According to Lewis….”The only people that are getting more views near the new Sylvia tower are those with units in the new Sylvia tower facing the sun setting on English Bay.”

Lewis, again you are wrong. If you review the minutes of the Urban Design Panel and Development Permit Board Advisory Panel, meetings when Henriquez proposed an elegant new tower in the West End, after years of 4 storey frame and mid-rise buildings, you will see that he went into many of the surrounding buildings and did a comprehensive analysis on a suite by suite basis of those who would maintain a view of the water with a mid-rise, (as encouraged under the zoning), and those who would maintain views with a tower. The complex mathematical results supported the tower, and helped get it approved. Today it is one of the most creative residential towers in the city.

In my opinion, this was a very significant undertaking in the planning history of the city, since it changed the way we viewed (pardon the pun) towers vs. mid-rises when it came to private views, as well as public views.

This brings me to the current initiative. Yesterday I did interviews with CBC radio and Radio Canada re: the proposed view and tall building policies. When asked whether I supported the staff report, I had to admit I didn’t know. While I am generally in favour of view protection , I do question some of the narrow view corridor ‘slots’ that may remain…I’m not sure if this has been addressed in the proposed revisions.

While I also favour taller buildings in many cases, I wasn’t sure why we were going from a maximum height of 600′ to 700′ when only one of the ‘600’ buildings has been built (albeit at 657 feet). I also questioned the two very tall towers at the north end of the Granville Street Bridge, although as some have noted above, these towers may well be joined by other towers…

So I will again reiterate my call for a briefing for architects, planners, developers, and the general public in advance of the January 20th meeting. I would add that at the same meeting, the DTES and Chinatown Height Review will be also discussed, with all of the other ‘baggage’ this dicussion will engender. (What baggage? Should condos be built in the DTES, etc?)

The discussions on views and tower heights are very important ..I therefore hope we can have a good conversation in the new year about what is really being proposed and why…and if we need to take more time to come to rational conclusions, I don’t think that’s a problem…

To the best of my knowledge, no one is lining up to build a 700′ tower. But if there is someone, then we should know about it.

“The discussions on views and tower heights are very important ..I therefore hope we can have a good conversation in the new year about what is really being proposed and why…and if we need to take more time to come to rational conclusions, I don’t think that’s a problem…”

— Michael Geller 52

History is not on your side, Michael. The example you site on one of the most desirable locations in the downtown peninsula—the Sylvia—is hardly a trend setter. If every tower architect had to go through the machinations that you describe Henriquez performing on behalf of his client, surely that would put an end to towers.

Manhattan is still the best example of how we build hyper urbanism. Twice in 150 years we have seen photography of people leaping to their death from tall buildings in NYC so as to avoid a worse fate. This is truly a case of market economics trial by fire. I am not a supporter. However, I acknowledge that the genie has most definitely left the bottle.

In Manhattan, most of the regulations for managing the towers have come after the fact. Including the regulation for stepping back the bulk, and the regulation for providing a “plaza” in front of the tower. I am not 100% about this, but bonusing the “turd” or civic art piece also came later.

I think that what we can conclude with certainty from a building type barely 100 years old is that we still do not possess the means to anticipate the consequences wrought by its erection. I asked my colleague , director of urban design in Toronto, if the city was performing wind tunnel testing on the tower proposals. His reply was in the form of a befuddled look: half amazement, half incredulity as I read it.

We are mesmerized by these icons, and that is just further proof that we really do not understand them.

Yes, Lewis and I did the Mount Pleasant thing last Monday: albeit car bound due to rain.

Now although views seem to take an inordinate part of this conversation there need be some home truths exposed before the planners allow their reveries to take shape.

True, dbls were at 80-90 levels on Main and Broadway: and at that an absolute level for any neighbourhood. Left unaddressed, street level noise pollution and traffic danger, in this Mount Pleasant plan, is absolutely unacceptable.

The Vancouver condo bubble has burst: 80% of all re-sales are now to off-shore Chinese as an investment rather than as a home: ergo thousands of empty units and pop projections out the window.

Rationalizing height, six story plus, is functionally uncalled for. Yet, planning for heights of six stories belie the caveats, mentioned in the plan, associated with height leaving open the, always, discretionary planning choice to go higher: as experience shows will always be the choice!

But height legerdemain is the least defect.

