In 1968, Shirley Chan and her family faced civic eviction from their home on Keefer Street in Chinatown to make way for a proposed freeway that would link Highway 1 with Carrall Street and continue to Burrard Inlet, slicing through Vancouver. The city offered them $6,000. Chan and a newly-arrived city hall employee named Darlene Marzari, a recent graduate of the London School of Economics, galvanized pressure on City Hall to protect the Strathcona neighbourhood, whereupon Vancouver was spared the blight of an intrusive freeway system in its downtown core, along the lines of Seattle and Toronto. Its one of the nine stories told in City Making in Paradise: Nine Decisions That Saved Vancouver (D&M $24.95), a slim book about some successes of regional planning in the Lower Mainland since 1945. Former Mayor Mike Harcourt-co-author with Ken Cameron and Sean Rossiter-previously recalled in his memoir A Measure of Defiance, "It does not happen often in life but Darlene Marzari and Shirley Chan are two people whom you can point to and say, 'They are the reason why Vancouver is as attractive a city as it is today. These two women truly helped save our city. The Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association is the single most significant reason why Vancouver is such a profoundly liveable city today."; 978-1-55365-257-1