We were never going to be able to keep Vancouver a secret. The setting alone is too spectacular: the ocean, the mountains, the verdant forests and, arguably, the best climate in Canada. Vancouver is the quintessential safe harbour, physically and politically – its government stable, its people welcoming and law-abiding. Yet, as late as the 1980s, the city remained an uninspiring – and undiscovered – provincial capital. Even the great Vancouver-born architect Arthur Erickson complained, then, that it was an ugly city in a beautiful place.

No longer. Today, Vancouver ranks in the top five on every list of the world’s most livable cities, with a reputation for planning and design so strong that it has spawned its own architectural phenomenon: Vancouverism. The once- utilitarian resource-based community is now a modern, high- tech pacific focal point. It claims Canada’s fastest-growing technology sector, with its start-up ecosystem ranked the 15th best in the world, generating over $26 billion in revenue annually. The technology and creative sector now employs more people in Vancouver, and in British Columbia, than the traditional industries of forestry, mining, and oil and gas – combined.

Vancouver is also among the world’s most welcoming cities: it is the fourth-most cosmopolitan, with more than 45 percent of its residents foreign-born, a tally exceeded only by London, Sydney and Toronto; and it is Canada’s principal link to Asia Pacific.

Vancouver’s exquisite natural beauty remains such an obvious draw that the city’s global status is sometimes dismissed as an accident of geography, but there is no question that some of Vancouver’s current success is rooted in more than a century of good decision-making. As early as 1886 – the year Vancouver was incorporated – City Council petitioned the Government of Canada for permission to lease and protect what is now Stanley Park, still a green treasure in the city centre. Early city politicians and administrators also commissioned the seawall (which now extends over 30 kilometres of urban waterfront), preserving a connection to the ocean unlike that in any other major city in the world. The city and region also turned back freeway proposals in the 1970s, preventing the destruction of residential communities in their path and creating the potential for the walkable, livable city centre for which the city has become so famous. The government has also supported the development of an education system that, at every level, stands among the best in the world – including, at the highest level, the University of British Columbia, which is regularly acknowledged as one of the world’s premier public research universities (a factor contributing to Vancouver’s strength as a technology and biotechnology leader).

Yet, the real emergence of Vancouver as a global city can be traced, at least in part, to the last World’s Fair ever held in North America – Expo 86. That fair provided the impetus for building Metro Vancouver’s first rail rapid transit system, the SkyTrain. It also launched the city onto the international stage.

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## The Convergence of Location and Quality

It’s a mistake to treat real estate as a commodity. If you buy property by the square foot, you can always get something cheaper, something farther away – something weighed, as it were, by the pound. The value of that purchase will rise and fall with the market, sometimes rising a little faster in boom times, but usually falling a little further in a downturn.

In all economic circumstances, quality will float to the surface. In that calculation, location is undeniably important. The world’s highest-quality (and highest-value) real estate markets all share strengths in such broad factors as geography, climate, accessibility, prosperity, stability, and social and environmental livability. They tend to be in economic and cultural capitals.

## Examples of High-Value Cities & Examples of Highest-Value Properties

The highest value, however, attaches not just to properties in the best location, but those that are best in class. These are marked by extraordinary architecture often with unforgettable views, and are distinguished by an extremely high quality of execution. Even beyond the general quality of their location, they are also placed carefully in their immediate space – their interaction and by their very presence enriches their setting. Such buildings don’t just benefit their owners, residents, retailers and tenants, they improve entire neighbourhoods.

If you look to the world’s great cities, you only find a few such buildings in every market. These are the Triple A addresses, the places claimed by those with the most discerning tastes.

In Vancouver, there might be five such properties, four developed by Westbank and a fifth by QuadReal: respectively, they are the Fairmont Pacific Rim by James Cheng; Vancouver House by Bjarke Ingels; Alberni by Kengo Kuma; and most recently The Butterfly, by the late Bing Thom; all for Westbank; with The Post by QuadReal, an urban revitalization of the Canada Post facility.

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