Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are heading
to the absolute edge of the continent. We're
talking about a place that is defined by this
incredibly dramatic, almost violent physical
beauty. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You
know, towering mountains, dark ocean, these massive,
massive trees. Yeah. But it's also a place defined
by some of the most intense urban contradictions
you will find. Really. anywhere in North America.
It really is. I mean, it's a city that consistently
tops the global lists for most livable. You know,
you see it all the time. All the time. Yet at
the same time, it simultaneously ranks as one
of the most unaffordable places to live on the
planet. It's this bizarre paradox. You have this
culture of aggressive health consciousness. You
know, the yoga, the hiking, the kale salads everywhere.
The West Coast uniform. And then that same city.
Contains one of the most concentrated areas of
drug addiction and poverty in the entire developed
world. The contrast is just, it's jarring. It's
right there in your face. We are talking, of
course, about Vancouver, British Columbia. And
the mission for this deep dive is to move past
the postcard. You know the image I'm talking
about. I do. The glass towers reflecting the
sunset over the water. Exactly. And the idea
that you can ski in the morning and... Sail in
the afternoon. Which, for the record, is physically
possible. I just don't know a single person who
actually has the energy or the money to do both
in one day. Right. It's a great marketing tagline,
but that's what it is. Yeah. We want to get into
the mechanics of the city. We have a massive
stack of research here, articles, urban planning
documents, economic reports, and we're going
to unpack this idea of Vancouverism. We're going
to look at the snow washing phenomena in real
estate, which is a wild story, and we'll dig
into the whole Hollywood North machine. Basically,
we're going to look at how a really rough and
tumble mill town transformed into a global luxury
brand and maybe what gets lost when a city becomes
that desirable and that expensive. But before
we get into any of the heavy economic stuff or,
you know, the urban planning theories, we have
to perform a public service. OK. We have to clear
up. The number one misconception about this city's
geography. Yeah. I feel like if you are not from
the Pacific Northwest, there is a 50 -50 chance
you get this wrong. I think I know exactly where
you're going with this. Vancouver is not on Vancouver
Island. It is not. And let me tell you, this
drives locals absolutely crazy. It's like a pet
peeve for the entire city. I can imagine. The
city of Vancouver is on the mainland of North
America. It's on a little piece of land called
the Burrard Peninsula. Vancouver Island is that
massive landmass. I mean, it's huge, about the
size of Belgium or Taiwan. And it sits across
the Strait of Georgia. And to make it even more
confusing for people, the capital of the whole
province, Victoria, is on the island. Correct.
So you have the major economic city on the mainland
and the political capital is over on the island.
Just to pile on the confusion, there's also a
designated city of North Vancouver and a separate
district of North Vancouver. Oh, come on. And
West Vancouver, which are all totally separate
municipalities from the city of Vancouver itself.
It's a bit of a mess. Okay, my head is already
spinning. But the core confusion, the island
versus the city, it all comes down to the fact
that they're both named after the same guy. Yep.
Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy, he
was the one who sailed into the Inner Harbor,
the Burrard Inlet, and charted it back in 1792.
That feels like a bit of an ego trip, doesn't
it? Naming the massive island and the future
metropolis after yourself. Well, to be fair to
George, he didn't actually name the city. He
was long dead by the time the city was incorporated.
The city was named in his honor much, much later.
And it was largely for branding reasons, which
is a whole other story we will absolutely get
to. But the name itself, Vancouver, it actually
has Dutch roots. It comes from Van Covoorden,
which means from the city of Covoorden in the
Netherlands. We have a Dutch name applied by
the British to a piece of land that had been
inhabited for thousands and thousands of years
before any of them showed up. And that is the
crucial context. It's so important. When we talk
about the origins of this place, we are not starting
with Captain Vancouver in 1792. That's just a
tiny blip. Right. The archaeological record shows
human habitation in that area for somewhere between
8 ,000 and 10 ,000 years. That is just a staggering
amount of time. We're talking about the end of
the last ice age. People were there as the glaciers
retreated. Exactly. This is the traditional,
ancestral, and unseen. of the Coast Salish peoples.
