{"id":6116,"date":"2026-06-05T00:51:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=6116"},"modified":"2026-06-05T00:51:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:51:06","slug":"books-on-cities-vancouverized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=6116","title":{"rendered":"Books on Cities: Vancouverized"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"1108\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Douglas-Coupland-City-of-Glass.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6117\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.812274393799533;object-fit:cover;width:450px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Douglas-Coupland-City-of-Glass.webp 900w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Douglas-Coupland-City-of-Glass-768x945.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The SkyTrain, Vancouver\u2019s current rail transit system, first went into service 40 years ago. Several promotional shorts made in the run-up to its opening are available to view on Youtube, the most elaborate of which is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7YlyJv4Wlhs\">\u201cGoin\u2019 to Town.\u201d<\/a> Produced not long before the opening of SkyTrain\u2019s first line, itself scheduled not long before the opening of Expo 86 world\u2019s fair, the film captures both the aesthetic of its historical moment and the mild but relentless tone of Vancouver boosterism in the twentieth century and early twenty-first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt seems as though the city and the people who are the city have bloomed to fulfill a new sense of destiny, to greet a beckoning capacity for urban maturity and share it with the rest of the world,\u201d intones the consummate eighties-informational-video narrator over the final shots of the skyline at sunset. \u201cThe measure of a city must be the freedom of people to move and interact within it. The extent to which the city makes them happy and safe while doing so is the measure of its greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, that\u2019s a measure of its greatness, in any case, and one that sounds pleasing but upon reflection curiously unambitious, much like the principle of \u201cpeace, order, and good government\u201d often cited as central to Canada\u2019s confederation. Also telling is the fact that the closing narration doesn\u2019t mention Vancouver by name; \u201cthe city,\u201d incidentally, was also how the cast of the contemporary Toronto-filmed cop drama <em>Night Heat<\/em> invariably referred to the show\u2019s setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.booksoncities.com\/p\/from-terminal-city-to-lotusland-to\">at Substack<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The SkyTrain, Vancouver\u2019s current rail transit system, first went into service 40 years ago. Several promotional shorts made in the run-up to its opening are available to view on Youtube, the most elaborate of which is \u201cGoin\u2019 to Town.\u201d Produced not long before the opening of SkyTrain\u2019s first line, itself scheduled not long before the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,101,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-books-on-cities","category-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6118,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions\/6118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}