Talk:Vancouverism/Archive 1

Untitled
Loodog edits are annotated ''remove statement about "by far". livability isn't a number. remove unsourced dubious statement about North America.'' But these claims were sourced, in the very sentence that was edited (it's the Business Week footnote, but Wikipedia also has a page on World's Most Livable Cities that supports it). The nature of these rankings is to turn "livability" into a number, and you only have to look down the list to see how Vancouver compares to other North American cities. (The next Canadian city is Toronto (15) and the first U.S. city is Honololu (28).) It is the comparison to other North American cities in a similar cultural and urban context that makes Vancouverism significant, or else everyone would be looking to Geneva for urban planning ideas.

BlueStraggler (talk) 15:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Livability is such a qualitative and imprecise idea, the best you can do is have independent sources make lists and try to get some sort of average from that. The concept of being "by far" more livable makes as much sense as a city having "by far" more culture than any other.


 * But hell, let's play the number game. Vancouver on the arbitrary weighted average the pretentious Englishmen who just graduated from snooty school came up with scores a whopping 2.3 points higher than Toronto.  If we really take these numbers seriously then Vancouver is 2% "more livable" than Toronto, which is, of course, an incommensurable squashing.--Loodog (talk) 16:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

"Vancouerism" - other meanings (LOL)
The pretentiousness of Vancouver-obsessed urban planning is really quite funny - does "Vancouverization" include jacking house prices beyond ordinary people's reach, or creating open-air drug markets where those who can't handle hte stress of hte newly-redesigned city can shot up on teh sidewalks? This isn't a pretty term if you're from Vancouver. Or from other parts of BC who don't like what's happened to the city because of all these wonderful planners and the big money letting them pack in the e world's wealthy into tiny boxes-with-a-view-and-shops-downstairs. To me a "Vancouverism" would refer to a display certain kinds of bad manners, particular kinds of attitudes, slang and/or insulting comments/behaviour, NIMbyism, "No Fun City" etc...Skookum1 (talk) 15:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Article in The Guardian
How I found out about this article was by linking it in another discussion, after finding it as part of the title of an article in the Manchester Guardian. See this. Seems like a neologism to me, but apparently a citable oneSkookum1 (talk) 15:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Downtown Eastside in See also
I left out the Potemkin Village, which admittedly was inserted ironically, but to make the point that much of "Vancouverism" is just for show, and makes for great architectural/planning self-congratulatory brochures and convention presentations. The Downtown Eastside, on the other hand, is a direct product of the planning policies this article extols as some kind of mantra for the ills of the modern city; rising land prices, controlled living environments, inhuman-but-glitzy design, branded marketing of neighbourhoods, nice-looking but desocializing urban landscapes (Yaletown, False Creek South and Coal Harbour are markedly void of true street life...and they're the epitome of "Vancouverism"; the reality of Vancouver, the upshot of hte economic and social policies which make the city look so great in brochures but so depressing in real life, is expressed by the Downtown Eastside. What this article needs is a "criticisms" section but instead it's rah-rah-rah.  Vancouverism has also offloaded a lot of design problems off on the suburbs, where the traffic that can't get into Vancouver is jammed up instead and suburban sprawl is virtually unchecked; with the parallel result that controls on design and desnity in Vancouver have escalated housing prices beyond the reach of ordinary people, and driven others into poverty and worse; and "worse" is where you wind up at when the city's design failures leave you with nowhere else to go but East Hastings and the adjoining alleways and tenements. Waht's going on with Vancouverism now is an attempt to purge the city of the very evils it's created and gentrify that area too...with the end result that Vancovuer's poor and addicted will be driven into farther suburbs like Abbostford and Chilliwack where they can't be seen by the visiting architects hhypontized by the beaches and mountains.....critiques of this design ethic, and the political-business corruption and backroom dealing that go hand-in-hand with it, are rife in Vancovuer's independent media; it's a sell-job, that's all it is. And the price of the sell-job is the Downtown Eastside; the reality is that the Downtown Eastside is the original downtown, which shatters the myth that Vancouver does not have hte urban decay that plagues the city cores of other American cities; Vancouver's solution is to quarantinize the failures and put up Potemkin Villages on Coal Harbour and False Creek to impress visitors and property buyers; and the ills of the Downtown Eastside are written off and blamed on the victims themselves......Skookum1 (talk) 00:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

transit lies and other mythology
I'm tempted to add Potemkin Village to the See alsos, but for now I'll let things be....there's no overt peacockery here, except in Bing Thom's self-serving quotation. What did strike me, though, as a victim of Vancouv er's crappy transit system, is the line "and significant reliance on mass public transit, " which is pure mythology. There is next-to-no public transit in the densified areas embraced by this "vision", and what there is is crowded and out of date (the Robson or Granville bus in rush hour? Gimme a break.  Skytrain "sleek and efficient" means nothing in overcrowded cars with low ceilings and small, uncomfortable seats, and stations with narrow staircases adn bad layouts....)  There's no transit service in Yaletown and Coal Harbour. overall this article needs to read less like a p.r brochure ffor the city's planning department/history. The reality is that all the wonderful design ideas about the cnetre of the city have offloaded all kinds of trouble into other areas, particularly the suburbs; the whole concept is a sham. That's POV, yes, but there are articles about the sham in The Tyee and elsewhere....Adbusters had at least one piece on this also...Skookum1 (talk) 15:38, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Please, if these assertions are substantially backed up by reliable, citable sources, even if only by newspaper articles, please provide links to them. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:32, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, it's fairly obvious to those who use Vancouver's transit system that the West End is a transit wait-wait-wait zone, with clanky old trolley buses, and the Yaletown has no transit service at all, except for maybe a new SkyTrain station that doesn't serve passengers within the downtown peninsula very well; Coal Harbour has no transit routes at all (not surprising for a postal code stacked with seven-figure suites and no real street life.... all you have to do to find this out is look at a map. But for specific critiques of Vancouverism, here's quite a few from "The Tyee" - this is a search of Tyee's archives for the word "Vancouverism".  The current state of this article is a p.r. job for Vancouver architects and planners, and the many social and political issues attached to the Vancouverism agenda are not covered at all; maybe you have the time/interst to expand based on what's in the Tyee; you'll also find more in http://www.straight.com.Skookum1 (talk) 18:25, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Lead problems
In the lead of this article, we have four sources:

1. The article in SPUR, which does not use the term "Vancouverism" and is falsely held up later that paragraph as proof that other cities have taken notice and have begun implementing similar planning principles. It was one article written for a urban planning organization for one city. It neither shows other cities being interested (in the plural), nor actual implementation anywhere else.

2. archnewsnow, which while obscure, seems to be legit, though I doubt it would pass wikipedia guidelines for sources, given its nature.

3. A 1975 development plan by the City of Vancouver, updated over the years which has the problem of being a WP:PRIMARY source, leaving the reader to question what (s)he's supposed to get out of an esoteric 28-page report.--Louiedog (talk) 13:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Is "Vancouverism" the right article title?
The article claims that "Vancouverism" is a notable technique, yet a spot check of the references that this article relies upon doesn't actually turn up use of the term "Vancouverism". Vancouver's approach to urban planning is notable, I think, but the article title doesn't seem to be popularly used. --Ds13 (talk) 05:32, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Update: I now see the term used occasionally in media. Global and Straight articles have used the term "Vancouverism". --Ds13 (talk) 17:48, 11 June 2012 (UTC)