That’s the argument that University of B.C. prof Nathanael Lauster is making in his just-published book, The Death and Life of the Single Family House: Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City.
Lauster (who walks the walk, living in a townhouse in Kits with his wife and two children) interviewed a few dozen Vancouverites about where they live and how they feel about it. His conclusion was that a significant number are adapting to a new kind of lifestyle here, one where they don’t live in a house with a yard but have instead traded that off for smaller space closer to urban amenities.
My interview with him and summary of the book is here. I’m sure many of you will agree with some parts, have some questions about others, as I did.
One of the things I noticed as I read his book was that house was deemed to be automatically equivalent to more space but far from urban activities, a form of housing that cut people off from their communities. Apartments, on the other hand, seemed to be equated to an automatic connection to more parks, shops, other people, and activities.
Yet there are plenty of apartments in the region that are parked in isolation near busy roads and without much around. And there are houses in neighbourhoods that are lively and filled with people walking around, meeting each other and connecting.
It seems to me that it’s more a failure of city planning than something to do with the actual structure of a building that defines whether single-family houses and apartments are isolated or connected, contributors to an integrated community or not.
But I appreciate Lauster’s approach, because the reality is that Vancouver is changing into a region that is different from other cities. Whenever census numbers come out that show more people are living in the suburbs than ever, certain public commentators leap on that with glee, thinking it proves that people really do prefer houses with yards and not urban living.
But the fact is that there are vastly more apartments, townhouses and rowhouses being built in the region than single-family houses, even in the remotest suburbs. The building starts for the region from January to October this year show 3,909 single-family starts and 13,415 “multiples.”
His emphasis in his research is understanding what we mean by home and how having a home structures our lives. From all the evidence, Vancouverites increasingly define home as not necessarily the house with yard.
10 responses so far ↓
1 charlesmenzies // Nov 15, 2016 at 3:42 pm
I guess home is where the heart is. However, whether or not people are deciding to live in apartments is moot point. Many of us (even with professional incomes) don’t really have a choice. What we can afford has been townhouses or apartments. I too live in a townhouse at UBC. If I had my druthers, I’d druther be in a home with a yard 🙂
2 francesbula // Nov 15, 2016 at 3:50 pm
Yes, I did ask Nathanael that question too. Are we moving to this new form by choice or just because we have to and now we’re rationalizing that decision. He agreed there was some rationalization going on. It seems to me that, like people in his book, you’re saying that you accept that form because you want to stay in the city and teach where you are teaching, as opposed to getting a job at Vancouver Island University and buying a house in Nanaimo. You’ve accepted it as the trade-off, which many of his interviewees do too.
3 Kirk // Nov 15, 2016 at 4:21 pm
I grew up in a house in South Vancouver and am currently raising two kids in an apartment in Mount Pleasant. Growing up in a house is a lot different than a condo in the city. There are tradeoffs for sure. There are experiences that I wish my kids could have that condo living just cannot give them.
My dad was a pretty handy guy. He did a lot of home and car repair. And, I played around with lots of junk in our basement workshop. I’m an engineer now. And, I attribute a lot of that to building a passion as a kid of just getting a lot of hands-on tinkering around. Now, go visit a 700sqft 2 bdrm, downtown condo tower presentation centre, and try really hard to stand in there and envision how different growing up in that is.
My kids just aren’t as hands-on like I was. Much more academic. When I meet kids from Hong Kong, I can understand why. I see it in my own two. So, it doesn’t surprise me that a UBC professor, and a lot of other academic professional types, are proponents of condo living.
Also, I know some single-family-house people in Mount Pleasant. They’re not isolationists who rarely go out. They’re very nice, well socialized 😉
4 spartikus // Nov 15, 2016 at 4:22 pm
We are precisely this. My spouse and I had the dream of the single-detached home in East Vancouver. Even at the time in the early 00’s we thought home prices were expensive (of course if we knew then what would happen to property values we might have stretched the budget) so we decided to get into the market with a condo in Fairview with eye to moving up later on.
And then…we liked it. And we stayed and plan on staying until retirement.
5 Raymond Wong // Nov 15, 2016 at 10:26 pm
Whenever I read about articles like this on more supply, it makes me wonder me scratch my head. Many of my colleagues in their mid-30’s believe the true cause to this problem is foreign capital whether the money is illegal or not. It is stored wealth. This issue isn’t just happening in Vancouver. It is happening everywhere worldwide. Our government doesn’t want to talk about it. They skirt along the edges making Bob Rennie and the developers happy instead of looking at the cause. Shouldn’t our government be wondering how this has happened? Most of our affordable condos are just 1 bedroom. Is it possible to raise a family in a 1 bedroom condo? This is what i called SPECULATIVE SUPPLY. Eventually the individual would want to have a family, force to sell their condo and move out which will inflate prices. Vancouver has literally gone into HK speculative supply.
Are we really getting that much people moving to Vancouver in 2015 all of the sudden? These are questions locals would like to know and should know. Furthermore, shouldn’t our government be wondering how is it possible that we have all these students and housewives buying multi-million dollar homes? There are red flags everywhere. These issues should not be ignored.
Currently, more and more locals who grew up here are moving away from the city or live with their parents forever. The current situation in Vancouver is very unhealthy. If this continues, even townhomes and condos will not be affordable. Our government is all sold out to ‘greed’.
6 Norman12 // Nov 16, 2016 at 8:02 am
Granted I haven’t read the article, but it sounds from your description that he is saying that because we are increasingly forced to live in apartments because we can’t afford single family homes, we must like it. Sure, and chickens like living in coops. They must, there are so many of them doing it.
What is really happening here is the deliberate destruction of neighbourhoods to serve developers. How they convinced city council it’s good for us, I’ll never understand.
7 Everyman // Nov 16, 2016 at 5:42 pm
I’d say there is a whole lot of rationalization going on. Who wants to admit they settled for second best? And if I recall the neighbourhood you have live (lived?) in correctly, surely you’d admit the whole isolation of single family houses meme is bunk. I met far more neighbours in a house than in a condo.
8 Kenji // Nov 18, 2016 at 8:49 am
This is thoughtful.
There may be a way to square the circle though, by providing shared amenity space.
Just as some apartment dwellers have been able to enjoy gardens, it ought to be possible for the handy tool-users to have shop space to build their go-karts, cut their hockey sticks and whatnot.
9 Gulley // Nov 18, 2016 at 2:17 pm
I have two kids and live in an apartment close to Gastown. We love it, and have no plans to move. When we bought around 6 years ago, we had a choice of a very nice apartment or a very dumpy house in a part of Vancouver we’d have to drive most places. We haven’t regretted our choice at all. A yard is overrated for child care anyways, especially with nice parks close by.
To make things easier, though, I applaud the city’s initiative to have a certain percentage of apartments be 3 bedroom. Perhaps they could also look at mandating some common space in buildings for child-centric functions, like they have at the Woodwards building.
10 pdub // Nov 23, 2016 at 9:05 am
I am also apprehensive of the notion that a “house was deemed to be automatically equivalent to more space but far from urban activities, a form of housing that cut people off from their communities.” The Vancouver Foundation’s 2011 survey on connections and engagement after all found that apartment dwellers were less connected to their neighbours than single detached dwellers (in the region as a whole).