Anya Martin has a great piece in Works in Progress about how the Squamish Nation reclaimed 11.7 acres of land in Vancouver and decided to build a huge housing development on it, called Senakw. The project will eventually add 6,000 rental homes for roughly 9,000 people, representing seven percent of all projected new housing in the city by 2033. Because the project is built on reserve land, it is exempt from zoning laws that constrain development in the rest of the region. With a loan from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and support from the City of Vancouver to connect public amenities, the project’s eleven towers will rise on land where almost any comparable private development would have been slowed, shrunk, or killed outright. Squamish Nation members voted to approve the development in 2019; unlike most neighbours asked to accept new housing, they had a direct stake in saying yes.
Big Muddy
Dispatches on technology, science, politics, and other curiosities