Vancouver is the Northwest's clear leader in compact growth. In 2001, more than six in ten residents of greater Vancouver lived in compact neighborhoods (more than 12 people per acre), almost twice as large a share as in any other Northwest metropolis. (See map.)

Vancouver has natural and historical advantages in containing sprawl: ocean and mountains constrain the city's land supply; province-wide legislation has protected nearby farmland, among the richest in British Columbia, in an Agricultural Land Reserve that is off-limits to development; and a fortuitous decision decades ago not to build an urban freeway system kept the city center intact while slowing the development of auto-dependent suburbs.

Yet greater Vancouver has a spotty record in some aspects of smart growth: the metropolitan area overall has done poorly in creating new jobs near housing centers; big-box stores are taking hold in the city's outskirts; and many greater Vancouver residents, particularly in recently developed areas, still depend exclusively on cars for transport.

And notwithstanding its improvements in recent years, Vancouver's overall urban density still ranks below that of eastern Canadian cities such as Montreal and Toronto, and far behind such European metropolises as Vienna, Zurich, and Munich.

But at current rates of improvement, decades will pass before the cities in any of the Northwest states can hope to match the record that British Columbia's two largest urban areas have already achieved.