Specifically for the area that is now Vancouver,
it's the Squamish, the Muskeme, and the Tsleil
-Waututh, also known as the Burrard people. And
they had settlements all over. All over what
is now the modern city. There were major villages
in what we now call Stanley Park along False
Creek near the mouth of the Fraser River. It
was a thriving, interconnected world. And one
thing that really stood out to me in the research,
which you touched on, was the difference in naming
conventions. It seems so revealing. Well, when
the British arrived, they started naming things
after people. Lord Granville, George Vancouver,
Simon Fraser. It's all about, you know, ownership
or patronage or honoring some distant aristocrat.
It's about imposing a hierarchy onto the land.
It's a human centric view. But if you look at
the indigenous place names, they are deeply functional
and descriptive. They describe the landscape
or the resources that are there. Can you give
us an example of that? Sure. So take the area
that eventually became the original colonial
settlement, the place we now call Gastown. The
Squamish name for that specific spot is Kemkemele.
Okay. And what does that translate to? It means
place of many maple trees. It tells you exactly
what is there. It tells you about the ecosystem,
what you can find there, what the land is. It's
practical. It's completely practical. Another
example is a name for the region in the upriver
Halcomelum dialect, LHK .lets. It means wide
at the bottom or wide at the end. It's basically
a navigational aid describing the shape of the
inlet for someone in a canoe. So it grounds the
name in the land itself rather than in a person
who might never have even seen it. set foot there.
Precisely. And that land, you have to remember,
was a temperate rainforest. Before the glass
towers, this was a land of giants. I mean, Douglas
fir, western red cedar, western hemlock. Some
of these trees were hundreds of feet tall, 10
feet in diameter. Unimaginable, really. And the
indigenous culture is often referred to as a
cedar culture because that one tree provided
everything. The wood for the massive longhouses
and the ocean -going canoes. The bark was woven
into clothing and baskets. and rope. It was the
center of life. OK, so let's let's fast forward
to the colonial era. You have the Fraser Gold
Rush in 1858. And this just changes everything.
Suddenly, 25 ,000 men, mostly from California,
come flooding north. A huge wave of people. But
they didn't stop in what is now Vancouver. No,
because there was nothing there. Vancouver didn't
exist. It was just forest. They completely bypassed
the peninsula to get to the colonial capital
at the time, which was New Westminster. And then
from there, they went up the Fraser River to
the gold fields. Vancouver was just a place you
sailed past. So how did the city actually begin?
We'd sort of tease this. Most major cities, you
know, they start with a fort or a government
decree or a mission. Vancouver started with a
bar. It is, without a doubt, the best origin
story of any Canadian city. It really is. It
started with one man, a character named Gassy
Jack Dayton. Right. Gassy. I have to assume that
doesn't refer to, well, digestion. No, no, thankfully.
In Victorian slang, to be gassy meant you talked
a lot. You were a storyteller, a braggart, a
bit of a windbag. A talker. A talker. And Jack
Dayton was a former riverboat captain and a barkeep.
He knew how to handle rough men. So paint the
picture for us. What year are we in? We're in
1867. You have this place called Hastings Mill
on the south shore of the Burrard Inlet. It's
a rough, muddy, dangerous operation. Men are
working these terrible jobs cutting down these
giant trees. It's all mud and sawdust. Not a
lot of amenities, I'm guessing. No amenities.
And Jack Deaton arrives. He shows up on the edge
of the mill property with his indigenous wife,
a dog, and one single barrel of whiskey. The
absolute essentials for city building. Pretty
much. He essentially goes up to the mill workers
who are not allowed to drink on company land.
And he says, look, I have this whiskey. If you
guys help me build a saloon right here, just
off the property line, you can drink as much
as you want. And I assume the local labor market
responded favorably to that particular incentive.
Immediately, they built a makeshift tavern, the
Globe Saloon, in about 24 hours. And that one
little building became the nucleus of the entire
settlement. The area around it was originally
just called Gastown after him. It is just wild.
to me, the idea that a city of millions, the
sophisticated global hub, started because one
guy wanted to sell booze to lumberjacks in the
mud. And Gastown is still there. It's now the
historic heart of the city, you know, with the
cobblestone streets and the famous steam clock
that tourists love. Right. But obviously, as
the settlement grew, the colonial government
couldn't just let it be officially called Gastown.
