vancouver: resort or metropolis?

I stumbled across this excellent article on Jason van der Burg's blog site which I think bears some discussion from the perspective of real estate as well as from that of urban sustainability. If you haven't already read it, you might find it useful - the author raises the interesting argument that by giving over all of the downtown core to new residential real estate developments, we may achieve a shining example of Larry Beasley's "liveable density" concept, but at the cost of the city failing as a vibrant, functioning metropolis which also attracts business and industry. He points out that while downtown currently seems hip and diverse, with typical residents portrayed as "mountain-biking software and computer game developers, walk-to-work denizens of the postmodern economy," a lot of evidence points to the fact that a significant proportion of new condos built in the last decade are owned by "a golden global class temporarily parking their investment dollars, linked with a huge cohort of Canadian baby boomers planning to spend their final years in Vancouver."

Estimates are that one-quarter of downtown purchasers are international speculative investors and another quarter are Canadian non-residents who rent out their apartments, Vancouver's only new source of rental housing in a decade. These mainly young renters give downtown its current
air of diversity. But soon after the arthritis kicks in for their greying landlords, these cultural creatives will get booted out.

Boddy also suggests that because 90 percent of downtown tower construction over the last 10 years has been residential condos, not only is Vancouver faced with a serious shortage of new rental housing, but Vancouver's downtown is

heading towards a fate as a dormitory suburb (transit ridership projections have more people leaving the core than coming in each morning, and downtown traffic levels and commute times have been reduced)
while new employment continues to locate in suburban fringes ill-served by transit.

When I considered focusing my blog around real estate demographics, I must admit in retrospect that it was in fact the intense focus on residential development so apparent in Vancouver at the moment that had piqued my interest. I had almost forgotten that the real estate market also governs the other important uses of land that drive a city's economy: agriculture, retail, industrial, and of course commercial. It looks like it's possible Vancouver's planners have made the same mistake when it comes to the downtown peninsula.