Dear Editor:
Vancouver housing bubble burst? I wonder. . .
While living in Toronto some years ago, I recall seeing a land/housing comparison chart of four Canadian cities and the surrounding areas: Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. It was proposed that the maximum driving distance for commuting was 30 kilometres. So you have a circle area with a diameter of 60 kilometres in which to build houses. These numbers are from memory; they are not precise, but close.
The number for Vancouver, I remember vividly.
In Montreal, the U.S. border is 29 kilometres south with the St. Lawrence River and Seaway running right through the middle, thereby offering about 350 square kilometres of buildable land. Toronto is on a lakeshore and has about 250 square kilometres of land available. Calgary can build within the whole perimeter of the circle; it has about 650 square kilometres in which to build.
The Vancouver area has some inlets, multiple rivers and deltas and everyone knows how close the mountains are to the ocean. We also have some very rich and highly productive agriculture land in the Fraser Valley. It turns out the Lower Mainland has about 79 square kilometres of buildable land.
It is little wonder that our land values are so high. Is there any reason to expect otherwise?
Gene Pelly
West Vancouver
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