I must concede one point to the NIMBYs – towers do not make ideal housing. Nine times out of ten I will choose to live in a building of modest size. About towers I despise the long, corporate-feeling hallways, the endless fobbing at locked doors, and the tedious elevator wait. I love instead a sense of place, neighborly acquaintance, and easy access to the street. It’s true, architecture of “human scale” is much better.

And yet I find it hard to argue against towers in cities desperate for housing. How else are we supposed to create many dwellings quickly? Over and over at zoning hearings at Vancouver’s city council the same old men crop up to rail against towers. They cast shadows! They’re too big for the neigborhood! They will drive up prices! They’re good for greedy developers and no one else! The council is corrupt!

For alternatives these guys make passing gestures at “reasonable” building heights of eight to twelve stories, but it’s hard to believe they mean it. It’s only because the proposals are for buildings of 30, 40, 50 stories that these guys are willing at all to entertain housing of greater density than already exists. Take for example this article, which sounds the alarm on prospective development on Commercial Drive, one of Vancouver’s liveliest and most attractive neighborhoods:

As Vancouver continues to densify, the pressures to develop this area to the current permitted four-storey height limit could create a dreary blandness that would destroy what is important about ‘The Drive.’

Four storey buildings? That’s what you’re so worried about? In 2016? Are you kidding me?

It’s the great plot twist we should’ve all seen coming, that these NIMBYs faithfully fighting to preserve good city life by declaiming against towers for their unlivability, their “luxury” prices, and the opportunists building them are themselves the greedy ones, hoarding the most luxurious of housing types – single family homes – and leaving eventually no option but to build towers. Because towers would not be necessary if over long periods of time densification were allowed to happen in the form of medium-density housing in the areas that demand it. But no! New buildings are gross! Yuck!