Last night when I was thumbing through Twitter before bed, I came across this blog post describing Vancouver’s land use types. The blog itself is called Mountain Doodles, but it’s not exactly clear who the author is. 

In any event, what she/he did was analyze Vancouver’s land use dataset to come up with a series of charts that break down the percentage of each type: residential single detached, residential low-rise apartment, commercial, green space, and so on.

Here’s what the chart looks like for Metro Vancouver:

And here’s what it looks like for just the City of Vancouver, proper:

When you look at the metro area, green / open space dominates. Although, the author states that, given the dataset, there could be a small overstatement of green space. There’s also the question of where the overall boundary was drawn.

When you look at only the City of Vancouver, it’s land for residential housing (detached and duplex) and roads that dominate, with green / open space coming in a somewhat distant third.

Of course, this does not speak to the intensity in which any of the above land might be used, such as the apartment lands (i.e., the third dimension). But from a two-dimensional perspective, you certainly get a sense of what we – for better or for worse – have chosen to privilege.