
|
| Since then things got better, the neighbourhood cleaned up,
| but then they rapidly declined again because council
| thought it was better to embrace than resist.
|
| And so I packed up my family and left.
| 99_00 wrote:
| More people from Vancouver go to Richmond for work than the
| other way around.
|
| Also, Richmond Delta are 50% or more farmland, Surrey maybe
| 30%.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| As an outsider (not from North America), I find it beyond
| insane how they still zone all those neighborhoods at the core
| of the city (short walking distance from Downtown proper) as if
| they were far periphery suburbs.
|
| In my country such central neighborhoods in such a young fast-
| growing city would have been re-zoned to 4-story buildings a
| long time ago, and then rezoned again to 12-story buildings
| more recently. No wonder they have a "housing crisis".
|
| _Edit:_ And when you compare it to a transit map it becomes
| even more outlandish, they have "single family zones"
| completely surrounding major transit stations.
| solson4 wrote:
| It looks like this could change soon with the city allowing
| "metroplexs" everywhere in city limits[1]. It's not law yet,
| but the city has been doing a lot of upzoning, so we'll see.
|
| 1. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-fumano-
| the-e...
| ripley12 wrote:
| It's definitely, definitely _not_ going to happen soon.
|
| The Vancouver Plan needs to be approved, then an Official
| Development Plan, then neighbourhood plans, _then_ actual
| rezonings. Expect 10+ years, if it happens at all; Vancouver
| has a very poor record with these sorts of city-wide plans.
| From a 1992 article I found in the archives a while back:
|
| "no city council has ever accepted any of the half-dozen
| attempts at developing a city plan"
|
| https://twitter.com/GRIDSVancouver/status/106689301711663104.
| ..
| deanCommie wrote:
| Fantastic!
| f1yght wrote:
| It's kind of wild but very common how much land is zoned for
| single family in north american cities, especially the
| expensive ones.
| lbrito wrote:
| Yeah, metro cities are pretty much exclusively SFH except for
| islands of density around transit corridors/skytrain stations.
| s1mon wrote:
| One of the things I really like about Vancouver's architecture,
| which I assume is a result of zoning, is that while there are
| tall apartment buildings for density, they aren't all bunched
| close together creating narrow dark cold streets with no views.
| You'll have a small number of stories near the wide streets, and
| then a big setback before there's a 20-story tower. It all feels
| open and approachable as a pedestrian, but there's decent
| density.
|
| I'd love to see similar maps for other cities.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I think I agree in part, but part of this that I take issue
| with, is that it takes what would otherwise be publicly
| accessible land, and rises it up off the street for people who
| only live in the towers. This has its own miserable effect on
| the streetscape, because I really don't think that people in
| those buildings actually use those spaces, and the land could
| be much more effectively used.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| This is def a direct intention of the city planners. Despite
| being in one of the warmest parts of Canada, it still has long
| dark winters due to its latitude. "Point Towers" are a way to
| maximize light and also to provide peak a boo views of the
| mountains.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I have a question about cities in North America. I know you don't
| have many apartment buildings, the urban sprawl etc. In fact I
| studied a bit of urbanism so I got the gist of it (I think).
|
| But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets
| closer to where people lives, instead of larger ones that require
| so long trips. I guess it wouldn't make it walkable, because
| cities are not designed like that, but it would be a 5 minute
| trip maybe.
|
| In my mind that is probably more efficient. People may come more
| often, so more opportunities for cross selling, real state is
| probably cheaper and the only downside I see is that would
| probably require more labor.
|
| If I had to hop in the car for doing anything I think I'll die of
| laziness.
| brailsafe wrote:
| It's for the obvious reasons you'd derive from what you
| studied, and it is absolutely soul-crushing.
|
| However, this is less-common in the more central areas of
| Vancouver, at least where I live, and I could never go back. If
| you drop into street view and go up and down Commercial Drive,
| there's 5-10 grocery stores that are easy to walk to. This
| absolutely isn't the case in most of the suburbs though.
