Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
an open work site and the Expo Corporation provocatively awarded contracts
to non-union firms. Symptomatic of public-private partnerships, the Board
comprised a majority of businessmen, though the provincial Cabinet, and
finally Premier Bennett, held ultimate authority. Holding the legislated
powers of a Crown Corporation, the Expo Board had more discretion than
a private corporation, including the capacity to override all Vancouver city
bylaws and planning policy.
Expo 86 was a loss-leading product devised by public and private sector
entrepreneurs whose intent was to advertise the city and the province to
global visitors and investors - among its jejune slogans were, 'What your
world is coming to' and 'Don't miss it for the world' - in a period when the
British Columbia economy seemed in need of all the help it could get. In
addition the fair would garner legacies in the built environment, with aid
from the federal government to build the first line of a rapid transit system
and a modern convention centre. At the same time it would rally support
and a semblance of unity in a much divided province through the
jouissance
of carnival. As provincial social programmes were bled, Expo, a crown cor-
poration, worked with a budget of $800 million and leveraged another $700
million from national and overseas private and public exhibitors. Exceeding
expectations, 22 million visitors passed through the turnstiles. The fair
made a loss of upwards of $300 million, yet in the enigmatic logic of mar-
ket-based neo-liberalism was counted a great success.
Located on the False Creek waterfront immediately west of Chinatown,
Expo was built on a large, declining industrial site and railway yards on the
edge of downtown acquired by the Province through land transfers. The
Province's redevelopment plan for its holdings included, besides the festival
area, BC Place, a 60,000 seat sports stadium and after the fair perhaps
10,000 housing units and up to seven million square feet of office space.
In a manner brazenly innocent of market accountability, the whole edifice
was justified by a quickly compiled non-technical report of just 22 pages
(Ley 1987). Market prudence was scarcely necessary, for democratic checks
were averted by the exaggerated powers of the Expo Corporation, directed
by the provincial Cabinet, specifically the Premier, illuminating what in
the early days of neo-liberalism Elliott and McCrone (1982) identified
as the 'authoritarian centralism' of the new right. Consequently, Expo 86
and the larger BC Place development sidelined both market accountability
and democratic freedoms, charter principles of neo-liberalism, as inconven-
ient distractions to goal achievement.
With the conclusion of the fair in October 1986, a fuller neo-liberal agenda
was unfurled as land privatization succeeded place marketing. Although a
design and planning process was already established for post-Expo redevel-
opment by a crown corporation, a dramatic political gesture by the new
provincial government in 1987, enamoured by Thatcherite privatization
