The city's spectacular natural setting; its attractive residential vernacular and well-treed streets; its relatively smooth transition from railhead and resource-exporting port to provincial corporate centre and now to high-amenity Pacific Rim metropolis; and its sustained postwar prosperity all have provided a platform for the development of an environmentally conscious planning regime since 1970. This regime has stopped freeway intrusions, promoted neighbourhood conservation, replaced redundant industrial and port lands with new high-density residential neighbourhoods, reclaimed the waterfront for public use, and reinforced the diversity, vitality, and attractiveness of its downtown and inner neighbourhoods. Vancouver has achieved an urban renaissance more comprehensively than any other city in North America.
John Punter is Professor of Urban Design in the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Wales.