| cameronpm wrote:
| In Vancouver, you'll usually have a few grocery stores in
| <10min walk because of the zoning. Commercial is usually every
| 4-6 blocks. It takes 10 mins to walk 4 blocks, as they are
| small in comparison to other cities I've lived in.
|
| Most American cities were designed to do everything by car.
| blamazon wrote:
| Vancouver is also notable for having mostly resisted the
| "urban interstate highway addiction" that incentivizes longer
| (distance) car trips in a lot of American cities.
| cameronpm wrote:
| Going to Toronto and seeing their highway along the water
| makes me sick. I can't believe they are cool with that.
| Boston at least realized their mistake and reversed it.
| jeromegv wrote:
| The city amalgamated with near inner-suburbs, which gave
| a lot of power to city councillors that are living in
| more car-centric neighborhood. So while people downtown
| couldn't give two shit about the highway and would like
| it destroyed, suburbans councillors voted to keep it
| because of course, that's the highway they use to drive
| to city hall. There was a decent plan to transform it
| into an urban boulevard (still large, but less ugly than
| elevated highway) and that lost.
|
| And before anyone mentions people going to work that need
| the highway, majority of commuting to downtown business
| is not cars, but a combo of transit + cycling + walking.
| ghaff wrote:
| Thank you Tip O'Neill.[1] It's nice to get the rest of
| the country to pay for your urban planning mistakes. The
| Big Dig was sort of awful to live through. But getting
| rid of the elevated highway that cut off the North End
| was a huge win for Boston.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O%27Neill
| blamazon wrote:
| The eternal sadness is that in part due to that reliance
| on federal money, we were unable to put real rail
| infrastructure in as part of the project and could only
| get Bus-'Rapid'-Transit which led to the mediocre Silver
| Line.
|
| In some parallel universe Boston is yukking it up with a
| high frequency train from Roxbury to the South End (along
| the original elevated Orange line route) to South Station
| to Seaport to the Airport and I hate them for it. I just
| know they demolished Central Parking at Logan and built a
| gleaming rail terminal in its place.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, the mediocre Silver Line (which has only become a
| more obvious "compromise" as the Seaport area has
| developed). As I understand it, there was also "supposed"
| to be a new better connection between North Station and
| South Station which never happened.
|
| Though I shouldn't complain too much. Not that I go into
| the city a lot but the public transit system, including
| commuter rail, is pretty good by US standards overall for
| all its problems.
|
| And parking at Logan is such a mess that I just get
| driven, expensive as it is. Even economy parking is
| expensive and it's practically in another state.
| munk-a wrote:
| See, hopping in a car to do everything is sort of the modus
| operandi in the Americas and something I absolutely can't
| stand. The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by
| virtue of being older with more entrenched infrastructure that
| predates cars but west coast cities are often oriented around
| cars as the primary method of transportation. Vancouver is one
| of the better of these but it still suffers greatly from a
| constant flow of traffic through the downtown core.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| > The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by
| virtue of being older
|
| Note that <100 years ago basically every US city had somewhat
| similar density to New York or Boston. It's not that they
| were built for the car so much as they were _rebuilt_ for it.
| So I don't think the reason can be as simple as 'because
| they're older'.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Yup. This was LA: https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1512
| 498617831018497?s=2...
| 99_00 wrote:
| I doubt that many small trips per week is more efficient than
| one big trip per week.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| You have to live in rather remote place in US to not have a
| supermarket within 10 minute drive. There are plenty of places
| like that, to be sure, but in the suburbia you're thinking of,
| large supermarkets are typically within 5-10 minutes drive.
|
| For example, I live in Seattle, in a single family house in a
| single family house neighborhood. I have 3 large supermarkets
| within 5 minute drives, and at least 6 within 10 minutes.
|
| Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller
| selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5
| minutes?
| brailsafe wrote:
| I do think 5-10 minutes by car is really bad benchmark, but I
| think a lot of people do feel like that's tenable.
|
| I've lived most of my life in places that are 5-10 minutes by
| car from a store, and it makes for a very isolated social
| experience, but also it means that if I don't have a car,
| getting groceries is a planned 1.5 hour experience.
