Vancouver has always entertained the conceit that it was different from other places. We were greener, more progressive, more livable.

This conceit even has a brand name. “Vancouverism” is the phenomenon we claim to export to the world: that model of a densely populated city centre served by an abundance of public amenities and public transit.

I think we can pretty well jettison that fiction now.

Vancouverism might be a reality for two or three neighbourhoods huddling in the downtown, and that greener, more progressive ethos might hold sway in one or two more.

But Vancouver — and I speak of it in the metro sense — is the sum of its parts, and most of its parts are suburban in their sensibilities, and that includes not just all of the suburbs but most of the neighbourhoods in the City of Vancouver proper.

They’re resistant to change. They abhor densification. They’re conventional in their sensibilities and they’re highly dependent on the automobile. More importantly, they’re not just dependent on the automobile, they prefer it.

Somehow, that important distinction was ignored in the plebiscite campaign. But what you did hear were complaints about TransLink’s governance or track record — complaints that were bogus, because most people in the public haven’t got a clue how TransLink is governed or how well it performs. Nor do they care. They’ve never been near a bus in their lives and wouldn’t stoop to ride one now. They solemnly swear that they would take transit if it were more convenient to do so, but that’s a lie disguised as a justification. I live in a far-flung suburban neighbourhood where public transit gets me downtown in less time than it would take me to drive my car, and most mornings the bus is never more than a quarter full.

That’s why polls showed that those who voted no in the plebiscite were more likely to live outside Vancouver and drive on a daily basis. They never use transit, so they had no idea whether transit service was good or not. They knew nothing of the public transit system, the future of which they were to decide. Did they care that a public transit system actually benefits them by alleviating pressures on the roads they drive, or that a public transit system allows the workforce to expand, or that it disproportionately benefits the young and elderly? No. All they knew was they didn’t want their tax dollars spent on it.

Yet while there’s much heat and froth over a .5 per cent rise in the sales tax to subsidize public transit, nary a peep is heard on the vastly greater subsidies drivers enjoy in the form of billion-dollar bridges, road maintenance and an ever-expanding road system. And that’s not to mention the costs that auto use causes in health care and environmental damage.

It would be a mistake to believe the plebiscite was merely about a tax hike. It was much more than that. Our wrecking ball of a premier has managed, in a stroke, to shatter the tenets of Vancouverism, which have taken decades to develop, from the fight to stop a freeway entering the downtown, to the development of Granville Island and False Creek, to the establishment of a network of bike lanes. It brings to a halt a coherent plan of development for Metro Vancouver. It not only leaves municipalities at sea, but developers, too, because, as the mayors kept saying, the orderly development of a city goes hand in hand with the development of public transit — the two can’t be divorced from one another. Where will those new densification corridors go now? What do you do with sites like the Jericho Lands if there isn’t the transit infrastructure to serve the increase in population there? What can we expect in the suburbs if they don’t develop transit there? More sprawl?

The questions pile up. But the most perceptive question was one I heard in a conversation with Gordon Price, director of Simon Fraser University’s City program. To him, the plebiscite asked a question much more philosophical than yea or nay to a transit tax.

“To me,” Price said, “it was an existential question.

“It asked Metro Vancouverites, ‘Who are we?’ ”

By that he meant, what did we believe made a good city? What were our core beliefs as citizens, not just of the city but of the world?

And the answer is, I think, we’re nothing special. The real Vancouver is like a hundred other cities. We can’t see past the ends of our driveways, much less into the future, and we don’t want to.

The No side didn’t win the plebiscite.

The car did.

pmcmartin@vancouversun.com