It's all about Stumps+and+Towers.
There is no office tower in Vancouver or BC that has ever been allowed to have a 40th floor. Seattle has the 76 story B of A tower & Toronto has the 72 story BMO tower. That's because those cities aren't under anything like the restrictions and limitations that Vancouver has. If you can't build a wall around BC, the next best thing is to limit or reduce the scale of things. Then continually fall behind with the overall infrastructure.
Vancouver not only has limited the scale of office towers, but residential towers as well. It would seem that there is more of a demand now for residential towers than office towers.
Seattle, Calgary & Edmonton all have allowed a residential tower to be taller than anything in Vancouver.
https://thedigitallabyrinth.blogspot.com/search?q=Vancouver+House
London, UK for the longest time, refused to permit taller buildings. Then eventually as the land became so expensive, they eventually started to allow some towers that even rivaled that of Paris & Frankfurt. Some of the towers would not even be stumps when compared to those in NYC & Chicago.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/no-rooms-at-the-inns-knock-on-effects-of-vancouvers-hotel-shortage If the city would allow taller buildings, then the hotel companies could build more rooms on the lower half, while providing condos on the upper half. Or, visa versa.
https://storeys.com/vancouver-hotel-shortage-council-motion Fortunatly, many other cities are able to keep up with getting more hotel rooms built. https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/09/08/vancouver-hotels-shortage-city-councillor/
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/metro-vancouver-hotel-supply-shortage-demand
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/city-of-vancouver-hotel-room-shortage-new-policies
Of course by the late 1800s, Montreal & Toronto had a sense of becoming major cities. Then by the early & mid 1900s, it became even more apparent. In the early 21st century, Vancouver is still stuck in a multi-decade rut of wanting to stunt, thwart or hold back the city in any way possible.
https://thedigitallabyrinth.blogspot.com/search?q=The+No+Fun+City
Most of the regional bridges or crossings have been deliberately kept so narrow that it's almost impossible to have a proper regional express bus network to compliment the short sighted Skytrain stations.
All the narrow bridges should have had additional Bus+and+HOV+Lane bridges by now.
