Douglas Todd: With skyscrapers, Vancouver follows Asia, not Europe

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“A city should not have low buildings. It should have skyscrapers. I know some people like the freedom of living at ground level, but I like the view. “It’s like a real city.”

That’s the perspective that Mike Wong, who grew up in a conglomerate of apartment towers in China, expressed last year about the new cluster of skyscrapers on the corner of Cambie and Marine Drive in Vancouver.

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Wong, 31, is among the many people drawn to the huge new residential towers that are rapidly going up in downtown Vancouver, False Creek and Oakridge; Lonsdale of North Vancouver; Burnaby’s Brentwood and Metrotown; Surrey Central and elsewhere.

Over the past 20 years, Asia has become the absolute winner of the race to see who can build the most and tallest skyscrapers. Meanwhile, Europe is left far behind, with no options.

Canada has been a middle ground that, in a sense, is becoming a battleground. Metropolitan Vancouver, plus Toronto, Calgary and, to some extent, Montreal, are ground zero for the conflict between the high-rise housing approach, seen in East Asia and West Asia (the oil-rich Persian Gulf states). , and the low-rise housing approach. route that is still followed in much of Europe.

Perhaps the biggest example of competition between high-rises and mid-sized buildings in the Vancouver area is the future of Jericho Lands in Point Grey. That’s where the MST Corporation is promoting a project of 50 ultra-high-density towers, which the city supports. Meanwhile, the citizens group Jericó Coalition has produced a video detailing an alternative mid-rise option, based on cities like Paris.

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Why does Europe generally prefer low to mid-rise residential buildings?

World War II has something to do with it. After a foreign army destroyed the cores of many great European cities, citizens responded by diligently recreating their museums, churches, palaces, houses, legislatures, apartments, and historic neighborhoods.

“The restoration of pre-war architecture was seen as a way to preserve cultural identity and rebuild a sense of community after the trauma of war,” writes Vancouver-based architect and urban planner Pragya Sharma.

Currently in Europe there are only about 400 skyscrapers, which are usually defined as towers of more than 45 floors. That compares to about 1,000 skyscrapers across North America (where they started in New York and Chicago) and more than 5,000 across Asia.

Instead of tower-filled skylines like we now see in Metro Vancouver, European cities have created zoning regulations that lead to more ground-oriented buildings.

“Brusselization” is the term used in Europe to counter the widespread demolition of historic buildings for the construction of skyscrapers. It refers to the 1960s and 1970s, when Brussels city politicians thought huge concrete towers were superior to traditional buildings. Critics noted that many towers were not only sterile and alienating at street level, but were also environmentally unsustainable and carbon intensive.

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Why have China, South Korea, Malaysia and the Gulf States progressed so radically in the last 25 years? (Indian cities are more likely to avoid tall buildings.)

An important reason in China is that half a century ago one in five people lived in the countryside. Now more than three in five people live in cities, driving incredible urban growth.

For decades, China’s communist leaders gave incentives to developers to build faster and taller, to the point that China now has most of the world’s tallest buildings. However, many are concerned that novelty and even bizarre skyscrapers are becoming projects of vanity and ostentation.

Official attitudes have recently changed in authoritarian China, as they often do. In recent years, the country’s leaders realized that too many tall towers were catching fire, shaking and becoming health hazards.

In 2021, Beijing decreed that it would ban “ugly buildings.” It also prohibited cities from building more than 45 stories if their population was less than three million. (For what it’s worth, Metro Vancouver’s population is about 2.7 million.) China’s fixation on shooting for the stars is wearing thin.

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Where do Metro Vancouverites fit into the different accesses to tall towers?

As architect Michael Geller says, British Columbia real estate developers and their political allies favor skyscrapers because they tend to be cheaper to build per square foot and therefore more profitable.

And many people like panoramas.

Metro Vancouver historian, illustrator and author Michael Kluckner notes that Vancouver was one of the first cities in North America to push for the construction of residential skyscrapers. He did it in the West End in the 1960s, until then Mayor Art Phillips decided the neighborhood had become dense enough.

Kluckner believes prestige is also a factor in luxury skyscraper projects, such as downtown’s 57-story Butterfly tower and Oakridge Park’s super-dense cluster of 14 towers, which will include a 55-story skyscraper. Both are being marketed to affluent international buyers.

The author of the upcoming book Surviving Vancouver also believes many younger Metro Vancouver residents prefer to live in high-rises, partly in the hope that it will be less unaffordable. Kluckner says rental high-rises, even if they are bland, seem to capture the “modern ethos” of many young adults.

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“I think Vancouverites love traveling to Barcelona or Paris, but they’re not necessarily interested in living like that. Hey, we’ve got the views, right?

Metro Vancouver now has more than 1,400 buildings over six floors.

While definitions vary on what exactly constitutes a tall building, Kluckner, a heritage specialist, says, “My oversimplified rule of thumb is: If you can’t recognize someone walking by on the street, you’re in a skyscraper.”

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