It wasn't dignified enough. It needed a rebrand.
A big one. So in 1870, they surveyed the town
site and they officially renamed it Granville
in honor of the British colonial secretary. But
the real game changer. The thing that turned
it from a muddy mill town into a potential metropolis
was the train. The Canadian Pacific Railway.
The CPR. In the late 19th century, you have to
understand, the railway was everything. It was
the internet, it was the highway system, it was
the airport, all rolled into one. It was the
only way to connect the country from east to
west. And the CPR was looking for its western
terminus. It had to end somewhere on the Pacific.
Exactly. They needed a deep water port so they
could start trading with Asia. And they looked
at a few options, but they eventually chose the
Burrard Inlet right next to Granville. Good news
for Granville. It should have been. But the president
of the CPR, a man named William Van Horn, had
a problem. He looked at the map, he saw the name
Granville, and he hated it. Why? What was wrong
with it? He just didn't think it had any brand
recognition. Nobody in London or New York or
Hong Kong knew where Granville was. It was meaningless
to them. But thanks to all those Royal Navy maps
that have been circulating for decades, people
of influence knew the name Vancouver. They knew
Vancouver Island, the name had cachet. So Van
Horn makes a marketing decision. A pure marketing
decision. He said, effectively, if you want the
railway to terminate here, you have to change
the name of the town to Vancouver. He wanted
the brand recognition. So the city's name was
basically an early form of SEO, search engine
optimization for a 19th century map. 100%. It
was about searchability and brand power. So on
April 6, 1886, the deal was done. The city of
Vancouver was officially incorporated. They had
a city council, a police chief, and these massive
ambitions. And then almost immediately, everything
went catastrophically wrong. Disastrously wrong.
I mean, this is the story of the Great Vancouver
Fire of 1886. And when we say fire, we're not
talking about a block of buildings burning down.
No, we're talking about total annihilation. It
was June 13th, just two months after the city
was incorporated. It was a hot, dry day. There
was a clearing fire nearby. They were burning
brush to make way for the railway line. Standard
practice at the time. Totally standard. But a
sudden, fierce gale blew up and the fire just
jumped. It leaped from the brush into the city
itself. And because the entire city was built
of wood. It was built of wood and it was surrounded
by what they called slash, all the dry branches
and debris left over from logging. The whole
place was a tinderbox. It became a firestorm.
The entire city was razed to the ground in less
than 45 minutes. 45 minutes. That is a terrifying
speed. It's unbelievable. It was an absolute
inferno. People had to run into the Burrard Inlet.
They were standing in the water, covering their
heads with wet blankets to keep from suffocating
or being scorched by the heat. Dozens of people
died. When it was over, the city was gone, just
ash and smoldering timbers. But what happens
next is what seems to set the tone for Vancouver's
entire history, right up to today. Yes, it's
this Phoenix effect. The rebuilding started literally
the next day. By the next morning, people were
pitching tents in the ash and setting up makeshift
stores. No hesitation. None. Within months, new,
more permanent buildings were going up, and this
time, many of them were built with brick. The
city's first fire... department was established
that same year, they learned a hard lesson fast.
It feels like that single event established a
core theme for the city. rapid development, a
willingness to tear down or be torn down, build
new, bigger, faster. Absolutely. Vancouver has
never been a city that's overly nostalgic about
its buildings. It's a city of constant, rapid
transformation. And that growth was just supercharged
by the arrival of the first transcontinental
train shortly after the fire. The population
just exploded. It went from about 1 ,000 people
in 1881 to over 100 ,000 by 1911. An incredible
boom. Okay, so we've got the history, we've got
the fire. Now let's look at the stage this is
all playing out on, the geography. Because when
you look at a map, Vancouver is in a very specific
and very confined situation. It is a locked box.
absolutely critical for understanding everything
from the city's traffic to its insane real estate
prices. So walk us through the boundaries of
that box. Okay. So to the north, you have the
Burrard Inlet, which is a deep arm of the sea.
