What do you think?
Rate this book
City Making in Paradise : Nine Decisions That Saved Greater Vancouver's Livability
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.
- GenresUrbanismCanadaNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2007
5 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 20, 2022
Funny thing happened to me on one of my first days reading this book while at a cafe on Bowen Island. A man sat next to me and commented on the book, saying they should make one on Bowen Island's history. Sure. He then asked what exactly the nineteen decisions were, precisely as I took in a heaping mouthful of food. I told him that it was actually nine decisions, and that I had only read about the first of them so I could (mercifully) only tell him one. I explained about how the flooding of the Fraser Valley in 1948 led to the formation of the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board, the first regional planning board in Canada, due to the fact that there had been no cohesion in shoring and dyking along the Fraser River between the many municipalities is crossed. The man's response was "Guess that's one way to spend money!" before continuing on to slander the local municipality, which I quickly shut down. Such an ironic conversation considering much of the LMRPB's short lifespan was spent begging its member municipalities for paltry funding commitments of often $2,500-$5000 each before fizzling out in 1969. Here we are still arguing whether the very existence of regional planning is necessary.
As someone who is not a native of BC, and as a small-town urban planner that was at one time honestly intimidated by Vancouver, this book is a wonderfully in-depth examination of Vancouver as well as the provincial leadership of BC from the 1950s until the early 2000s. The writing is a deep pool of knowledge that I've been reading back through directly after finishing, particularly some of the final chapters, which follow more modern events and involve more complex legislation and organizations. In some of these chapters I struggled to understand the overall point of the chapter (ie. the "decision" being highlighted), however this was more clear on a reread. I thought the ideas were structured in an exciting manner, with figures of eventual importance appearing in early chapters as civil activists, subsequently leading them into life-long roles with municipal or provincial government where they played key roles in policy decisions of later chapters, decades after their initial involvement with the municipal planning process (Shirley Chan as an example). The types of decisions themselves were also varied - some being fundamental to the inception of regional planning to begin with (the formation of the LMRPB), some being neighborhood-specific (saving Strathcona from slum clearance, or the development of False Creek North and South), some being an homage to key figures of Vancouver's history (Harry Lash), while some highlighting province-wide planning initiatives (the Agricultural Land Reserve).
It's interesting to note the role that this book's authors themselves play throughout the text - being that Mike Harcourt was a former Vancouver mayor and BC premier, with Ken Cameron as a former director within the Greater Vancouver Regional Planning Board, they had a direct hand in the described events. While this of course supports an inevitable and unconscious bias, the successes and failures of each initiative seem honest enough and it's a true joy to read first-hand accounts of some of the keystone events in Vancouver's history, with the authors often providing dialogue between decision makers which I'm unsure if it comes from on-the-record Council meetings, private conversations, or simply a conversational description of the general positions held by decision makers at the time. My guess is the latter, and the book is all the richer for these conversational explanations of the background thinking leading up to major policy decisions.
This certainly feels like a book written "by planners, for planners" and included a number of incredibly relatable anecdotes. Some of my favorites would include the quote that goes something like "when residents get used to being heard, their passion and drive behind their involvement in the planning process often far outstrips that of the paid professionals and elected officials who are supposedly there to represent their views", as well as the anecdote of Harry Lash learning that sometimes his own anger had a place in planning discussions, in that it was sometimes okay to drop the robotically PC public servant lingo in favor of letting one's true passion shine through, particularly when dealing with repetitive and obstinate opposition.
I'm so devoid of criticisms for this well-researched work that I had to peruse the reviews to see what others had to say. Some seem to feel the book is too specific to Vancouver, which probably should've been obvious from the title - while I certainly understand why some may want more generally-applicable ideas, Vancouver is such a unique beast that a proper analysis can only be truly done through examining specific neighborhoods and decisions. I came to this book hoping to gain some understanding of the formation of this multi-headed beast of a city that exists today - I was in no way disappointed, if anything overwhelmed by the wealth of information.
