Our Premier was interviewed on the BBC at the beginning of April. Here’s what jumped out for me:
I am excited by the initiatives that we are taking with regard to cities. I think too often we’ve allowed our cities to sprawl.
I think creating compact, livable, walkable cities is a huge shift and it’s a very exciting thing for me. I was the Mayor of Vancouver for seven years so we did some things that started that in Vancouver. But I think it has to be part of our urban form.
There is still a mysterious disconnect between these sentiments – which I think he truly believes – and the message being sent by the Gateway Project. Which is a commitment to a car- and truck-dominated transportation system. Which means any sensible investor, business owner or home-purchaser will make their decisions based on that assumption. Which means land-use planners and transportation engineers will plan for that. Which means more roads, more bridges, more sprawl, in a self-reinforcing cycle.
You don’t get a ‘compact, livable, walkable’ city that way.
I have a hunch that if Gateway was being considered today – rather than two years ago, when Kevin Falcon announced the twinning of Port Mann Bridge out of the blue – it would be a very different kind of project.
But the Premier must nonetheless reconcile the two visions.
