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DRAFT. THE DEATH OF VANCOUVERISM. Vancouver’s Lost Eden: How Land Speculators Stole Our City Canada’s fractured federation leaves housing to the provinces, a messy quilt of policies stitched together by local ambition—or the lack of it. Nowhere did that ambition burn brighter than in Vancouver, a city that, for a fleeting moment, showed the world how to harness urban growth for the public good. Through a process we called conditional zoning, Vancouver captured the windfall of rising land values to build a city of towers, parks, and promise. But global capital, like a relentless tide, washed away that dream, leaving a city too costly for its own people—a tragedy of our own making. Back in the 1980s, Vancouver woke up. Hong Kong investors, captivated by our shimmering waters and mountain backdrop, poured money into this former mill town. Our city planners, sharp as ever, saw the chance to do something bold. They rezoned old industrial lots for sky-high towers, using British Columbia’s flexible laws to negotiate Community Amenity Contributions—CACs, our shorthand for taxing the “land lift.” Picture a lot worth a million bucks for a two-storey building. Rezone it for 20 storeys, and its value leaps to $10 million. We aimed to grab 80% of that lift, funneling millions into seawalls, community centers, daycares, and, yes, affordable homes. This was Vancouverism, a term coined with pride. It wasn’t just towers; it was a way of life—dense, walkable, vibrant, straight out of Jane Jacobs’ playbook. In the 1990s, a family earning $70,000 could buy a two-bedroom condo for $250,000. Developers, happy with their 20% cut of the land lift, played ball. We built broad boulevards, waterfront trails, and mixed-income neighborhoods, all funded by land rent, not buildings. It felt like we’d cracked the code: tax the land’s unearned value, as Henry George might’ve cheered, and build a city for everyone. Then came the fall. By the 2000s, global capital—pension funds, REITs, sovereign wealth—locked eyes on Vancouver. Land prices exploded, untethered from local wages or jobs. Between 2006 and 2016, land values soared 500%, adding $100 billion in 2016 alone. That same condo? Now it’s $1.2 million, maybe more, with land eating up 60% of the cost. The math no longer worked. Our CAC system, built on negotiated deals, buckled. Developers, paying sky-high land prices upfront, shrugged: “No lift left to tax.” New staff, lacking the old guard’s savvy, nodded along. Speculation had baked future density into land prices years early, gutting our ability to fund civic dreams. We lost our way. Vancouverism, once a beacon, became a cautionary tale. Our failure to fix CAC rates let global markets steal the land’s value before we could claim it for parks or homes. Now, ordinary families are priced out, their city a glittering prize for the global elite. We built an Eden, only to watch it slip through our fingers, cooked by the very speculation we thought we’d tamed.