|
| Now that I'm living within walking distance, I buy a majority
| of my food multiple times per week, only for a few days at a
| time, which means I can also go to the coffee shop and see
| people doing the same thing, have a talk with them, socialize
| etc..
| _dain_ wrote:
| Another answer that assumes "close" is synonymous with "close
| by car".
|
| >Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has
| smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper
| one in 5 minutes?
|
| Because you might not have a car.
| bnjms wrote:
| The thread OP assumed themselves "close by car". I think it
| wasn't obvious to them that supermarkets are all relatively
| close by even at their size.
| alephxyz wrote:
| I used to live in a canadian suburb and the reasons I heard the
| most often to opposecommercial development near their houses
| were that they didn't want additional traffic, loud trucks
| making late night deliveries or people parking on their street.
| Basically making it impossible to rezone residential or vacant
| lots as commerces.
| ghaff wrote:
| >But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller
| supermarkets closer to where people lives, instead of larger
| ones that require so long trips.
|
| It's a reasonable question but I don't really know the answer.
|
| In the US you tend to have sort of a bifurcation between (a
| few) supermarket chains (possibly somewhat downscaled in an
| urban environment) and convenience stores/bodegas/small food
| departments in places like urban Targets that tend to have
| minimal produce etc. Whereas in someplace like London, you're
| have Tesco's and smaller Sainsbury's which are somewhat in-
| between. Certainly there are exceptions with various local
| markets/specialists but that's the general pattern one sees.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Demand: I live near small supermarkets, but many in North
| America choose not to. We also have to pay for the privilege
| (since such walkable areas are generally not cheap).
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller
| supermarkets closer to where people lives,
|
| Maybe we'll leapfrog that step straight to Amazon Fresh
| delivery to the door.
| blamazon wrote:
| I'm not sure _why_ this is the case, but American consumers
| have come to expect (have been trained to expect?) a wide
| variety of choice at the supermarket. I 'm talking like, you
| want honey? You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey
| available. Repeat for every expected type of product, and you
| need a big centralized building for this to work out
| economically.
|
| Of course, all problems in NA urbanism seem to stem from land
| zoning. Building a small grocery store in a residential
| neighborhood is illegal in a distressingly huge percentage of
| urban land here, and it's been this way since the 50s. So
| that's probably part of why the megamart has succeeded. The
| concept of 'mixed use' is a new idea to many cities, and it's
| not well distributed on the zoning maps.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Do people really make use of this choice? Or is more like
| companies conditioning customers?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think consumers really do make this choice, and aren't
| very compromising. People have a high expectation for both
| the variety of products, and the variety of a single
| product.
|
| As a result, the different people have very diverse diets,
| and it is unlikely that a small store would satisfy most of
| them.
|
| For example, each week I shop from 2-3 different
| supermarkets that are 60k ft^2 each (6k m^2).
| ghaff wrote:
| And an individual consumer probably doesn't take
| advantage of all the choices on a weekly basis but in
| aggregate they do. I have a couple of convenient
| supermarkets and I don't shop at both weekly but I
| recognize that each is better for certain things. And
| Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are even better for others
| although neither are close enough to make a special trip
| for the most part.
| jhgb wrote:
| > You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available.
|
| ...and all of it is from three different companies?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The why is because once you have a car, the marginal cost of
| using the car is only $0.40 to $0.60 per minute of travel.
| That means if you are running errands, it makes sense to shop
| at big box stores that can sell for 10%+ cheaper due to
| efficiencies of scale.
|
| Hence Costco/Target/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Best
| Buy/Staples/etc succeed over a small business that might be a
| walkable distance. You are already in the car going to and
| from work, what difference does a detour make.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| You make a solid point, I'd only say you're overestimating
| a marginal cost of a minute of travel. Unless you're doing
| a long freeway trip (which is unlikely in the context of
| going to Target), your average speed will be closer to 30
| mph. That means that you'll burn less than 2 gallons of gas
| (closer to 1 in fact) per hour, and even at today's gas
| prices, that will come down to less than $.15/minute.
| Maintenance and amortization, as a good rule of thumb, are
| around equal to the cost of fuel, so you're unlikely to
| reach $.40/minute, much less $.60, unless you drive
| expensive, fuel inefficient car at highway speeds for
| extended periods.
