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This Metro Vancouver study investigates the cost of providing infrastructure and services to neighbourhoods with varying residential densities, with the goal of informing municipal planning and regional growth policies for Metro Vancouver.

Key insights:

The study emphasizes a complex relationship between residential densities and infrastructure costs influenced by factors like infrastructure age, existing capacity, and the physical landscape of the serviced area.
Evidence presented suggests that infrastructure and servicing costs per capita and per unit are significantly higher for houses compared to apartment developments.
Increasing density is identified as a potential contributor to lowering housing development and municipal operating costs over time.
The study includes a literature review on municipal infrastructure and associated costs.
Cost calculations are provided for various factors, including development cost charges, municipal operating costs, property taxes/utility fees, and infrastructure servicing, categorized by housing type.

The City of Edmonton is working to enable residential infill development to meet the increased housing needs of a growing population.

Key insights:

This dedicated web page features an Infill Data Explorer tool to learn more about community trends in development and find potential sites for construction, and a Compliance Dashboard displaying current inspection and enforcement information.

In addition, two Infill Roadmaps have been released – the first in 2014 works to establish community support and familiarity with infill development, with actions including:
- Creating a public-facing information hub
- Creating a robust communications strategy (including community programming and events), providing resources for residents to engage with infill conversations
- Launching demonstrative pilot projects.
- Preparing to increase infrastructure capacity (such as drainage) and creating a supportive regulatory environment (including allowing garden suites) are also explored.
The second Infill Roadmap (released in 2018) builds off the previous roadmap to provide later-stage actions, including a fulsome review of infrastructure capacity, developing tools to improve housing affordability, and reducing barriers to missing middle and where appropriate medium-scale development.

This report from the Town of Collingwood details actions that can be pursued at the municipal level to advance affordable housing from the perspective of a lower-tier municipality.

The Town of Collingwood’s Affordable Housing Task Force advises Council and take leadership action on a broad suite of housing matters, including monitoring and providing recommendations for local planning policies and regional initiatives aimed at enhancing affordable housing options, while also exploring and suggesting improvements for current grant and funding opportunities for various affordable housing development types, including new constructions, renovations, and conversions

Key insights:

Redeveloping existing town assets, such as apartment complexes.
Updating the Official Plan and zoning bylaws to embrace a variety of housing types.
Eliminating parking minimums for multi-unit developments and introducing financial incentives for mixed-use development.
Increasing and retaining the supply of affordable housing units, including permitting accessory dwelling units.
Allocating staff resources for ongoing oversight of new programs and initiatives.

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This study investigates how to right-size the amount of on-site and off-street parking allocated to new apartment building developments.

Key insights:

This technical report brought forward a number of new insights about street parking supply and utilization, for example:

Apartment parking supply remains excessive relative to observed utilization. Apartment buildings close to frequent transit, whether or bus or SkyTrain, have lower parking supply and utilization
The lower rates of parking utilization are associated with higher transit use as measured by the number of bus boardings near the buildings, and this relationship is stronger for rental apartment sites
Street parking is inherently complex in mixed-use neighbourhoods. Some of the factors contributing to street parking use include visitors to non-residential land uses, such as restaurants, shops, and parks; apartment visitors on weekends, holidays, and special occasions; and some apartment residents parking on the street. Even with these factors, only a handful of surveyed street networks experienced persistently high street parking utilization.
Finally, the 2018 Regional Parking Study highlights a challenge that remains unchanged from the 2012 Study. The design and capacity of current bicycle parking facilities in apartment buildings are discouraging their use by many residents.

The findings indicate that the parking supply in Metro Vancouver outpaces observed utilization, and apartments close to frequent bus and train transit networks display lower parking utilization rates. Parking in mixed-use neighbourhoods was observed to have unique trends that varied by time of day and weekday versus weekend and holiday travel.

This technical report was prepared by TransLink and Metro Vancouver.

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This discussion guide provides an overview of housing affordability in Metro Vancouver, looking at trends in persons experiencing homelessness, available housing supply, rental housing supply, the purchase price of homes, and the percentage of homes with a core housing need.

Key insights:

Compiled by Simon Fraser University, this paper explores:

The roles of different levels of government to produce and maintain affordable housing
Alternative ownership and tenure models (include housing/equity co-operatives and collaborative housing)
Affordable housing finance tools (including equity loans, community land trusts, and group mortgages)
Cost saving models to reduce construction costs (including using modular pre-fab housing and micro units) along with each models’ advantages and challenges.

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This paper recounts early-stage research conducted by the City of Vancouver on a variety of small-scale housing types.

Key insights:

The report outlines how a variety housing types, be they sixplexes, cottages, rowhouses, small lot infill or others, can work to advance the goals of creating ground-oriented, affordable, neighbourhood scale development.

An information sheet is provided for each housing form with a mock-up to display how new development can take shape on single or two-three lot consolidations in existing residential neighbourhoods.

Other areas explored include:

Technical feasibility
Marketability
Ownership options

Report prepared by Patricia St.Michel – City Plans, Planning Department, Community Services Group, City of Vancouver

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This report from Salt Spring Solutions aims to bring together a comprehensive set of solutions to the housing crisis on Salt Spring Island.

Key insights:

Salt Spring Island’s housing challenges are currently exasperated by several factors, including sprawl, demographic changes and strained infrastructure capacity.

As this report details, Salt Spring Island looks to address these by establishing a local housing framework that advances five strategies:

Strategy 1: Coordinated and Properly Resourced Local Approach to Housing
Strategy 2: Effective Public Education, Engagement, and Dialogue on Housing.
Strategy 3: Preservation of Rural Areas and Nature Space through Clustered Housing.
Strategy 4: Readying Ganges Village for More Housing
Strategy 5: Accessory Dwellings for Housing, in the Right Places

Amongst the key policy actions recommended include:

creating an entity to oversee and coordinate interagency tasks,
developing a public education and engagement policy,
updating policy and zoning regulations to incentivize compact,
clustered housing development,
intensifying growth in the town centre,
and permitting ADUs for long-term occupancy.

Infill Development in Edmonton: Strategies for Success brings leaders to better understand how public support is garnered for infill development in residential neighbourhoods and explore strategies that can be transferred to BC communities (including municipal policies and processes, partnerships, resources and engagement tactics/messages).

In this Gentle Density Network webinar from February 2023, learn how the City of Edmonton garnered public support for infill development in residential neighbourhoods, with insights from Nicholas Rheubottom, Executive Director at Infill Development Edmonton Association (IDEA), and Travis Fong, Co-Founder and President of YEGarden Suites.

Key insights:

There are many benefits to infill development:

More diverse housing stock: Infill helps to create diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods by providing options to meet everyone’s needs, whether it be new families, seniors, students, front-line workers, or more!

Financial Sustainability: Similar to above, by creating more diverse housing options, we can also cater for a greater diversity of financial needs and incomes.

Multigenerational Living: Enabling a variety of housing options in a neighborhood provides families with the choice to age in place, allows young individuals to reside nearer to the city center

Amongst the key barriers to infill include:

Infrastructure: At project inception, infrastructure upgrade costs are unknown and unpredictable.

Financial Feasibility: Medium-scale development from 4 units to 8 stories can be difficult to finance and has high risk brought on by contradictory planning policy, and uncertainty in approval processes and infrastructure upgrade costs

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Key insights:

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Key insights:

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Key insights:

Other areas explored include:

Are you a planner?

Do you have resources to share?

Key insights:

Are you a planner?

Do you have resources to share?

Key insights:

Are you a planner?

Do you have resources to share?