Events like these reinforced Hastings Street’s role as the city’s ceremonial main street — Vancouver’s primary public showcase. In later years, this civic role shifted westward, to municipally designated ceremonial streets such as West Georgia Street and Burrard Street. The Great Depression struck Vancouver in 1929, with impacts that lingered well into the 1930s. The Downtown Eastside felt these effects early and intensely, as it was often the first place where job seekers arrived — and stayed — when employment failed to materialize.

At the same time, the region’s economic and civic “centre of gravity” began to move west. Key decisions — such as the 1912 construction of the courthouse and the relocations of Vancouver City Hall and Vancouver Public Library’s Central Branch — along with broader planning and economic trends, redirected investment and foot traffic away from the Downtown Eastside. Commercial energy increasingly consolidated in the emerging downtown core to the west. As institutions and visitors moved, many businesses followed, gradually reducing daily activity and weakening the customer base that had sustained a bustling retail and entertainment district.

The disappearance of Japantown also played a role in the Downtown Eastside’s decline. Before the Second World War, the Powell Street area was a vibrant Japanese Canadian community that supported local businesses and street life. The forced removal and internment of Japanese Canadians beginning in 1942 abruptly dismantled this community, and few residents were able to return after the war, leaving a lasting social and economic void in the neighbourhood......and tragically this old urban precinct evolved into an almost forgotten run-down retail area full of SRO's and finally into the slum with decayed tents and garbage on the sidewalks that it is now.....and it's crawling a little into the existing urban core!  https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/downtown-eastside-vancouver-photos-before-after                                                                     

This is not unique to Vancouver- other cities in Canada are infected, and in the US some cities this decay has taken over the entire downtown area!6 US cities where fear of homelessness has reached crisis levels, survey finds. MSN Marcel Kuhn12-12-2025  Walking through certain neighborhoods feels like navigating an entirely different reality.                                                                                                                                                                    The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported approximately 75,500 homeless individuals in Los Angeles County in 2023, creating visible encampments that residents never imagined would become permanent fixtures. Honestly, the scale is staggering when you see it firsthand.                                                                                                                  Las Vegas: The Surprising Crisis Behind The Neon. Las Vegas tells a story few saw coming. Las Vegas presents a unique case where the glitz and glamour of the Strip contrasts sharply with one of the nation's fastest-growing homelessness crises, as Clark County is experiencing its highest level of homelessness in a decade, with 7,928 people recorded in 2024 – a 56% increase over the past three years.The fear in Las Vegas is particularly acute because residents had not expected their city to join the ranks of major metropolitan areas struggling with visible homelessness. That shock factor makes the crisis feel even more overwhelming.                                                                                           Chicago: Racial Disparities And Migrant Pressures. The City's annual Point-in-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness estimated 18,836 people experiencing homelessness in shelters or unsheltered locations on January 25, 2024, a three-fold increase from the 2023 estimate of 6,139 people. What's deeply troubling is the racial dimension. The PIT identified that 72% of the total non-New Arrivals population in Chicago experiencing homelessness during the 2024 PIT Count identified as Black or African American, but less than 30% of residents in Chicago identify as Black or African American, a disparity that highlights systemic inequalities that the crisis has intensified rather than created.                        New York City: The Epicenter Of American Homelessness. New York City stands as the epicentre of America's homelessness crisis, with the situation reaching unprecedented levels in 2024, as between 2023 and 2024, New York saw a 53 per cent increase in homelessness. Think about that for a moment - a majority increase in just one year in the nation's largest city......read on    https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/general/6-us-cities-where-fear-of-homelessness-has-reached-crisis-levels-survey-finds/ar-AA1T80zB?ocid=BingNewsVerp    

 Deep Dive Cities......Driving transformative change through long-term, cross-sectoral, data-driven engagement in cities to create a healthier, more resilient and sustainable urban environment for all. Cities are complex living systems and are increasingly at the nexus of economic, social and climate concerns as well as opportunities. Cities must not only address longstanding urban challenges — such as housing, water, transport, sanitation and energy — but are also expected to bear the brunt of climate change impacts in the coming years.Responses to urban issues that operate through short-term, single-sector interventions are insufficient to address the complexity of the modern city. We need to enact multi-sectoral, long-term and locally led solutions to create healthier, safer and more sustainable cities for people and the planet.

About the Deep Dive Cities Initiative..........City Metrics Dashboard  CityMetrics is an online data platform to explore indicators and geospatial datasets related to the urban environment of many cities with which WRI works, including cities participating in UrbanShift, Cities4Forests and WRI Ross Center’s Deep Dive Cities Initiative. WRI Ross Center’s Deep Dive Cities Initiative focuses on locally driven strategic projects as entry points to foster long-term, cross-sectoral and transformative change. Through the initiative, WRI provides strategic funding and additional technical capacity to support a wide range of projects, from decarbonizing transportation and enhancing climate action, to strengthening disaster preparedness and urban resilience. The initiative also allows WRI to share lessons learned from across its network of partner cities.

The Deep Dive Cities Initiative is a core approach to how WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities does its work, bridging support across multiple political administrations and projects and building relationships with diverse stakeholders to strengthen strategic planning and implementation. This initiative builds on existing engagement and strong relationships with cities across WRI Ross Center’s network of offices in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, Turkey, Ethiopia, Rwanda and China to advance pathways for transformative change.

