The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop
Episode
22 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Software Development, Science & Discovery
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Sovereign Land as Zoning Exemption: Indigenous nations in Canada are not bound by municipal zoning laws on reserve land. The Squamish Nation used this exemption to build towers up to 60 stories in Vancouver, where over half the city was previously restricted to single-family homes — a legal pathway unavailable to conventional private developers.
- ✓NIMBY Asymmetry Problem: Economists identify a structural political imbalance where concentrated, vocal minorities block housing projects that would benefit a diffuse, unrepresented majority. In Los Angeles, this slow permitting process accounts for roughly one-third of total construction costs, per a recent MIT and Princeton working paper on pre-permitted land pricing.
- ✓Permit Value Premium: MIT and Princeton researchers found that developers in Los Angeles pay approximately 50% more for land that already holds approved permits. This quantifies the hidden cost of neighborhood opposition and bureaucratic delay — hundreds of thousands of dollars per project — making regulatory certainty a measurable financial asset worth pursuing.
- ✓Seven-Generation Planning Framework: The Squamish Nation evaluated their development through an indigenous stewardship principle requiring decisions to benefit descendants seven generations forward. This long-term lens pushed younger council members to reject a modest 1,500-unit mid-rise proposal in favor of a 6,000-unit high-density project generating sustained, multigenerational rental income.
- ✓Speed Through Sovereignty: Three of eleven Sanak towers reached near-completion within three years of breaking ground in 2022 — a pace described as unusually fast for Vancouver. Removing neighbor veto power and litigation risk eliminates delays that typically inflate costs and timelines, demonstrating that regulatory friction, not construction capacity, is the primary bottleneck in urban housing development.
What It Covers
The Squamish Nation, an indigenous group of ~5,000 people near Vancouver, reclaimed 10.5 acres of ancestral land in 2003 and leveraged their sovereign status to bypass Canadian zoning laws, building 11 skyscrapers with 6,000 rental apartments — a case study in what unrestricted urban development can achieve.
Key Questions Answered
- •Sovereign Land as Zoning Exemption: Indigenous nations in Canada are not bound by municipal zoning laws on reserve land. The Squamish Nation used this exemption to build towers up to 60 stories in Vancouver, where over half the city was previously restricted to single-family homes — a legal pathway unavailable to conventional private developers.
- •NIMBY Asymmetry Problem: Economists identify a structural political imbalance where concentrated, vocal minorities block housing projects that would benefit a diffuse, unrepresented majority. In Los Angeles, this slow permitting process accounts for roughly one-third of total construction costs, per a recent MIT and Princeton working paper on pre-permitted land pricing.
- •Permit Value Premium: MIT and Princeton researchers found that developers in Los Angeles pay approximately 50% more for land that already holds approved permits. This quantifies the hidden cost of neighborhood opposition and bureaucratic delay — hundreds of thousands of dollars per project — making regulatory certainty a measurable financial asset worth pursuing.
- •Seven-Generation Planning Framework: The Squamish Nation evaluated their development through an indigenous stewardship principle requiring decisions to benefit descendants seven generations forward. This long-term lens pushed younger council members to reject a modest 1,500-unit mid-rise proposal in favor of a 6,000-unit high-density project generating sustained, multigenerational rental income.
- •Speed Through Sovereignty: Three of eleven Sanak towers reached near-completion within three years of breaking ground in 2022 — a pace described as unusually fast for Vancouver. Removing neighbor veto power and litigation risk eliminates delays that typically inflate costs and timelines, demonstrating that regulatory friction, not construction capacity, is the primary bottleneck in urban housing development.
Notable Moment
When critics — including a former Vancouver city councilor — suggested that tall concrete towers were incompatible with indigenous identity, Squamish developers pushed back, calling the expectation that they should build traditional longhouses a form of racism rooted in stereotypes about how indigenous people are permitted to participate in modern economies.
Episode Transcript
This is Planet Money from NPR. A few weeks ago, reporter Alex Maiazzi and I headed to Canada to meet a leader of a small nation. There's dinner. The geese? Yeah. Well, that's that's dark meat, man. This is Gilbert Jacob. Everyone calls him Chief Givi. He used to be one of the leaders of the Squamish nation, a nation of around 5,000 indigenous people living in the Pacific Northwest. We met him in this charming little neighborhood full of single family homes. There was a big open park nearby. Now the land that we were standing on used to be a Squamish village. It's called Sinoc. Chief Gibby's ancestors once lived here back in the eighteen hundreds. This was one of the most bountiful areas in all of the coast. We had elk, we had moose, you know, we had killer whales, we had seals, sea lions, you know, we had catch lots of different fish out here. And then what happened? Then the white people came. Government officials from British Columbia in 1913 came and took the land. They forced the Squamish to leave and destroyed the village. They didn't even give them time to go and take their belongings. They put our people on a barge. And when they were going out there, they turned around and they'd set this whole place ablaze. They burned everything. All our people's belongings. The whole village. They didn't want us to come back. Because the land that Sanak was sitting on, it was right next to a fast growing seaport. A seaport that would eventually become a major city, Vancouver. Over the decades, the land where chief Gibby's great grandparents used to hunt and fish was turned into streets, houses and apartments, government buildings, a park, a wharf, a marina. But the Squamish kept fighting for Sinoc. In 1977, the Squamish nation sued the Canadian government. The legal battle took decades. And in 2003, they were able to get some of this land back, about 10 and a half acres. I was ecstatic. Yeah. This this place, we never doubted it. Belonged to our people. The location of those 10 and a half acres was incredible. We were standing right next to it. It's so close to Downtown Vancouver. This was the biggest economic opportunity in the history of the Squamish nation. When we got it back, I brought my whole team together. I said, we got a plan. The land they got back was a prime piece of real estate in one of the most expensive cities in the world. And now, they had to decide. What were they gonna do with it? Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Alex Mayotte. And I'm Jeff Guo. In most cities in North America, regulations put limits on how high or how quickly you can build. But Sinak is the sovereign territory of the Squamish nation. They are not bound by these regulations. They can build in a way that almost …
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“In Los Angeles, this slow permitting process accounts for roughly one-third of total construction costs, per a recent MIT and Princeton working paper on pre-permitted land pricing.”
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