|
| The rest of your comment, however, I fully agree with.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| IRS gives almost $0.60 per mile:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-
| rat...
|
| > The standard mileage rate for business use is based on
| an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of
| operating an automobile.
|
| I also incorporate morbidity/mortality risks associated
| with driving, considering it is the riskiest thing people
| do on a day to day basis which very well could result in
| loss of income due to not being able to work and other
| costs.
|
| I also expect inflation to keep driving up replacement
| cost of cars (and repairs).
|
| Finally, I am under the impression that short distance
| start and stop driving is more costly via wear and tear
| than long distance highway driving.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I think they're overestimating, but more importantly,
| they also include fixed costs in those figures, while the
| parent comment was talking about cost of a marginal
| minute once you already have a car.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| The most fascinating part to me as an immigrant is that when
| you go to a supermarket, the 50 brands of honey are all
| basically the same thing.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Because they are illegal to build in residential areas, per
| zoning laws.
| drivers99 wrote:
| To back up what you said:
|
| The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most
| of North America (Not Just Bikes channel)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ
| bubblethink wrote:
| >why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where
| people lives
|
| You will find smaller supermarkets (publix, trader joes, etc.)
| within 5-10 mins of driving time in a lot of cities.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >within 5-10 mins of driving time
|
| and what about within 5-10 minutes of walking time? I think
| that's what was meant in the GP comment.
| bubblethink wrote:
| I think that depends on where you choose to live. To give
| the ideal case scenario, in a city like Atlanta which has
| sprawl, you can choose to live close to midtown/downtown,
| and you'll get that proximity. You can also live further
| away and drive. This is far more sustainable in terms of
| quality of life, cost of living etc., than forcing everyone
| to make one trade-off v/s the other. Personally, I like the
| choice and options that this brings, rather than shopping
| at an overpriced corner store or a high-end local grocery
| store in cities like SF.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Look I get that HN is a North American-dominated site,
| but you have to understand that what you just posted is
| sheer lunacy from the perspective of someone not from
| that continent.
|
| In the UK, the trade-off you described _does not exist_.
| Unless you live in a genuine rural area, there is _almost
| always_ a supermarket (or mini version of a supermarket
| chain) within a 10 minute walking distance of where you
| live. Even in suburban areas. And they aren 't
| overpriced, I've never noticed a significant difference
| in pricing between the mini versions of e.g. Tesco and
| the big versions.
|
| I live in the suburban outskirts of a medium-sized city,
| there are about half a dozen decently sized food shops in
| a ten minute walking radius of my house.
|
| From what I've seen, this is purely because of zoning
| laws. You can't walk to buy milk in American suburbia
| because it's illegal to build retail in residential
| areas. It's that simple.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >From what I've seen, this is purely because of zoning
| laws.
|
| America is vast and sparse for the most part. I don't
| know if such a model is even viable even if you were to
| relax zoning for grocery stores. Isn't the store's
| profitability proportional to population density ?
| Considering the real estate and labour costs, you would
| have to incentivise the grocery stores quite a bit to
| achieve that sort of store/ditance ratio.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _America_ is vast and sparse, but that doesn 't mean your
| _settlements_ have to be, does it?
|
| And yes, it would be viable. For one thing, the zoning
| laws are what is keeping the population density low in
| the first place, so the problem is circular. There are
| huge tracts of land where you can only build single
| detached houses with minimum lot sizes. Let people build
| duplexes, triplexes, small apartment buildings. This
| gives the customer base for amenities.
|
| (When I say this, often the first reply is: but people
| want single family homes! Well yes, I'm not denying they
| are popular, but that's no reason to mandate them. The
| status quo enshrines one set of people's preferences in
| law while forbidding all alternatives. You can't really
| gauge true preferences in the presence of such huge
| market distortions. At any rate, single family homes
| still exist in places without zoning to mandate them, so
| they are available to people who want them.)