And right behind that, you have the North Shore
Mountains. And these aren't rolling hills. These
are steep, rugged mountains. You can't just build
endless suburbs up the side of them. Right. Boundary
number one. Boundary number one. To the west,
you have the ocean, the Strait of Georgia. Can't
build there. To the south, you have the delta
of the Fraser River, which is agriculturally
protected land. And then very shortly after that,
you hit the U .S. border. So unlike a city like,
say, Dallas or Phoenix, that could just sprawl
endlessly into the desert for hundreds of miles.
Vancouver has hard edges. It has walls. And when
you run out of land in a city like that, you
really only have two choices. You either stop
growing. Or you go up. And they definitely chose
up. But they did it in a really unique way. And
this brings us to this term. Vancouverism. Yes.
Vancouverism is a globally recognized urban planning
term. It's studied all over the world. It describes
a specific style of high density living that
tries to balance skyscrapers with, you know,
livability. So what is a classic Vancouverist
building actually look like? If I'm standing
on the street, what am I seeing? You are typically
seeing what's called a podium and tower model.
OK, explain that. So imagine the base of the
building, the podium is maybe three or four stories
tall. This part covers most of the property a
lot. And critically, it has active uses at street
level. It usually has townhouses with their own
front doors or retail shops, a grocery store,
a coffee shop. So it feels human scale when you're
walking past it. Exactly. It feels like a neighborhood,
not a corporate plaza. Then, set back from the
edge of that podium, a tall, very thin, glassy
residential tower rises out of the center. And
why thin? Why not big, blocky towers like you
see in New York or Chicago? There are two big
reasons. The first is light. Thin towers let
more sunlight down to the street and into neighboring
apartments. It feels less oppressive. But the
main and most fascinating reason is something
called view corridors. This is a concept I had
never heard of before. The city legally protects
the view. They do. It's official policy. There
are dozens of legally protected lines of sight
from specific public places, like from City Hall
or certain points on the seawall or Queen Elizabeth
Park. The city guarantees that from that spot,
you will always be able to see the mountain peaks.
So if a developer wants to build a 60 -story
building and it happens to be right in the middle
of one of those protected views, they can't build
it. Or, more accurately, they have to reshape
it. They literally have to carve angles into
the building to preserve what they call the view
cone. That's why so many of the downtown towers
in Vancouver have these unique slanted roofs
or distinct geometric shapes. They're not just
stylistic choices. They're sculpting the skyline
around the mountains. That's a perfect way to
put it. It's an attempt to maintain that connection
to nature, even when you are in the heart of
a very dense concrete jungle. Which seems really
smart. Yeah. And it creates a density that allows
for a very walkable lifestyle, right? Yeah. This
is a key difference for most North American cities.
For sure. You avoid the donut city phenomenon
that plagued the U .S. for decades, where the
downtown core empties out at 5 p .m. and everyone
drives back to the suburbs. In Vancouver, you
have a massive and growing residential population
living in the downtown core. And this connects
to that greenest city idea. We'll get to the
sustainability targets later, but just the physical
layout itself promotes walking in transit. Exactly.
This is what the city planners called ecodensity.
The idea, which was formally launched in 2006,
was that using density in a smart way is actually
good for the environment. It lowers the collective
carbon footprint. How so? Well, if you live in
a tower downtown, you're heating one small, efficient
unit. You can walk to work. You can walk to the
grocery store. You can take the SkyTrain. It's
vastly more energy efficient than a single -family
home in the suburbs where you have to drive everywhere
for everything. Now, before we move on from the
physical environment, we have to talk about the
climate. Because the rainforest dictates the
lifestyle just as much as the skyscrapers do.
Oh, it does. There is this myth, especially outside
of Canada, that the whole country is a frozen
wasteland in winter. Vancouver is the great exception
that breaks that rule. Yeah, if you're from Toronto
or Montreal, you learn to hate Vancouver in January
because they're posting photos of cherry blossoms
while you're digging your car out of a snowbank.
It's an oceanic climate. A temperate rainforest.
