Vancouver is the epicenter of British Columbia’s housing crisis and shortage. So why does the city still effectively ban new apartment buildings on most of its residential land, reserving it exclusively for low-density housing?

While there have been small steps toward reforming single-family zoning in Vancouver in recent years, apartments are still not allowed on more than three quarters of the city’s residential land. Much the same is true in other big, expensive cities in British Columbia and across North America.

Under this decades-old zoning regime, sometimes referred to as the “grand bargain,” apartments are permitted only in relatively narrow segments of a city. New apartment buildings are largely confined to busy roads and areas with older apartments where working-class and poorer folks live, while the wealthiest single-family housing areas are left largely untouched to avoid provoking NIMBY backlash.