Suburban Density Retrofit, Vancouver-Style

At the September 2017 Land Economics weekend in Vancouver put on by Lambda Alpha International (LAI), Jim Chappell, a former San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association Executive Director and a development consultant, was impressed enough by to write about it. Like other metropolitan areas that acquired their urban form in the post WWII auto-oriented, the Vancouver metropolitan area had become a sprawling auto-dependent suburbia. However, "Metro Vancouver"—"a federation of 23 jurisdictions"—is well ahead of most other sprawling metropolitan areas in converting into a form that addresses the needs for more equitable and sustainable transit and housing. 

The Regional Growth Strategy was updated and adopted by Metro and all 23 jurisdictions in 2012 and extends to 2040. It is a plan for a network of 26 urban nodes ranging in size and character and connected by SkyTrain and other rail connections. There are a planned nine “regional city centers” and 17 smaller regional-scaled activity hubs.

 Metro area cities and neighborhoods like Burnaby, Surrey, Brentwood, and Lougheed, are experiencing impressive densification along these SkyTrain transit nodes, with residential buildings up to 600 feet in height. Chappell goes into more detail in the source article.