It very rarely drops below freezing for any extended
period. And it rarely gets super hot in the summer,
though. That is starting to change with recent
climate heat domes. But generally, it is famously
mild. But there's a tradeoff. Yeah. A big one.
The wet. The rain is relentless. It's not a joke.
We are talking about nearly 1 ,600 millimeters
of rain downtown annually. That's over five feet
of water falling from the sky. And if you go
over to North Vancouver, closer to the mountains,
it's over 2 ,000 millimeters. So you trade your
snow shovel for a really, really good umbrella?
And Gore -Tex. You have to invest in Gore -Tex.
The unofficial West Coast tuxedo is a fleece
vest and a high -end rain jacket. It's a very
practical, function -over -form fashion sense.
Let's just jump back to architecture for one
second. We mentioned the glass towers, which
are everywhere, obviously. But there are some
weird ones. The source material mentions the
concrete waffle. You cannot miss it. It's the
Macmillan Bloedel building on Georgia Street.
It's a... brutalist classic from the late 60s.
And it literally looks like a giant concrete
waffle iron standing on its end. It's got this
grid of deep set square windows and the whole
building tapers as it goes up. A love it or hate
it kind of thing. Absolutely. And the Central
Library is another one. A coliseum. A coliseum,
yeah. It's Library Square designed by Moshe Safdie.
It looks like a modern interpretation of the
Roman Coliseum. It's this massive elliptical
reddish concrete structure. Again, it's very
polar. People either think it's a masterpiece
or a total bizarre folly, but it definitely shows
that the city isn't just about simple glass towers.
OK, so we've built the stage. We have the mountains,
the ocean, the rain, the glass towers, the concrete
waffles. Now let's talk about the people, because
the demographic shift in Vancouver over the last
40 years has been just profound. It's one of
the most diverse cities in the world statistically.
As of the 2021 census, nearly 50 % of residents
are not native English speakers. That is a huge
number. Just think about that. Half the city.
And over 54 % of the population belongs to what
the census calls visible minority groups. The
Asian influence in particular is incredibly strong.
People of Chinese heritage make up over 25 percent
of the total population. And this isn't just
a story of general gradual immigration. There
was a specific historical event that triggered
a massive wave of this, a real inflection point.
The Hong Kong handover. Right. Take us back to
the 80s and early 90s. What was happening? So
everyone knew that in 1997, the United Kingdom's
lease on the territory was up and they were going
to hand sovereignty of Hong Kong back to the
People's Republic. And there was a lot of anxiety
and uncertainty in Hong Kong about what that
would mean for their way of life, for their democracy,
their freedoms, and very importantly, their wealth.
So people started looking for an exit strategy,
a plan B. Exactly. A safe place to go and a safe
place to move their money. And Vancouver became
the destination of choice for a huge number of
them. Why Vancouver specifically? A few reasons.
It was on the Pacific Rim, so it was a relatively
easy flight. It was a Commonwealth country, so
the legal and political systems were familiar.
It was stable, safe, and had a high quality of
life. You saw this massive influx of wealthy
Hong Kong families moving. their lives and crucially,
their capital to Vancouver. And this physically
reshaped the city. This wasn't just a cultural
shift. Oh, completely. We're just talking about
all those glass towers. A huge amount of that
development in the 90s was funded by Asian capital.
The entire neighborhood of Yaletown, which used
to be old industrial warehouses, was developed
largely by a company called Concord Pacific,
which is owned by Li Ka -shing, who is a Hong
Kong billionaire. They bought the old Expo 86
lands and built a new city on it. So the modern
skyline of Vancouver is directly tied to the
geopolitics of China and the UK from 30 years
ago. It is inextricably linked. You cannot separate
them. And of course, it's not just Chinese influence.
There's a massive and longstanding South Asian
community, specifically from the Punjab region
of India. The Punjabi market. Yes, historically
centered in the Sunset neighborhood on Main Street.
It was actually the first little India in all
of North America. But what's interesting and
speaks to another theme is that as real estate
prices have skyrocketed in Vancouver proper,
a lot of that community's center of gravity has
shifted out to the suburbs, places like Surrey
and Delta. Which is a classic trend we see in
so many cities, right? Yeah. Gentrification and
rising costs pushing established cultural enclaves
further. further out. Precisely. The city's affordability
crisis reshapes its cultural geography. Okay.
