It is often said Vancouver’s insanely high real estate prices are due to a lack of land. That’s not exactly right. Yes, mountains, water and an international border bound the region. But there is in fact a lot of land in the City of Vancouver and the surrounding suburbs. The problem is that zoning rules reserve so much of that land for low-rise, single-family homes.
Vancouver, like Toronto and other cities with fast-growing populations, remains burdened by the weight of outdated laws governing what can be built where – including severe restrictions on height and density in most neighbourhoods and rules that force developers to build as if every future resident is going to own a car and need a place to park it.
But what would a modern city look like if those zoning rules didn’t exist?
The Globe and Mail reported this week on the latest thinking from the Squamish Nation on its development plans for a T-shaped sliver of reserve land near downtown Vancouver, around and under the Burrard Bridge. The area was once home to an Indigenous village, Senakw. In the early 1900s, the Squamish were pushed out, but in the early 2000s, they won back five hectares of their original reserve.
Development on reserve land is not constrained by the volumes of planning rules that guide the rest of Vancouver. Freedom offers interesting opportunities.
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