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Apparently the end of the housing boom will be costly. http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2612405/ quote:
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Apr 16, 2014 19:45
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Cultural Imperial posted:Against my advice, a good friend of mine is constantly shopping for a place to buy in Whistler. He's been looking for over 2 years and his comment to me recently was that the housing stock is completely poo poo at the 300-400k price level. It depends on what he's looking for I guess. If he's after a 1-2 bedroom place there's a small amount of decent places at that price point, but if you want 3 bedrooms plus you're definitely looking in the 500+ range, more like 550+. And if you want freehold I hope you have at least 800k, and even that will only get you something in Emerald, which is the worst neighborhood (and also if there's ever a giant forest fire your place will burn down). I personally think The Gables is the best complex in the whole area, location-wise, but a 3 bed/2 bath is still trying to be sold there for a million (though I'm about 95% sure I saw a 2/2 selling for 500k a few months back). I'm happy renting here for now, but honestly I'd probably buy if I had the money for my dream place because I don't know what's going to happen, renting with pets in Whistler sucks balls SO HARD and I don't actually consider buying personal property an investment so I wouldn't really care about MAH CAPITAL GAINS. But I'm also totally accepting of the fact that property values might still drop like another 50% or something because it's a resort town and boom/bust is what they do.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:54
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This was a fantastic read, and if you were to roll it into a thread branching out from this topic, I'm sure there would be general interest.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:18
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ocrumsprug posted:^^^: Thanks for that. Education seems to be an under appreciated part of the migration to Vancouver. Everyone leaves their boondock town, gets an education and cannot really return home as there is no call for whatever they got educated in there. Even the larger towns suffer from it. I meant in terms of inflation actually. Inflation benefits debtors and hurts creditors. The Bank of Canada could, not-plausibly-but-not-impossibly, be forced to cause it.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:22
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Lexicon posted:This was a fantastic read, and if you were to roll it into a thread branching out from this topic, I'm sure there would be general interest. Well thanks, I'm glad it was at least coherent given the phone typing. I've been putting notes together for a while with the intention of doing a blog post on the subject, but some of this is proving hard to provide firm evidence for and I don't want it to come off half-cocked and be dismissed off-hand as bullshit. I get this super weird gut feeling that BC is rapidly losing its "cultural identity", in part through this process of breaking down into urbanization, whenever I have the opportunity to go on a trip outside the lower mainland. That's really what got me thinking about this in the first place. Hopefully I'll have something more substantial composed by the end of the summer, with actual references rather than anecdotes. I'd really like to do street interviews with locals or at least photographs of how bad things are in places, if I can. 
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Apr 16, 2014 20:46
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Rime posted:I get this super weird gut feeling that BC is rapidly losing its "cultural identity" I don't mean to sound like an rear end in a top hat, but I'm actually skeptical it ever had one. The whole reverse-migration to cities is quite fascinating. It's happening all over - all at a time, oddly, where remote/distant [office] work is more possible than it's ever been.
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Apr 16, 2014 21:06
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Lexicon posted:I don't mean to sound like an rear end in a top hat, but I'm actually skeptical it ever had one. Oooh boy, once you get out of the Lower Mainland and the areas that are easily accessed from either Calgary or Vancouver by car within 3-4 hours, you better believe it has a distinct culture and I haven't seen it losing it either. I grew up in the Slocan Valley in the West Kootenays, and I still go back pretty frequently. The culture is strange as gently caress in a lot of cases, but it's very much alive and well. Put it this way: if you want to know why the Green Party's platform includes bits of utter, complete batshit insanity, it has its roots in places like that. EDIT: It helps that there are still some "farming operations" that are best done far from urban areas. PT6A fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 21:08
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I wonder if when weed is legalised terroir will become a thing for weed, and particularly good or ~culturally significant~ weed land will be a valuable commodity.
