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Old 06-21-2017, 12:24 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
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I saw this article this morning. It begins by noting that even in attractive and fast-growing U.S. cities (some of which have decent public schools) the number of households with children is falling fast. Vancouver bucks this trend with 5,600-7,000 children downtown (over 10% of the population). For comparison, the 17 and under population is 12.8% for Portland, 10.2% for Seattle and 7.9% for San Francisco. This measures the entire city, not just the downtown area, where presumably the percentage of children is much smaller.

They interview the former chief planner of Vancouver, and he identifies three things which cities must do to retain families:

1. Ensure family-sized housing options exist. Developers want to pack as many units into new buildings as possible, since micros/studios and one bedrooms are the most profitable units. Vancouver has mandated 25% of units are two bedroom, and more recently 10% are three bedroom, in all new developments.

2. Provide amenities for families. This not only means local public schools, but also means access to day care options within the neighborhood.

3. Public spaces should be built with everyone in mind, from parents with children in strollers to teenagers.

I have my issues with the piece. It's a bit of fluff of course, and it doesn't mention at all ridiculous housing prices within Vancouver. But the first point in particular was interesting to me, because it's not something that is typically dealt with by zoning within the U.S.

Last edited by eschaton; 06-21-2017 at 12:55 PM..
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Old 06-21-2017, 12:49 PM
 
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That first point is really interesting, and something I've thought about before as well. Aside from NYC (where there are plenty of family-sized apartments and condos), American cities tend to be much worse at this than other countries. Despite an overall shift towards urbanity in planning, the "American Dream" of a house with a yard and more space is still going strong, even in relatively dense, urban cities. That said - I still think demand could be there, but as you mentioned developers are thinking strictly about profit and the smaller the units, the greater the profit. It would likely take government intervention like what you mention in Vancouver - I just don't see that happening since demand (while potentially there) is not that high for it. It's a shame in my opinion.
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Old 06-21-2017, 01:31 PM
46H
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward234 View Post
That first point is really interesting, and something I've thought about before as well. Aside from NYC (where there are plenty of family-sized apartments and condos), American cities tend to be much worse at this than other countries. Despite an overall shift towards urbanity in planning, the "American Dream" of a house with a yard and more space is still going strong, even in relatively dense, urban cities. That said - I still think demand could be there, but as you mentioned developers are thinking strictly about profit and the smaller the units, the greater the profit. It would likely take government intervention like what you mention in Vancouver - I just don't see that happening since demand (while potentially there) is not that high for it. It's a shame in my opinion.
There are plenty of family sized apartments in NYC, its just that regular folks cannot afford them. The larger, multi bedroom apartments that are affordable are locked up in rent stabilization and are sometimes passed down to the next generation. If they ever become vacated, landlords refurbish the apartments to get them out of rent stabilization.

Government intervention might work in Canada's best weather city, but it would only cause problems in the USA.

Sometimes people forget that not everybody wants or needs to live surrounded on all sides by other families.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:34 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
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Boston has plenty of family-sized apartments, if anything an oversupply relative to studios / 1 bedrooms. This results a big savings for young people to live with roommates over by themselves. Due to more demand by young singles than families, in many inner areas young people with roommates live in family sized apartments [usually a floor of a triple-decker or similar size building].
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Old 06-21-2017, 04:38 PM
 
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There are several factors that we have not touched on that is primarily responsible for this urbanization in Vancouver, not city laws.

1) crime rate--Vancouver is a very safe city by US standards. The government can legislate all they want, but this would never work in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Memphis, etc.

2) the very high land costs in the Vancouver area, pushing up the cost of suburban style housing. A very small suburban house would be at least one million.

3) the number of immigrants in the Vancouver area--Here is a quote from the article below: "Vancouver was home to 913,300 immigrants, 13.5% of the total immigrant population. They accounted for 40.0% of Vancouver's total population, about the same proportion as in 2006 (39.6%)."

Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity in Canada

A high percentage of these immigrants are from China, Russia, and Europe, where apartment living is normal for all classes, the poor, the middle class, and the rich.
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Old 06-21-2017, 05:56 PM
 
Location: Vancouver
18,504 posts, read 15,463,928 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I saw this article this morning. It begins by noting that even in attractive and fast-growing U.S. cities (some of which have decent public schools) the number of households with children is falling fast. Vancouver bucks this trend with 5,600-7,000 children downtown (over 10% of the population). For comparison, the 17 and under population is 12.8% for Portland, 10.2% for Seattle and 7.9% for San Francisco. This measures the entire city, not just the downtown area, where presumably the percentage of children is much smaller.

They interview the former chief planner of Vancouver, and he identifies three things which cities must do to retain families:

1. Ensure family-sized housing options exist. Developers want to pack as many units into new buildings as possible, since micros/studios and one bedrooms are the most profitable units. Vancouver has mandated 25% of units are two bedroom, and more recently 10% are three bedroom, in all new developments.

2. Provide amenities for families. This not only means local public schools, but also means access to day care options within the neighborhood.

3. Public spaces should be built with everyone in mind, from parents with children in strollers to teenagers.

I have my issues with the piece. It's a bit of fluff of course, and it doesn't mention at all ridiculous housing prices within Vancouver. But the first point in particular was interesting to me, because it's not something that is typically dealt with by zoning within the U.S.
Just wondering how you calculate that children are 10 percent of the downtown population? That would make the population of downtown at most 70,000, which is low. Many articles I've read about " downtown " Vancouver quote 2011 census records, also they leave out the downtown neighbourhood of the West End which easily has 65,000 living there.

