Enjoy the good life, but fear for the future of the sewage system

WITH glistening office towers rising between broad beaches and forested mountains, big parks and waterfront residences, Vancouver often comes at the top of lists of the world's best cities in which to live. This week, amid much triumphalism from civic leaders, Vancouver is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the moment when a scruffy wooden lumber camp burned to the ground, and the foundations of what is now western Canada's largest city were laid. But for all its picture-postcard image, Vancouver, like other Canadian cities, faces some pressing problems and lacks the means to deal with them.

Those headaches include Downtown Eastside, a ghetto of crime, poverty and drug addiction that is the country's sickest urban area. Soaringhouse prices intermingle with homelessness. The middle class is being squeezed out to the suburbs. Although the city has lost corporate head offices to Calgary, in oil-rich Alberta, the population of Greater Vancouver is set to rise from 2m to 3.4m by 2041, according to the planners. The city faces a steep bill to expand public transport, upgrade sewers and water systems and repair crumbling civic buildings, roads and bridges.

Vancouver's difficulties are mirrored across the country. Provincial governments have neglected their responsibility for such matters as social housing, welfare, mental illness, drug addiction and policing. All told, Canada's big cities need at least C$238 billion ($243 billion) to repair and expand infrastructure, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. But municipal governments lack both money and powers. They