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Apr 16, 2014 21:15
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Bubbles need a crisis to pop and thankfully Canada is a bit more insulated to crises due to our social welfare systems. The obvious elephant is increasing interest rates but BoC can hold that down. So we may see slowing growth and eventual stagnation in the best case. Worst case 1 is that the bubble is further inflated. Worst case 2 is that an unseen crisis causes rates to rise, unemployment to rise, resource demand to decrease, etc. Anything that puts financial strain on all those people barely making payments which will result in people flooding the market with properties or defaulting. The absolute worst case is speculators getting spooked. If enough people get scared and try to sell their condo "investments" it will start a run on the "condo bank" with the most solvent holding on to their worthless condos long term and the least solvent forced out of their positions. This is why all the banks, media and agents are overly optimistic. They know once sentiment turns it will be a cluster-gently caress given the number of condos that are sitting empty as "investment" properties. Smart money is probably already making its way out or already gone leaving average Joe holding the bag. The time to get out was when the international stories about the housing bubble started getting exposure which coincided with the banks adjusting their tone slightly. They are buying time to remove themselves from the market but keeping the spin alive so that someone is willing to buy their bag of magic beans. Same thing that the big investment brokers on wall street do - tell their investors one thing and release reports to the public saying another. Pump and dump. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 21:41
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Lexicon posted:I don't mean to sound like an rear end in a top hat, but I'm actually skeptical it ever had one. Hardly any companies allow telecommuting in any meaningful way. Probably because it requires managers who are actually capable. In my experience the companies most likely or capable of encouraging telecommuting are the least likely to allow it as well. Edit: my husband just told me he read in Metro yesterday that ReMax released a statement saying that half as many condos are being built in Toronto when compared to this time last year. This means there's a housing shortage, of course! 
peter banana fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 23:21
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Cultural Imperial posted:Apparently the end of the housing boom will be costly. Not to mention housing similar to energy sector is another classic case of the dutch disease since it causes a misallocation of resources such a credit and capital.
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Apr 16, 2014 23:30
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peter banana posted:Hardly any companies allow telecommuting in any meaningful way. Probably because it requires managers who are actually capable. In my experience the companies most likely or capable of encouraging telecommuting are the least likely to allow it as well. It will vary by company/industry, but in my corner of the working world the trend towards telecommuting is going like gangbusters. Also, I know some people who work for Telus, and a bunch of them have more or less been forced to telecommute as a means of saving on office space. This is all anecdote, but it does seem to be happening. And the tech has never been better, of course. peter banana posted:Edit: my husband just told me he read in Metro yesterday that ReMax released a statement saying that half as many condos are being built in Toronto when compared to this time last year. This means there's a housing shortage, of course! Cohort analysis and stock & flow concepts clearly well outside the capabilities of the noble Metro publication.
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Apr 16, 2014 23:37
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There's a lot of stuff on Twitter about Toronto condos but, well, gently caress Toronto. I'm out of care.
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Apr 17, 2014 06:32
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Lexicon posted:I meant in terms of inflation actually. Inflation benefits debtors and hurts creditors.
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Apr 17, 2014 06:53
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:Only if the debtors wages/source of income tracks inflation, otherwise they just get poorer and lose the house anyways. True, but that's more or less a given in a higher-inflation scenario. It would be demanded.
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Apr 17, 2014 12:25
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Lexicon posted:
Work is more possible but you still have to buy all of your stuff from outside of your local suburb and gas costs money.
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Apr 17, 2014 14:24
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computer parts posted:Work is more possible but you still have to buy all of your stuff from outside of your local suburb and gas costs money. The point I'm making is this: given available technology, and increasing acceptance of remote work - you might expect the importance of cities, especially large ones, to be diminished relative to the past, at least marginally. Precisely the opposite has occurred though.
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Apr 17, 2014 14:29
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Lexicon posted:True, but that's more or less a given in a higher-inflation scenario. It would be demanded. We've already seen decades of wages not keeping up with inflation though. Without an organized labor force, inflation has been a hidden mechanism for raising prices and reduce wages as long as I've been alive.
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Apr 17, 2014 14:31
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Lexicon posted:The point I'm making is this: given available technology, and increasing acceptance of remote work - you might expect the importance of cities, especially large ones, to be diminished relative to the past, at least marginally. Precisely the opposite has occurred though. Yeah, and the point I'm making is that outside economic factors (cost of transportation) are counteracting that potential trend.
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Apr 17, 2014 14:32
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EvilJoven posted:We've already seen decades of wages not keeping up with inflation though. Without an organized labor force, inflation has been a hidden mechanism for raising prices and reduce wages as long as I've been alive. To be honest, I don't really agree with this. There are a few sectors (important ones, admittedly) where the cost/price level has been racing ahead of inflation out of all possible proportion: housing, education, healthcare (though this is hidden to a degree). However, food, vehicles, consumer goods, clothing, etc have never been cheaper in percentage-of-earnings terms. The oft-cited point is that "real wages are stagnant". Stagnant, not dropping. Your claim is tantamount to saying that "real wages are dropping" - that's not true. They just aren't rising, and this is exacerbated by the stupid cost-inflation in those mentioned-areas.
