How the Squamish built Senakw
from Aarva Hosted by Works in Progress
Could the homes a city needs be built by the very people it once forced out? Writing on 11 June 2026, Anya Martin looks at a rare exception to the housing gridlock that defines so many modern cities. In Vancouver, the Squamish Nation is using reclaimed land to build eleven massive towers, bypassing the local planning rules that usually stall such projects for decades. The story moves past the history of dispossession to look at a practical reality: when a community directly captures the value of new housing, the political will to build suddenly appears. It offers a glimpse into what urban growth looks like when the incentives finally align. The Squamish Nation is constructing Senakw, a high-density residential development on returned ancestral land in Vancouver. By utilizing the site’s status as a federal reserve to bypass municipal zoning restrictions, the project aims to generate billions in revenue while addressing the city’s housing shortage. The history details the community’s 1913 forced removal and the legal and anthropological efforts that restored the land a century later. Read at source: Works in Progress For more features and details, visit aarva.app
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