So if Lower Lonsdale is the place for bearded, tattooed, flat white drinking hipsters, who is the District aiming itself at? Their web site doesn't really offer a clue, it's strictly nuts and bolts stuff. The Official Community Plan talks about adding 40,000 more people to the North Shore, but doesn't spend a lot of time considering who those people will be.
Families? Townhouses in our strata have just passed the $1 million dollar mark, so a lot of small families will surely be priced out of Lynn Valley unless they have inherited wealth. Seniors? A growing group all over the country, but they too are facing financial squeezes as pensions fail to keep up with rising living expenses. Foreign investors and immigrants? That seems to be where West Vancouver's real estate has been heading.
The question for the District of North Vancouver is probably pretty simple: do we keep trying to maintain whatever we are now (or believe that we have been in the recent past), or do we try to plan for a new type of community and population? Do we keep believing that because the last few decades were about single family homes, that the next half century will be the same?
Or is it time for a laissez-faire approach, just hoping that everything will work itself out?
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where—" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"—so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
