Vancouver Walks the Jobs-Homes Tightrope

Vancouver urban planners are working to zone for business in order to promote a better “homes-jobs” balance. City planners often struggle with this important concept, where planners seek to build housing and business districts in roughly equal proportions and nearby each other. This sustainable building principle that promotes people living near where they work rather than commuting to jobs elsewhere.

Vancouver’s downtown has been redeveloped over the last two decades, increasing the number of condos of the waterfront city dramatically. The condo regime has been accompanied by a correlating population increase, doubling the city’s population in less than two decades. Vancouver’s condo market expanded so rapidly that business buildings eventually began to be converted into housing. In order to save their business districts and be sure that all the people in the new condos had somewhere to work. and planners are scrambling to create sites for business to expand into.

The city is taking a variety of steps to respond, including banning conversions of business space to housing. They are also allowing high rise developer building office space to build taller and denser than their zoning otherwise allows for. Vancouver is naturally limited by the ocean on one side, so physical space to expand is an issue as well.