Now, there is another industry that really defines
the culture and the economy of the city, and
that is the film industry. We teased it in the
intro. Hollywood North. It is a juggernaut. It's
a huge part of the city's identity now. Vancouver
is the third largest film and TV production center
in North America, right after Los Angeles and
New York. And the funny thing is, you almost
never see Vancouver playing the role of Vancouver
in a movie. That is the whole point. That's its
superpower. Vancouver has this quality that architects
sometimes call the generic city. What does that
mean? Because so much of its downtown was built
relatively recently with modern glass architecture,
and because it doesn't have a singular, instantly
recognizable landmark like the Eiffel Tower or
the Empire State Building, it can stand in for
almost any other North American city. It's the
ultimate chameleon. The ultimate stand in. Exactly.
It's always playing Seattle in shows like Grey's
Anatomy or The Killing. It plays National City
in the show Supergirl. It plays a futuristic
metropolis in movies like Blade, Trinity. It
plays New York and San Francisco constantly.
The X -Files is the big one, though, right? That's
what really put it on the map in the 90s. Oh,
the X -Files basically defined the Vancouver
aesthetic for a generation. The mist, the dark
green forests, the perpetually gray skies, that
gloomy atmospheric look fit the mood of that
show perfectly. And more recently. Huge productions.
Deadpool was filmed there. And that one actually
did show Vancouver as Vancouver, which was a
nice change. The TV show The Last of Us did a
lot of filming in the region. Supernatural was
there for 15 seasons. The list is endless. So
why did they all film there? Is it just about
the tax credits? The tax credits are a huge part
of it, for sure. The government makes it very
financially attractive. But it's also the geography.
Just think about it. Within a 45 -minute drive
of downtown, you can be on a snowy mountain peak,
you can be inside an ancient -looking old growth
forest, you can be on a sandy beach, or you can
be in a modern city grid. So a production can
film scenes set in five different countries in
a single day without having to move the whole
crew. Exactly. It's incredibly efficient. and
this is a huge logistical advantage, it is in
the same time zone as Los Angeles. That's massive
for business. Studio executives in Hollywood
can be on the phone with the set in Vancouver
at 2 p .m. their time, and everyone is still
working. There's no jet lag, no weird hours.
It's just a massive economic engine for the city.
Huge. The numbers are staggering. Something like
$3 .6 billion was spent in the city on film and
TV production in 2021 alone. It employs tens
of thousands of people, from actors to carpenters
to caterers. So just to recap the economy here,
we have a booming film sector. We have a massive
tech sector. You know, Lululemon and Arc'teryx
are local lifestyle brands that went global.
Slack started there. Microsoft and Amazon have
huge offices. And we have the Port of Vancouver,
which is the largest in Canada, the third largest
in the Americas. It's the primary gateway for
trade with Asia. So on paper, the economy looks
fantastic, diversified, modern, growing. Here
it comes, the big but. And it is a devastating
but. If you actually live there or if you try
to move there, you run headfirst into a brick
wall. And that wall is the cost of living. The
housing crisis in Vancouver is legendary. It
is not an exaggeration to say it is consistently
ranked one of the most unaffordable cities on
the entire planet, especially when you measure
it relative to local incomes. Let's break down
that relative to incomes part because, you know,
New York is expensive. London is expensive. How
is Vancouver different from those places? In
a place like New York or London, there are a
lot of extremely high paying jobs in sectors
like investment banking or global finance that
can, for a certain class of people, support those
high prices. In Vancouver, the local wages for
professionals are actually quite modest compared
to other major global cities. So the salaries
aren't at a New York level. Not even close. But
the housing prices are. So you have this massive
disconnect. The price of an average house is
no longer based on what the local teacher or
engineer or nurse earns. It is completely decoupled
from the local economy. That's the perfect term
for it. It's operating in its own global market.
To give you some perspective, back in 2010, an
average two -level home was already nearly a
million dollars. Now, in some neighborhoods,
you're looking at $2 million for a house that's
basically a teardown. So who is buying them?
