By Rod Stevens – thanks to Ed M.
When most people see downtown Vancouver, BC, they think it is a big city because of the number of high-rise buildings. Actually, its metro population is less than Portland’s, and most of those buildings are condo towers. In contrast, most of Seattle’ high-rises are offices.
You could argue that Vancouver and Seattle have different approaches to planning, but what’s really at work is the different business interests in each city, and how those drive public investment. Seattle could have beautiful walkable waterfront neighborhoods on the north and south doorsteps to downtown, but century-old industrial interests are keeping underused land from conversion to residential. It will probably take job loss to the suburbs to open those possibilities.
Vancouver, Where Homebuilding is a Major Industry
Leave it to the Canadians, who rely on exports to Pacific Rim countries to drive much of their economy, to make homebuilding on their own shores a major industry with high-wage jobs in high-rise construction. That began happening in the mid 1980s when Hong Kong residents fearful of the 1997 turnover began flocking here. That turnover is now 28 years behind us, but today the mainland Chinese come as well, drawn by the possibility of getting their kids into good schools.
Vancouver had high-rise development before the 1980s near Stanley Park, but it was the reuse of the Canadian Pacific rail yards as the Expo 86 site and then as a new waterfront neighborhood that took that high-rise residential development to scale. And it was a Hong Kong developer, Li Kai-shing, one of the biggest businessmen in that city, who bought the Expo 86 site and brought master-planning and large-scale development to Vancouver. Yes, some of the seawall walks were left over from Expo 86, but as part of the approvals process, Li Kai-Shing also added large waterfront parks, a marina, and a new community center in an old round house, all publicly accessible. Those amenities made downtown a more interesting place to live, and they also sold condos.
With that template established, Marathon, the development subsidiary of the other railroad in town, Canadian National, began turning its railyards on the north waterfront at Coal Harbor into a second walkable waterfront community, also with a marina, seawall walks, parks, and a second community center. In preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the city acquired old warehouses and factories on the southeast shores of False Creek (about a mile east of Granville Island) and turned this into the Olympic Village, which was turned into permanent housing after the games were over. Just south of downtown in the Kitsilano neighborhood, two First Nations groups have approval to build a total of 19,000 housing units on two sites each near the water.
All in all, there are now about 80,000 housing units in and around downtown Vancouver, compared to about 45,000 units in areas of Seattle south of Mercer, west of I-5. and north of the football stadium. Seattle would have about three times as many units as it does now if it had the same ratio of downtown to metro housing as Vancouver.