Traveling to Vancouver was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I consider it a world city on par with London, Paris, New York City and Chicago. It's a city planner's dream: dense living with mixed-use developments in every direction. However, as the term 'Vancouverism' has spread, how has the actual plan of Vancouverism worked out? Is it the urban utopia that it is heralded to be? The LA Times reports that not all is harmonious in British Columbia.He and one of his students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1990s pioneered a way of measuring the connection between human population and its consumption of resources. It's known as the "ecological footprint." Ominously, Rees found that the 2.2 million people who live in the Vancouver region would need an area 57 times larger than their own city to sustain them. Indeed, if everyone on Earth lived as people in Vancouver did, Rees calculated, it would take four planets to keep them alive.
That message resonated, and it changed Rees' adopted city. To a degree probably unmatched anywhere else in North America, the city of Vancouver has tried to impose notions of sustainability in its decisions on what, where and how to build.
The result has come to be known as "Vancouverism," an urban motif of public transit instead of freeways, a low-carbon energy infrastructure and gleaming high-rise condominium towers in sunlit, walkable neighborhoods laced with urban parks.
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games next month provide a showcase for how Vancouver is trying to evolve. A $1-billion development that houses the athletes' village generates up to 70% of its power from converted sewage, and the vaulted ceiling of the Richmond speed-skating venue emphasizes that most renewable of resources, wood.
Over the last 20 years, Vancouver has managed to more than double the number of people living downtown while also reducing its carbon emissions per capita to the lowest levels of any big city in North America. The central city has refused to allow a single freeway and recently began to further tighten the noose around automobiles, closing lanes on crowded streets in favor of buses, bikes and sidewalks.
The city has hit up developers to build parks, recreation centers, libraries, day-care centers, and open, public waterfronts to a degree almost unknown anywhere else.
When other cities were erecting warehouse-style retail outlets in the hinterlands, Vancouver built its Costco right downtown -- the first urban Costco in the world, with four 40-story residential towers rising from the top. There's a boutique Home Depot not far away and a Safeway that squats on a second floor, above smaller street-level shops.
The 1908 Woodward's department store building is being revamped into a mix of high-priced condos, housing for the homeless, a contemporary art institute, grocery store, drugstore and day-care center -- all on a single city block, topped by a mini-replica of the Eiffel Tower. "Be bold," said a sign erected at the site, "or move to suburbia."
"We've become the North American model that you can't ignore," said city planning director Brent Toderian. "We're the only North American downtown to have opened a new elementary school -- think about it -- and we're about to open another one. And it's not because we're all utopians here. It's a willingness to have vision, and then back it up with regulation and willpower."
But the new Olympic athletes' village -- a lower-slung eco-village with narrow, European-style streets and green-planted roofs that hardly resembles the city's famous high-rises -- demonstrates the degree to which Vancouver planners have discovered shortcomings in their own magic.
Forests of glass high-rises are a bit monotonous, many residents now complain.
The new downtown is also a victim of its own success: the condos with the good views are so sought-after that they often cost several million dollars. Even the cheaper studios routinely hit $350,000. How can young families afford those kinds of prices?
The city recently suspended new condo conversions in some areas until job centers catch up. The region's top four employers are various agencies of the government -- troubling in a region that long ago shut down most of its resource economy, such as logging.
With downtown housing costs so high, the suburbs have grown relentlessly. For every new downtown resident, four others have moved to the vast, Orange County-like expanse of the Fraser Valley.
And then there's the traffic: Without freeways, auto commuters are confined to endless queues until they hit the Trans-Canada Highway outside the city. Transit use is high and getting better, but riding in from the far reaches of the Fraser Valley, 35 miles from downtown, can mean one or two long bus trips before reaching the first rail station.
"If you look at the real numbers . . . you'll discover that Vancouver's share of growth uptake in the region is actually diminishing as a proportion," said Lance Berelowitz, who edited the city's Olympics bid package and wrote the book "Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination."
The whole article delivers far more insight into the dichotomy that faces Vancouver, but the effort of Vancouverites shouldn't be dismissed. While they are working towards uniting a city towards environmental efficiency, most cities in North America are just acting as if there isn't a problem at all. And in general, the problems posed towards the Vancouver region really aren't dilemmas with city planner, but with economics. Simple supply-and-demand curves are what are causing the housing prices to go so high--and, as a broad statement, this is a good thing. Housing is expensive in places where people want to live. Why do you think the cost of living is so low in Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis?
Vancouver is at least taking the active role, instead of the passive role. They are quite aware of their impact on their region and the world and are diligently working to improve their city's efficiency. How many American cities can say the same?
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