Something I just wanted to touch upon. Vancouver clearly has a "pre" and "post" 1986 (which is when we hosted the World's Fair).
The video suggested that in 1986, Vancouver's forward-thinking planners inherited "a city with good bones" upon which a real city could be built. But Vancouver was already a hidden gem of a city before 1986, which is why it was selected to be shown off.
In the 1960's, BC constructed (what at the time was) the largest hydroelectric dam in the world and established "BC Hydro", our electrical utility, with more hydroelectric dams to follow (at least two more as big as the first one). Pre-1986, we were selling our excess green energy to California.
But in 1984, all dam construction ceased. Vancouver is no longer energy self-sufficient. BC Hydro apparently has a stated moral objection to creating dirty energy, so it doesn't build any coal plants (good), it pays a premium to buy dirty energy from those willing to get their hands dirty and help kill the planet for smug Vancouver (wat?). All while Vancouver residents bitch about their ever-increasing energy costs. Thanks, forward-thinking post-1986 planners [/sarcasm].
And, since the 1950's, Vancouver had an award-winning public transit system made up entirely of electric trolley buses. In time for 1986, we built our first electric monorail.
And then (after 1986) the powers that be let their award-winning system fucking rot. 20 years without any new investment. I was riding the buses at the time, and heard the drivers constantly bitching about how the maintenance department was barely holding the system together with duct tape. IIRC, the impetus for new investment finally came when a wheel fell off a bus and killed someone. But the powers that be complained that electric vehicles have too much upfront cost, so they bought some dinosaur-burners to take the pressure off the electric system.
And then they realized that the dinosaur-burners could go places where the electric buses couldn't, so they reassigned them towards expanding the transit system's mandate instead of supplementing the broken system. They did eventually get some new electric buses, to replace the dying electric fleet, but they just kept on adding more and more dinosaur-burners, so now the fleet is five times it's original size, and dinosaur-burners outnumber electrics by at least 4-to-1. While our single-track monorail keeps on breaking down, making things grind to a halt for several hours for thousands of people. Very forward thinking [/sarcasm].
Basically I'm just saying, progress has been made since 1986, but there's also been quite a lot of resting on laurels and complacent backsliding.
