Everyone who is able to live in a dense downtown apartment is another acre of forest outside the city not razed to build McMansions and 6-lane highways. These buildings will house thousands of people and keep thousands of gas-guzzlers off the road since these buildings have such excellent public transportation options.

I'm all for letting nature be nature, but how about we let cities be cities?

I don't expect that the people buying the 3000sqft McMansions with a two bay garage and an eighth acre in the back are the same wanting to live in a 1000sqft loft with shared greenspace.

Some of those McMansion buyers would opt to live in a condo downtown, within walking distance of their work and numerous ameneties, if they weren't priced out.

All of them don't have to come for it to reduce urban sprawl.

There is a tremendous negative cost to keeping this little tiny chunk as "just nature." If it weren't for these buildings, we would need thousands and thousands of homes sprawled out across many square miles, requiring roads, and literally millions of vehicle miles every year.

This sort of structure preserves nature and allows thousands of people to experience Vancouver that would not be able to otherwise.

Stanley Park is close by for those who want actual nature, rather than the little speck of lawns that was where these buildings are being built.

> If it weren't for these buildings, we would need thousands and thousands of homes sprawled out across many square miles.

I mean you could build these towers elsewherez perhaps even demolishing some existing single family dwellings.

Youve made a bit of a false dichotomy here.

Maybe there’s a reason we don’t see skyscrapers out in the suburbs?

The whole deal here is that this project happens only because 1) the Squamish got some of their land back, and it's in an urban area with all the infrastructure one could want, and 2) as reserve land, it’s not subject to the city’s zoning laws, so they YIMBY'd a forward-thinking project.

This is not really a false dichotomy. The only other option would be to delay/cancel this project to just do the same thing in the same way somewhere else, which isn't really that different of an option.

For your example, it is almost literally impossible to destroy enough SFH's to build skyscraper apartments (where do these people go?) even if these SFH lots were somehow also zoned for massive skyscrapers (which they are certainly not).

I think your example is not necessarily a bad idea either, it's just an impossible idea. Nowadays we just can't simply displace thousands of people and then build structures in areas that aren't zoned for those structures.

Could you point to this other plot of land?

This land is Squamish land, which is the only reason it's getting built. Otherwise greedy neighbors would block it.

What?

You said it's either build this or build thousands and thousands of homes sprawled across many miles.

Where's the land for those thousands of homes coming from?

Building sprawl on green fields is the default, it's legal nearly everywhere. Head out past the current exurban boundaries, and it's easy to plop down acres of single unit housing structures.

These tall buildings are illegal nearly everywhere, and most importantly, they are illegal where they make sense to build, near job centers.

This difference, between what is legal and what is illegal to build, is why the alternative to these towers is sprawl. There is no other plot of land where they could be built, but people still need housing.

It's bought, and developed in ways that would/will not be stoppable by regular NIMBY-style activity, because the SFH etc. model is well inside current zoning.

Yes. The dozens of acres that don't need to be razed to build crappy single-family houses with it required streets and infrastructure just saved you a bunch of greenery.