Top headlines from Vancouver and beyond for July 27 2011:

Dozens of citizens gathered at City Hall yesterday to protest what they call the “broken” planning and rezoning process in Vancouver. Randy Helten, organizer of the demonstration and president of West End Neighbours, told the crowd that the City is ignoring and misinforming the public, and that the planning department appears as an advocate for developers rather than residents. As the city wrestles with a housing affordability crisis and the need to shelter an additional 70,000 residents over the next ten years, density looms large, as does the opposition to it.

Environment Minister Terry Lake’s decision to support a mass-burn incinerator for Metro Vancouver’s garbage has prompted outrage from opponents in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Tentative approval was given for the plan to burn trash and convert it to electricity contingent on the implementation of alternative air quality protection technologies. While many residents and politicians are concerned, scientists in the region point to the farming, sprawl, and commuter traffic as the main sources of air pollution in the region. “If we’re trying to get emissions down, there’s a lot they could be doing in the Valley that I don’t see them doing — not allowing sprawl, taxing property development more to put in their own transportation systems and so on,” the CBC quotes Marc Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at SFU.

The banishment of a homeless man from Saltspring Island, after he was involved in theft and an altercation with the police, has raised the ire of the B.C. Civil Liberties association. The island, home to former rock stars, politicians and the otherwise well-to-do, banished another person from their community last June following a domestic disturbance, and lawyers are arguing that it sets a dangerous NIMBYist precedent, where problems are displaced rather than resolved. “Saltspring Island is an island, not an island unto itself,” BCCLA Executive Director David Eby soundbites for the Globe.

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