The program brief invited competitors to focus on 4 blocks of a traditional single-family dwelling neighborhood not far from Vancouver's downtown.  Asked to consider 2 adjacents lots for re-development under more progressive urban zoning, the goals of the competition were to achieve increased density, affordability, social integration, and sustainability.

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As Vancouver - and this neighborhood - is well-served by both land and rapid transit, the premise of this solution is the virtual elimination of the personal car; focusing instead on, successively, a project-by-project managed fleet of cars, and later, a managed neighborhood fleet of collective cars.  Streets were narrowed to relieve the sites of car storage; and each small fleet is simply parked among trees and planter, perpendicular to curb and sidewalk.

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A second principal premise of this submittal was to push the traditional walk-up to its maximum capacity within a garden environment, resulting in units that, by code, can be no higher than 2 stories, most leveraging a mezzanine to increase the unit area.  The approach for this neighborhood, (which has the unique features of a reversal in block orientation/address; and a year-round prevalence of east-west breezes), is to combine courtyard housing and a townhouse/row-house typology, both being permeable to the east-west breezes.   

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Combining these approaches with modest, (but not micro) units, the master plan achieves a respectably urban unit density of 40 dwelling units per acre.