Having lived in an absolutely wonderful city with incredible neighborhoods and street-life (DC), in which no building was taller than about 14 floors due to extreme height restrictions, I always find this talk about skyscraper heights to seem rather "phallic"
. I think some of the streetscapes here are quite nice, but they pale in comparison to the scale of buildings and quality of the sidewalks and street fronts and facades there. And I am NOT talking about the federal buildings downtown. The neighborhoods outside the federal area are amazing . . . great scale of people to buildings, outdoor cafes, great attention to the building facades (due in part to the lower buildings), a much broader city of neighborhood hubs. Paris is the only city I've seen that does it better, and not in all aspects.
If you think having a parade of monoliths makes a city livable or more impressive, you should really rethink your ideas of cities and visit a few more (i.e. not just hong kong or others on the Pacific rim). Vancouver does not have the street widths - or land area downtown - to be another New York or Chicago. It would become a monolith of shadows with the narrow streets that dominate most of downtown. You might get a postcard or two out of the deal, but it could easily destroy the very ambiance that makes downtown Vancouver special.
Review the view cones, certainly, but what I always read in discussions here sounds more like angry vitriol calls to abolish them all together, which would just be pathetically dumb. The city would suffer if that were to happen.