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Apr 17, 2014 15:05
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Lexicon posted:The point I'm making is this: given available technology, and increasing acceptance of remote work - you might expect the importance of cities, especially large ones, to be diminished relative to the past, at least marginally. Precisely the opposite has occurred though. Cities are more than just hubs for jobs. The cultural value of cities is significant, especially when compared to suburban sprawl which has virtually no culture at all. Music, Art, food choices, access to people from different parts of the world, travel options, public transit, sports, organizations/clubs for virtually every interest under the sun, etc are all much better in cities and factor significantly on why people live where they live. I am certain I could work from home permanently and move to the suburbs to lower my cost of living, but that would loving suck, because I love Toronto and everything it has to offer and no 3500sq ft house with cookie cutter yard and 2 car garage would ever convince me otherwise.
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Apr 17, 2014 15:58
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Aren't dense cities a lot more environmentally friendly than burbs anyway?
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Apr 17, 2014 16:04
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shrike82 posted:Aren't dense cities a lot more environmentally friendly than burbs anyway? Yes, amazingly so. A bunch of yuppies living in new york or downtown vancouver are greener than idiots doing "earth ships" out in the woods even once you add up all their per capita energy, resource, and land use.
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Apr 17, 2014 16:06
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Saltin posted:Cities are more than just hubs for jobs. The cultural value of cities is significant, especially when compared to suburban sprawl which has virtually no culture at all. Music, Art, food choices, access to people from different parts of the world, travel options, public transit, sports, organizations/clubs for virtually every interest under the sun, etc are all much better in cities and factor significantly on why people live where they live. I am certain I could work from home permanently and move to the suburbs to lower my cost of living, but that would loving suck, because I love Toronto and everything it has to offer and no 3500sq ft house with cookie cutter yard and 2 car garage would ever convince me otherwise. I totally agree - no persuasion needed on that front. It's the seeming recency of people waking up to this fact that fascinates me. There's a book on my reading-list called "The Great Inversion" that covers this phenomenon, so perhaps I should just read that rather than musing about it here.
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Apr 17, 2014 16:10
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Lexicon posted:I meant in terms of inflation actually. Inflation benefits debtors and hurts creditors. The Bank of Canada could, not-plausibly-but-not-impossibly, be forced to cause it. Inflating out of this disaster is pretty much the central theme to every soft landing scenario. There are two problems I see with it. 1) Real wages are just tracking inflation, and wages increasing to what they need to be for that million dollar home to fall into historical norms would seem to be a worse outcome that the crash. (I and everyone else would love to get paid 5 times more money over the next 5-10 years, but not sure it would be possible.) *** 2) The BoC cannot even meet their current goal of 2% inflation, and the threat of deflation is very real. I am not convinced that they have the ammo to fight that battle, or if it even possible considering much capital is now tied up in non-productive investments (condos). I will grant you, if they do try it will definitely test their independence as it will be very disruptive. *** E: And this would somehow need to occur without an corresponding 5 fold increase in the price of housing. ocrumsprug fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 16:30
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Saltin posted:Cities are more than just hubs for jobs. The cultural value of cities is significant, especially when compared to suburban sprawl which has virtually no culture at all. Music, Art, food choices, access to people from different parts of the world, travel options, public transit, sports, organizations/clubs for virtually every interest under the sun, etc are all much better in cities and factor significantly on why people live where they live. I am certain I could work from home permanently and move to the suburbs to lower my cost of living, but that would loving suck, because I love Toronto and everything it has to offer and no 3500sq ft house with cookie cutter yard and 2 car garage would ever convince me otherwise. some provincial and federal representation or attention would be nice though, right?