I do not believe the focus group accepted increased in situ heights, 12+/-. Lower is more the norm.

Of signal importance in quartier design consideration must be given to figure ground, foot-print.

In this MP plan or in this conversation there is very little talk of pedestrian amenity: yes lip service but no implementation. I am aware our centuries old concept of private ownership is an impediment, but public usable space is the key, and so far it is inadequately designed or addressed!

May I remind the planners we are planning for a Future Village on a Hill.

Without a footprint, figure ground, layout of interconnected walk-cycle ways discreetly connected, well used and public places of varying sizes and utilization there is no plan.

The obsession with height and view is a shibboleth: the latter being real estate marketing. Views are always built-out sooner or later and heights may be ameliorated by foot-print use and articulation: i.e. the atrium.

All good planning should be subject to traditional use and common sense.

As an example, common sense is clearly lacking in the downtown proposals for 600-700 heights: how do they arrive at these arbitrary figures any way? Is the city just wishful fishing for land-lift musings?

Back to Mount Pleasant: Lewis brought up Watson Street. Fronting on Main Watson is back-fronted single layers. But east development is in depth with east-west lanes.

Now such a unique anomaly opens an opportunity for the atrium configuration: allowing for height without resorting to the podium or the naked tower. And, breaking old habits, the atrium may straddle the lane.

Old habits must be discarded. The naked tower looms ominously over the pedestrian and the podium exposes the front stoop and living rooms without privacy.

The atrium (very common in other cultures) provides an enclosed courtyard for privacy, gardens, humane scale within the courtyard and the street and moderate towers were views are there. This is how eco-density in Mount Pleasant may be maturely achieved.

As for input.

The plan mentions several public presentations: aggregate 2,100 attendance at one such presentation.

Die-hard attendees are often compliant and too ready to go along.

My decades of public hearings/presentations, in many capacities, tell me an attendance of three hundred in any Vancouver neighbourhood is going some: Mount Pleasant pop is 24,000 so clearly cross-section attendance was insufficient to legitimize this plan!

Yup, so much for good urban design!

Ghost, I can add some hard data to your urban analysis. The political stuff I leave it to others.

Who in their right mind might imagine that if we go about building behemoths one beside the other we are going to get anything but severe view blockage? In a turn of play, the “Wall Centre” inadvertently conveys the right image in its name… Further, that view blockage will increase as we draw nearer to the tower zone until we are completely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of objects far too large to be apprehended with the human eye, except at great distances.

Yes, like across a large body of the water—False Creek is not big enough, the towers on the north still hide the mountains to those walking the seawall on the south.

The rule of thumb for human vision is that we must stand 3x as far as the object is high to see it in its fullness. For a 600 foot tower, that’s 1800-feet away. That’s a 6.8 minute walking distance from a tower before it can fit into the view field of the human eye.

700 feet? Walk for 8 minutes. Heck, you could be within 500 feet of the edge of the next quartier before you can “see” the tower in full.

The second part that I can add to Ghost’s observations is that the urban view is not only had on foot, at street level, but that it is a kinetic experience.

Thus, walking in a straight line—so as not to “exit” the cone—is really not what good urbanism is all about. The kinetic aspects of what we see and don’t see, of what disappears and reappears as we walk about resonates with our innate, wayfinding abilities. In complex environments these human instincts are triggered in enlivening and useful ways.

In Vancouver we have a tower zone, and we should strive to keep it that way: just one zone. We should work hard to make it a good one. Let’s have some workshops, etc.

If I have it right, and the Westenders get their way, that zone begins on the east side of Burrard and terminates on Victory Square half a mile away.

A number of people in this discussion have suggested there are important missing ingredients in the current proposal’s scope. These missing bits make it clear that this proposal is another example of piecemeal planning which is the sibling of the the equally inadequate ‘spot rezoning’.

The complexities and divergence articulated in the comments so far make it clear that even 1 public briefing, even with some discussion, plus the Council meeting on the 20th are insufficient and the decision premature. Let’s not fool ourselves that this is an acceptable process. What’s really going to happen in that scenario?

1) planners have already made their presentation to Council. The report is final;
2) public meeting happens, earliest date – 12 January – no time for anything but damage control changes. Discussion similar to this but, more demonstrative;
3) decision made 20 January – approve the report with, maybe, a tweak (not a tweet) here or there.

