This book examines the development of Vancouver’s unique approach to zoning, planning, and urban design from its inception in the early 1970s to its maturity in the management of urban change at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By the late 1990s, Vancouver had established a reputation in North America for its planning achievement, especially for its creation of a participative, responsive, and design-led approach to urban regeneration and redevelopment. This system has other important features: an innovative approach to megaproject planning, a system of cost and amenity levies on major schemes, a participative CityPlan process to underpin active neighbourhood planning, and a sophisticated panoply of design guidelines. These systems, processes, and their achievements place Vancouver at the forefront of international planning practice. The Vancouver Achievement explains the evolution and evaluates the outcomes of Vancouver’s unique system of discretionary zoning. The introductory chapters set the context for the study: they cover the invention and refinement of this system in the reform movement, its development of policies, guidelines, and control processes, and its translation into official development plans and neighbourhood design in the 1970s. Subsequent chapters focus upon the downtown, waterfront megaprojects, single-family neighbourhoods, the city-wide strategic planning programme (CityPlan), pressures for reform of control processes, and current downtown and inner city developments, especially issues of affordable housing, social exclusion, and multiple deprivation. The concluding chapter summarizes The Vancouver Achievement, explains the keys to its success, and evaluates its design success against internationally accepted criteria. Heavily illustrated with over 160 photos and figures, this book – the first comprehensive account of contemporary planning and urban design practice in any Canadian city – will appeal to academic and professional audiences, as well as the general public

Vancouver is heralded around the world as a model for sustainable development. In Planning on the Edge, nationally and internationally renowned planning scholars, activists, and Indigenous leaders assess whether the city’s reputation is warranted. While recognizing the many successes of the “Vancouverism” model, the contributors acknowledge that the forces of globalization and speculative property development have increased social inequality and housing insecurity since the 1980s in the city and the region. To determine the city’s prospects for overcoming these problems, they look at city planning from all angles, including planning for the Indigenous population, environmental and disaster planning, housing and migration, and transportation and water management. By looking at policies at the local, provincial, and federal levels and taking reconciliation with Indigenous peoples into account, Planning on the Edge highlights the kinds of policies and practices needed to reorient Vancouver’s development trajectory along a more environmentally sound and equitable path.

City greening has been heralded for contributing to environmental governance and critiqued for exacerbating displacement and inequality. Bringing these two disparate analyses into conversation, this book offers a comparative understanding of how tensions between growth, environmental protection, and social equity are playing out in practice. Examining Chicago, USA, Birmingham, UK, and Vancouver, Canada, McKendry argues that city greening efforts were closely connected to processes of post-industrial branding in the neoliberal economy. While this brought some benefits, concerns about the unequal distribution of these benefits and greening’s limited environmental impact challenged its legitimacy. In response, city leaders have moved toward initiatives that strive to better address environmental effectiveness and social equity while still spurring growth. Through an analysis that highlights how different varieties of liberal environmentalism are manifested in each case, this book illustrates that cities, though constrained by inconsistent political will and broader political and economic contexts, are making contributions to more effective, socially just environmental governance. Both critical and hopeful, McKendry’s work will interest scholars of city greening, environmental governance, and comparative urban politics.

In the context of urban sustainable development, the "details" of sustainability's current expressions perpetuate environmental injustice, untenable growth, and the destruction of functioning ecosystems. In response to this state of affairs, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism aims to prompt new debates about the consequences of sustainable urbanism as it moves from planning to practice. Contributors explore policy, practice, and experience from cities around the world, including Calgary, Christchurch, Dortmund, Vancouver, and others. Written by scholars who live in these cities, chapters offer empirically rich descriptions for opening up new lines of thinking, theorizing, and debate about the sustainable city and its actual material expressions in place. By examining the sustainable city through various analytical framings, contributors urge readers to move from viewing the sustainable city as something everyone can agree on, to a highly politicized and contested process. Additional resources are provided for readers who may wish to extend their own research into a city or theme. SUNY Press has collaborated with Knowledge Unlatched to unlock KU Select titles. The Knowledge Unlatched titles have been made open access through libraries coming together to crowd fund the publication cost. Each monograph has been released as open access making the eBook freely available to readers worldwide. Discover more about the Knowledge Unlatched program here: https://knowledgeunlatched.org/. It can also be found in the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/8435.

Transportation, Land Use, and Environmental Planning examines the practices and policies linking transportation, land use and environmental planning needed to achieve a healthy environment, thriving economy, and more equitable and inclusive society. It assesses best practices for improving the performance of city and regional transportation systems, looking at such issues as public transit and non-motorized travel investments, mixed use and higher density urban development, radically transformed vehicles, and transportation systems. The book lays out the growing need for greater integration of transportation, land use, and environmental planning, looking closely at changing demographic needs, public health concerns, housing affordability, equity, and livability. In addition, strategies for achieving these desired outcomes are presented, including urban design and land use planning, regional and corridor-level transit plans, bike and pedestrian improvements, demand management strategies, and emerging technologies and services. The final part of the book examines implementation challenges, considering lessons from the US and around the globe at both local and regional levels. - Introduces never-before-published research - Offers best practices for transit, cycling, urban design and housing provision - Assesses emerging developments, such as smart cities, new vehicle technologies, automated highways and transportation sharing - Examines the institutional and political dimensions of sustainability planning at the urban and regional levels - Utilizes case studies from around the world that show alternative ways forward

