Retired real estate lawyer, author of The Condominium Manual and former adjunct law professor.

Voiceless in Mount Pleasant: Towers and the Death of Public Oversight

By Mike Mangan

Retired real estate lawyer, author of The Condominium Manual and former adjunct law professor.

Mike will explain how City Council has step-by-step excluded the voices of residents in the way Mount Pleasant develops, and what residents can do about it. Now, City Council approves massive tower after tower on our quiet streets without any genuine regard for residents’ concerns.

Issue

Vancouver’s historic neighbourhood planning tradition is being eclipsed by citywide growth frameworks that prioritize development scale and financial yield over community-based planning principles. As the city approaches the 2026 civic election, there is a timely need to re-centre public understanding of neighbourhood planning, local knowledge, and place-based decision-making.

Background

Vancouver has a long legacy of neighbourhood-led planning that emphasized livability, social cohesion, and context-sensitive urban design. Recent planning approaches have shifted toward broad, top-down growth strategies, often experienced by residents as disconnected from local needs and neighbourhood character.

There is strong public interest in revisiting how neighbourhood planning can:

• Support housing affordability without eroding livability

• Balance growth with infrastructure, services, and social capacity

• Strengthen democratic participation at the local level