We already have Yaletown, LEED buildings, laneway houses, and numerous international awards for livability, walkability, and sustainability.

Few would argue with the inspiring language in the EcoDensity Charter, and hence its conceited enactment last Tuesday night in Vancouver Council. The most expensive staff report in North American history, EcoDensity reflects well on what we have done in this city, and might well carry on to do.

The only question is: as a piece of legislation, what does it legally enable or change? Where are its metrics, standards, or mechanisms for accountability? From sitting Councillors to world-renowned planners, many people simply asked "where's the beef?"

Full of internal contradictions and calls for additional study, Vancouver's new EcoDensity Charter says absolutely nothing to the development community except to expect higher costs, which is of course exactly what Vancouver needs!

It does, however, have much to say to Vancouver's residential and small business communities. Neighbourhood-based planning is over.

Philip Owen's CityPlan and the Community Visions program it inspired are barely mentioned, except as something to be "built upon," as once were the truly green First Nations settlements of this area.

Largely abandoned since the dawn of EcoDensity in 2006, with Action Plans ignored, meeting records forgotten, and Council funding denied, CityPlan committees all received written warnings two weeks ago that the decade-old neighbourhood planning program was "under review." The entire program will be reconsidered and reassessed this fall at one city-wide meeting. Sounds neighbourly, doesn't it?

Twenty-nine separate community groups, the largest and most diverse coalition ever assembled in Vancouver to oppose a municipal initiative, voted democratically time and again for the past 4 months to take a firm stand against each of the three EcoDensity Drafts for what it actually represented, a gag order on all those who have made Vancouver great.

From Randy Chatterjee