Creating North America's 'Most Livable City' - Vancouver, British Columbia

Instructors: Mr. Sam Sullivan, Former Mayor, City of Vancouver and Founder of Global Civic Policy; Professor Patrick Condon, UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments. 

Cross listed: ARCH 597B, LARC 582B, PLAN 550

Vancouver has led North America in the quest for more livable and sustainable cities. Between
1990 and 2010 the population of the downtown peninsula more than doubled, leading to dramatic gains in sustainability (reduced car use, increased walking, lower per capita GHG production). However, adding density in other parts of the city has proven more difficult, and even the successful downtown Vancouver examples seem tied to suburban prototypes (grass strips on sidewalks, suburban style planting details). Efforts to bring density to other Vancouver
neighbourhoods, already occupied by very low density single family homes, has proven even more difficult unless this density is “gentle” and almost “invisible”. Absent those features, most efforts to add density outside the downtown core have failed. An investigation of the political history that lead to these architectural results will be a central focus for this course. Students, guests and faculty will attempt to understand why these impulses are so strong and to what extent they are subject to change. Barring this understanding we, as a democratic society, may fail to accelerate the progress toward urban sustainability we all so clearly desire.

Given an emerging consensus among most environmentalists, many economists and progressive
social theorists, it would seem that a much higher density city (for residential, institutional,
commercial, and jobs land uses) should be a goal for city leaders. Yet for the last four decades
almost all North American metropolitan areas have sprawled dramatically. What are the arguments for densification? What are the arguments against densification? What economic, political, technological and cultural forces have driven the suburbanization of North American cities? What political, cultural, economic and technological changes might bring about denser cities? Does the suburban culture still dominate political and bureaucratic decision-making in Vancouver and, by extension, in other North American cities as well? If Vancouver continues to densify where should this density go and where should it not go? The history of Vancouver in the era just before and after the suburbanization juggernaut will be investigated. People who played key roles in city development over the last five decades will be guest speakers in this course.