Population matters

While most know that countries like China, India, USA pay attention to their population because it is quite relevant to their economic prospects, it may be a hidden secret to many Canadians that Canada is actually taking active actions by letting in more than 400,000 new immigrants each year into the country, which is about 60% increase from previous decades when 250,000 new immigrants were brought in each year. For Port Moody, we might have a similar situation. If it is done right, population increase in Port Moody could exceed other neighboring municipalities.

There could be at least two ways to attract more people to choose Port Moody to live -- economy and housing affordability. It takes a long shot to have a real competition on job market with Vancouver and Burnaby. This means the City may remain to be a bedroom community. To attract people into the City, housing affordability might be a practical way.

When you walk out of the inner street onto the nearest main or commercial strip, one would expect to have Starbucks on the left-hand side and Tim Horton's on the right. Those are called amenities. Good amenities become available only if population size is large enough. Premium services need a consumer base being large enough to sustain.

Based on these rationales, I hope the City of Port Moody can approve as many projects as possible to increase density on existing residential lots. Parks and other un-development areas can be kept as-were and for conservation purposes. Increasing density on existing land lowers building cost and increases population density and size, which makes it more likely to bring in more businesses for better amenities. As long as it is manageable, the higher the FSR (floor space ratio), the greater density. Lower cost to developers (regardless of being large or as small as a single house owner) eventually means more affordable housing to the public. Greater Vancouver is infamously for its unaffordability. Knowing the City of Vancouver is to allow stacking up to 6 units on a single residential lot, the trend is greater FSR and higher density. If the City of Port Moody can lead the way with planning higher density, all of us owning properties in the City would be proud of our shares in solving the affordability problem.