Public participation
For several years before the residents of Vancouver woke up to the fact that a freeway was going to be built through their historic Chinatown without anyone having asked them if they approved of such a scheme, power at City Hall was not in the hands of the elected mayor and alderman, but in those of the two appointed city commissioners. One of these, as chief planner in 1959, had generated a city plan that was "completely automobile and freeway oriented [...] In clamour for getting his plan implemented, Commissioner Sutton-Brown seems to rely on the philosophy that the decision making process should not be made cumbersome by public participation." Public participation was soon to make a difference as the freeway controversy developed.