|
| I grew up in a suburb of a town that was dying twice over
| (from collapsed manufacturing and collapsed tourism, the
| two big employers in the old days). Most housing was
| semi-detached, what you call duplex housing. Within 10
| minutes walking distance of my house, there were three
| off-licences, a Co-Op, two butchers, two pubs, a post
| office, a library, and a chip shop. So, lets say we halve
| the population density by making the houses single
| detached instead of semi-detached. All else equal, that
| would let them support about half the retail, so that
| would be (rounding down) one off-licence, a smaller Co-Op
| with a post office branch inside, one butcher, and one
| pub. A wealthier town would likely have even more.
|
| So yes, it's completely workable, both in theory and from
| my own experience.
|
| When I talk about this it puts me in mind of a Cold War
| westerner trying to explain how grocery stores work to an
| eastern bloc denizen. Yes, ordinary people can afford
| bananas!
|
| Zoning is a kind of Soviet-style central planning mania
| that has somehow grown like a tumor inside the world's
| biggest free market democracy. It distorts markets and
| mindsets.
| bombcar wrote:
| Probably because grocery store margins are low, and the number
| of employees for a small one vs a large one is pretty similar,
| so it's cheaper and easier for the company to build larger
| ones.
|
| We do have "convenience stores" some of which are effectively
| very small grocery stores (produce, fresh meats, etc). But
| usually significantly more expensive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Convenience stores aren't really more expensive small grocery
| stores. I'd challenge you to regularly pickup the ingredients
| for a tasty healthy dinner from a typical US 7-Eleven.
| bombcar wrote:
| Our local equivalent has bacon wrapped steak, potatoes,
| with some avocado on the side.
|
| Or you can get the 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts (boneless)
| for $7.
|
| Of course I'm actually only a block from a normal grocery
| store so I don't need to worry.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| If you're lucky they may sell not quite ripe bananas at the
| front counter. Otherwise the healthiest is going to be
| cheese from the cooler, orange juice, and tortilla chips.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ours adds carrots, lettuce, avocados, apples, oranges,
| potatoes and sweet potatoes, along with other stuff I
| can't recall.
| nightski wrote:
| I don't know about other areas but where we live there are 3
| grocery stores within a few mile radius. I do think this is
| quite common. I am in a smaller city as well, of about 250k.
|
| My wife & I walk or bike to them quite regularly in the
| spring/summer/fall.
| nikanj wrote:
| White means "you need to be able to afford a multi-million dollar
| mortgage to live here".
|
| Most of the map is white.
| cameronpm wrote:
| Incredible map, I've never seen this before and I grew up here.
|
| Zoning decides so much of the vibe of a city/neighbourhood.
| Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of
| having an area that people love to love in.
|
| Having lived in 6 other cities, other things Vancouver does well
| that aren't obvious on this map:
|
| - Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets)
|
| - No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of
| space)
|
| - Grass on both sides of sidewalk and trees on every street.
|
| - Extremely high park density.
|
| - Protected bike lanes everywhere.
|
| - Side streets with random dead ends.
|
| - Commercial streets every ~4-6 blocks that allow more traffic +
| bus routes.
|
| - Rectangle structured blocks with numbers 1 direction and names
| the other.
| sofixa wrote:
| From the other side of the pond, your list makes me sad. It
| appears we take a lot of urban design elements for granted
| here. I grew up in commie blocks, am now in Haussmannian
| urbanism, and most of those ( i mean there isn't grass and
| trees on _every_ street, but it 's pretty frequent) are just..
| basic common sense here.
|
| Like the fact that there's a term, "transit oriented
| development" used in North America. Here it's just common
| sense, nobody calls it anything.
| sefrost wrote:
| Where exactly do you mean by "the other side of the pond"?
|
| I moved to Vancouver from the UK last year and it is
| significantly nicer/more liveable than most UK cities I've
| seen.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >- No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of
| space)
|
| Why doesn't this result in cars simply traveling on regular
| streets and creating noise and danger in the exact same space
| as pedestrians, cyclists, and residents?
| ripley12 wrote:
| There are a lot of potential answers to that, but perhaps the
| shortest one is that cars drive much faster on a highway.
| [deleted]
| Matthias247 wrote:
| > - Protected bike lanes everywhere.
