Embrace, Enhance, Evolve
CC #155—Vote for where you'd love to live
Municipal party positions by CityHallWatch as of April 1st.
Today (April 1st) ) is the last advance voting day for the Vancouver municipal by-election—voting is at City Hall. Saturday is the actual election day, with voting at most community centres.
The summary chart above clearly indicates where the five parties vying for two Council seats stand on seven key municipal issues. Regardless where you stand on these and other issues, please circulate to your friends and neighbours.
For myself, although I am somewhat known as a numbers analyst (with a sadly excellent record so far), I would like to ask readers to consider the most basic question:
What does the city look like where you’d love to live?
I have found the following three principles helpful in answering that and other planning and urban design questions:
Embrace
what we have that we treasure, ensuring we keep and nurture that treasure. For Vancouver in 2025, my short list includes:
The neighbourhoods that we all know—20+ at last count, each with its unique character that supports those who live there and engages with all citizens of our city;
Our parks, open spaces, libraries and community centres, where we are supported physically and spiritually with the resources we need outside our individual homes;
Our setting, the mountains, water and greenery that make Vancouver a unique place attracting folks from across Canada and around the world;
Our democracy, a form of government that until recently we took for granted, but is now under attach locally, provincially and internationally.
Please think about what each local political party thinks about these, noting the following short, hence incomplete issues list of current initiatives of the three existing parties on Council—ABC, the Greens and OneCity1:
Elimination of neighbourhoods in favour of “villages,” an artificial construct by our current municipal government and city staff that abandons most existing neighbourhood commercial areas;
Atrophying of existing neighbourhoods by ignoring their established businesses—see villages above;
Elimination of the Park Board, with its assets to be taken over and possibly disposed of by the city’s Real Estate Department.
Promotion of massive development without any realistic commitments to affordable housing for those in need or fated to be demovicted, or to adding to or improving any of the community amenities that an expanding population needs;
Destruction of our existing environment by erasing citizen’s views, shadowing parks and schools, to name a few;
Suspension of democracy by eliminating public hearings2 and filtering out all dissenting opinions and research3.
Enhance
what we have that we treasure, with incremental addition and expansion, such as:
Incenting existing neighbourhood development by making it easier to renovate and replace neighbourhood residential and commercial infrastructure;
Focusing new development by facilitating development of our “existing 20-year zoned capacity”—that’s planner speak for focusing on the 20 years of development allowed by existing zoning before setting it aside for massive new developments;
Taking advantage of transit by concentrating new development closer to transit nodes in lieu of remote side streets and scaling that development down the further we get from transit stations and stops;
Restoring democracy at City Hall by ignoring provincial over reach, reinstating public hearings and listening to what citizens say.
Only one political party has embraced these principles—TEAM for a Livable Vancouver—see chart above.
Evolve
our city in line with realistic population and business growth projections (i.e., those of StasCan and Metro Vancouver). The massive over development proposed by the current Council and supported by all parties in power, that is ABC, OneCity and the Greens, will unquestionably destroy the Vancouver that we Embrace and that we wish to Enhance.
Vancouver has grown to the wonderful city it has become largely through Evolution, that is, incremental and considered change, with the exception of its revolutionary rejection of freeways in the 70s, which departure from other North American city planning approaches is largely responsible for the city we have today.
Vote for the city where you’d love to live
This by-election is the first opportunity for citizens to change the course of our future since the election of Vision Vancouver in 2008 and more recently, the election of ABC, whose first action was to wipe the website of their 70 election promises. If you like where they have “guided” us, vote for them, or the Greens, or OneCity, who support them4. Please don’t split your vote—an effective opposition needs two Council members in order to be heard5.
Please vote. The future of the city where we love to live depends upon it.
This post is almost double the three minutes citizens are allowed when they speak to the current City Council, in their efforts to suppress democracy. If you appreciated it, please vote, share to your social media and consider becoming a free subscriber to City Conversations at
Brian Palmquist writes on the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of the Musqueam people. He is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is a member of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. 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 50-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.” A glutton for punishment, he recently started writing a book about how we can Embrace, Enhance and Evolve the places where we love to live.
OneCity was represented by Christine Boyle, who resigned to run for provincial office. I can confidently say she and OneCity’s current candidate for Council support all of these initiatives.
Elimination of public hearings is a provincial “initiative” that the current City Council has wholeheartedly embraced rather than pushing back as some other BC municipalities have done.
As a personal example, I participated in a 2022 presentation by environmental scientists to the Green Councillors, demonstrating that low and mid-rise construction was environmentally and economically superior to high-rise construction—thereafter the Greens voted in favour of the Broadway Plan and Vancouver Plan.
The Greens and OneCity voted in favour of the Broadway Plan (and turbocharging it) as well as the “Villages” Plan and the Vancouver Plan.
During her first term of office as Councillor, Colleen Hardwick failed to get a seconder for some important motions from the Greens or OneCity. This had the effect of ending discussion or debate.
Very helpful essay, and illustration. Voter turnout has been very strong at the two days of advance voting. I wish every voter could read this before voting.