The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop

Synopsis

The Squamish Nation — an indigenous people whose land in Vancouver was forcibly seized in 1913 — is now building 11 skyscrapers and 6,000 apartments on that same land, bypassing the NIMBY opposition and restrictive zoning laws that have strangled housing supply across North America. Because the Squamish own the land outright and govern it under their own authority, they sidestepped the permitting battles that MIT and Princeton economists estimate add roughly a third to typical construction costs in cities like LA. Three towers are already up in just three years — a pace that exposes how much zoning and neighborhood politics, not construction capacity, are the real bottleneck in the housing crisis. For anyone trying to understand why cities can't build their way out of a housing shortage, this episode makes the structural obstacles concrete — and shows exactly what happens when they're removed.

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Episode Breakdown