It's seems tricky to find the actual stats, but any Vancouverite will tell you that downtown's population should include the neighbourhoods of the West End, Coal Harbour, Downtown Business district, Gastown, Yaletown and Downtown South, and Crosstown.

However I agree with the article. Vancouver is doing a great job of making downtown living wonderful.
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Old 06-21-2017, 06:15 PM
 
Location: Vancouver
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Quote:
Originally Posted by james777 View Post
There are several factors that we have not touched on that is primarily responsible for this urbanization in Vancouver, not city laws.

1) crime rate--Vancouver is a very safe city by US standards. The government can legislate all they want, but this would never work in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Memphis, etc.

2) the very high land costs in the Vancouver area, pushing up the cost of suburban style housing. A very small suburban house would be at least one million.

3) the number of immigrants in the Vancouver area--Here is a quote from the article below: "Vancouver was home to 913,300 immigrants, 13.5% of the total immigrant population. They accounted for 40.0% of Vancouver's total population, about the same proportion as in 2006 (39.6%)."

Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity in Canada

A high percentage of these immigrants are from China, Russia, and Europe, where apartment living is normal for all classes, the poor, the middle class, and the rich.
Why wouldn't Vancouver's style of city planning work in those US cities? Seattle is trying. Is it push back from business or citizens?

The cost of land is high, and if you were to have a small suburban house downtown ( there are a few, some as B&B's, some as private residences ) they will be well over 2 million. A very small house with a postage sized backyard sold for 2 million not too far from me. Others in the leafy Wend End could be sitting on parcels of land worthy much, much more than that.
However, Vancouver started building high-rise apartments in the West End in the mid-1960's. Many currently standing were built in the 1970's when land was much cheaper. These were rentals, in the days before the idea of owning an apartment took hold here. Many locals growing up moved out into apartments, as did many empty nesters. Ownership of apartments did happen in the 1970's on the south side of False Creek where redevelopment of industrial land was happening. So perhaps the idea of living and owning an apartment was not too foreign an idea for us. Kind of like New Yorkers.

Immigrants, for the most part, I agree are used to living in apartments and there is no adjustment for them and even before the high cost of land and housing, the high density West End was always a place that attracted new people.
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Old 06-21-2017, 07:09 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
46,009 posts, read 53,324,806 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by james777 View Post
There are several factors that we have not touched on that is primarily responsible for this urbanization in Vancouver, not city laws.

1) crime rate--Vancouver is a very safe city by US standards. The government can legislate all they want, but this would never work in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Memphis, etc.
Vancouver is similar to Seattle and Portland crime-wise

Quote:
2) the very high land costs in the Vancouver area, pushing up the cost of suburban style housing. A very small suburban house would be at least one million.
Seattle, the Bay Area and some others have very high land values as well and perhaps higher median rents suggesting demand for big apartment building.
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Old 06-22-2017, 11:42 AM
 
Location: Seattle
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I don't know that I'd hold Vancouver up as a workable model for very much in the way of housing.

Vancouver Sees Major Housing Correction As Sales Plummet, Prices Slide

Metro Vancouver housing crisis is destroying region’s heart and soul | Vancouver Sun

Vancouver's imposition on a transfer tax aimed at discouraging foreign ownership (meaning, mainly, Chinese) has resulted in sales and values plummeting; if anything Vancouver's response to homelessness is even more backward than major US cities'.

And local planning law in BC conveys considerably more power to local governments than, say, Washington State law conveys to developers in Washington cities. In Seattle, for example, you can't "mandate" a percentage of units to be income- or size restricted, you can only incentivize the kinds of units you want. In other words, you can't say, "You must build 25% of your units as 2-bedroom or larger;" instead all you can say is, "We'll give you a density bonus if you build 25% of your units to meet X or Y standards," (unit sizes, incomes served.) It's way too easy for build-it-and-sell-it developers to say, "Thanks but no thanks."
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Old 06-22-2017, 12:28 PM
 
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,346 posts, read 80,679,251 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gardyloo View Post
I don't know that I'd hold Vancouver up as a workable model for very much in the way of housing.

Vancouver Sees Major Housing Correction As Sales Plummet, Prices Slide

Metro Vancouver housing crisis is destroying region’s heart and soul | Vancouver Sun

Vancouver's imposition on a transfer tax aimed at discouraging foreign ownership (meaning, mainly, Chinese) has resulted in sales and values plummeting; if anything Vancouver's response to homelessness is even more backward than major US cities'.

And local planning law in BC conveys considerably more power to local governments than, say, Washington State law conveys to developers in Washington cities. In Seattle, for example, you can't "mandate" a percentage of units to be income- or size restricted, you can only incentivize the kinds of units you want. In other words, you can't say, "You must build 25% of your units as 2-bedroom or larger;" instead all you can say is, "We'll give you a density bonus if you build 25% of your units to meet X or Y standards," (unit sizes, incomes served.) It's way too easy for build-it-and-sell-it developers to say, "Thanks but no thanks."
Seattle has other problems, such as assuming that the tenants in the new apartments and condos will all take public transportation (wrong!) so they require little or no parking, so existing tenants and homeowners have the additional strain on street parking. The typical new high rise has rent ranging from as little as $1,600 to over $6,000 depending on size, but also views,since higher floors may have water and mountain views while lower ones only have views of the buildings around it. The lack of children in Seattle is more related to the ages and careers of the workers that can afford to live there, and the quality of schools, which have had many management issues over the years to overcome. In Sammamish where the schools are highly rated, over 32% of residents are under age 18 as compared to 10% in Seattle.
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