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Apr 17, 2014 16:45
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People living in fairly dense environments has been the norm for many many centuries if not thousands of years. Even a village or small town was generally fairly dense, because the only way to get around was by foot generally so you put everything close together, and you aren't needing huge roads for cars so you don't need to waste so much space on car infrastructure. Back then though there were a lot of health and sanitation issues that were not resolved, and by the industrial revolution you saw ridiculous population density in vast slums and hellish living conditions due to the whole concept of health and sanitation being in its infancy. Railroads finally made commuting possible. At the same time, thoughts on health and sanitation had a big "get back to nature" kick. What happened were suburbs. Good suburbs though, "street car suburbs". They'd build a little railway from the city out to the country and build new towns with much lower densities than the city, but still quite high, and still very walkable. You'd walk from your town-house to the train stop and be in the city at your job quickly. This lead to a huge exodus from the over-crowded cities that had built up far too fast and with absolutely no care for sanitation or living conditions due to the rapid industrial revolution. This pattern became the norm until about WWII. City centres were still very dense, but suburbs took a lot of the pressure off and allowed people a little breathing room. People were still well connected and you could still get everywhere by foot or bike or carriage thanks to a dense network of steam and then electric commuter trains and trams. After WWII the US was ridiculously rich off war profiteers and having the only not-destroyed economy in the world. They also had a vast influx of soldiers coming home from the war that needed housing. The idea of the "garden city" was still very much in vogue, that man's most natural state was in extremely low density almost rural or agricultural settings. With cheap gas and a ton of manufacturing capacity cars became a big deal. Cars allowed a new type of suburb, one focused around driving rather than walking and transit. Vast swaths of suburbs were created, but there was a catch: whites only. Blacks and other non-wasps were outright denied entry to many of these very racial and class segregated suburbs. Cities were heavily marketed as terrible dirty places full of scary minorities and horrible places for kids and if NEED to buy a car and move to the suburbs! All these cars and suburbs required a ton of infrastructure so massive highway systems were built, but there was a problem, they often "had" to go through built-up areas. Don't worry, we'll just build them through useless land like abandoned industrial areas or thriving black neighbourhoods since the land is cheapest and we can easily ignore the people there. And anyways, we're doing them a favour, urban living is terrible. We can build them huge soviet style housing blocks surrounded by useless swaths of "green space" and everything will be better for them. This continued on at a rapid pace from the post war period until the 90's, with the suburbs getting worse and worse all the time. Commutes became longer, more and more land and money had to be spent on highways, and cities lost their tax bases. Regional politics swayed to favour suburbs over city centers. Depending on how the region was government, the suburbs could all be technically separate cities which allowed them to hoard all their taxes or keep them low while the cities starved. This fuelled the idea that cities were outdated and terrible places and created a vicious cycle of tax-flight. In the 90's something started to happen. New York was fully cleaned up and had lost its image of a post-apocalpytic urban hellscape. People started to actually really question suburban lifestyles from environmental, cultural, and financial perspectives. Companies started to realize that workers preferred cities with good amenities and proximity to other companies spread innovation better. Vancouver started to become a world-wide poster child for how to do a city 'right' and how urban highways aren't needed. This whole idea of "new urbanism" or "traditional urbanism" became very popular with planners and the whole academic world finally reached a consensus that suburbia was a loving disaster on every front. But how to change things?? When gas prices started to shoot up, it provided the catalyst for change. People realized a slight fluctuation in fuel prices could absolutely gently caress everything over. The economy also shat it's pants at the same time, then the whole 2008 financial crisis. You had high gas prices, tons of unemployment and low wages. At the same time, the good jobs were moving back to the city. The whole "office park" concept was abandoned as a failure much like suburbia. Successful companies realized that a more expensive office in the city was more productive and could attract better talent than an office park in the middle of nowhere. With the internet and smart phones a whole generation grew up being able to be connected with their friends and social world without having to leave their house, the push to drive and get a car the moment you were 16 vanished. Driving became seen as an expansive hassle, not freedom, not coming of age. So now we've got a whole generation of people coming into the job market without as much of this love-affair for driving, the good jobs are back in the cities again because that's where the amenities are and dense concentrations of companies spurs innovation and efficiency that more than makes up for the real-estate savings vs an office park. People who can afford it are moving back to the cities and there's now cultural inertia supporting it (it's cool! it's environmental!) much like the post-war flight to the suburbs. At the same time working class people saw their house value poo poo the bed, their commute become more and more expensive, and the jobs move to the city, and often have no choice but to move closer. But just like the post-war exodus, there are vast swaths of people who just can't afford to move and have been left behind in a crumbling environment. With the tax-flight from the suburbs (or even before that actually) the infrastructure needed to maintain them has become even more unsustainable. It's cheaper to house workers in a city than house them in far-flung suburbs when you factor in all the infrastructure needed to support a suburb. When they were built, most suburbs didn't have the tax-base to support their local highways and roads, now it's even worse. We're going to see a sort of "reverse Detroit" pattern in the poorer suburbs soon and it's going to be bad. This has already happened in many small towns, and will happen on the fringes of cities and move inwards as the tax base contracts. This is though less a problem in canada and more a massive massive problem facing the US though.