|
| As an avid biker in Vancouver, I can unfortunately not confirm
| that. There's a few strategic ones, but it's far from
| everywhere. https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-
| vancouver.pdf has the overview. It unfortunately doesn't cover
| the extended area, but already shows that outside of downtown
| only a small amount of fully protected lanes exists - like
| Arbutus Greenway.
| rtlfe wrote:
| The "local street bikeways" tend to actually be pretty good
| though. There are plenty of traffic diverters and other
| calming elements, unlike most North American cities that just
| paint sharrows and pray for the best.
| omosubi wrote:
| Yeah anyone who thinks that Vancouver bike infrastructure
| is bad is delusional - it's not perfect but no city is
| (especially in north America) and you can get basically
| anywhere in the city on a safe side street
| cameronpm wrote:
| Another great map. Yea, in comparison to Amsterdam we suck. I
| hope we keep making them. I find the sidestreets on pretty
| safe, due to low car traffic.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, sure, in comparison to _the best biking city in the
| best biking country in the world_ , anyone would suck.
|
| Vancouver is consistently ranked among the most bike
| friendly cities in the world: -
| https://www.archdaily.com/920413/the-20-most-bike-
| friendly-c... - https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-
| cycling-ranking-20... - https://www.momentum-
| biking.com/us/9-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-...
| MikeSchurman wrote:
| They also have view cones, which are: "a policy enforced by the
| City of Vancouver that limits the heights of the buildings to
| protect sight lines of the North Shore mountains from a number
| of arbitrary perspectives"
|
| Interestingly the 1st image result of view cones is how they
| could be a bad thing for Vancouver:
| https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-view-cones-economi...
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Seems like view cones are a frequent criticism of certain
| pro-housing activists, but I think we can see from this
| Vancouver Zoning Map is the real low hanging fruit for more
| housing development is the vast swath of land zoned
| exclusively for single family homes.
|
| Personally I can't understand the hate for the viewcones that
| I sometimes see. Talk with any newcomer to the city and they
| absolutely love the mountains. The mountain views are one of
| the selling points of this city. It would be utterly mad to
| block them.
| ripley12 wrote:
| Depends on the view cone, I think. I agree that view cones
| aren't public enemy number 1, but some really are bad.
|
| I live near one in East Van that is utterly useless; it's
| defined as starting in the middle of a road, and the view
| is blocked by tree foliage most of the year anyway. And yet
| because of it, multiple proposed apartment buildings have
| been cut short.
| dleslie wrote:
| > No highways in the city (loud, dangerous, take up lots of
| space)
|
| The Grandview Highway cuts through half of Vancouver.
| inasio wrote:
| It's also slated for removal (at least the upper viaduct), a
| very large park is meant to be built in its place (the
| architects that designed the High Line park in NYC were going
| to be designing the project, at least as of 3 years ago).
| novok wrote:
| That feels like such a waste compared to not making the
| super crowded b-line a train line sooner vs later.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| They're literally digging up Broadway constructing the
| Broadway line skytrain right now.
| dleslie wrote:
| Yup, and coincidentally there's basically no plan
| whatsoever to either move offices out of downtown or
| significantly improve transit options into downtown.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Isn't that because there is a 400-year tsunami of 60m
| high, and they're trying to de-densify?
| thinkingkong wrote:
| It doesnt cut through what most people would consider the
| "city" part of Vancouver which is the denser part of
| downtown. It's also not really like a highway that most
| people refer to. It's nothing like the 400 series in Toronto,
| or the I5 in Seattle.
| dleslie wrote:
| It's interrupted in its path by the viaducts, but the
| highway begins again to cut through Stanley Park and cross
| to the North Shore.
|
| Vancouver's not a particularly well-designed city; its lack
| of a fully through highway is more a circumstance of
| indecision than design. It's still a city hampered by
| office districts and bedroom communities, linked with
| stroads, like many North American cities.
|
| Glad I left.
| cameronpm wrote:
| what cities do you consider well designed and why?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Montreal is nice. Most people, even as far out as
| Outremont, have a grocery store within walking distance.
| Metro map could be improved but is decent for the core.
