Abstract
At the metropolitan scale, the Greater Vancouver Regional District has earned acclaim for its commitments to preserving green spaces, its attention to metropolitan labour markets and employment, investments in rapid transit and the introduction of ‘compact’ and ‘complete’ communities. Recently, the regional governance authority was rebranded to ‘Metro Vancouver’, connoting a more integrative policy framework, as well as a cosmopolitan/transnational imagery; and entailing the insertion of sustainable development into planning discourses. This essay offers a critical perspective on Vancouver's planning record, and a commentary on prospects for advancing the ‘metropolitan consciousness’ required to address the developmental exigencies of the twenty-first-century city-region.
Notes
The Greater Vancouver Regional District was formed in 1967, following the creation of Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District in 1914 and Greater Vancouver Water District in 1926. The GVRD was renamed in Metro Vancouver in September 2007.