Selling Condomania

I knew the revolution had arrived when I saw the propaganda. It was a marketing brochure, promoting yet another downtown condominium project, one of dozens launched in Vancouver during the Nineties.

All the ads at that time were ostensibly pushing condominiums. But of course they were really selling lifestyle, and with the lifestyle a revolution in what was desirable.

The ad portrayed two yuppies in bicycle helmets: heads raised, eyes intense, anticipating a brighter future, a better way of life, a high-speed Internet connection. It was mock-Soviet Realism in service to High Capitalism, with music by the Pet Shop Boys: "Go West" - or at least to West Georgia - and (here's the revolutionary part) go by bike!

By appropriating the fashion of the northwest outdoors, the designers took cycling out of the alternative-lifestyle gutter into the mainstream traffic of contemporary living.

Making density sexy

And it wasn't just cycling: the marketing campaigns of downtown developers were taking many of the public policies embedded in the grim, gray text of Council reports and translating them into eye-catching images of unquestionable appeal. Above all, they were making desirable what was generally perceived to be politically unspeakable. They were selling Density.

How well did they succeed? In today's booming Lower Mainland real estate market, sales of condos in the Vancouver downtown core set the hottest pace, with 816 units sold last month alone, a 91 percent increase over the previous month, according to the Vancouver Sun.

As those glass spires multiply so fast, it's quaint to recall that the earliest marketing brochures at the beginning of the Downtown boom were almost indistinguishable from planning documents.  In many cases, they were planning documents - renderings and photographs of models used to gain City approval for development permits.

Beautiful people in beautiful spaces

But very quickly, the dominant images shifted away from buildings to people, and it became clear that the major developers, particularly of Hong Kong-controlled Concord Pacific and Henderson Development, were appealing to two markets simultaneously - one offshore and Asian, the other local and mixed.  This was multiculturalism in action: never stated, always understood.

The people were as beautiful as the setting, and the setting was always spectacular.  The developers knew right away that they were selling views, but it took them a while to understand that the attractions of public spaces and the urban fabric were as appealing as the granite countertops and designer faucets.

But not to get carried away, the advertising was usually littered with the E words:   Extraordinary!  Entitled!  Exclusive! 

Although the City never allowed gated communities, insisted on accessible public spaces, and even bought the Yaletown docks to keep them in the public domain, the advertising would have you think otherwise. 

Nor was there any mention of the non-market housing that had to be mixed into the megaprojects, next door to the million-dollar condos.  Or to the family-housing that ensured kids would be as much a part of the community as the lean-bodied singles.

Refining the sell

But the campaigns were certainly successful, at least measured by the number of condos sold.  Within a square mile surrounding the central business district, over 150 highrises went through the approval process.  And each had to distinguish itself, as a tour of this article's accompanying gallery of advertising images attests. 

The designers soon went into their Mannerist phase. 

They took subtlety to the point of obscurity.

They sold the technology, they sold the art.

They even started selling themselves.

Ultimately, they sold the Sell.

By doing all that, they sold a way of life that a few decades ago would have been unthinkable.

Vancouver, like most North American cities, had rejected the excesses of modernism in the 1960s.  No to freeways, no to urban renewal, no to highrises.  The consensus had it that only renters lived down-town, and few by choice.

Forbidden desires

After the downzonings of the 1970s, it was difficult to impossible to build a residential tower in the City of Vancouver. What changed all that was the condominium act (now you could own that concrete box in the sky), a shortage of land, a housing crisis and a development-approval process that ensured both public input and design control.  Growth had to help pay for growth, and developers had to pay for the amenities that produced complete communities and public goods.

Even all that might not have been enough.  Without a market, no product, no matter how appealing, will survive. While the marketing itself could not have sold something people really didn't want, it did neutralize the critics who claimed that such a dense urban environment, particularly in the form of highrises, was socially and politically unacceptable.  The beautiful people were living there, after all, and you could see them for yourself.

They were on bicycles.