Knute Berger, a writer for Crosscuit’s Mossback section, throws some cold water on the over-heated praise for places like, well, Vancouver:
Take Vancouver, the Cascadian city green urbanists most admire. It’s a dense Hong Kong in the making. But wait. Those skinny towers haven’t stopped suburban sprawl; the tax policies that created the modern city are likely unsustainable; the cost of living is sky-high; and the boom in condos is making it more difficult for the city to offer the full range of jobs and services a city requires to be healthy. Downtown is so stuffed with rich, idle baby boomers that some critics worry that Vancouver is turning into Canada’s Miami Beach.