And onc e that's done...

how about we find some land that these projects can go on.

Good luck. This is the age-old question that nobody wants to take a stab at answering

lot's of big lawns in

Shaughnessy and Point Grey

housing and automobiles

Any look at housing, plans etc. must include automobiles.
For decades we have designed our society and housing to accommodate the use of automobiles.
Lots of pavement and land used for roads and parking.
Carfree cities create more caring people and clean healthy environments.
Crime is seriously reduced.
Parking lots are no longer necessary.
Green spaces and housing can easily be planned and built.
Everyone is less stressed.

2 car garage

part of the GM et al phenomena.
Turn them into suites.
All those layers of parking stalls can be used for housing too.
Take action.
Everybody enjoyed street closures to traffic during the Olympics.

really?

carfreecity are you for real?
This entire country is built around vehicles.
try living anyplace except downtown and you are stymied.
try getting to a shopping mall if you do not have a car.

try living 15 KM from any stores like I do.
BC is more than downtown!

15 km, eminently bikable my good man

15 km is less than an hour by bike. For a fit rider on a path without stoplights and no traffic blocking his/her path, it's about a half hour. The more people that take advantage of this, the fewer cars on the street, the less need for road expansion, and of course, it also means more room for housing, more money for transit for those who can't cycle, and more room for those who require vehicles for work, such as tradespeople and delivery services.

The entire country used to be built around horses, then rail, now cars. There's no reason the transportation grid can't continue to evolve.

Evolution eh?

Chris Keam:
Thanks for the advice and I do bike, when weather permits.
Now, try hauling a sack of fertilizer and some groceries home on your bike, eh?
Forget the hill where many cars downshift or the storm off the water. I won't mention my age but I have been a senior for decades.
Horses, rail, cars... and the next step forward is pedal power?
Is that not close to where we began, by walking?
True that is how we might end up, but hardly evolution.

Evolution yes

Alive:

I don't think it's feasible for everyone all the time to cycle. I do think it's more feasible than yr extreme example might suggest. After all how many times do need to carry a sack of fertilizer in a year?

I absolutely believe a stronger emphasis on walking, public transit, and cycling represents progress, both in cities and in suburbs, rural areas, etc. The question is one of individual choices regarding appropriate technologies and embracing a long range view of the solutions. As long as we have people using the most extreme situations to stand for the average it will remain difficult to get people to consider alternatives.

alive

yes alive, i am for REAL.
I just got my gold card.
For the last 3 years I have used my elecric bike for personal mobility and public transit.
In Montreal, all year round my daughter has firends, one a carpenter, and one an electrician who use their ebikes with a cart for their tools to get around all year.
People who are accustomed to hopping into a vehicle to get about have a difficult time putting aside that automobile. Once you decide, like I did, that you don't want to contribute to the madness, like any addiction, you can conquer the habit and feel better, sort of.Breaking the auto habit may be one of the most difficult habits to break.
I attended the World Ecocity Summit in San Francisco 2 years ago.
Most inspiring conference I ever attended.
We heard from people all around the world who are transitioning their places from car culture to other fabulous modes of transportation.A resolution was passed that the goal of an ecocity is to become carfree.
I have lived in rural areas and did park and ride, taking a train to work and smirking at all the traffic jams as I rode in peace and comfort,enjoying a book, the scenery and a cappucino.
It is horrid to live beside a road, a street with heavy traffic.
Bringing this all back home,:without putting so much money from our tax dollars into support for the uses and abuses of automobiles, we can have billions, yes billions, freed up for housing projects .
People will be less stressed. Our environment will be more peaceful and even mental health will improve.

carfreecity

The public automated rent-a-bike bicycle ranks in Montreal are presently still closed for the winter. Why? Well they get lots of snow and ice there and it does tend to get a bit cold sometimes. In fact, exposed flesh can freeze in a minute or two when the wind blows - much like about 98% of Canada.

Off the shelf steel boxes made in Asia will not be replacing homes made with BC wood in the near future, except as a novelty. Anyway, a whole new building code for them would have to be written and trades people would have to learn how to run services within and amongst them - particularly electrics, plumbing, venting. Secondary exits to ground level would have be designed and created for emergency exits. If they were to be publicly owned they would have to be wheelchair accessible, so that means elevators and corridors. It's all possible, the corridors would probably be external on a steel based structure, so what you would essentially have is a steel framed structure, like the Travelodges in the earlier article, with the steel containers slotted into the framework.

Right now BC needs a larger market for its well proved wood-frame industry.

Dreamers

OK, it is a nice to dream about how we could live without cars, and there are many benefits for sure.

Unfortunately our country has developed around the personal car, and every neighbourhood is like the next, completely dependant on travel to get to anything.

Now, the cities in Europe was built for pedestrians, the streets are narrow and there are stores on every corner.
But even there, the public fail to use the public transit, the buses go empty so often that schedules are cut.

Yes, maybe we all suffer from a car addiction, but it is real, because in many cases there are no real alternatives, and dreaming is not going to change it.

Thinking that the average Joe is going to walk or bike to Tim Hortons is not realistic.

Personally I dream of the day when the public will use their brains when they vote, and my dream unfortunately is not realistic either.

I'll take the dream over the despair thx

"dreaming is not going to change it"

Dreaming is just the beginning. Most everything we've ever achieved began as a dream. I'll bet the Tyee founders had a dream and nothing else, and here we are.

Realisticman:

With regard to Montreal's Bixi program, please refer to my earlier comment about people taking the extreme and using it to apply to all situations. By your reasoning, we'd throw away the road network because it's totally congested twice a day during rush hour and not operating properly.