Vancouver’s seawall: A walking/cycling path or could it be so much more?

When you name your YouTube seawall video How Vancouver’s Waterfront Became So Boring, subtlety is not your aim.

“It definitely generated a lot of controversy, at least in some circles,” Lee said. “I’m friends with quite a few urban planners in the city and I think there were definitely some feathers ruffled.”

If nothing else, his video has helped spark a conversation.

Lee, who graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax with a bachelor degree in community design and urban/regional planning, was inspired to make it after watching a debate last April sponsored by Urbanarium, a non-profit platform for community planning and design discussions that partnered with Lee to make the video, and UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

The event was titled City Debate #13: Commercialize the Seawall.

A poll prior to the four speakers taking the podium — two of them yay, two of them nay — showed 73 per cent against the idea of more commercialization along the seawall, which runs uninterrupted from the convention centre downtown to Spanish Banks in Point Grey.