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Re: empty buildings was What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411721 is a reply to message #411717] Wed, 06 October 2021 16:50 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma:
Senior Member
On 2021-10-06, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Maus <rhunDARNtheSPAM@DARNtheSPAMkatamailDARNtheSPAM.com>:
>
>>> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
>>> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
>>> circling the drain.
>>
>> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
>> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
>> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?
>
> Vancouver has luxury apartment blocks that are dark at night because
> nobody lives there. So do Toronto and NY, but I gather it's worse in
> Vancouver. It's one of the reasons that Vancouver real estate is
> completely unnafordable to normal people. They have made weak attempts
> to control it with surtaxes on unoccupied foreign owned flats, but the
> far worse problem is that most of the city is zoned to prohibit
> anything denser than detatched single houses and to require vast parking
> garages for multi-unit structures.

Zoning changes move slowly, but if you're a rich enough developer you
can get it done. Council has begun to listen to developers' crocodile
tears about the costs of including parking garages in new towers, and
is even talking about passing bylaws prohibiting adequate parking from
being built, as part of a war against vehicular traffic that they have
been waging for decades. It's easier - and more fun - to make life
miserable for those who dare to take a car downtown than it is to make
life easier for those who are willing to take transit - even if that
takes three times as long.

> a First Nations tribe that owns a large chunk of Vancouver real estate
> recently voted to develop it with 50 story mixed use towers that will
> both provide housing to their members and a lot of other people and
> businesses, and with more transit access and much less parking than
> the city would require. They can do that because they can ignore the
> city's zoning.

The city is too busy going after buildings consisting of a row of
storefronts with one or two storeys of apartments above them for
shopkeepers, etc. Under a policy they call "highest and best use"
(gag), they're taxing these buildings as if they were 50-storey
mixed-use towers, which is killing the small businesses that occupy
the ground floor. Once those businesses been gotten rid of, the
deserted hulks of these buildings be torn down and another 50-storey
tower built. And they still talk about "building communities". Feh.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
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