Why does Vancouver need to grow?

Livability vs. growth

From Metro Vancouver’s 1975 Livable Region Program

Someone asked on Reddit: Why does Vancouver need to grow? Is Vancouver full?

So in biology and demographics we have a concept called “carrying capacity,” which is the limit at which an environment can uphold a population at equilibrium since any further increase would cause a decrease in quality of life and an increased death rate.

So has Vancouver reached its optimal population? i.e. any further increase is a detriment to its residents?

Should we not focus on increasing density where density is already low? Why build somewhere that’s already full? Can we not be content with a stable population? Should cities have threshold population/housing limits?

TLDR Why should Vancouver keep growing?

I thought this reply, from u/po-laris, was perfect:

Perhaps unknowingly, you are expressing a sentiment that is deeply rooted in West Coast culture and which is basically the source of the housing crisis, and the plethora of other related social ills, we're facing today.

That feeling being: "This place is great but it'd be nice if no one else moved here."

In the 1970s, city planners openly discussed the idea of limiting Vancouver's population in the name of preserving "livability" (a word that I've come to hate). Of course, all they did was shift development into sprawl across the Lower Mainland, and eventually accumulate a housing shortage that will take an entire generation to fix.

Since the 1970s, we've had an ambivalent attitude towards growth. Orwell talks about "Little Englanders." Similarly there seem to be a lot of "Little Vancouverites" who are politically active, who want Vancouver to stay the same and who don't want it to grow. The result is that Vancouver has become more and more exclusive and expensive. The only people moving to Vancouver have a household income of $100,000 or more.

People move where the jobs are. We need people to run the healthcare system, for example. Tech employers want to expand. And so on. Problem is, because of Vancouver's ambivalent attitude towards growth, we're reluctant to build enough housing. So we end up with a mismatch between jobs and housing. And then prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to keep people out.

If you have a lot of money, or if you moved here and bought a place 20 years ago, Vancouver’s a great place to live. Otherwise, even if you did everything right - you went to university and got good grades, you got a high-paying job - it’s going to be very hard to stay in Vancouver. This is why Vancouver is sometimes described as a “playground for the rich.”

Given the scarcity and cost of housing, it’s not surprising that a lot of first-time homebuyers are getting help from parents. (It’s like the return of the landed gentry: you can buy a property here if your parents have a property.) According to a survey in June, 40% of first-time homebuyers in BC needed help from family.

TLDR: We basically have two choices.

• We can keep Vancouver small, expensive, and exclusive, like the Arbutus Club, with high prices and rents keeping people out. Because we have a lot of high-paying jobs that need to be filled (like emergency-room nurses), this seems like a cost rather than a benefit.

• Or we can be larger, with a wider range of people and incomes: more like Montreal than like Shaughnessy.