VANCOUVER SHOULD SIT UP, TAKE NOTICE

Criticisms Of The City's Downtown Core In The Economist Are No
Laughing Matter As We Approach The 10 Winter Games

Vancouverites never miss reading, or at the very least boasting
about, any edition of The Economist designating their city as the
best on the planet in which to live.

So maybe we ought to pay equally close attention when the world's
most prestigious magazine -- and probably the one that's only truly
read on a global basis -- takes pains to offer a wakeup call to
Vancouver, now undergoing the biggest population and development boom
in its history.

The Economist's latest dispatch about our charmed city by the Pacific
has this somewhat sobering title: "A great city more troubled than
it's cracked up to be."

It's not an entirely scathing article. We're hardly headed to the
bottom of The Economist's livability ratings, occupied by such spots
as Tehran and Algiers, unless urban planners do a lot of things wrong
in the years to come.

"It regularly tops surveys of the world's most livable cities," the
magazine says of the city. "Vancouver's combination of natural beauty
and urban sophistication has drawn expatriates from far and wide."

Still, the article isn't anything the boosters at the tourism board
are going to be writing home about, either. In fact, the theme is
that Vancouver is a city at the crossroads, experiencing the growing
pains of its success and quite possibly lacking a coherent plan to
save itself from its phenomenal growth.

The big problems aren't in the suburbs, though the magazine wonders
whether planners are going to encourage urban sprawl with their
current push for $3 billion in bigger highways, rather than more
rapid transit, that will bring more cars into the city's core.

What The Economist worries about is the quality of life in
Vancouver's very epicentre, usually applauded for those magnificent
beaches and architectural triumphs such as Coal Harbour's glass
towers and Arthur Erickson's waterfall over Granville Square concrete.

". . . it is the once pleasant downtown that causes most alarm," it
warns. "Homeless panhandlers yell at theatre goers, while young
addicts deal drugs on street corners. They spill out from the
Downtown Eastside, an area of decrepit boarding houses, sleazy bars
and boarded up shops infamous for the country's highest rate of
poverty and drug addiction. Its ills have resisted decades of
government effort."

It might be tempting to call this an overheated exaggeration from a
visitor. Vancouver's downtown is hardly a walk through an American
ghetto. Yet others, particularly those who have seen the city grow
over the last few decades, have noted The Economist's critique and concurred.

"Just Thursday night I drove past the corner of Georgia and Granville
- -- the very heart of the city -- and saw a couple of homeless people
bedding down for the night outside Pacific Centre, the city's
ritziest mall," Ian Haysom, a former editor-in-chief of The Vancouver
Sun wrote in his column in the Victoria Times Colonist. "It shocked a
visitor to Vancouver who was driving with me. Me? I'm not shocked by
anything here any more . . . .

"The city, if we continue on this course, will be a haven for the
very, very rich and the desperately poor, coexisting in an unlikely
metropolis of Guccis and gutter-dwellers."

The Economist also isn't optimistic that the city has yet come up
with the solutions to these challenges. It says rookie Mayor Sam
Sullivan's "most promising scheme is an attempt to rein in sprawl by
increasing housing density in central areas. But on the crucial
issues of drugs and crime, he has made little progress."

Should we worry about what The Economist thinks?

Well, yes. As the 2010 Olympics approach, this is just a first
glimpse of the unflinching critical eye Vancouver will be getting
from the Economist Intelligence Unit, the analysts who rank 127
cities each year for the magazine.

And while no journalism is infallible, The Economist is an
institution that often sets the agenda and has an ability to attach
labels to people and places that stick. Just ask former Prime
Minister Paul Martin, whom the magazine christened Mr. Dithers, a
moniker that haunted him all the way to defeat.