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Apr 17, 2014 16:53
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Looking at some European cities is really amazing, in terms of density. I'm going on vacation to Granada at the beginning of May, and it's amazing to look at the city map, pick out points of interest, and realize that I can basically walk from my hotel to any one of them in under half an hour. I will probably take a taxi from the airport to my hotel, and then back the other way, and just walk the rest of the time. Even downtown Calgary and the Beltline combined are larger than that, physically. Madrid's metro also looks pretty awesome, and it's being actively expanded instead of simply being allowed to stagnate. Novel idea, eh? Meanwhile, I'm talking to idiots here in Calgary, buying houses at the far edge of the city limits because "look how cheap it is!" Yeah, it's cheap. It's cheap because no one wants to spend 2 hours every day sitting in their car to get to and from work or anything else of any interest. How do people in these far-flung suburbs maintain a social life of any sort? I can barely be bothered to go more than 5 C-Train stops for social occasions.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:07
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PT6A posted:Looking at some European cities is really amazing, in terms of density. I'm going on vacation to Granada at the beginning of May, and it's amazing to look at the city map, pick out points of interest, and realize that I can basically walk from my hotel to any one of them in under half an hour. I will probably take a taxi from the airport to my hotel, and then back the other way, and just walk the rest of the time. Even downtown Calgary and the Beltline combined are larger than that, physically. I pretty much don't see any of my friends once they move out to the burbs. I'm sure as poo poo not going to drive all the way down there for a party to spend $50 on cab fare home. I was driving on the ring road yesterday, trying to figure out why people would want to live in areas like redstone. I live in bankview and hate the 20 minutes of bumper to bumper I have to deal with if I drive to work, I couldn't imagine doing an hour plus each way every day.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:20
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When you grow up in the suburbs and it's your norm you get this idea that quality of life = size of house and "quietness" of neighbourhood. It's all about the square footage and the greenness of your lawn and neighbor's lawn too of course (MY PROPERTY VALUES!). Also cities are often hard to drive in, parking is expensive or absent. When you look at a city from a suburban perspective it's a terrible place. You have to WALK places? What if it's raining or cold? How will I get my groceries home? There isn't even a walmart! Everything is more expensive! That condo only comes with one parking spot! They see living in the city as just as crazy. Why would anyone live in a "shoe box" in a noisy crowded place full of visible homeless people and be forced to walk or transit everywhere just to shave some time off their commute? Yeah my drive to work is an hour and a half each way, but I have a big house, a big yard, and all my neighbours are people like me. Traffic is really the only problem living out here, so if these social-engineers would stop throwing money away on transit and bike lanes maybe we could fix my commute and then it will be perfect. It's a totally different mindset. It also falls into the false dichotomy both "sides" like to present where the only two patterns of living are in a tiny over-priced condo tower surrounded by over-priced shops or a McMansion surrounded by nothing but clogged highways and walmarts. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 17:26
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Baronjutter posted:When you grow up in the suburbs and it's your norm you get this idea that quality of life = size of house and "quietness" of neighbourhood. It's all about the square footage and the greenness of your lawn and neighbor's lawn too of course (MY PROPERTY VALUES!). Also cities are often hard to drive in, parking is expensive or absent. When you look at a city from a suburban perspective it's a terrible place. You have to WALK places? What if it's raining or cold? How will I get my groceries home? There isn't even a walmart! Everything is more expensive! That condo only comes with one parking spot! They see living in the city as just as crazy. Why would anyone live in a "shoe box" in a noisy crowded place full of visible homeless people and be forced to walk or transit everywhere just to shave some time off their commute? Yeah my drive to work is an hour and a half each way, but I have a big house, a big yard, and all my neighbours are people like me. Traffic is really the only problem living out here, so if these social-engineers would stop throwing money away on transit and bike lanes maybe we could fix my commute and then it will be perfect. I don't know. I've lived in a very rural area, a semi-rural area 30 minutes from a city, a suburb, and now twice downtown (in Montreal and Calgary) and, man, living downtown in a city is the loving way to go, no question whatsoever. I also hate beach resorts with a passion, compared to vacationing in a busy, vibrant city, so maybe I'm just weird.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:44
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Im somewhere in the middle ground. I want to live in the city because suburban life is boring and useless to a single person in their mid to late 20s. But I dont want to give up driving because I enjoy it and the freedom it gives you. Plus I find parts of the commute absolutely infuriating. The Wilson bus is terrible. I would rather deal with the expense of owning a car than put up with the lovely weather and double commute time. I dont think Id ever give up my car. Its far it solves far more problems for me than it creates. Best case scenario is that I get to use it less living in the city and save gas that way.
