We have always been at the top of the most live-able cities in the world. The reasons are obvious.
However today I had a long chat with some long-term residents who believe we have moved towards a city that is becoming undone due to it's own success. Too crowded and too developed.
Lets look at this week-end. We have the Firemen and Police Games, Gay Pride Week-end, the Fireworks, Cruise ships and the usual mass of tourists plus a new arrival of Far-East home students which are subsiding many lower mainland mortgages.
The result is gridlock. It is hard to get into Stanley park, or cycle or walk around it. Driving to the supermarket is a mini expedition.
As if it wasn't bad enough having our week-days clogged with construction and filming, the week-ends have to be messed up to.
I know we should be grateful that all these activities (from tourism to filming to constant construction) bring the large number of jobs with them. Some of these jobs are even enough to pay for a reasonable life, if you didn't have to pay for housing.
It makes one wonder whether there is anyone at the helm of this, planning how our lives are being changed by the develop-at-any-cost mantra.
Where are the new down-town residents going to drive their cars, does it matter that our air quality is going down. What was the point of the Olympics? To get us on the map? Or to inconvenience locals, enrich developers and go into debt?
This week-end it was unbearably crowded everywhere I went, from Down-town to the beaches to the Grouse Grind. I am beginning to believe we do not have the land mass, or the infrastructure to become the huge world class city our Premier and the developers are trying to squeeze us into.
Are we the victims of our own success?
I am seriously starting to consider a move outside the lower mainland.
Meanwhile Larry Yatter is the first one out with the July numbers:
http://www.yattermatters.com/real-estate/vancouver-residential-average-july-09/
Lets pay particular attention to the first graph on his post and compare it to this one:
http://tinyurl.com/ntvgvj
