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It appears someone in our neighbourhood has nothing better to do than to litter power poles with anti rental tower propaganda, so I wanted to see for myself how it would affect me, since I'm a neighbour after all, and I'm told my voice counts more than, say, someone from WVan 1/x
So, I took the elevations posted online for the Rezoning and and made a quick and dirty (but accurate) 3d model, then loaded that into Google Earth to see what the views would be of the thing. 2/x
Traveling West along Broadway from the East, there are lots of towers of different heights, set back by different amounts from the street, but all with significant gaps between them. So, due to parallax, it's almost impossible to compare heights.

Traveling West, the 28 Story tower seems to loom just as much as the next from a pedestrian (or car) level view, and even though the new tower is taller than its neighbours, it still hides behind foreground towers almost the whole trip, and seems no more massive than others 4/x
Looking the other way, coming from the West, the tower is more visible, if anything highlights just how oddly low density the South side of Broadway is from Granville to Birch, which will unquestionably change when the new subway gets built. 5/x

I thought before I might be able to see the thing from my front door ... turns out nope, I won't. 6/x

For all the Sturm und Drag about overshading everyone living North of the tower ... something can't cast shadow on you if you can't see that thing.

Can you see the 28 story?:
8th and Willow? No
8th and Laurel? No
8th and Oak? No
8th and Spruce? No
(my front door? No)
7/x
Does that mean the thing is completely invisible from 8th, not quite, but from Willow to Spruce, this is how much you can see the thing (literally these are the only times you can see the tower the whole way):

(the one between Oak and Spruce will test your eyesight)

8/x View from 8th between Oak and Spruce ... a tiny corner of thView from 8th between Spruce and Alder ... a tiny corner of
Moving further West until you are directly North of the tower surely means it puts you in perpetual gloom, right? It must loom like the Burj Khalifa?

Nope

Parallax strikes again, tall-ish things in the foreground look taller than tall things in the background, funny huh?

9'x View of the 28 Story tower from 8th directly North of the to
Moving a bit further West to the intersection of 8th and Birch, where you can see the tower in 'all its glory' ... and again the tower on the North side of the street has much more 'weight' than the 28 story one further South.

10/x view from 8th and Birch showing a shorter foreground tower l
Further West yet at 8th and Hemlock, and suprise suprise the tower isn't visible anymore anyway.

... and in case anyone asks, the view from 7th is even less than from 8th - the tower isn't visible from any point I could find except crossing Birch St because of the slope.

11/x view SE from 8th and Hemlock
Looking from a few other places in the neighbourhood ... is the tower visible, sometimes, not significantly more than other buildings, and it isn't even taller than the trees as viewed from the seawall at Charleston Park. 11/x View SW from Charleston Park showing the 28 story tower shorView SW from Laurel Street Overpass
(oops, last one was 12/x)
Finally, someone else did a bad photoshop job attempting to do what I've done above, to show with a big orange blob just how horrid the new tower was from their penthouse, 1.5km+ away.
(The horror, to live in a city and see a new tower, boo hoo)
13/x
see:
So as a rebuttal to the view above ... I give you this view:

What's that? You say you can't see the new tower?

That's because it was taken from the rooftop of the tower at 15th and Granville, which had a view 'obliterated' by the penthouse of whomever is bad at photoshop.

14/x
I was designing a MIRHPP myself, and it costs so much to build in Vancouver requires such significant extra density, that the project ultimately seems unviable on that site, so it has stalled indefinitely.

My hats to the folks doing this tower for making it work.

15/x
We desperately need more rental housing in Vancouver, but even more desperately we need non-market rental housing. Folks like me can suck it up and eek out market payments, but plenty of others can't, so are forced to live more precariously than anyone ought.

16/x
Folks talk about context, and how 28 stories sets a new precedent that then all other nearby buildings will follow.

Those saying this are pro's, and should know that Vancouver Planning never lets good things become precedent, if a fight is possible.

17/x
We could have planned the city properly ... we didn't, we did everything we could to do everything ad-hoc, having random plans everywhere, many being contradictory.

But now we have to wait for a 'Plan' before anything can be done to dig us out of this housing hole? FFS.

18/x
Worst case scenario, approve this tower and we get needed housing in a tower which is oddly tall. Hopefully a well written city plan emerges which creates a framework for fixing things.

The context that matters is that its broke, lets fix it. NOW.

19/x
I'm encouraged seeing tweets today from @LisaDominato wanting to fix zoning. Adding missing middle elsewhere in the city will eventually take pressure off of the need for tall things. But eventually is a long time, and there are 33 residential zones.
20/x
If the 28 story tower becomes a cautionary tale of why we can't let our planning get so screwed up that huge areas of the city are losing people at the same time as people are getting priced out of everywhere dense, than that's great, but I doubt it, and we need housing now

21/x
Hopefully I'll have a chance to speak at Council, but with a 10 month old, ???

@ COV Council, I support the 28 story MIRHPP, so should you ... please scroll up for why.

@christineeboyle @PtFry @LisaDominato @MelissaDeGenova @AdrianeCarr @sarahkirby_yung @kennedystewart
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