This is a really great long form article about the efforts to upzone New Zealand, one of the only countries going through an even worse housing crisis than Canada. There’s a lot to learn here about the political challenges of implementing good urban planning strategy.
The quick upshot: upzoning worked to lower prices. But there’s been a political backlash against the most ambitious country wide reforms, and a lot of forward thinking policies are now at risk of being reversed.
BC is the only province that has been doing similar things, especially recently with province wide zoning reforms. (Not coincidentally, BC is one of the only provinces with a progressive government in the country.) There’s a lot of political buy in at the moment in BC, including municipal government support, but I’m worried about how the homeowner class will react when the policies actually start taking effect.
BC is one of the only provinces with a progressive government in the country
I thought there might have been one or two more, but it’s just Manitoba who finished their election pretty recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_Canadian_first_ministers
The provinces across Canada have been surprisingly conservative for a while. Even supposedly left leaning BC went through 16 years of a conservative government until just relatively recently in 2017. All while conservative governments have endured scandals, mismanagement, limp economies, and chronic underfunding of healthcare and housing.
