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If Toronto is the new Florence, ablaze with construction in an unprecedented cultural building boom, Vancouver is the new Venice. So says architect Bing Thom, the visionary behind a recent plan to create a so-called "cultural precinct" for the city.

"Just as in the Renaissance, when Venice facilitated and expressed the meeting of the West and the Orient, today the contemporary crossroads between East and West is in Vancouver," Thom writes in a planning document that imagines the precinct as a place to celebrate and leverage Vancouver's position as North America's "Asian capital."

Another similarity in Thom's comparison? Development in Venice lagged far behind Florence.

That may soon start to change. Last month, Vancouver council and the B.C. government jointly announced they will each spend $5-million on the planning and initial construction of what they called a cultural "precinct." Among other things, the development might include a provincial Asia-Pacific Museum of Trade and Culture, a National Gallery of Aboriginal Art (championed by the Bill Reid Society) and two performance halls (alternative venues for the Coal Harbour Arts Complex, which has been squeezed out of its original waterfront destination by the Vancouver Convention Centre expansion).

The precinct would be located on a city-owned block bounded by West Georgia, Hamilton, Dunsmuir and Beatty streets. Currently a parking lot it was once a grassy field called Larwill Park. Opened in 1887, it held Vancouver's first sports venue, which is fitting, since it's the Olympic Winter Games that inspired this latest project. "Vancouver is home to Canada's most vibrant artistic and cultural community -- it helps define our community and it's critical to our economy," Premier Gordon Campbell trumpeted in a press release. "It is Vancouver's face to the world in 2010."

The announcement -- as scant in detail as it was bold in ambition -- was a welcome surprise to Vancouverites who have long lamented the city's lack of iconic cultural venues. Other than the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, the quaint Orpheum Theatre and Moshe Safdie's Colosseum-styled library, what does Vancouver have? "It's high time," says urban thinker Lance Berelowitz, author of Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination. "How long can we trade on our natural good looks? If Vancouver is serious about competing in the global marketplace of city states, then we have to see culture not as a cost but as an investment."

Some observers are skeptical; the provincial government, until very recently, has had an appalling record when it comes to supporting the arts. "You can't expect a Cadillac if you're paying for a beater," warned Heather Redfern, executive director of the Greater Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture, speaking at a recent day-long culture summit convened by Olga Ilich, the provincial minister for tourism, sports and the arts. Last year, however, Victoria established the $25-million B.C. Arts Renaissance Fund to help match private-sector grants to arts organizations. It also increased the B.C. Arts Council's program budget by $3-million, to $13.95-million -- the first increase since 1992.

Arts officials are generally pleased, but wary. "I find it an interesting paradox," Redfern continued. "Here we are talking about building a new cultural precinct while we're struggling to come up with $300,000 to buy Kogawa House [Joy Kogawa's childhood home]. And you can't even go to the toilet at the Cultch during intermission." The Cultch -- the Vancouver East Cultural Centre -- is a performance venue with one washroom and no dressing rooms that's struggling to raise $13.5-million for a renovation.

It's not alone. The city-owned Queen Elizabeth and Playhouse theatres also need overhauls. The sound separation is so poor that actors onstage at the Playhouse struggle to be heard over the rock concerts at the adjoining Queen Elizabeth. The cramped Vancouver Art Gallery is looking for a new home, as is the Maritime Museum.

Then there's the Pantages, one of Canada's oldest surviving vaudeville theatres. It's rotting away because fundraising efforts have failed. The $10-million earmarked for planning a new cultural district would likely be enough to redo Pantages. The Downtown Eastside is home to several new galleries as well as Simon Fraser University's School of Contemporary Arts, so a renewed Pantages could anchor its own cultural district.

"I think the Premier means well," says Hank Bull, executive director of Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. "He sees Vancouver as a centre for Asian culture. But at the same time, we can't just plunk [the new cultural district] down from above. It has to be fed from below."

Centre A, for example, has been invited to create a satellite gallery in the new precinct, even though it can barely afford to operate its current gallery in a spacious but bare-bones heritage site in the Downtown Eastside. The gallery's landlord and the city are working on a deal that would trade higher density for the development in exchange for a better facility for Centre A. But in the meantime, Centre A's current exhibit is being lit with swing-arm desk lamps, and the building's soaring cathedral windows are draped in green garbage bags. "Vancouver imagines itself a great cultural capital, but it's really a small town," says Bull. "It's not Toronto or Montreal. In some ways, it's not even Winnipeg. It's still pretty bush out here."

The frontier isn't such a bad place to be, says Thom. Vancouver might not have many iconic cultural venues or old-money families to act as modern Medicis. But it does have a rich aboriginal heritage, it's the most Asian city (per capita) outside of Asia, and it's enviably placed on the ocean with a view beyond the cultural mainstream of Canada. "We can afford to take risks," Thom says by phone from Denver, where he's working on a new art gallery.

The precinct idea got started two years ago when the Premier called Thom. " 'We've got the Olympics coming,' " Thom recalls Campbell saying. " 'I want to tell a unique story about our province and its cultural diversity. I don't know exactly what I mean, but there's something different happening here and I want to express that.' "

Thom sighed. The last time Campbell asked for help on a major cultural project, it ate up six years of Thom's life. Campbell was Vancouver's mayor then, and he got Thom to serve as head of the new library's building committee. A few weeks after the more recent call, Thom presented the premier with his Vancouver-Venice, west-meets-east notion. Premier Campbell liked the theme and, during last year's election campaign, he pledged his support to a new Asia-Pacific Museum that would animate Thom's concepts from a uniquely British Columbian perspective.

For the last five months, Thom's office and the ministry of culture have been working on a feasibility plan. "My idea is to create a museum without walls," says Thom, "one that will break down the boundaries between institutions and create a jam session, if you like, between different types of people."

The project could include a relocated Vancouver Art Gallery. But Thom firmly believes the precinct must also embrace schools, a trade centre and perhaps consular offices. He points to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, with its National Museum of Modern Art, galleries, library, film centre and futuristic plaza, as the closest comparison.

Surrounded by Vancouver Community College, the CBC's regional headquarters, the Queen Elizabeth and Playhouse theatres, the central library and the Centre for the Performing Arts, the precinct could glue together many disconnected parts. The site is also within walking distance of Olympic facilities such as GM Place, BC Place and the coming False Creek Olympic Village.

Campbell admits he doesn't know precisely where the precinct money will come from. Victoria has not set aside funds for cultural infrastructure in its Olympic initiatives -- the $20-million Spirit of B.C. Arts Fund or the $12-million 2010 Arts Now program.

In fact, the province doesn't have any funding programs to which cultural organizations can apply for capital expenses. "I cannot stress enough how much we need an infrastructure funding program for the facilities in which we produce, rehearse and perform," Jeff Alexander, president of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, said at the summit. "The facilities we have are outdated and rundown." The VSO's new education centre is going ahead and should open by 2009, but so far without provincial help.

The new precinct will require federal support, but the last federal-provincial infrastructure agreement expired and has yet to be renewed. And at the arts summit, Linda Johnston, Canadian Heritage's B.C. director, didn't sound encouraging. "I've had at least 14 museums tell me it's critical they open by 2010. I'm not so sure. If you build something without putting in place the resources so artists can use it, how is it going to function?"

There are countless hurdles to jump before the cultural precinct becomes a reality. Thom is optimistic, but he's concerned, too. "I worry about Vancouver sometimes," he admits. "We're becoming so conservative. If we don't wake up as a community and break new ground, we're going to turn into a nice resort that just happens to be a city."