| Transit runs decently during peak times. Main issue is
| lack of bike lanes, but there's always a shortage of
| bixis so apparently people do cycle. Easy access to
| parks, I've got two within walking distance.
| Unfortunately the metro does stop at around 1a, so going
| on a downtown bar until closing means you're taking a
| night bus back.
| dleslie wrote:
| There aren't any, really; because we didn't spend the
| 20th Century thinking of alternatives to commuting via
| personal automobile from bedrooms to offices.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| A true well designed city have not been tried yet.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Do you actually design a city, waterfall style? Wouldn't
| you just end up with Canberra, the most boring city ever,
| or Disney World?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Tokyo does well. Ubiquitous public transit does wonders.
| Singapore is supposed to be pretty good as well, but I've
| never left Changi to tell.
| deanCommie wrote:
| If you're speaking about the part on the map that is labeled
| "Grandview highway", it's just a name - it is a regular
| street interrupted with traffic lights, bordering "The
| Grandview Cut" which has both train tracks and metro
| ("Skytrain") tracks: https://goo.gl/maps/B9dTbxg4LhedP9C7A
|
| If you're thinking of the Georgia Viaduct
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Viaduct), it is slated
| for removal and is only about <1km
| rtlfe wrote:
| > Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of
| having an area that people love to love in.
|
| This implies that the current zoning was implemented for good
| reason. That's basically never the case. Most existing zoning
| was done either to increase property values or to keep out
| people that the elites don't want to be around.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Are you perhaps being a tad hyperbolic? Is it fair to say
| that the suburb layout is generally considered ideal to live
| in? Supply issues aside, I would argue that _most_ people
| would move to a suburb rather than a dense city all other
| things equal.
|
| Is there a compromise that you'd be okay with? Maybe sprinkle
| in some high-density apartments around to supplement the
| single-family housing? Maybe wipe away rental properties so
| that you don't have effectively vacant units for portions of
| the year?
| ripley12 wrote:
| Yeah, Vancouver's zoning code has pretty awful origins; I
| wrote about it here a while back: https://www.abundanthousing
| vancouver.com/vancouvers_first_zo...
|
| In a nutshell, it was intentionally designed to keep
| apartment buildings and stores out of most of the city.
| ripley12 wrote:
| > Narrow streets (avoids traffic in side streets)
|
| That's an interesting one to me, because I'm generally bothered
| by how wide Vancouver streets are. IIRC most Vancouver
| residential streets are 33 feet wide, waaaaaaaay wider than in
| many European and Asian cities.
| dangwu wrote:
| It's nice that Vancouver doesn't have a highway cutting it in
| half like Seattle, but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.
|
| From my experience, many of its neighborhoods/dining districts
| feel really cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane
| roads everywhere. Traffic noise still seems like a huge issue,
| trying to parallel park when cars are buzzing by at 50 mph
| isn't fun, and the unprotected left turns are pretty gnarly.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > but it also takes longer to drive anywhere.
|
| Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.
| nfca wrote:
| Driving is just one mode of transportation. Buses can take
| 3 or 4 times as much time to reach any destination, which
| is far too much to be a viable alternative to people with a
| choice.
|
| Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard
| the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car
| klyrs wrote:
| Public transit is significantly slower than driving, unless
| both endpoints are immediately close to a skytrain station.
| rtlfe wrote:
| Idk if you think that statement somehow refutes my point,
| but it certainly doesn't.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I feel like LA and Amsterdam are both evidence that having a
| big highway cutting a city in half is neither necessary nor
| sufficient to make journeys (even car journeys) faster.
| ripley12 wrote:
| > many of its neighborhoods/dining districts feel really
| cold/loud/unwalkable due to the high speed 4 lane roads
| everywhere
|
| Yeah, this is an unfortunate aspect of Vancouver's city
| planning; our zoning forces nearly all shops and restaurants
| onto busy, loud, polluted arterial roads. Changing this isn't
| really on the political landscape right now, and I don't
| think it's going to change anytime soon.
