Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
If you want more people congested into urban areas where there is transit available, you need to build more multi unit housing. There are a lot of cities that choose to build suburban sprawl instead.
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Most Canadian cities have a glut of condos. Urban planners like them because they create density. Developers like them because they’re cheap and efficient to build. Turns out buyers don’t actually like them much, though.
I understand the reasoning behind densification. The efficiencies and systemic benefits. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves - it will be carried out against the strong preferences of the public.
Remember when everyone was saying Millennials were turning their backs on the suburbs and were going to usher in a new era of dense urbanization? That turned out to be almost comically wrong. Millennials were happy enough to live in urban centres in their 20s and early 30s. But once they started having kids they’ve been flooding into the suburbs and (with the help of the bank of mom and dad) are paying eye-watering prices to raise their families in a detached home - a preference held by 78 per cent of Millennials in Toronto and Vancouver.
So sure, impose higher and higher costs on detached homes. But don’t be surprised when buyers react in ways planners don’t anticipate, like continuing to pay those higher and higher prices, or moving out of major centres (and public transit hubs) altogether in search of more affordable detached homes in smaller cities and towns. And know that policy that runs so strongly against the wishes of the public always imposes a political cost on the leaders pushing the policy.