With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/526329
V ancouver is one of the most unafford- able housing markets in the world, causing many to worry the city is losing its soul. Andy Yan, a senior urban planner and researcher with Bing Thom Architects, whose ancestors arrived from China more than a century ago, has been watching the boom unfold and mapping its trends for the past five years. Among the first to quantify the empty condo prob- lem in downtown Vancouver, the dramatic eastward shift of $1-million homes, the exodus of young people from the city's west side, and concerns over offshore money flowing into local real estate, Yan has become the go-to guy for insight into Vancouver's turbulent real estate scene and its impact on the city. Are you concerned about what is happening in Vancouver? What worries me is how we build a city where people can thrive and develop a set of roots amid the forces of globalization. That's the challenge. How do we work out of a set of conditions inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries in a 21st-century environment? The old economic environment has changed so much. Are we preparing to work in the new global economy while protecting things that made us such an incredible place to grow and thrive? I suppose the rapid increase in million-dollar single-family Andy Yan T h e C o n v e r s a t i o n Vancouver's most famous urban planner and researcher on how to build a livable city—and avoid the zombie apocalypse by Rod Mickleburgh homes doesn't help… The danger is that Vancouver becomes a city of the entitled, and we drive out the risk- takers, the innovators and the dreamers. We also stand to lose a major demographic of 25-to-39-year-olds in the workforce, just as they are entering their most productive years. San Francisco and New York are very expensive, too— but risk-takers still flock there because those cities are some of the most powerful economic engines on the planet. Without that kind of dynamic economic engine and with the price of residential real estate so high, Vancouver runs the risk of becoming a stagnant slough. Many are quick to blame offshore buyers for esca- lating real estate prices. Is that fair? I'm not denying the effects of global flows of capital. Money is coming from all over the world and landing in the city. I was one of the first to start talking about it. But there is also an unprecedented level of cheap money because of low interest rates and a large transfer of generational wealth, mixed in with a limited land base. I like to say I'm trying to find the Higgs boson particle of what drives Vancouver real estate. Is it just foreign investment? [At this point, someone eavesdropping on the interview interjects that "of course" it's foreign investment, adding that his friends on the west side have "all sorts of examples." Unper- turbed, Yan uses the interruption to make a point.] You have to acknowledge this type of passion. I feel it myself. But you have to temper that passion with reason. I believe in understanding a problem before reaching for a solution. Anec- dotes are not data, and they lead to very poor decisions. They also lead to rage. They don't move us toward solving housing problems. in 2011, of condos in Vancouver's dense, pricey Coal harbour area were empty or occupied by non-resident owners. the city's overall residential vacancy rate was 7.7%, compared with 5.4% in toronto JUly 2015 BCBusiness 29 ADAM BlASBERG FACToID Among 25-to-55-year-olds with university degrees, Vancouver's median income ranks last in Canada 23%