Is Vancouver Ill-Prepared for the Future?

For a city renowned for its excellent design, livability, and smart growth, it was somewhat surprising to read that Vancouver's future growth is being imperiled by shortsightedness by the city council and a lack of long-term planning. At least that is the conclusion reached by three of the city's former planning directors - Larry Beasley, Ray Spaxman and Brent Toderian.

According to Spaxman and Toderian, "the city is putting too much emphasis on solving here-and-now issues at the expense of long-term growth."

With affordability becoming a key concern, Beasley said, "the region needs a 'brand new' metropolitan plan, 'a plan that thinks about the issues of the future, a plan that is not shy, a plan that does not have parameters and you can't talk about this and you can't talk about that."

"And until we get that plan, we are not going to solve the problems of the inner city, the affordability, our heritage program, our culture, whether we have enough office space. We just are not going to solve it unless we get a much broader concept of our metropolitan core and we get a plan for it.'"