Who can afford this? That is the multimillion
dollar question, isn't it? And the answer is
complex. We already talked about the flow of
global capital money from Hong Kong and more
recently, mainland China, but also from places
like Iran, the U .S., Europe. People use Vancouver
real estate as a safe deposit box. Explain that.
They park their money in a condo or a house because
it's seen as a stable, secure asset in a politically
stable country. It's safer than keeping it in
a volatile currency or under a less stable government.
Which leads us to a term that I found really
disturbing in the research notes. Snow washing.
Yes. This is the dark underbelly of the real
estate room. Snow washing is a Canadian term
for money laundering. How does it work in the
context of real estate? For a very long time,
Canadian laws regarding corporate transparency
were incredibly lacked. They were full of loopholes.
You could set up a numbered company or a trust
and use that anonymous company to buy a multimillion
dollar house. And nobody, not the land title
office, not the types authorities, knew who the
actual human being, the beneficial owner behind
that company was. So if you are a criminal organization.
or a corrupt foreign official with a suitcase
full of cash. You take your illicit money. You
buy a luxury condo in Vancouver through a shell
company. You hold it for a year. Then you sell
the condo. Now you have a legitimate check from
a Canadian law firm for the sale of the property.
The money is now clean. It has been washed through
the system. That is just infuriating for a local
family trying to buy their first apartment. You're
not just competing with other families saving
up a down payment. You're competing with international
money laundering syndicates. It completely distorted
the market. There was a massive public inquiry
into this, the Cullen Commission, and it estimated
that billions, possibly tens of billions of dollars,
were being laundered through British Columbia
real estate every year. And this creates this
massive visible social divide. This is the contradiction
we talked about right at the start of the deep
dive. It is visceral. It's something you can
see and feel. You can walk through a neighborhood.
like Coal Harbor, this beautiful waterfront area
where you see Ferraris, Lamborghinis, super yachts,
and these stunning penthouses that are dark and
empty half the year because they're just investments.
And then you walk 10 minutes east. Just a 10
-minute walk. And you are in the downtown east
side. The DTES. Yeah. It is often described as
Canada's poorest postal bound. But even that
label doesn't really capture the reality of it.
It is a neighborhood where thousands of people
are grappling with severe overlapping crises
of mental illness, homelessness and addiction.
And it's right there. It's not hidden away in
some remote suburb like in some other cities.
No, it directly borders the historic tourist
district of Gastown and the edge of the financial
district. You can literally turn a corner from
a high end boutique hotel and suddenly you're
in the scene of the most desperate, grinding
poverty imaginable. And the city has tried to
address this. specifically the drug crisis, with
some fairly radical policies for North America.
Yes. To its credit, Vancouver has been a pioneer
in the philosophy of harm reduction. Back in
2003, they opened a facility called Insight.
And this was North America's first legal supervised
safe injection site. Correct. The guiding philosophy
was, look. He was incredibly controversial when
it opened. Oh, massively. And it still is in
some political circles. But the scientific data,
study after study, showed that it reduced overdose
deaths in the immediate area and increased the
number of people seeking treatment. It treats
addiction as a health care issue rather than
a purely criminal one. But despite these efforts,
by all accounts, the problem seems to be getting
visibly worse, not better. Because the root causes.
The lack of truly affordable housing, the deep
poverty, the lack of mental health support are
all accelerating. When a single room in a specialized
housing unit costs more than a person's monthly
welfare check provides, people end up on the
street. It's a basic math problem as much as
it is a social one. And this all leads to a growing
fear about the future of the city. I saw that
some economists have started using the term doom
loop. That sounds ominous. It does. What does
it mean in the Vancouver context? It's a warning
and it's largely drawn from what has happened
in cities like San Francisco. The cycle goes
something like this. The cost of living gets
so astronomically high that middle class and
working class. People, service workers, teachers,
artists, young professionals, they just leave.
They can't afford to live there anymore. So then
businesses can't find staff, especially in the
service industry. So they reduce their hours
or they close down or they relocate. The downtown
core starts to come hollowed out. All you have
left are very rich people in their condos and
very poor people on the street with no vibrant
middle class in between. The city loses its soul.