If you’d like to see what the implications of some of these height / density increases will be go to:

http://www.CityHallWatch.ca/

Urbie, we are looking at the same problem from different sides. We both would like to see “new” solutions that have a continuity with the “past”. It sets up a kind of paradox, I know, but that’s just more room for good art to work with.

And, I’d like to get you take on the fact that when I’m looking at the gmgw site, and the one kiddie-corner, what is most aberrant in my experience of place is not the architecture but the design of the street.

In urbanism, both of those elements trade on the same currency. No good doing great in one, if the other one sucks.

PS . . .

I arrived in Vancouver May 1951. I had a job on Water Street. We would pop over to Woodward’s food floor for lunch. On the way we would pass the numerous, cheek-by jowl, beer parlours: no windows, women dignified, isolated.

No windows! Yet still the noise and frivolities were hilarious: even at noon! And of course the almost comatose bodies would spill out onto the street and sidewalk.

There was one profound difference between then and now.

The bodies, then, could go back to the bush, the mines the fish boats to well paying jobs secure in the knowledge there was more were that came from.

What can the bodies look forward to now? Condescension, put ’em in a box, pretend they don’t exist, keep ’em out of sight, especially from “thu tourists!

Keep ’em out of sight from us!

Can you imagine our equally comatose architects and planners spilling out onto the street with such joy and abandon even though they can go back to their astronomical salaries, any time, after all the fun?

“We are looking at the same problem from different sides.”

Still holds for me, Roger…. and we are starting to sound like bikers! Let’s be bikers in a bar, at the least.

I ask myself the same question you pose: What difference does holding title make to urbanism?

At a smaller scale, rental and non-rental buildings appear to present quantifiable differences. The marketplace seems to value qualities found in the non-rental building over the rental building.

I focus on the fee-simple house because it delivers two quantifiables that I am interested in: high density, and human scale form (sorry if I’m repeating myself, folks).

Furthermore, the form puts doors and windows on the street in a manner that the condominium building does not. Not even the podium in a tower, since typically these are on double loaded corridors and access to parking is internal via an elevator.

All of these small elements combine to produce quantifiable results in the quality of the resulting urban environment outside—but you have to come at the question from a slightly different angle than a planner, or an architect trained in the old paradigm (which means all of us).

So, there is a building type that can deliver density, human scale, and can elevate the resulting quality of the urban environment in the quartier. However, by a queer twist of fate it is outlawed in our province & city (architects have told me that we can get around it with special designations in the title of the property).

I think just about everybody reading this blog has read those words before, and they get the argument, Roger. Even those who see it differently understand these concepts.

Furthermore, if you realize that at 3.5 stories these buildings are in a ratio of 1 : 2 to the width of the common 20-chain R.O.W. in the CPR townsites, then the building type satisfies one of your concerns: what you call figure-ground.

Figure-ground is an experience of human consciousness in the urban environment, that I have likened to happening on a clearing in the forest, that can only be experienced when the urban environment is structured within a certain range of physical ratios. These we typically denote by simple numbers (1 : 2 : 3).

Another concern you have expressed is captured by the concept that these smaller buildings can be built by either small or large developers; can employ either small or large design firms, contractors, interior designers, cabinet makers, and repair companies. In other words, there is a connection between the choice of building type, and the health of the local economy. We agree there too.

There are many other issues that we can address (I identified 12 for Mount Pleasant above), but we can close on a “new paradigm” concept: zoning by building type, rather than by use.

In Mount Pleasant (and that’s also a reason to discuss it in the same breath as the downtown—at a certain level it is all urbanism, and principles may be clearer in one “zone” than in the “other”) we lauded the plan for identifying the need for a Historic District, although we did not agree that the proposed “The Great Saint George’s Cross” is the true expression of that urban reality.

Given that we would be zoning by district, the Historic District would require a “building type” all its own, and we suggested the Lee Building and the old Post Office—I note that neither are fee-simple, zero lot houses.

The height of the Lee Building streetwall will challenge us if we should apply it as the common element for new buildings fronting streets in Historic District.

Throughout, I have tried to write using urban language, and referencing urban values that we can all verify for ourselves.

I urge others to adopt that style of debate. When we find ourselves back at the food fight mode (i.e. name calling), then it is a sure sign that the tank has run out of gas.

“Lewis, you have to stop making these incorrect pronouncements…you can have street oriented condominium townhouses, which look exactly like fee simple townhouses.”

