STRATEGIC FORESIGHT

Vancouver 2050: Future Scenarios for the City of Vancouver

Client

City of Vancouver

Scope of Work

• Capacity Building Workshop
• Desk Research
• Interviews
• Horizon Scan
• Engagement
• Future Scenario Development
• Illustrations
• Foresight Workshops
• Strategic Implications
• Final Report
  

The City of Vancouver undertook a scenario planning process to support the provision of a Citywide planning program with KerrSmith. This bold strategic research and Futures project helped to guide Vancouver as it built a resilient strategy for the next 30 years.

The City of Vancouver is committed to inclusion, reconciliation and resilience and required both a broad, citizen-based participatory approach to defining a future vision, as well as an expert-led exploratory investigation into possible emerging challenges. Our work set the stage for comprehensive, future oriented, and non-siloed strategic planning and policy development.

Effective solution making is sharpened by establishing metrics and goals. Throughout this project, we augmented our deliverables with training, allowing the City to increase its own capacity for ongoing Foresight research and Scenario Planning.

We worked with a multidisciplinary team of collaborators, including political leaders, planners and technical policy makers. We drew upon our experience working with large and diverse bodies of internal and external stakeholders to coordinate the project. As well-informed outsiders with a knowledge of urban issues, resiliency planning and the expectations of policymakers the goal was to make the work inclusive, accurate, unbiased and relevant.

Spectrum of Engagement
By using a spectrum of participation to consult, involve, collaborate or empower, we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders for a thorough exchange of opinions and reasoning.

Future Scenarios

The scenarios we created focused on land use, population, housing, jobs/economy, environment, infrastructure, City services, and overall quality of life in the city. They helped prepare for unforeseen situations and to seed discussion. The scenarios also considered disparate impacts on different segments of the population. Each scenario considered issues relating to equity, inclusion, resiliency, and reconciliation with a time horizon of 2050.

We developed a custom methodology for the city which was highly collaborative. The parameters for capacity building, the complex criteria and the range of stakeholders required a unique approach appropriate for Vancouver. Our experience in a number of city-building projects brought perspective to the intricate requirements of the project.

Drivers of Change

The following Drivers of Change were identified by the City of Vancouver in the Planning, Urban Design, and Sustainability Department’s Strategic Plan:

• Climate change and natural hazards;
• Population growth, aging population, and immigration (City and region);
• Global economic and technological shifts and innovations, concentration of wealth and capital;
• Growing disparities in income and opportunity, shortage of affordable housing/living;
• Challenges to human and environmental health;
• Densification of neighbourhoods, growing demands for public services and amenities, indications of social isolation;
• Cultural diversity and sociocultural change;
• Reconciliation;
• Growing fiscal/service expectations gap; and,
• Low civic engagement, high digital engagement/externalities of technological change.
  

Issues

To navigate risk and uncertainty and build organizational resilience, multiple future scenarios were developed.

Key Criteria for the Core Scenarios

The scenarios we wrote were exploratory in nature and were used primarily to illustrate the range of possible narratives, including radically transformed but plausible futures. 

• The scenarios considered the jurisdiction of the City of Vancouver and key partners.
• Among the initial set of scenarios, there was no “preferred” or “most probable” scenario at the first stage of the project. Each scenario was equally likely/unlikely and likable/unlikeable.
• The internal logic of each scenario had to be aligned and consistent.
• The methods used to construct and evaluate the scenarios were clear and transparent.
• The scenarios were easy to recall
• The scenarios were not “too safe”; they challenged assumptions and looked beyond the present environment to help prepare for unforeseen situations and deliberately provoke discussion.
• Final scenarios considered plausibility. The scenarios considered significant impacts to or demands on City revenue or other funding sources and considered potential new funding sources.
• Scenarios considered “if / then” statements regarding actions in response to potential trends, disruptors, and Drivers of Change and flagged potential trade-offs that needed to be considered.
  

Engagement
Continuous engagement activities included work required to describe the three to four core scenarios as part of the report for public review. We ensured that there was sufficient support present at the engagement activities to capture ideas generated through the discussion.

Vancouver and Reconciliation
The City of Vancouver’s Vision includes striving to form a sustained relationship of mutual respect and understanding with local First Nations and the Urban Indigenous community, including key agencies. The City incorporated a First Nations’ and Urban Indigenous perspective into their work and decisions and provided services that benefitted members of the First Nations and Urban Indigenous community.

The City’s Long-Term Goals

• Strengthen local First Nations and Urban Indigenous relations
• Promote Indigenous peoples’ arts, culture, awareness, and understanding
• Incorporate First Nations and Urban Indigenous perspectives for effective City services
  

Vancouver is consistently named as one of the top five worldwide cities for livability and quality of life. The city itself is in the centre of the much larger district of Metropolitan Vancouver, surrounded by the important communities of West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey and Richmond. These relationships are crucial to metropolitan and urban planning and our work considered the intricacies of the region.

There are approximately 631,000 people living in the city of Vancouver, while the population of Metropolitan Vancouver is close to 2.5 million. Vancouver is the most linguistically diverse city in Canada: 52% of its residents are not native English speakers. 48.9% are native speakers of neither English nor French, and 50.6% of residents belong to visible minority groups. Community engagement was planned to accommodate this diversity.

© KerrSmith Design 2023

KerrSmith Design
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