This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building. It presents ‘biographies’ of drivers and processes of green building innovation in four case studies: Brisbane (AUS), Freiburg (GER), Luxembourg (LU), and Vancouver (CA). Two of them are relatively well known for their initiatives to mitigate climate change – particularly in the building sector, whereas the other two have only recently become more active in promoting green building. The volume places emphasis on development paths, learning processes, and innovations. The focus of the case studies is not restricted to purely technological aspects but also integrates regulatory, procedural, institutional, and other processes and routines and their influence on the variations of the building sector. The diversity of the selected case studies offers the reader the opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of how sustainability developments have unfolded in different city regions. Case study-specific catalogues of transition paths provide insights to inform policy debates and planning processes. The catalogues identify crucial innovations (technological, regulatory, etc.) and explain the factors and circumstances that have led to their success and broader acceptance in Freiburg, Vancouver, Luxembourg, and Brisbane. With the help of a number of micro case studies within each of the four city regions, the case studies also offer ground for comparison and identification of differences. The book represents the outcome of the GreenRegio project, which stands for ‘Green building in regional strategies for sustainability: multi-actor governance and innovative building technologies in Europe, Australia, and Canada.’ GreenRegio was a 3-year CORE-INTER research project funded by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Even in a globalizing, knowledge-based economy, cities remain engines of growth, innovation, and diversity. Increasingly, they are also active participants in the creation of the social and political conditions necessary to create a thriving community. The Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-Regions series is a focused analysis of how developments at the local and regional level affect these three key determinants of future prosperity. Growing Urban Economies summarizes its conclusions in a single volume that presents an overview of the evidence and its implications. A rich and nuanced analysis of the interplay of social, political, and economic factors in thirteen Canadian city-regions, large and small, this collection integrates research focusing on innovation, creativity and talent-retention, and governance in order to understand the distinctive experience of each region. A valuable cross-section of city-region development in a variety of circumstances, Growing Urban Economies offers important insights into the way in which local conditions affect urban economies around the world.

Vancouver, located at the edge of a continent and the edge of national consciousness, has become the model for post-industrial urbanism. Does it deserve the attention? This provocative new book explores the links between the city’s seductive natural setting, turbulent political history, planning and design culture, and the local and global forces that are reshaping Vancouver’s urban environment at a ferocious pace. Filled with historical and contemporary photographs and maps, Dream City offers compelling insight into how buildings, public spaces, extraordinary landscapes, and civic values have merged to form a uniquely 21st-century city.

This book chronicles and explains the role of suburbs in North American cities since the mid-twentieth century. Examining fifteen case studies from New York to Vancouver, Atlanta to Chicago, Montreal to Phoenix, The Life of North American Suburbs traces the insightful connection between the evolution of suburbs and the cultural dynamics of modern society. Suburbs are uniquely significant spaces: their creation and evolution reflect the shifting demographics, race relations, modes of production, cultural fabric, and class structures of society at large. The case studies investigate the place of suburbs within their wider metropolitan constellations: the crucial role they play in the cultural, economic, political, and spatial organization of the city. Together, the chapters paint a compelling portrait of North American cities and their dynamic suburban landscapes.

This critical work explores those key choices that made Vancouver one of the world's most livable cities, an international urban poster child-and challenges policy makers and the public to reinvigorate the debate for the next generation of successful, sustainable city building Time and again, the Vancouver region is recognized internationally as one of the world's best places to live. Chroniclers of the city's success over the past half-century have noted its achievement - unique among the world's cities -- of growing past 2 million in population without losing any of the features that make it a great place to live. In fact, many would say that it is an even better place than 50 years ago, with more protected green space, better environmental quality, more choice in housing and transportation, a more diverse and stronger multicultural society, and urban design that frames a spectacular natural setting. Even with its current problems of housing affordability, drugs and crime, and congestion, Greater Vancouver is a world leader in addressing urban sustainability issues. Interestingly, it has achieved that status by breaking rules and pioneering new directions in North American urbanism. This compelling book details the nine most important decisions made in the Greater Vancouver region since the 1940s. Authors Mike Harcourt and Ken Cameron, themselves key players in several of these developments, take readers to the heart of each story, focussing on the people involved to reveal the political machinations, the ideological struggles and the personal commitment that lay behind each one. The Fraser River flood of 1948 demonstrated the need for regional planning for the entire Fraser Valley. Shirley Chan and Darlene Marzari led the fight against bulldozer urban renewal in Strathcona. Dave Barrett was called a communist when the Agricultural Land Reserve was introduced, but the real battle was inside his cabinet. Gordon Campbell cut his political teeth building consensus around an inspiring vision of the future that set the regional agenda for a decade. By tracing today's successes back to their roots, Harcourt and Cameron illustrate their central theme that cities-both those that work well and those that don't-are the result of the daily choices we make as leaders, activists and citizens. According to urban critic Trevor Boddy, Vancouver is in a position to "write the new rulebook of city-making for the twenty-first century." But Harcourt and Cameron argue that Greater Vancouver itself is at a crossroads. They end their book with a survey of the decisions Greater Vancouver must make concerning transportation, growth, air quality, regional governance, relations with First Nations, and climate change if it is to remain an international model for urban sustainability. Our future will depend largely on our ability to successfully plan and manage the development of our urban regions. If we can do this in a visionary, collaborative way, Harcourt and Cameron argue, Vancouver can continue to be a model for how to get things right.