One of the main reasons touted for this is that we didn't allow the creation of a freeway system into the downtown core and along our waterfront. This was part of the planning in the '60s like every other major city but when it came time to build it the residents said no and stopped the process.
As you can see the streets are fairly wide (wider than they are now) to accommodate the electric trolley cars, the horse-draw carriages and the multitude of pedestrians and cyclists.
You're close but miss the mark. The solution is simply to change the existing _minimum_ parking requirements to a _maximum_ and then simply let market forces take care of it.
Michael Geist has done the most to explain the new laws. Since they just came into effect there are many articles like the following that explain the details:
I think that was the point of the reputation economy the article speculated. Much harder to get away with that kind of abuse with a ubiquitous, trustable (ie. decentralized) reputation system.
I was called and agreed to be part of poll commissioned by some segment of the media industry a few weeks ago. The caller was speechless that I had no "TV" and listened to no radio stations.
Of course our two-person professional household has high-speed internet and a total of 8 "screens" including laptops, workstations, phones, tablets and a 50" screen for our media center.
Not yet. While it's very interesting and research-worthy technology we are far from able to declare it "safe" and it should not be left to multinational agribusiness to patent and commercialize.
Although it started by stating that every member of the network possesses a complete copy of the ledger which isn't the case (eg. Electrum, mobile wallets, etc.)
You can learn a bit more about the history in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts#Vancouver