Vancouver's suburban involution

Abstract

Contemporary urban theorists are deeply suspicious of city-inspired models and ‘schools’, but policy elites, investors and journalists harbor few reservations. One of the more prominent new contestants in the evolving locational tournaments for urban ‘model’ status is ‘Vancouverism’, an ensemble of planning and design innovations for high-density downtown living that is widely regarded as an antidote to suburban sprawl. Vancouverism may represent the eclipse of conventional forms of metro-fringe suburbanism, but it does so by privileging and centralizing neo-suburban modes of development, cultures, esthetics and lifestyles. In this way, Vancouver has not so much transcended suburbanization as it has ingested its cultural and political–economic logic.

Key words:

• suburbanization
• Vancouver
• Vancouverism

Acknowledgements

We thank David Ley, Jan Nijman and the reviewers of City for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the paper, but responsibility for these arguments remains ours.

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through funding from the Major Collaborative Research Initiative, ‘Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in the 21st Century (2010–2017)’. Additional support was provided by the Hampton Fund at the University of British Columbia for the project, ‘Remaking the Vancouver Model’.

Notes

1 Vancouver's CBD employment grew by 15.8% between 1981 and 1996, compared with 8.0% in Montreal and 0.3% in Toronto (Coffey and Shearmur 2006). In 2006, 29% of the Vancouver metropolitan area's jobs were within 5 km of the city center, compared with 28% in Montreal and 20% in Toronto (Shearmur and Hutton 2011).

2 Business advocate, Vancouver, interview August 2010.

3 Architect, Burnaby, interview August 2010.

4 Former senior city-council officer, Vancouver, interview August 2010.

5 Architect, Vancouver, interview March 2011.

6 Several projects have got underway since 2010, with 1.2 million square feet under construction; by the spring of 2014, eight office towers were in progress to add about 2 million square feet. Living First creates a strange mixture of creative-class policy sensibilities and postindustrial esthetic sensitivity: one developer adding to its downtown office tower inventory softened the impact of the construction by issuing noise-cancelling Bose headphones to tenants in its surrounding towers, modified ‘construction schedules around clients’ meetings’ and provided ‘complimentary shoe shine stations to tackle dirt and dust’ (Morton 2012, C1). At the same time, property developers proudly articulate a Floridian rationale for adopting higher rated buildings under the ‘LEED’ sustainability designation (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). ‘Ask any senior executive in any firm’, says Andrew McAllan of Oxford Properties of the firms’ LEED-certified office tours across Canada (including one in Vancouver). ‘They need to recruit and retain top talent, and that is increasingly competitive. Talk to Gen-Xers and Millennials—they all have social consciousness, they want to work in a building that is not undermining the environmental fabric, buildings that have natural light, good air, showers, recycling programs, bike parking, low water-volume fixtures, energy-efficient lighting’ (quoted in Metcalf 2014, C3).

7 Developer, Surrey, interview August 2010.

8 Urban policy analyst, Vancouver, interview April 2011.

9 Business advocate, Vancouver, interview July 2011.

10 Developer, Vancouver, interview September 2010.

Additional information

Jamie Peck is Professor of Geography and Canada Research Chair in Urban and Regional Political Economy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Elliot Siemiatycki is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Work and Society at York University in Toronto, Canada. Email: [email protected]

Elvin Wyly is Associate Professor of Geography and Chair of the Urban Studies Coordinating Committee at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Email: [email protected]