this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Cities promise housing – and then make new rules that prevent it (www.theglobeandmail.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] fresh 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

hot take: There should not be any area in the country that only allows detached SFHs. Townhomes, duplexes-triplexes-quadplexes, and 3-4 story walkups should be allowed everywhere in the country. If you start making exceptions, everyone wants an exception. Just open it up everywhere. Make these buildings as fast and easy to build as a detached SFH.

And before anyone complains about parking, we massively overbuild parking everywhere. Even in most of Vancouver, you can often find parking if you are willing to walk one or two blocks away. And before people say we first need more public transportation, I hate that the lack of density supposedly justifies not building public transportation, but the lack of public transportation also justifies not building density.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It saddens me that this is considered a hot take.

[–] fresh 5 points 1 year ago

Me too.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Townhomes, duplexes-triplexes-quadplexes, and 3-4 story walkups should be allowed everywhere in the country

And allow mixed-use buildings by default as well. It would be so convenient to have little shops everywhere so that people don't need to drive in order to pick up daily necessities, such as groceries. That is how cities used to work until recently.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

What we need is 4 to 5 story building, mixed with SFH that are close together. More than 5 story and the city start to lose its appeal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As much as I believe we need more good multi-plexes, the article makes it look like it's evil not to allow promoters to replace single-family houses by massive skyscrapers of 12+ units on a land that is surrounded by single family homes.

We don't want to replace houses by cheap tenement buildings, we need a more elegant densification where each unit has at least land for a small garden.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are areas which should have single family homes, but in my opinion if you have a single family home anywhere near the downtown core of a town or city you should be prepared to have your neighbourhood turn to skyscrapers and tower complexes. It's just the way that cities need to go in order to survive. If you want a single family home you shouldn't be living in the middle or a city, move to the outskirts and the suburbs where there is more space.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Allowing downtown to be surrounded by an ocean of suburban sprawl means that suburbanites get preferential access to nature. In hyper urbanized countries, the kids who live in skyscrapers can bicycle to the mountain wilderness. Suburbia creates an ocean of barrier to that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I believe that we just need to change the definition of the single residential unit so that it only restricts to residential units of a certain size. Allow townhouses and low-rise apartments in the same area. They're about the same height and their appearance doesn't have to deviate much from what's already being done to single units.

A properly made town-house making the most use of a single unit lot can easily house four families. Take a double lot and you can quadruple it by making some concessions on each unit.

People might complain about three or four story buildings suddenly popping up everywhere, but in reality most houses are as tall as three and four story buildings already. They just waste the extra height with a triangular roof. Modern materials make a flat roof work fine even with how much snow we get, and you can multi-purpose the roof as a patio space on top of that. No more yards needed to waste space not being used for anything.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great idea! I don't think anybody has a problem with the fact that a building houses more than one family... The troubles begin when a castle tower pops up next to their pool!

How would you manage car traffic in a neighborhood that is slowly converted to houses 3 or 4 times as many families with as many cars?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't think anybody has a problem with the fact that a building houses more than one family...

It is because of parking. Every additional unit will require parking spaces, those units will have guests who must likely will park on the street and that's what gets the neighbourhood pitchforks out. They will scream how there will simultaneously be too much congestion and no parking spaces but also that people will speed down the street and make the neighbourhood unsafe. Parking and building height (neighbourhood character) are the two bullets nimbys use to kill a lot of housing projects.

BC will be introducing legislation in the fall that permits up to 4 units per parcel on all parcels. I'm interested to see how its handled by zoning and what things will look like in a few years. Hopefully this gets cities to start investing in transit as the higher densities might be able to support it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

With density, which enables adequate public transit, we need much less parking. Get rid of the parking requirement, and a lot of that problem goes away. I'd love to be able to buy a place without a useless-ass patch of concrete attached to it that'll cost me an extra 20k for no damn reason.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the article makes it look like it’s evil not to allow promoters to replace single-family houses by massive skyscrapers of 12+ units on a land that is surrounded by single family homes

That's because it is.

There's a housing crisis on. When my kids grow up they're going to either live in my basement, their cars, or Texas. I don't care about you wanting to carve out the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs to decorate the top.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's challenging... I've seen hostile promoters creating undesirable "condos" just to squeeze out as much profit as they can from a lot, for example by removing all the greenspace and putting parking lots.

How do you propose to manage preservation/improvement of green cities when promoters try to cram as many units as possible in a tiny land?

I want to increase housing density, but not by forcing everyone to live in "Judge Dredd" tenements everywhere...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's worth looking into why they cram so many units in. In my opinion, because there's so little room to build any kind of density, where it is allowed, developers feel the need to maximize their space budget to cater to the segment of the population that really does want the smaller place.

If we had more flexibility, we could have a wider range of places, rather than just giant mansion houses and small tenements. The law doesn't allow for much else.

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