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Brendan McEwen's avatar

Not to be too cheeky.... but I keep idly musing how interesting it would be to completely eliminate zoning (or replace it with a very simple rubric) in some sizeable neighbourhoods, and see what happens. I guess it is politically infeasible - Many people of course don't want their neighbourhoods to change, certainly not drastically - I'm on a residential street and would admittedly be ambivalent about a highrise across the street shading my garden. But honestly, there are big parts of Vancouver & Burnaby that are proximate to great transit & that lack much charm.

I keep imagining a political leader sacrificing the votes in those areas & saying - You can build six storey condos & twelve storey rentals; no onsite parking requirement; it has to be all-electric, passive-house & low embodied carbon. Have at it. Govts could buy up some parcels for parks in advance... it would be kind of an interesting experiment & much more analogous to the more laissez-faire processes that originally resulted in some of North America's best architecture.

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