Dear reader, it is time to put your analytical (or more likely guessing) powers to the test: what exactly is it you see in the photo to the left?

If you said a mini-mansion, most likely inhabited by a couple or prim family of four, you are dead wrong. Instead, it’s a model of dense urban living that houses ten people in eight bedrooms.

This is where I stayed last week while attending Cascadia’s Living Future Conference in Vancouver, B.C. It’s a charming space that a developer bought, renovated and began renting out to young professionals and students in January.

It’s bright, daylit, airy and dense. It’s clean and well lit and is filled with amicable students and young professionals, including my sister. It’s within walking distance from a number of shops, bars and restaurants in a trendy family neighborhood. It’s a street away from a bus line and only a couple of the house’s inhabitants even have cars.

My only question? Why doesn’t this happen more.

I live in Seattle, where the Department of Planning and Development is slogging through the process of expanding the use of attached accessory dwelling units or ”backyard cottages” to increase density. Vancouver’s had a policy like this for years and is looking now to create a similar one for apartments and townhouses.

Sure, there’s plenty of houses here with multiple tenants, but to be completely honest, I have never been in a Seattle house that is as nice and pleasant as the one I stayed in in Vancouver, and houses as many tenants. And I grew up in Seattle and have been in a lot of houses here. Enough said.

Did I mention the developer of my sister’s house charges around $700 per month rent? My sister also did not have to sign a lease and only has to give a month’s notice when she chooses to move out. Since she’s lived there people have moved in and people have moved out but there’s a very quick turnaround. If you don’t like the people you live with, you can just move.

Remembering hellish living situations my friend’s and I dealt with in college, due to bad leases, living situations or unhappy neighbors (like the one that threatened us with a crowbar for example), I can only wonder why these kinds of spaces - that are flexible  - aren’t more common place.

True, Vancouver has amazing density and people barely drive close to the city center, (though miles driven grow exponentially as you move further away from downtown’s glass encased high rises and massive throngs of people). True, the outer edges of the city seem more suburban and less neighborhoody than do those in Seattle (in my humble opinion). And I realize Vancouver has a totally different kind of government. And horrible traffic.

But is this such a difficult concept to repeat? Why is this kind of successful project workable in Vancouver, but not a generality in Seattle? What’s missing here?

In both Seattle and Vancouver, people walk more when they’re closer to amenities. Both Seattle and Vancouver use busses as their major form of public transit. Both cities have internationally acclaimed universities with large populations of students.

And both cities have underlined that they want to be DENSE DENSE DENSE! To check out Vancouver’s theory on the subject, which they have deemed ‘ecodensity’ press here. The closest thing I could find for Seattle is this. I’ve got a lot more on this topic. I’ll try to post the rest on it tomorrow.

What am I missing here? Can someone please enlighten me?

And P.S., Vancouver has a lot more Smart Cars too.

Tags: Canada, Code issues, Density, Living Future, Seattle, smart cars, Vancouver BC

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Code issues, Density, Living Future, Seattle, Seattle Department of Planning and Development, Vancouver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.