—Geller

We can build them—maybe—but the facts on the sidewalk show something altogether different. When a project grows to the size of a strata ownership it is as if a switch flips, and all kinds of small decisions pile up to result in lower quality buildings, and higher strata fees.

Let’s look at two examples over and above the need for site assembly.

One: underground parking.

The strata project will have a suspended slab that holds up the units above, and roof over a common parking area below. Fee-simple housing has to find another way, including putting pressure on City Hall to reconsider parking requirements that may be a left over from the suburban phase of intensification.

In my condo, half the stalls are empty. So much so that there are 10 “collectible” cars taking up the empty space. The parts of the suspended garage slab that have sod for the rear yards has leaked pretty much since its inception. The artificiality of the building section is in my view entirely a strata invention. Fee simple units can’t afford suspended concrete slabs.

Two: separation between units.

Whether in Mount Pleasant; on Granville and on Oak in the forties; or on Fairview Slopes along 7th Avenue; I see a disturbing practice underway. Two houses are sited on the same 122.5-foot lot.

That’s not: one house and one “laneway cottage”. It is two houses. What results is what I have described here as an indecent separation between the houses.

Let’s add a third: The scale of the project.

Small scale projects do not just involve simpler technologies (think boiler room vs. furnace), they also involve smaller enterprises that can be handled by either large or small businesses, and financed by either multinational banks or local credit unions. There are direct social implications to fostering a thriving small business sector.

I believe the crux of our difference of view is this:

“…we shouldn’t confuse TENURE with FORM…”

What do you mean by form? If we are talking about “building type”, a form of building that has been evolving slowly over time, then I think that there is room to look at tenure as a determining characteristic of type. In other words, in some cases TENURE will be a determining characteristic of Building Type—or its most important attribute.

Two identical buildings on the exterior (as my 3 points suggest) will be animals of a different type from the point of view of building sustainable quartiers, and promoting social functioning.

I do not think it is a stretch to suggest that social conditions would follow suit. Try to sublet a basement in a condo row house project. What will the council say? Oh… and, and let’s not lose sight of the fact that there is no basement. There is a underground garage.

That’s a material loss of affordable housing directly attributed to tenure. Next post will be about building affordable housing in towers because that’s the only “building type” we can afford to build. Let me get ahead of the NHL playoff season: Nah, nah, nah.

I have taken the trouble to identify these “rows” in our city that date from the 19-teens to the mid 1920’s because I see them as traces of practices elsewhere where the laws around tenure are different. Differences that put product in the market place that does not exist in our region.

“So here’s a Christmas suggestion for you…why not set up your own blog?”

I just don’t have the spare time to feed a blog on a regular basis. However, we are working as I write this to create a place where research on urbanism can have a home, be aired and discussed, and brought in to work with local government and local community organizations.

Notwithstanding, it is of tremendous value to me to hear back from all you folks.

OK. I am throwing down a gauntlet here (great thread, btw!).

Lewis, Roger, gmgw and Michael: why don’t you four envision Vancouver as it could be in say, 10, 25 and 50 years from today. Submit sketches/drawings/charette of the city to your faithful readers here—or host a panel on same.

Duelling t-squares! Though frankly, you are all so intelligent, I would love to lock you all together in a room and see what you can produce
ensemble.

Great idea provde free hotdogs while you’re at it, and you might get more then half a dozen people to attend.

I’d love to see the results though, I just don’t see what they would accomplish except stroke the winners ego. The city certainly wouldn’t implement the ideas.

Joe Just Joe!!

Well, perhaps if the process started in such a way that the city HAD to listen…

Our Fabula Four could be the leaders of a city-wide initiative that invites the neighborhoods to meet with them at workshops (imagine that!—public consultation BEFORE ideas are floated/jammed at the population).

They could talk about all the possible issues for each district of the city, gets feedback and ideas and then distill it all into a working piece that actually shows how we could plan a city by design, not by local government fiat, or whereby developers have an innordinate amount of power in the process.

Why, we could even imagine and show people how their neighborhoods could grow in a planned, orderly fashion that takes into consideration all the many fine points that this thread has touched upon, as well as thinking about and incorporating the unique factors that make up each city district.

