Abstract: Since Ebenezer Howard published “Garden Cities of Tomorrow”, planners have promoted self-containment of travel, and mode shift to public transport. Unfortunately, most of these attempts have failed. The history of planning is littered with what Peter Hall has called “Great Planning Disasters.” In recent years, Vancouver has attracted attention from a range of urban commentators: in 2005, The Economist christened it “the world’s most livable city”. But in July 2006, Statistics Canada released an assessment that should have attracted even more attention, particularly from planners. Over the period 1992 to 2005, Vancouver was the only Canadian city in which the time taken by the average resident to get to and from work declined. In other cities journey times increased markedly, even though none of them experienced such rapid population growth as Vancouver. Significantly, this period corresponds to that covered by the Livable Region Strategic Plan, which was adopted in 1993 and promotes self-containment plus mode shift away from the automobile. Since Vancouver built no new major roads during this period, the improvements in trip times show that the plans succeeded: at last, a city has achieved the “holy grail” of planning! This paper draws out the lessons for Australasian cities from the Vancouver success story, by examining the policies and actions taken in the areas of transport, urban consolidation and development regulation. On each of these issues, Vancouver’s approach is crucially different from those of Australasian cities: our failure to make the “hard decisions” taken by Vancouver explains why we have not been able to replicate its success.