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I went to Vancouver, Canada Thursday to preview “Cabin Fever,” now open at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Read the article on page five.

It was the most different day I have had in the Pacific Northwest since I moved here. The $44 (Canadian) parking fee was the least of it.

There were all those people out on the streets downtown. It seemed that more were on one block than in all of La Conner. And all of them were walking. The very noticeable demographics of the population jumped out: all sexes, ages and colors and different clothing styles and languages. And so many were walking in their neighborhoods after work. I haven’t seen so many pedestrians at home in their neighborhoods since I lived in Minneapolis.

Then there were the buildings downtown. So much of the downtown is skyscrapers. Who knew they came in so many shades of blue and brown glass? There was an obvious preference for curved building sides. Architects and developers were not afraid of unusual geometric shapes. Once built, many had trees and greenery growing high up, on top floors.

This city of over 600,000 has no expressway through it. At its outskirts the freeway turns into surface streets. Not till you go over the bridge from Stanley Park into north Vancouver does the expressway start. Patience – and time – are required for getting into and out of the city.

Evolving into one of the world’s most livable cities was no accident. But it didn’t start with city leaders, corporate elites or government planners. Vancouver today is a result of citizen push-back, that noisy, messy uncertainty of citizens not only voicing their concerns but insisting on being listened to. In the late sixties people organized to say no to an expressway through their downtown neighborhoods, an elevated roadway that would block the view of and access to the bay.

It is a storyline similar to the one Skagit Valley citizens created when they stopped nuclear power plants in 1979. It is the same story activists are writing in Seattle in pursuing corporate taxes to alleviate homelessness. Notice how politicians have retreated from supporting that.

Internet research brought this up:

Bing Thom, a prominent Vancouver architect, credits the city’s success to, among other things, timing and sensibility.

“One of the legacies of the protests was that they created an appetite and appreciation for critical debate. We have had enlightened civil servants and an educated citizenry. Everyone has an opinion, and you can talk logic and ideas even if you disagree.”

Wouldn’t it be great to live where “you can talk logic and ideas even if you disagree?”