The City of Vancouver recently published this video talking about missing middle housing. For those of you who are following this trend (and reading this blog), there won't be a lot that is new in the video (although Uytae Lee is great). But I'm sharing it here, anyway, for three reasons. One, it's an example of Toronto being ahead of Vancouver, which wasn't the case with laneway housing. Vancouver started allowing these first. Two, it is further evidence that this shift toward intensifying low-rise residential neighbourhoods is really happening -- and gaining momentum -- all across North America. And three, the City of Vancouver is about to bring forward new multiplex housing policies. So now is a good time to get involved and say things.

A rezoning submission was recently filed with the City of Vancouver for two towers on Alberni Street in the West End. Designed by Heatherwick Studio for Bosa Properties and Kingswood Properties, this will be the design firm's first high-rise project in the country when built.

There are some incredible pieces of architecture in the pipeline in Vancouver and I would now add this one to the list. Below are a few renderings and massing studies taken from Vancouver's Shape Your City website.

It's also worth noting that Vancouver's Shape Your City website allows people to very easily comment on rezoning applications. And as part of that, you are asked to state your overall position on the proposal: Support, Opposed, or Mixed.

This strikes me as a step in the right direction, as I think it's important to reduce the friction associated with participating. Asking people to show up to a community meeting (whether IRL or online) is a level of commitment that is simply too great for most people.

But I don't think it solves the problem that opposition is usually a more powerful motivator than support. And so I'm not yet convinced that we have systems in place which accurately and broadly capture the way that cities and communities are feeling about certain proposed changes.

In an effort to curb the much talked-about and much debated empty home situation in Vancouver (supposedly the number is ~20k vacant homes), the city, as many of you know, implemented an Empty Homes Tax.

To enforce this, the City of Vancouver now requires that every year, every owner of residential property must file a status declaration. If you don’t file this by the deadline, the property is automatically deemed vacant and the tax (1% of assessed taxable value) and a penalty ($250) are applied.

Last month, 11 days before the 2017 deadline, the city published the below heat map showing the concentration of Vancouver property owners who hadn’t yet made their declaration. There were just under 4,000 undeclared properties.

But as Jens von Bergmann points out on his blog, Mountain Doodles (great data-driven blog), this was really just a map of where people live. Because if you also create a map of residential properties subject to the tax, which he did, it looks pretty similar to above.

The City of Vancouver recently published this video talking about missing middle housing. For those of you who are following this trend (and reading this blog), there won't be a lot that is new in the video (although Uytae Lee is great). But I'm sharing it here, anyway, for three reasons. One, it's an example of Toronto being ahead of Vancouver, which wasn't the case with laneway housing. Vancouver started allowing these first. Two, it is further evidence that this shift toward intensifying low-rise residential neighbourhoods is really happening -- and gaining momentum -- all across North America. And three, the City of Vancouver is about to bring forward new multiplex housing policies. So now is a good time to get involved and say things.

A rezoning submission was recently filed with the City of Vancouver for two towers on Alberni Street in the West End. Designed by Heatherwick Studio for Bosa Properties and Kingswood Properties, this will be the design firm's first high-rise project in the country when built.

There are some incredible pieces of architecture in the pipeline in Vancouver and I would now add this one to the list. Below are a few renderings and massing studies taken from Vancouver's Shape Your City website.

It's also worth noting that Vancouver's Shape Your City website allows people to very easily comment on rezoning applications. And as part of that, you are asked to state your overall position on the proposal: Support, Opposed, or Mixed.

This strikes me as a step in the right direction, as I think it's important to reduce the friction associated with participating. Asking people to show up to a community meeting (whether IRL or online) is a level of commitment that is simply too great for most people.

But I don't think it solves the problem that opposition is usually a more powerful motivator than support. And so I'm not yet convinced that we have systems in place which accurately and broadly capture the way that cities and communities are feeling about certain proposed changes.

In an effort to curb the much talked-about and much debated empty home situation in Vancouver (supposedly the number is ~20k vacant homes), the city, as many of you know, implemented an Empty Homes Tax.

To enforce this, the City of Vancouver now requires that every year, every owner of residential property must file a status declaration. If you don’t file this by the deadline, the property is automatically deemed vacant and the tax (1% of assessed taxable value) and a penalty ($250) are applied.

Last month, 11 days before the 2017 deadline, the city published the below heat map showing the concentration of Vancouver property owners who hadn’t yet made their declaration. There were just under 4,000 undeclared properties.

But as Jens von Bergmann points out on his blog, Mountain Doodles (great data-driven blog), this was really just a map of where people live. Because if you also create a map of residential properties subject to the tax, which he did, it looks pretty similar to above.