The Globe and Mail

I returned to Vancouver in 1996, after a decade teaching architecture in the United States and Eastern Canada. The first phase of Concord Pacific Place was the most visible change in the city I loved so much that I took a big cut in pay to run back to it. The condo projects that now define downtown Vancouver were just coming out of the ground a few blocks away in Downtown South. These were the first buildings constructed using what has become a standard formula for downtown development: skinny condo towers of 15 to 40 storeys set on podium-like bases of townhouses lining street-fronts, with underground parking reached through an entrance on the lane behind. International jaunts by city planners and the gruding acceptance of the development industry had yielded this architectural shotgun marriage: stoops inspired by the 19th century brownstone apartments of Greenwich Village, wedded to Hong Kong's tall skinny towers.