At this point in our development, we know and like the “differences” between Main Street, Oakridge, Strathcona, Renfrew, etc. Why not determine the flavour of each district and have it reflected back to its citizens in tangible, well-designed ways? I am not suggesting that the neighbourhoods wouldn’t change in some ways–(some physically)-what I would hope to see that their character/flavour is not totally lost in re-development and growth. I am not talking about cosmetic solutions here, or a mere nod to the past or the present. Indeed, we could consider each district it’s own “urban zone’ with design to that supports business, residential, commercial, entertainment, transportation, etc.

Someone has to get into the bones of this town, before the whole place looks like Anytown, USA.
That we are so short of GREAT urban design here is a major scandal, considering all the natural wonders and elements that make this such a terrific place. Sorry, the mountains and water shouldn’t have to bear all the responsibility in making us habitable. Strip those away, and ughhhhhhhhh.

Someone like Ray Spaxman could also be coaxed to address all the forgotten implications of city building, including policy and procedures, sustainabilty (can someone get us a really GOOD definition, please!) transportation and other services for neighborhoods.

What we could end up are unique neighborhood design plans, that still interconnect with each other. We could give people a fair indication of what to expect as the city grows, instead of the unecessary fear that is currently being generated by such things as the STIR projects and the seemingly endless “plans du jour” that eminate out of City Hall.

Additionally, I would like to see someone taking a crack at defining “affordable” housing (free hold, rental and supported) for each neighborhood, that serves the local population—not just very wealthy global investors. How about considering an investor tax –if kids from oversees have to pay a premium for a spot at schools here, why not the same for real estate investors? That way, we could take that tax money and put it towards affordable housingthat ensures that the middle class, including families, can continue to live and work in Vancouver. Having a good social mix will ensure that we don’t have quite so much traffic from the ‘burbs or have to worry that we are runing out of transit.

@ TFH . . .

“ . . . sustainability (can someone get us a really GOOD definition, please!) transportation and other services for neighborhoods.”

GOOD definition! Well here’s, maybe a workable one . . . Sustainability is essentially limited by entropy i.e.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#The_second_law_of_thermodynamics

As used in urbanist or environmental terms it is a convenience, a way of reigning in wasteful building and planning practices that have probably roots, locally, in the leaky condo scare dating from the late ’80’s and still ongoing.

Unscientifically entropy translates into sustainability: i.e nothing is sustainable. PERIOD!

“. . . we could even imagine and show people how their neighborhoods could grow in a planned, orderly fashion that takes into consideration all the many fine points that this thread has touched upon . . .

Someone like Ray Spaxman could also be coaxed to address all the forgotten implications of city building, including policy and procedures . . .

Yes, let’s get something going. Absolutely! Hooray . . . when do we start!

Unfortunately the term “sustainable” has become a catch-all marketing excuse to justify almost anything.

Ignoring the deleterious impact of traffic noise, danger and physical imposition: rationalizing 600-700 foot heights in an already unsustainable cluster of downtown towers could, uncharitably, be termed criminal negligence except, IMO, it is a desperate attempt to paper over the disastrous effect of money-as-debt Globization (“ . . . taking a crack at defining “affordable” housing . . . “) has had, and is having on the well being (the issue BTW has nothing to do with AGW, GHG’s, CC etc.) of us all.

Obviously that goes way beyond local jurisdiction so we settle for fooling ourselves . . . ergo sustainability is banded around with ineffectual, albeit comforting, consequences.

It’s easy to blame staff, but where does staff get their direction from?
In the case of the Marine Drive proposal, Brent acutually stated publically in the initial stages that he could not recommend the proposal. It was council that wanted to ensure all options were on the table.

“Whose side is the city on?”

I think the Spaxman transcript provides a pretty sober assessment on this. Political campaigns run on good will, and they run on money. Try that balancing act on for size.

Didn’t gmgw, post a while ago, paraphrasing, “pedestrian amenity at street level is the issue not height“. Of course, for heaven’s sake!!

Lewis wisely coined the phrase quartier as a description of a pedestrian scale neighborhood then went off on his psychotic obsession with ridiculously nostalgic cottages.

I have news for you Lewis. Urban design encompasses many different typologies depending on so many variables: as gmgw creatively points out, the spaces between, at street level, is urban design.

As for your obsession with fee simple, where on earth did you latch onto that?

You sure lobbed Nanaimo back a decade or two. We missed out badly on your obsessing over the Krier Bros., Lombardy poplars and Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein, BTW, Lewis, is a pretty little town on the edge of a precipice and has absolutely no relevance, none at all, to Nanaimo. Stat!

