The Greater Vancouver Regional District (recently renamed "Metro Vancouver") published its Livable Region Strategic Plan in 1996 with the goal of maintaining the livability of the Vancouver metropolitan area. A decade later, it is clear that the plan contains serious flaws that are actually making the region less livable each year.

In writing the plan and the plan's predecessors, the region's leaders could have focused on reducing the impacts of growth through technical solutions, such as controlling auto emissions, and through user fees and incentives that ensure people pay the full costs of their housing, transportation, and other choices. Instead, planners focused on efforts to change people's behaviour by manipulating and strictly regulating land uses.