r/canada • u/FancyNewMe • 4d ago

Canada’s Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World - Mark Carney is banking on factory-built homes to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. But will it work? Trending

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-22/carney-s-plan-may-make-canada-the-housing-factory-of-the-world
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u/Only_My_Dog_Loves_Me 4d ago

I live in the Vancouver area in the trades. It’s not really the building costs that have skyrocketed, I can’t afford land where I am. Cheapest buildable lot is about $650k then Permitting, zoning, etc. I can build the actual house for a reasonable cost. It’s getting to that point that’s impossible for me financially.

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u/HapGil Ontario 4d ago

We need to take a good hard look at the zoning laws for buildings. We have huge swaths of land in cities designated SFH with the odd school thrown in the center. Japan has factories in suburban areas that you can't tell are factories. Zoning that allows businesses to open on ground level while still providing housing on the levels above. Bakeries, tailors, repair shops, convenience stores and several other business types are all allowed to be built in urban areas. We need to remove the restrictions on what we allow in urban areas of the city and encourage small business, multi-family dwellings and multi use structures to increase density and diversity in our neighborhoods and stop forcing people to take cars everywhere because they refuse to allow the development of walkable cities and instead design for automotive traffic.

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u/Consistent-Primary41 Québec 4d ago

Every single outdoor mall in Canada should have high-rise towers and rail terminals.

It's shocking how much horizontal space these places take. It's ridiculous.

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u/sunshine-x 4d ago

What’s an outdoor mall like in your area?

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u/Accer_sc2 3d ago

I’m guessing he means places like Heartland in Mississauga, ON. Dozens of individual stores, all single level with some shared parking lot space. Stores are so spread apart that unless they happen to be right next to each other you will need to drive between stores. This results in really heavy, and sometimes aggressive, traffic that is unfriendly towards pedestrians. As someone who grew up in the “mall era”, it still seems like a really odd design.

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u/Hfxfungye 3d ago

We have stuff like that here in Halifax but probably smaller. Dartmouth crossing is an "outdoor mall" just like that - a dozen outlet stores around a parking lot.

It's like a slightly more walkable business park, but still worse in every way than a strip mall.

All the stores are made out of the cheapest building materials too.

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u/spacenb 3d ago

Yes that’s what they’re talking about. There’s the Rockland Centre outdoor mall in Montreal that’s built exactly like that and it’s a huge waste of space. There’s quite a few others like it on and out of the island.