^
you can't compare "architecture" without paying attention to pricing... it's a lovely project whether it's affordable housing or market housing but it's not cheap housing...
the $32.3M residential allocation of the project's total hard construction cost is $538k per unit. add say 15% for land and 15% for soft costs and those 60 small apartments cost $700k each noting that a good portion of the total project cost is being subsidized by the underlying bc hydro substation and by the school construction. it also has to be noted this doesn't allocate any municipal overheads and doesn't reflect the city's non-collection of any development levies (because it's "affordable housing").
you also have to look at what is considered "affordable housing" in the vancouver residential market. as of march of this year, the average cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in vancouver is $2,239, while the average cost for a two-bedroom unit is $$3,050. anything rented at or below that average is deemed to be "affordable". it's also worth noting those are vancouver numbers, not coal harbour/west end numbers which i would think would be higher.
my guess is that if you could get those numbers in edmonton on either a sale or a rental basis, there wouldn't be any downtown gravel parking lots left.
the bar isn't set by design or demanding better design per se, it's set by dollars and we won't get what we're not prepared to pay for any more than vancouver or anywhere else gets anything for free.