Where and How Does WRI Engage With Deep Dive Cities?......Priority cities are chosen where WRI has a strong presence through existing projects and multi-sectoral partnership opportunities are strongest. By leveraging ongoing WRI work in cities while jump starting new key initiatives, priority cities become measurably more inclusive, resilient and low-carbon. The results not only improve quality of life and sustainability directly but contribute to creating an enabling environment for sustained engagement over time. 

The Deep Dive Cities Initiative enables transformative urban change in three primary ways.....Multi-year engagement: Inspired by the successes of over two decades of engagement in cities like Bengaluru, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, the initiative helps WRI Ross Center work in priority cities beyond typical project lifecycles. We build coalitions and support work across political administrations and funding sources, implementing strategic projects that catalyze enduring urban transformation. We also provide flexible financing to act on opportunities as they emerge and build momentum over time. 

Cross-sectoral technical expertise: The initiative supports knowledge exchange and the practical application of technical expertise that transcends traditional sectoral divisions. From guiding the creation of “climate-smart communities” in Shenzhen to creating educational cycling campaigns in Istanbul and improving disaster resilience in Kochi, we help municipal and community stakeholders to document and apply evidence-based solutions that cut across traditionally siloed policy areas including transport, water resilience, urban regeneration, clean energy and air quality.                                Trusted relationships.....read on    https://www.wri.org/initiatives/deep-dive-cities

Passive measures are a valuable first priority.......While both pillars of passive and active measures benefit resilience and decarbonization, passive measures are the first priority to address two main challenges: 1) peak energy load management and 2) energy affordability and equity. Electrification in the building, transportation, and industrial sectors is projected to dramatically increase peak electricity demand. Prioritizing passive measures helps manage the total electricity load growth. For example, according to RMI research (Hu et al. 2024), peak electricity demand in New York State could rise by 123 percent by 2050 if residential buildings are simply electrified. However, implementing residential envelope retrofits combined with building electrification would reduce this peak electricity demand growth by 27 percent.

Moreover, passive measures are already widely implemented and prioritized in decarbonization efforts to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. RMI's founder, Amory Lovins, highlights that equipping buildings with passive measures can eliminate, shrink, or simplify HVAC equipment when electrified. Another challenge is energy affordability and equity, which is recognized as an essential priority in both national and state level building decarbonization efforts. Prioritizing passive measures such as weatherization drives down total energy usage and lowers utility costs year-round. It also reduces the size of solar PV and battery storage to meet a building’s remaining energy needs and provide back-up power when necessary. Because passive measures can reduce total load and shift load outside of the hours of peak demand on the grid, it helps empower buildings as grid resources that support reliability. Each of these benefits is especially valuable for households in environmental justice communities that may financially struggle to purchase and use heating and cooling equipment to maintain safe indoor conditions during extreme events. Notably, RMI research has demonstrated that passive measures significantly extend a homes’ “hours of safety” during an outage shown below. Improving passive measures in new buildings to meet or exceed current energy code is often cost-effective, and in existing buildings can extend the ability to shelter in place by as much as 120 percent during extreme cold and up to 140 percent during extreme heat. However, passive measures have been adopted more slowly than the rate needed to confront climate threats. Quantifying the resilience benefits of passive measures could be beneficial to accelerate the adoption of .......

Passive measures .......These measures improve the building envelope to reduce the required capacity of heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting systems by maximizing the use of natural resources such as sunlight and airflow. This passively extends the “hours of safety” indoors when buildings have no power during extreme weather events.

Active Measures......These measures take a more active resilience role by generating, storing, providing, and efficiently using energy. Some ensure continuous access to critical energy services. Others position buildings as an asset to grid reliability both in normal operations and through power outages. In many cases, these measures provide both services. Individual active measures can be networked locally into microgrids or virtually aggregated to form virtual power plants (VPP).

Three real-world examples demonstrate the value of breaking down silos.....Using this integrated approach to decarbonization and resilience, we can steward climate progress and prepare for future climate threats like flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires......read on   https://rmi.org/resilient-carbon-free-buildings-are-within-reach/

Drought is quietly pushing American cities toward a fiscal cliff. Drought is set to pose a greater risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market than floods, hurricanes, and wildfires combined.Grist Tik Root Senior Staff Writer 27 Oct 2025  City of Clyde sits about two hours west of Fort Worth on the plains of north Texas. It gets its water from a lake by the same name a few miles away. Starting in 2022, scorching weather caused its levels to drop farther and farther. Within a year, officials had declared a water conservation emergency, and on August 1 of last year, they raised the warning level again. That meant residents rationing their spigot use even more tightly, especially lawn irrigation. The restrictions weren’t, however, the worst news that day: The city also missed two debt payments. Municipal bond defaults of any kind are extraordinarily rare, let alone those linked to a changing climate. But with about 4,000 residents and an annual budget of under $10 million, Clyde has never had room to absorb surprises. So when poor financial planning collided with the prolonged dry spell, the city found itself stretched beyond its limits. The drought meant that Clyde sold millions of gallons less water, even as it imported more of it from neighboring Abilene, at about $1,200 per day. Worse, as the ground dried, it cracked, destroying a sewer main and bursting another quarter-million dollar hole in the town budget. Within days of Clyde missing its payments, rating agency Standard & Poor’s slashed the city’s bond ratings, which limited its ability to borrow more money. Within weeks, officials had hiked taxes and water rates to help staunch the financial bleeding.