As someone who is not a native of BC, and as a small-town urban planner that was at one time honestly intimidated by Vancouver, this book is a wonderfully in-depth examination of Vancouver as well as the provincial leadership of BC from the 1950s until the early 2000s. The writing is a deep pool of knowledge that I've been reading back through directly after finishing, particularly some of the final chapters, which follow more modern events and involve more complex legislation and organizations. In some of these chapters I struggled to understand the overall point of the chapter (ie. the "decision" being highlighted), however this was more clear on a reread. I thought the ideas were structured in an exciting manner, with figures of eventual importance appearing in early chapters as civil activists, subsequently leading them into life-long roles with municipal or provincial government where they played key roles in policy decisions of later chapters, decades after their initial involvement with the municipal planning process (Shirley Chan as an example). The types of decisions themselves were also varied - some being fundamental to the inception of regional planning to begin with (the formation of the LMRPB), some being neighborhood-specific (saving Strathcona from slum clearance, or the development of False Creek North and South), some being an homage to key figures of Vancouver's history (Harry Lash), while some highlighting province-wide planning initiatives (the Agricultural Land Reserve).
It's interesting to note the role that this book's authors themselves play throughout the text - being that Mike Harcourt was a former Vancouver mayor and BC premier, with Ken Cameron as a former director within the Greater Vancouver Regional Planning Board, they had a direct hand in the described events. While this of course supports an inevitable and unconscious bias, the successes and failures of each initiative seem honest enough and it's a true joy to read first-hand accounts of some of the keystone events in Vancouver's history, with the authors often providing dialogue between decision makers which I'm unsure if it comes from on-the-record Council meetings, private conversations, or simply a conversational description of the general positions held by decision makers at the time. My guess is the latter, and the book is all the richer for these conversational explanations of the background thinking leading up to major policy decisions.
This certainly feels like a book written "by planners, for planners" and included a number of incredibly relatable anecdotes. Some of my favorites would include the quote that goes something like "when residents get used to being heard, their passion and drive behind their involvement in the planning process often far outstrips that of the paid professionals and elected officials who are supposedly there to represent their views", as well as the anecdote of Harry Lash learning that sometimes his own anger had a place in planning discussions, in that it was sometimes okay to drop the robotically PC public servant lingo in favor of letting one's true passion shine through, particularly when dealing with repetitive and obstinate opposition.
I'm so devoid of criticisms for this well-researched work that I had to peruse the reviews to see what others had to say. Some seem to feel the book is too specific to Vancouver, which probably should've been obvious from the title - while I certainly understand why some may want more generally-applicable ideas, Vancouver is such a unique beast that a proper analysis can only be truly done through examining specific neighborhoods and decisions. I came to this book hoping to gain some understanding of the formation of this multi-headed beast of a city that exists today - I was in no way disappointed, if anything overwhelmed by the wealth of information.
December 28, 2021
Essential foundational reading for Vancouver municipal politics. Would love to read the authors’s perspective on what’s transpired since then.
November 24, 2008
This is a good book but there's not a lot of help here for the rest of us. It seems like the good things that happened over the years in planning Vancouver are very site-specific to a city with Vancouver's unique geography. A lot of us who don't live in "Paradise" are looking for advice - you won't find it here. There also seemed to be a confluence of like-minded people who captured the thoughts and wishes of Vancouver's citizens. This book leans so far left that I had to tilt myself back while reading it.
In the end, I suppose that the delicate tailoring process of making Vancouver a great city could be applied anywhere in the most general sense. I was hoping for something a little less vague.
In the end, I suppose that the delicate tailoring process of making Vancouver a great city could be applied anywhere in the most general sense. I was hoping for something a little less vague.
Read
May 8, 2008Mike Harcourt is on his cell phone, sitting in the West Broadway Mercedes dealership waiting for his Smart Car to be fixed. He's also been stumping for his latest collaboration, the book City Making in Paradise: Nine Decisions That Saved Vancouver, co-written with veteran planner Ken Cameron and longtime Vancouver civic affairs journalist Sean Rossiter.
read more ...
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/09/17/Pa...
read more ...
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/09/17/Pa...
October 14, 2011
A great overview of some of the major political and planning decisions that have shaped metro Vancouver's urban form. A definitely must read for urban policy wonks.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews