Urban Density

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_density

https://www.straight.com/city-culture/why-urban-density-is-actually-good-for-us

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/urban-density-and-sustainability/241696/

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/04/17/when-density-good-and-when-it-harmful-cities

https://theconversation.com/urban-density-matters-but-what-does-it-mean-58977

"In the 1970s, British Columbia cities adopted policies and processes to resist densification. As Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan started the EcoDensity Initiative to counter these." https://globalcivic.org/urban-density-urban-bc-vancouver/

New Westminster City Council balks at high-rise density plan

 https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/lower-twelfth-street-area-study-update-new-westminster-rejection

Given the limited industrial areas within the Greater Vancouver Region, there should be a balance between residential & industrial. 

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/columbia-square-new-westminster-edgar-development-plan-approved

However, some parts of NW need more taller towers in order to have much grater urban density.

https://www.newwestcity.ca/transportation/transportation-planning

https://www.newwestcity.ca/planning-building-and-development/roadworks

https://www.newwestcity.ca/transportation/trucks

https://www.newwestcity.ca/railways

https://www.newwestcity.ca/qtoqferry

Why doesn’t Australia simply build more cities?

 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAustralian/comments/17rn4r5/why_doesnt_australia_simply_build_more_cities/

A lot of the secondary cities in each state could become big in their own right.

https://theconversation.com/how-our-regions-can-help-make-australias-growing-cities-more-sustainable-240330

Texas has a lot more people than Australia, yet it's a much smaller area & still has plenty of room.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/cities-population-density-congestion-urban-environment/100183522

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829222001605

https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-06/future-cities-paper-web.pdf

https://scenariojournal.com/article/made-in-australia

Of course one expects Melbourne and Sydney to have all the big stuff. However, from a Canadian perspective, it's amazing to see that Australia has a 12 lane crossing in Brisbane & a 10 lane crossing in Perth. Such wide bridges just don't exist in Halifax, NS & Victoria, BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Leo_Hielscher_Bridges 12 lanes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Gateway_Bridge_aerial4.JPG ,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Leo_Hielscher_Bridges#Duplication

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrows_Bridge_(Perth) 10 lanes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Narrows_Bridge_from_QV.1.jpg , 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrows_Bridge_(Perth)#Second_road_bridge:_2001

There is a lot more potential to have express bus lanes & HOV lanes on 10-12 lane bridges than some narrow Vancouver, BC bridge with only 4 lanes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrows_Bridge_(Perth)#Railway_bridge:_2005 Seattle & Montreal would end up having their own version of a wide bridge with a train component as well. Of course, stubborn & backwards Greater Vancouver would be one of the last urban areas to ever allow such  similar bridges.

It doesn't look like anyone from Canada was ever able to convince Australians to give up on bridge duplication & opt to just cram everything into 4 lanes or an inept 3+lane+bridge for two-way traffic.

City of Burnaby makes formal apology for decades of discrimination against people of Chinese descent

 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/burnaby-apology-discriminating-chinese-descent-9.6980642 

Since BC started out as a British Colonial outpost, people of European descent were at the orchestrated top of the human hierarchy. Chinese and Asians & nonwhites in general were a concern to the White majority of early BC.  

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/history/discrimination

https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/chinese-canadians

South Asians were also a concern to the colonial power structure.  

https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/komagata-maru 

https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2016/08/the-komagata-maru-incident-of-1914.html 

Of course Indigenous and Black People were part of being categorized as a lesser class of human. 

It took a very long time for the British_Empire to respect the people of a multicultural world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_British_Empire 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_British_Empire#Decline_and_decolonization 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_British_Empire#Postmodern_and_postcolonial_approaches

Multicultural Canada has less than 1% of the world's population. Yet, so many smaller countries are able to have a higher density and larger population than Canada. 

Burnaby in Greater Vancouver is part of Canada's largest urban area on the Pacific_Rim. There are still many people who would like to thwart the scale of growth in Greater_Vancouver. They don't want the region to become as big and dynamic as Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Seattle, SFBA, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane. 

A big & dynamic urban region means more Asians and more nonwhite people in general. Unfortunatly, some people are still too uncomfortable with that notion.  

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Burnaby+apologizes

High Density Plans for Vancouver

 https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/cartoon-ucs58-vancouver-plans-high-density-2-complete-community

Well, Vancouver still isn't allowing any residential tower to rival the tallest in Edmonton, Calgary & Seattle. BC is 75% mountainous yet, there are only a handful of potential major urban regions in this backwater wilderness of a province.

https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2025/06/25/antisocial-housing-cc160-vancouvers-initiative-is-neither-social-nor-affordable-by-brian-palmquist/

Vancouver could get more benefits from developers if there was more incentive to build taller hotels and residential towers, as long as there was a good component of affordable housing. 

Urban sprawl vs density

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z8L15rjmH30

Switzerland

Switzerland has 8.9 million people & can fit into BC about 23 times. BC has yet to reach the population of one Switzerland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Largest_cities

Unless BC claims to have a different set of physics than that of CH, mountains can't be used as an excuse for limited urban growth & density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Switzerland

Italy & Japan also have plenty of mountains, but that hasn't prevented them from proper planning & infrastructure development.

https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/switzerland/netherlands A very flat country with about double the population of CH.

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Switzerland