Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
confirmation, and SHPOA worked vigilantly to protect each through the
1970s. When the local area planning process took place, SHPOA continued
to urge preservation and enhancement of its heritage landscape (Duncan
1994). If Chinatown could be preserved for its special cultural character,
then so too could Shaughnessy. Its case was aided by a broader city-wide
ideology favouring neighbourhood preservation. A 'Goals for Vancouver'
survey by the City Planning Commission in 1979 found residents support-
ing the special character of neighbourhoods, heritage preservation and
enhancing public green space (VCPC 1980). Here was a broader 'livable
city' ideology (Ley 1980), adapted by City Council to shape planning goals,
and it elided neatly with neighbourhood objectives. With astute steering of
the planning process by SHPOA, City Council approved the local plan for
First Shaughnessy in 1982. Besides endorsing preservation, the Plan intro-
duced design controls forbidding new buildings that departed from an
'English picturesque' landscape tradition. Successful in the oldest one-third
of its territory, SHPOA subsequently took its preservation campaign south-
wards into Second and Third, or South Shaughnessy. But in doing so by the
late-1980s it encountered the first arrivals of millionaire migrants, leading
to an altogether more public and contrary political process.
Assessing Growth: Public Debates and Dirty Tricks
Concerns with growth and preservation movements returned to the city
and region in the later 1980s; metropolitan population rose 16 percent from
1986-91 and another 14 percent in the next five years (Ley et al. 1992). Old
arguments were re-opened. In a 1986 report, Vancouver's Planning
Department observed that residents were 'of two minds about the way their
city should change' (City of Vancouver 1986). On the one hand they wanted
'Vancouver to be a thriving urban centre, a world city. With more jobs and
business opportunities and with a greater variety of things to see and do.'
But they also wished 'to preserve Vancouver's present small-city character:
relatively low density housing, peaceful neighbourhoods and quiet streets.'
The debate was re-invigorated by a speech by the celebrated modern
architect Arthur Erickson in October 1989 in which he provocatively urged
his home town to plan for a population of 10 million, with the ringing
double-edged exhortation 'We have to grow up!' (Bramham 1989a). The
speech touched a raw nerve and was widely reported, generating an edito-
rial in the
Vancouver Sun
, letters to the editor, and precipitating a public
debate a few months later, where Erickson endorsed the question 'Should
Vancouver plan for a future population of ten million?' Opposing the motion
was Vancouver's recently retired Director of Planning, Ray Spaxman. The
debate moved across fundamentally contested terrain, exposing starkly