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Apr 17, 2014 17:56
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The problem is our zoning and finance systems basically mean it's either horrible suburban developments or expensive condo towers. It's called the "missing middle" in urban planning. Single family areas near the cores become extremely expensive, but at the same time have the political power to resist any sort of change. Instead, the only groups powerful enough to push through development are massive well connected developers who want to build 30 story towers of tiny condos. The other option is greenfield development farther and farther out from the city of lovely cookie-cutter houses. Both are actually the least efficient ways to house people. Suburbia requires massive amounts of infrastructure that the tax base can barely justify, so basically its an extremely subsidized style of living. Condo towers are more efficient on all fronts, but a tall thin building is very expensive to build as it requires extensive engineering, expensive materials, and a lot of space "wasted" on stairs/elevators. Also development is very political, there's a high cost to all the red tape and political processes to get anything built so only the most experienced and well-equipped developers can get anything done. Back in the day most buildings were built by the people that were going to be using or living in them. The most efficient way to house people comfortably and affordably are in low but dense buildings. Think brownstones and row-houses at the lower end (while still allowing private ownership) up to dense european style 4-6 story blocks. A row of row-houses, none needing fancy engineering or elevators, can often be more dense than a condo tower, and cheaper per unit while also not needing any common-property or a strata. Everyone gets a little back yard too. So why don't we build like this? Culture, zoning bylaws, and the way financing works for these projects. But so much red-tape and banks only wanting to finance big developers means it's very hard for this more local/organic smaller sort of development to happen. You need a massive war-chest to fight the local nimbys, buy the right politicians, and have the experienced legal team to push your project through. Buildings use to be a local source of pride, but now they are seen as things outsiders come into their neighbourhood to build and there's often an antagonistic relationship. Ideally instead of forests of Vancouver style glass Po-To's (they're fine downtown) you'd see large areas of lower density neighbourhoods near the city slowly and naturally increase their densities along with the city upgrading transit. But the suburbs fight transit spending and the neighborhoods fight the density/change. For instance in Victoria I'd love to see some of the core and ridiculously expensive single family neighbourhoods get replaced with more affordable row-houses and apartments. There's places here only a 10 min walk from downtown that are still single family houses despite being so close to downtown and well served by transit, but they have extremely powerful neighbourhood associations that lobby and protest and stop all change. Instead, development is limited to the worst of big-box suburbia or over-priced condo towers built by developers powerful enough to push their project through. \/ We're slowly figuring it out again, but there's like 50 years of cultural/institutional inertia still going the wrong direction. A city might decide to be progressive and change their zoning to allow more density, but the banks will still use 1960's risk formulas that say low-rise mixed use is evil and bad and a high risk. A developer might want to create a mixed-use and more importantly mixed-class development using all the latest in urban design standards and green features only to have the local community say it's 1 story too tall and they want more green space and suddenly all the progressive features are cut out and it's just another boring condo. A planner might present a well reasoned and evidenced plan to city hall showing how increased transit and "road diets" will actually cut travel times and improve movement but it gets shut down because misinformed local businesses along the route flip out that their businesses will die if any of their street parking is reduced. Urban planners, transport engineers, and even a lot of economists all know this poo poo. It's just really really hard to change the course of a ship as big as this, specially when the government is dumping bails of cash into the boiler instead of adjusting course because "We'll ram through the ice berg and have a soft landing!!" Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 18:19
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I like the way you think and would vote for you. Urban development is a lost art on our continent.
