Embrace, Enhance and Evolve, or Discard, Degrade and Destroy?

City Conversation #121: Stark but clear alternatives to the future of Vancouver and many other communities.[1]

Detail from “Departure” by George Lunden—photo by Brian Palmquist

Apologies to City Conversation readers for this post’s publication delay. Originally I was awaiting the passage by the BC Legislature of the Bills eviscerating our communities[1]. Then I delayed on account of the sudden assault on Vancouver’s Park Board, which may be dismantled with provincial participation[2] despite overwhelming opposition as evidenced at yesterday’s City Council meeting.

I hesitated further because, frankly, so many folks more talented and experienced than I have written so much more eloquently about the harms that this provincial and municipal legislation will rain down on the Province and the city I love. Yet their words have had almost no effect on the back room orchestrated rolling out of laws and regulations that will destroy what brought us here and sustains our bodies and our souls, whether we be indigenous first inhabitants, early settlers, later imports such as I, or the many thousands who we are told are forecast to join us despite our lack of jobs, housing and healthcare, including for those with mental health issues and addictions.

I cannot further delay, but what can I do? Well, I have been thinking for the last while about the essential ingredients to our past and future successes. I have landed on just three community design concepts, perhaps simplistic but hopefully memorable:

• Embrace our environment, our past and our current condition. Embrace where we live and preserve the essence of our setting by the sea and mountains. Embrace our fair share of migration and immigration.

• Enhance what we have with thoughtful additions and changes. Enhance each neighbourhood’s ability to determine how it will take in its fair share of new residents while preserving the essential characteristics that make it a unique and desirable place to live and work.

• Evolve our city and its social fabric to maintain its best qualities while opening our doors to our share of internal migrants and external immigrants. Evolve continuous community-based processes that are flexible enough to manage these population and demographic changes.

Most but not all of these three “Es” can only prevail if we remove the current legislation mentioned above.

In my darker moments I have also landed on three community design concepts describing the bad that I see around us:

• Discard our community visions, plans and guidelines—this has already happened. Discard all existing zoning—this has already happened. Discard historically consistent population projections in favour of notional numbers not seen in more than 100 years—this[3] has already happened.

• Degrade our communities and neighbourhoods by ignoring their citizens—what they have built and inhabited; what they have proposed to balance between existing and future residents; what they and future residents will need in the way of community facilities, parks and schools. Degrade the perceived value of our existing building stock in favour of a “trickle down” approach where amenity is offered preferentially to those on top, with those on the bottom subsisting on the crumbs and leftovers, literally cast down from the heights.

• Destroy what existing residents have in favour of what we see already happening: ever denser development for investors and non-residents; ever increasing housing costs for existing and arriving residents, designed to pauperize the many while enriching the few; loss everywhere of the amenities we have enjoyed until now and would hope to offer future residents including sunlight, parks and greenery and a canopy of climate mitigating trees—in short, increasing inequality in all aspects of our lives.

Many but not all of the worst of the “Ds” will mostly manifest in the future, but they have been cast as our future by the current legislation mentioned above.

In the face of all this, how can we preserve hope and perhaps show a different way? I urge others to continue their courageous work analyzing “what could possibly go wrong?” with the legislation and subsequent regulations. For myself and City Conversations, I am embarking on a series of fictitious Vancouver community futures contrasting E-centric visions with D-centric alternatives. Each alternative will be footnoted sufficiently to tie into what legislation is or may soon be in place, or what might replace what is currently “on the books.”

I have no doubt some of my imagined futures will not come to pass, and other events will evolve in ways I cannot imagine. I promise to be honest about the former and vigilant about the latter.

Like the tide that King Canute sought unsuccessfully to withstand centuries ago, I continue to believe that all of our thoughts, our beliefs and our small actions will, in the end, overwhelm the damage that is to come in the shorter term.

Best holiday wishes to you all.

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Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, still teaching, writing and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 45+ year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and hoping to start in 2024 a book about how we can accommodate a growing population in the cities we love.



[1] https://brianpalmquist.substack.com/p/losing-the-british-columbia-we-love

[2] Dismantling the Park Board requires an amendment to Vancouver’s Charter, which itself requires approval by the Province.

[3] 1913 was the last year before recently when Canada’s immigration exceeded 400,000. There were no large wars and indigenous lands were available to immigrants free or cheap. Not a value judgement, just our history.

 [1] In addition to Provincial legislation’s impacts on dozens of BC communities, my En