| dleslie wrote:
| It's not immediately apparent from the street names; but the
| Grandview Highway and Georgia St effectively act as parts of
| a bifurcating through-way, albeit with a congestion
| nightmware between them.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Not really comparable to a highway. I mean, yes it's a wide
| street, but you can just walk across Georgia Street as a
| pedestrian. Can't do that with the sort of highways that
| scar the landscape of so many North American cities.
| dleslie wrote:
| You can walk across Lougheed Hwy as a pedestrian; it
| doesn't make it any less of a highway.
| Pxtl wrote:
| > Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of
| having an area that people love to love in.
|
| Well, avoiding changing zoning has created areas that nobody
| can afford to live in, so they don't really have a choice at
| this point. Vancouver's affordability crisis is generally
| considered by economists to be the worst in North America.
| cameron-p-m wrote:
| Is it a supply or a demand problem? They do have a choice,
| zoning is just one tool among many.
| epistasis wrote:
| What sort of demand side solution are you considering?
| Housing is a basic necessity of life. Perhaps by reducing
| demand you mean that instead of one family living in a
| single family home, demand for living space is reduced so
| that two families live in the same space?
| rtlfe wrote:
| > zoning is just one tool among many
|
| Not really. If you don't build more homes, you have to
| limit how many people can live there. The latter is
| currently accomplished by money, but could be shifted to
| lotteries and waitlists if there was strict rent control or
| all housing was public. Both of those are significantly
| worse than just building more.
| epistasis wrote:
| Worse for who, though? The traditional political power
| base of cities is homeowners, particularly those with
| enough wealth and free time to get involved with
| politics.
|
| By owning homes, they don't care about the iniquity
| caused by wait lists, lotteries, or rising prices. In
| fact, they benefit greatly from rising prices. And if
| they can keep people out, they don't have to worry about
| change causing any discomfort to what they currently
| enjoy.
| tantalor wrote:
| What's FSD? It's not in the legend or the "Zoning and land use
| document library"
| kredd wrote:
| First Shaughnessy District, aptly named after the area.
| jjaaammmmy wrote:
| It stands for First Shaughnessy District, it's an area with a
| lot of unique pre-1940 single-family Tudor-style homes
| wheretolive wrote:
| It's First Shaughnessy District. Most historic area of
| Vancouver and has many heritage protections e.g. a. can't
| demolish houses built before 1940, b. every change in the
| exterior have to be approved by a First Shaughnessy Design
| Committee apart the city.
|
| By many metrics, FDS is one of the best places in the world to
| have a house in, due to following reasons:
|
| 1. Big lot size: Average size Half acre (21k+ sqft). No other
| world class city has such sized lots in walking distance to the
| downtown (< 30mins walk, <10min drive).
|
| 2. Incredibly safe.
|
| 3. Right next to the Granville shop area which is even closer
| than the downtown (< 10 mins walk). Major develpment happening
| in nearby Broadway area.
|
| 4. 15mins drive to Vancouver International airport.
|
| 5. Incredibly safe.
|
| 6. 10mins drive to beach
|
| 7. 30-40mins drive to skiing. While Vanvouer itself gets snowed
| in maybe 10 days an year.
|
| 8. Other benefits which apply to Vancouver due to being
| centrally located in Vancouver.
| deanCommie wrote:
| All neighborhoods with 10MM+$ houses are "incredibly safe".
| wheretolive wrote:
| Agreed. Still doesn't take away the other unique features
| away. I am yet to find any more place with such size houses
| which are walkable. Which was the charm for me.
| cameronpm wrote:
| Main problem is its a requirement to live around people who
| like mansions and being hoity-toity.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The big problem with the mansions is that they take up so
| much space that there's no room for anyone to live here.
|
| It's such a great area because of the proximity to the
| city, so we should let more people live here.
|
| Raze the mansions to the ground and build apartments that
| regular people can afford.
| wheretolive wrote:
| Mansions might be positive for some. And doesn't take
| benefits away!
|
| Vancouver downtown is amazing too. Used to live there. But
| living in a high rise with young kids and constant false
| fire alarms where a big pain.
| prideout wrote:
| Very clean presentation. What frontend technologies were used to
| make this?
| brailsafe wrote:
| Shaughnessy has its own fucking zoning ordinance!?
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