Envisioning the livable city: The interplay of "Sin City" and "Sim City" in Vancouver's planning discourse

This paper describes the close relationship in urban planning practice between the "Sin City" motif of urban decay and the "Sim City" discourse on the livable and sustainable city. Stock images of urban dysfunction advance and legitimate urban reform and revitalization of the type imagined by Sim City discourse, but these alternative representations of the city are not simply contrasting; they are mutually constitutive, and in Canada their meaning depends on a second and mutually reinforcing opposition of American and Canadian identity. We discuss these general issues with reference to plans for the redevelopment of Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. We show how supporters of the plan, like their opponents, have cast their objections to the status quo in the terms of the Canadian discourse on the livable and sustainable city and the associated opposition to the Sin City represented by the example of American inner cities.