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This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle-class parents choose a predominantly white school - whose students are non-ESL and have a second language choice of French - in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle-class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle-class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a stratilingual society in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise and rise of sustainability in urban and social policy circles has transformed the discursive terrain of urban politics. In 2009, Gunder and Hillier argued sustainability is now urban planning's central empty signifier, offering an overarching narrative around which practice can be oriented. This paper takes up the notion of sustainability as an empty/master-signifier, arguing that the recognition of its nominal status is central to understanding how it operates to produce ideological foundation. Drawing upon a series of interviews and focus groups with urban and social policy makers and practitioners in Vancouver, Canada, Zizek's 1989 critique of the cynical functioning of contemporary ideology is used to interpret the city's engagement with sustainability. Focusing on 'social sustainability' it is argued that sustainability has provided a quilting point that has enabled new social and urban policy-related partnerships and organizational agendas to be developed. However, this coherence remains unstable and plagued by questions of signification due to the radical negativity of the master-signifier, where efforts at definition and agreement are haunted by the non-presence of sustainability. It is argued that this framing of sustainability as ideological conduit in Vancouver helps explain the co-presence of transformative rhetoric and business-as-usual. Using Zizek's critique of cynical reason in contemporary ideology, interview data is drawn upon to show how many practitioners seek to distance themselves from sustainability, but at the same time continue to act it out anyway. In conclusion, the sobering politics of Zizek's critique of contemporary ideology are considered in the light of growing urban problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vancouver exemplifies the richness of the many processes that set the civic culture of large contemporary cities. This paper focuses on what drives the social and economic construction of Vancouver, pointing to the complex linkages that tie agents to their environment. It shows that, in Vancouver, power arises from strong popular control and local democratic and participatory values, where group interactions produce and co-produce community development. The Vancouver regime is open yet stable, socially progressive yet fiscally conservative and pro-development. It is a regime that upholds an activist, tolerant and entrepreneurial civic culture. It emerges from an on-going process where the openness of the regime is re-negotiated in each neighbourhood and around each policy arena leading to the emergence of a culture of ongoing participation where civic, neighbourhood, ethnic and business groups constantly re-invent the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of recent Canadian case law on the constitutionality of legal controls on begging reveals the importance of an unacknowledged view of space and behaviour that I call the traffic code. The paper endeavours to take this code seriously, unpacking its logic and scope. In particular, it explores its legal effects, noting that it deflects rights-based arguments on behalf of the public poor. Its emphasis upon space, use and behaviour appears to be not only illiberal, but curiously aliberal, operating without reference to rights. It is suggested, however, that it may in fact rely upon some deeply liberal notions of rights and space. This, perhaps, allows for a rights-based critique of the traffic code. This, and other possibilities for challenges to the traffic code, are explored in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vancouver Region is widely recognised as one North American jurisdiction where strong growth management plans and policies have been put in place in order to control urban sprawl. While many authors have lauded the region for its good planning intentions, there has been little in the way of assessment of actual performance. This paper attempts to identify some quantitative growth management goals that have been (officially and unofficially) espoused by planning authorities in the region, and to measure these against actual trends. The results are mixed: on the one hand, some key growth management goals adopted by the region are not ambitious compared with existing trends and even these goals are not being met. For instance, the supposedly compact scenario adopted by the region deviates hardly at all from existing growth trends, which regional planners had clearly identified as untenable and requiring drastic change. On the other hand, the region's goal of preserving extensive green areas has been achieved without being watered down during goal formulation or implementation. Whereas these findings may appear contradictory, they are not: conservation in the region has not compromised the potential for growth in the region—at least for the time being. The real test of regional growth management efforts will come in the near future when further expansion meets the 'green wall' on the periphery and NIMBY resistance against densification within existing urban areas. The study suggests that the current structure of regional planning, relying on a partnership between municipal and regional governments, has served the region fairly well in building support for the need for growth management and in elaborating growth management vision. However, there is serious doubt about the ability of this system to set ambitious growth management objectives and to see through the implementation of those objectives in the face of social forces attempting to preserve business-as-usual trends in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Vancouver's system of urban design as public policy utilizing 12 principles derived from critiques of design review in the USA. These principles include community vision; the relationship of design, planning and zoning; substantive design principles; and due process in review. Vancouver's city-wide plan, neighbourhood visions and sub-area development plans provide the vision, while its cooperative planning, development levies and discretionary zoning system and guidelines support the pursuit of quality urban design. Its practices are based on generic and contextual design principles, while its processes are transparent, participative, backed by peer review, predictable and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Designing or transforming urban areas into 'sustainable cities' is becoming an increasingly common vision. It is, however, an unrealizable vision without agreement on how to determine whether a sustainable city vision has been fulfilled. In this paper we define a provisional set of urban environmental sustainability metrics, chosen to cover the spectrum of issues related to urban areas, and to be drawn from data that are customarily available. We devise a display technique to communicate efficiently the results of a metrics evaluation to a variety of stakeholders. The approach is illustrated by applying the metrics set to Vancouver, Canada, an urban area that has expended considerable effort toward achieving its own environmental vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Vancouver has two overtly identified gay and lesbian areas: West-end, primarily perceived to be associated with men, and East-end, mostly identified with lesbians; thus, where the genderization of space and the sexualization of space converge, the urban lesbian and gay landscape is often gendered by spatial association. In reality, however, lesbian and gay enclaves exist outside these more popular locations and beyond the city peripheries and these two specific locations are not as neatly ordered as their mythical simplicity might suggest. This research explores the construction of lesbian spaces in metro Vancouver through extensive research which began during summer 1996, and the perceptions and expectations of lesbians living in both the East-end and the West-end of Vancouver will be examined. This introductory paper provides a discussion on the opposing views of lesbians in Vancouver expressed in the survey which explode commonly held myths and stereotypes of lesbians in the East-end and the West-end. In essence, lesbian residents hold opinions of the lesbians residing in the "other" community which have political and ideological implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional geography courses have declined in status and number at many North American universities. Yet it is regional courses which students with limited geographical education at the high school level may identify as typical geography, and thus regional courses may play a significant role in recruitment of geography majors. Regional courses on the students' country or state/province offer an excellent opportunity to showcase how geographic perspectives can enrich our understanding of the familiar, both in terms of place and discipline. This paper discusses the pivotal role a regional geography course has been given in a new university's geography curriculum, and the innovative structuring of the course so as to avoid some of the deficiencies of common instructional patterns which may deter some students from pursuing further geographic education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In part because of the rapid global spread of English and other international languages, the majority of the world's students are attending school in a second or other language. Thus, there is a need to ensure that students from all countries can master an international language to a level that will permit them to contribute to academic research and publication. The rapid growth of national Internet networks and their integration into larger, international networks has made possible the creation of virtual graduate courses and graduate programmes for students around the globe. This paper describes how the author uses WebCT at the University of British Columbia to provide a highly interactive Internet course for international graduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the publication of the 'Children and War' position paper written for the Association for Childhood Education International by Norma R. Law, director of the Child Study Center in Vancouver. Concern about nuclear threat during the Cold War; Significant role of children in preventing war; Ways to educate children for peace.