Vancouver’s First Chief Planner Gerald Sutton Brown, Chief Planner 1952-1973, represented the last of the British/London model of development in Vancouver, where development happens organically, incrementally and is resilient, responding quickly to market forces. Because of this, the price of housing remained stable despite rapid growth. The West End, the Vancouver Special, high-rise residential on the industrial waterfront and the sprinkling of townhouses, mid-rise and high-rise buildings throughout low density areas are part of his legacy. He wanted high-density living only in the most liveable areas away from arterial streets. This is why the West End, the highest density neighbourhood in the city, has mostly one storey retail with no residential on busy thoroughfares. He was born and raised in Jamaica and worked as an urban planner in England, rising to head planner of Lancashire, the second largest County in Britain after London, which contained cities like Manchester and Liverpool. He is credited with keeping UK cities functioning during the bombing of World War Two. He was hired under Mayor Fred Hume, a descendant of Royal Engineers who had been sent to British Columbia to prevent a US takeover. He wanted to hire someone from the Commonwealth to reduce the influence of US planning which had been brought in by Harland Bartholomew. Bartholomew had introduced Zoning and Comprehensive Plans to prevent market forces from bringing density to detached house areas, politicize development by freezing neighbourhoods in place, segregating them by demographic categories. The system of Comprehensive Plans for cities had been championed by the Soviet Union and had been introduced to Britain by the Labour Government shortly before Sutton Brown left. Sutton Brown developed a hybrid model called Discretionary Zoning which he described as “distinct from the United States and United Kingdom”. It harnessed the… Read More »Gerald Sutton Brown