ABSTRACT
Vancouver is, in many ways, one of the best planned cities in North America (Punter, 2003b) and a “poster-child of urbanism” (Berelowitz, 2005: 1). It has won innumerable awards for its particular style of urbanism that is a distinctive response to a particular topography and morphology, what Punter (2003b) describes as “the particular juxtaposition of its high-rise dominated downtown peninsula and dark forests of Stanley Park against a backdrop of the heavily rain-forested and often snow-capped Coast Range”. This undeniable achievement is, in no great measure, down to the engagement of the city’s planners and urban designers with the tall building typology: ways of promoting them in appropriate locations, limiting them where views of the surrounding mountains and water might be affected, and increasing urban densities to attract particular forms of living.
