Down the road from the BCIT Burnaby Campus, sits a vibrant city called Brentwood Town Centre. Brentwood has many large towering apartments that are under construction. However, just across the street and behind the towers are small single-family homes. 

Before the pandemic shifted classes online, I always had the pleasure of taking the SkyTrain to Brentwood Town Centre. I would get off here to take the bus to BCIT. During my SkyTrain ride, it was very surreal to me when I see small, single-family homes across the street from large, monster skyscrapers. I remembered it was just a parking lot before the towers were there. Way back about 15 years ago, there were not as many towers in this neighbourhood.

As I did more research into this anomaly, I came upon something that was known as the “Missing Middle”. The City of Vancouver (and other municipalities) either build two types of housing:

However, there are no forms of other housing types like what is known as the “Missing Middle”:

“So why?”, you might ask. Well, Vancouver is in the middle of a housing crisis. It is WAY too expensive to buy a home in Vancouver. Working in Vancouver and earning a decent income is NOT going to guarantee that you will own a home in the city. That is the reason why so many young families are moving to cities on the edge of the Metro Vancouver Area like Surrey, Maple Ridge and Langley.

People prefer housing types that are in the Missing Middle. It helps to create more options and lower housing prices. A good example of this is a building that is located in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Strathcona. Known by the locals as “The Snail”, it is unique because it has a hair salon, grocery store and restaurant on the ground floor with eleven units of housing located on the top. 

Unlike other metro areas (like Calgary or Edmonton), Vancouver is located on a peninsula. Therefore, compromises have to be made to put lots of units into one lot, rather than using a single lot for one house. By incorporating the “Missing Middle”, houses can be discreetly hidden beside homes rather than having high rises towering over single-family apartments.

So how did we get here? 

Why are there mostly 2 types of housing in Vancouver and the other types are missing? 

To answer these questions, we have to look at the evolution of zoning bylaws in the city. Buildings like The Snail were built before these zoning bylaws were implemented. There are many things that make it illegal today in regards to the Zoning Bylaw. This includes the following:

• The building is located too close to the street
• There are 3 floors (not including a basement)
  • Buildings in this neighbourhood have to be 2 floors (not including a basement)
• Since there are businesses below, there has to be parking lots (or a form of parking structure)
• This type of structure would be illegal to build, as the zoning bylaw states only single-family homes are allowed here
  • So the businesses aren’t supposed to be there

In 1927, the population of Vancouver was increasing at a rapid pace. The municipal government hired civil engineer Harland Bartholomew to create a zoning map. Previously, he worked in designing American cities like St. Louis, Missouri and Peoria, Illinois. This was the first time an American urban planner was put in charge of designing a Canadian city. 

Sam Sullivan, a former Mayor of Vancouver, said in a video that Canadian city planning was based on the United Kingdom’s model of human action over human design. However, Bartholomew’s views on cities were focused more on human design. This meant he created a city that fits his view on Vancouver, not what was applicable to the people’s needs and wants. Sullivan also went on to comment that Bartholomew had a “racist View” in urban planning. He said “Bartholomew endorsed exclusionary aspects of zoning. In the U.S., he claimed that zoning could prevent movement into finer residential districts by coloured people.” 

Therefore, he eliminated what is now known as the Missing Middle from the Vancouver picture. He saw that houses in the Missing Middle category would cause an increase in population and become gateways to the rise in crime and the introduction of slums. He made houses with businesses below them illegal. This is the reason why today, there are only a handful of businesses with houses on top of them in Vancouver (The Snail falls under one of these). Back in the 1920s, these businesses operated secretly without the municipal government knowing.  

Bartholomew’s zoning act was to put minorities, immigrants and the poor in their place and not be living among people of higher status. People of lower-income were unable to move anywhere else because in his eyes, only wealthy white people had the promising future he envisioned to enjoy more opportunities. This process was known as redlining. Minorities were relegated to impoverished, crowded neighbourhoods and not allowed to set up their homes among the fine homes of the rich in Vancouver’s West End.

Today, cities with multiple types of housing become havens for coffee shops and small businesses to thrive. These cities include New York City and San Francisco. Vancouver still holds onto Bartolomew’s Urban Plan that prohibits the building of smaller and more affordable homes such as duplexes, townhomes and other “Missing Middles” that I mentioned earlier. This is the reason why the housing crisis in Vancouver still exists today as it lessens the opportunities of people from various economic diversity to own homes. It is impossible to own a home here even for the middle class.

The only two options of housing are the reason why Vancouver is known today as the “City of Glass.” It is also the reason why so many towers are being built throughout the Metro Vancouver Area. Just down the road from my house, the once quiet Lougheed Town Center will be transformed into a large sprawling metropolis in the coming years. In perspective of height, the towers are starting to block out the sun and I can’t even see Metrotown from my house anymore. Maybe, if and when I do live on my own, due to the ever-escalating costs of homes, I would have to either:

a)Rent a basement

b)Live with friends

c)Move to another city in the Metro Vancouver Area

d)Move to another city where housing is affordable

I’m not going to end my article on a sad note as there is still hope. In cities like Minneapolis and Portland, the local government has gotten rid of single-family zoning. The Vancouver municipal government is currently in talks of banning it as well. Urbaniarium, a non-profit organization of Vancouver-based urban planners and architects, held a competition with local architects in designing Missing Middle housing. They found that by tweaking some zoning bylaws, all of the designs you see here are possible. 

With the implementation of the Missing Middle, we can make housing affordable to all people.