No more obsessing please Lewis.

I was a spectator when Ray decided to call it quits. It was sometime in the early ’90’s, Puil surprised every one proposing a motion to defer view corridors, as cones of vision were then called, awaiting further developments of Concord’s plans: like the not at all unusual practice of deferring major decision to the developer: then and now!

Ray looked somewhat bewildered and a few days later handed in his resignation.

Mind, in his time Ray was no purist: isolated brutal, gray stumps became de rigueur in the west End on his watch. He started off Surrey Centre with two innocuous ICBC chunks in Surrey that Dianne is now trying to plaster over.

Let’s get real here. We can all do the Google Earth tourist thing with Lewis for fun but essentially we are dealing with home: we’ve all been rubber necking tourists.

Home now is in needs of our dire attention. Vancouver has autochthonous issues that requires autochthonous creative answers.

Get with it!

@ Deacon . . . interesting. So it was Leon who coined quartier . . . Thanqxz.

May I correct a faux pas in my #82 reference to Liechtenstein when in fact I meant Luxembourg.

I first came across the definition of a village (preferably quartier) in the UK 1947 Town and Country Planning Act to wit . . . Village: pop 5,000 within a quarter mile, 5 min walking, radius of the village centre comprising, ideally, administration, high street stores etc., pub, church, school.

Although I am sure the Romans beat the Brits to it!

Talking of the Kriers, they have had a most chequered career.

Starting with the ill-fated Runcorn, with Jimmy Sterling, it was a concrete, geometric monstrosity, demolished shortly after my visit by popular demand.

The Bros went on to propose a re-design, fortunately abandoned, of their home town Luxembourg: IMO, a very beautiful little town on the edge of a precipice that should, well, be left alone.

Then Leon designed Charlieville. A very, very expensive reflection on just how out of touch the P of W and his cohort are.

The compact centre was designed by that arch purveyor of anachronisms Quinlan Terry.

Outside Terry’s faux indulgences, just after my visit, it was beginning its slide into peripheral sprawl . . .

None of this has anything to do with Mount Pleasant Village-on-a-hill or Norquay Village.

Village! Amazing how planners abuse the English language.

I was in Poundbury (Urbie’s Charlieville) six years ago. I agree, the architecture looks like it was designed by the hobbits. And the new section—not designed by Krier and using different building types—was beginning to show signs of degradation.

Still and all, it was a fine place. Not the least because is shows clearly that there is a difference between “architectural style” and “urban design”.

Poundbury can be read at the level of the street and the square. Urban problems are well handled. The streets are human scale, and the parking is neatly tucked away. The houses are small lot (as in that other infamous project with Leon Krier hands—Seaside Florida) yet very private. Doors open on the street, and the streetwall at times can be seen to take a bend in order to bend the public right of way. The length of streets rarely exceed the distance of human vision, and most streets are terminated with a street end vista.

It is a tour de force of urbanism, albeit at a small scale and density. I have not calculated the density, but I would be surprised if it was more yield than our duplex housing.

Not that there is not an iota in Roger’s comments that is negative about the urbanism. He quarrels with the figure at the head of it, and with the architect that executed some of the buildings. But, on the urbanism…

Of course, that is the bit that has continuity, both across geographic distances, cultural divides, and vast oceans of time. That urbanism, in my view can teach us something.

I learned from it.

I just heard from someone, from a well known company who is involved in the lease and sale of commercial and residential hi-rise properties, that many offshore interests are looking to buy 5 or more buildings–at a time.

This is really what is driving development in this town. It’s not about rental or sales to locals, at all. It’s about providing a commmodity to outside interests, which in turn, keeps driving up the cost of land and res all around. I have talked to many real estate lawyers who agree with me. One developer laughingly told me, “We are all whores. We don’t care who we support politically, as long as we can do our thing”.

Like I’ve said before—if you are not a landed immigrant and are looking for a place to park/invest your money, we should be charging you a premium that we can in turn use to fund civic services and rent-controlled buildings.

The motto of all our local developers: If ya got ’em, sell ’em! All our pols should be whipped for not squeezing every plugged nickel and CAC that they can get on behalf of the taxpaying citizens of Vancouver!

They are selling our city out from under us.

I think that Mr. Pattison will get what he wants, and I don’t think he wants views to be protected.