It loses its energy. And it loses its tax base.
If businesses leave, the city has less money
to pay for social services, sanitation and policing.
So the street level disorder gets worse, which
in turn drives more businesses and residents
away. That is the doom loop. So is Vancouver
there yet? Is it in the loop? I don't think it's
fully there yet. The tech sector is still very
strong. Immigration is still high. People from
all over the world still desperately want to
live there because of the natural beauty. But
the warning lights are definitely flashing red.
Let's pivot to one final area where the city
is, or at least was, trying to lead. Sustainability.
They branded themselves as the greenest city.
The Greenest City Action Plan, or G .C. Ho. The
official goal was to be the greenest city in
the world by the year 2020. It was a very ambitious
plan. Did they make it? It's a mixed bag. In
some ways, yes. In others, not really. So what
were the wins? Where did they succeed? Well,
a lot of the success is in the lifestyle that
the city's geography and planning encourages.
Vancouver has the lowest obesity rate in Canada,
around 17 percent. People are active. The bike
lane network is fantastic and getting better
all the time. And the seawall is an absolute
jewel. Right. It's 28 kilometers of uninterrupted
waterfront path for walking, running and cycling
around Stanley Park and False Creek. It's one
of the best pieces of urban infrastructure anywhere.
But there were struggles with the policy side
of things. Policy is hard. It's messy. They banned
plastic straws, which mostly just annoyed everyone
and had a minimal environmental impact. Then
they tried to put a mandatory 25 cent fee on
single use coffee cups. The goal being to discourage
waste and encourage reusable mugs. Right. A noble
goal. But the problem was in the execution. The
city didn't collect the 25 cents as a tax for
environmental programs. The coffee shop just
got to keep the 25 cents. So people were furious.
They felt like they were paying a tax that just
went straight to Starbucks' bottom line. There
was a huge public backlash, and the city eventually
repealed the whole thing. And then there's the
traffic. For a city that prides itself on being
green, the traffic is famously... Terrible. This
is the traffic paradox. It's really interesting.
Back in the 1970s, Vancouver did something incredibly
brave and forward thinking. The citizens rose
up and stopped the construction of major freeways
through the heart of the city. There is no I
-5 or 401 equivalent that runs into downtown
Vancouver. Which saved historic neighborhoods
like Chinatown and Gastown from being bulldozed.
It did. It preserved the walkable human scale
urban fabric. But the consequence is that all
the cars that need to get downtown have to drive.
on city streets. So you have these horrific bottlenecks
and congestion. It's a direct tradeoff, livability
for the people who live there versus drivability
for the people trying to get there. So bringing
this all together, we have a city of just breathtaking,
almost overwhelming natural beauty, a city that
reinvented high density urban planning with its
glass towers and view corridors, a city that
is a vibrant cultural melting pot, but also a
city that is fundamentally struggling to figure
out who it's for. That is the central question,
isn't it? Is Vancouver a functioning city for
workers and families and the middle class? Or
has it become what some critics call a resort
city? A resort city. That label. That stings.
It does. Locals sometimes half -jokingly call
it no -fun city because of the strict regulations,
the early closing times, and the high cost of
everything. The danger is that it becomes purely
a playground for the global wealthy, a beautiful,
safe backdrop for American movies, but a place
where the people who actually create the culture,
the artists, the chefs, the musicians, can no
longer afford to stay. It's a cautionary tale,
really, for desirable cities everywhere. When
you become too popular, you risk destruction.
the very thing that made you popular in the first
place. The paradox of desirability. It's a tough
problem to solve. Well, on that rather teary
note, I think it gives us a lot to think about.
Next time you watch a movie. and you see a gray,
misty sky and a sleek glass tower, don't just
see the background. Think about the concrete
waffle. Think about Gassy Jack and his barrel
of whiskey. And think about all the complex,
often contradictory, mechanics that are keeping
that beautiful, troubled city running. And check
the street signs in the background of the shot.
If it says Hastings Street, but the characters
say they're in Manhattan, you'll know exactly
where you are. Thanks for diving in with us.
Anytime.