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Apr 17, 2014 18:30
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Kraftwerk posted:Im somewhere in the middle ground. I want to live in the city because suburban life is boring and useless to a single person in their mid to late 20s. But I dont want to give up driving because I enjoy it and the freedom it gives you. Plus I find parts of the commute absolutely infuriating. The Wilson bus is terrible. I would rather deal with the expense of owning a car than put up with the lovely weather and double commute time. A very common pattern is for a family to keep one car, but only for special trips (entertainment on the weekend, bulk grocery shopping, etc). If you don't use your car for commuting, you pay vastly reduced insurance premiums, plus less on gas, less wear and tear, etc. A variant of this is to have no car, but a membership with Car2Go, Modo, Zipcar, or their ilk. Cars cost about $8K - $14K/year to own if used as a primary commuter. You can probably shave that down to $5K/year if it's only for occasional use. http://www.caa.ca/docs/eng/CAA_Driving_Costs_English.pdf http://www.travelsmart.ca/en/Life-and-Home/Day-to-Day/Cost-of-Owning-a-Car.aspx Hear, hear! Although I would point out that at least some of the "townhome" development around Vancouver has been very similar to European row-houses. We could definitely use more of it, though. I also think Vancouver will see a lot of McMansions getting carved into 3-5-dwelling apartment buildings, like happened in parts of London. We're seeing a lot of that already, actually. Kraftwerk posted:I like the way you think and would vote for you. Urban development is a lost art on our continent. BaronJutter for Victoria City Council? 
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Apr 17, 2014 18:58
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Cars cost about $8K - $14K/year to own if used as a primary commuter. You can probably shave that down to $5K/year if it's only for occasional use. I'd be surprised if it's even that high for occasional use. My insurance (with collision, comprehensive, great liability coverage, and low deductibles), as a 24-year-old on a fairly new Mustang, is still south of $2000/year. I spend around $1000/year in gas, I'd say, and let's say another $1000 for maintenance (including car washes and changing winter/summer tires). Unless you're talking about lease/finance payments in that figure, I'm guessing the average person who's only using their car occasionally can cut their ownership costs to closer to $3000-3500 (buy a fuel-efficient car with lower insurance rates). There's no way in hell I would give up driving entirely in any Canadian city except Montreal, but I enjoy never having to drive if I don't want to.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:06
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Baronjutter posted:Buildings use to be a local source of pride, but now they are seen as things outsiders come into their neighbourhood to build and there's often an antagonistic relationship. I think part of this is due to how rotten architecture has become as a field post-WWII. Developers focus exclusively on building the cheapest building they possibly can, with the cheapest materials possible, in the shortest possible time and with an absolute minimum of any "frills". As a result, architecture has gone from being a field full of talented artisans to one which is basically made up of engineers drawing kinex diagrams. We'll never see something like the Marine Building in Vancouver be built in this climate, and it's no surprise people are antagonistic when the cash-grabbing soulless nature of every new development is so brutally obvious.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:07
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Although I would point out that at least some of the "townhome" development around Vancouver has been very similar to European row-houses. We could definitely use more of it, though. I also think Vancouver will see a lot of McMansions getting carved into 3-5-dwelling apartment buildings, like happened in parts of London. We're seeing a lot of that already, actually. London doesn't have McMansions and if anything, that trend's going in the opposite direction at the moment - wealthy individuals are buying up grand townhouses that were previously subdivided into flats and turning them back into urban mansions (in some cases, complete with servants' quarters...)
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Apr 17, 2014 19:10
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Lead out in cuffs posted:A very common pattern is for a family to keep one car, but only for special trips (entertainment on the weekend, bulk grocery shopping, etc). If you don't use your car for commuting, you pay vastly reduced insurance premiums, plus less on gas, less wear and tear, etc. A variant of this is to have no car, but a membership with Car2Go, Modo, Zipcar, or their ilk. Exactly this. If you live in a city with good public transport (i.e. Montreal or Toronto), proximity to amenities, and have access to vehicles (ideally car-sharing for errands lasting several-hours and car-rental, e.g. Enterprise, for longer trips), you'll never want your own vehicle again. Vehicle ownership is a tremendous hassle and expense for a depreciating object that sits idle the vast majority of the time.
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Apr 17, 2014 19:11
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PT6A posted:Unless you're talking about lease/finance payments in that figure
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Apr 17, 2014 19:13
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