Vancouver: Planning Trouble In Paradise?

"The solutions to healthy and balanced downtown growth are certainly not to be found in the ideas of our current [Vancouver] director of central area planning, Larry Beasley, who recently hit [Seattle] in his extended roadshow of American colleges and city halls, selling his latest branding of "Vancouver-ism" to the land of his birth.

...Our restaurants are full, tourists pack the sidewalks, and the climax forest of condominium apartment towers is now nearing a complete buildout on our land-limited downtown peninsula, with False Creek on one side, Burrard Inlet on the other. Downtown Vancouver appears to pros-per, but in the complex world of city building, appearances can be deceiving.

...Well-intended but badly mismanaged downtown land-use policies ensure any future corporate successes, like a Vancouver-grown Starbucks or Amazon.com, will be obliged to leave our burg, because 90-plus percent of our best downtown sites went for condos, not offices."