Beautiful, But Not So Vibrant

Michael Goldberg, a professor emeritus at University of B.C.'s Sauder School of Business, is a critic of planning in the city, and argues that the city is lacking what makes cities enjoyable to be in.

"'But we [in Vancouver] rely excessively on being beautiful and being next to nature. All our planning tends to focus outward toward the views, and there has been no attention to the street-level experience for people.

'You might as well be living in a hotel in Banff.'

What Vancouver needs to do, Goldberg said, is take lessons from other places that have made themselves far more vibrant. Places as diverse as Milan and Melbourne, Singapore and Seoul. Indeed, he even mentions -and this is embarrassing to me as a Vancouverite -Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg as places that do better than us, at least in some ways."