New project asks residents to envision Vancouver’s future

What would make Vancouver “A Better City”? A new project asks residents to share their ideas and recommendations on how the City of Vancouver can improve in the decades to come.

A Better City invites Vancouverites to participate in a dialogue about Vancouver’s future. Participants can share their thoughts and co-create policy recommendations to issues facing the city, such as housing, transportation, sustainability, parks and recreation, and more.

Starting with Vancouver’s 50 neighbourhoods, participants will be asked to share their ideas about what would make Vancouver better through the lens of their neighbourhood. The feedback collected will be aggregated into categories that reflect the City’s various departments. The engagement will use a variety of tools, including discussions, place-based commenting and open ideation with the ability to upload documents, images and videos.

The project will culminate in a city-wide symposium involving thought leaders and members of the general public. Feedback collected throughout the process will be used to create a report containing a series of policy recommendations to bring to Vancouver City Council for implementation after the 2018 municipal election.

“Engaging with the A Better City project provides a wonderful opportunity for residents and business owners to collaborate on the future of their neighbourhood,” said Scot Hein, professor in the Master of Urban Design Program at UBC. “I am excited by the prospect of how this dynamic approach to social engagement can illuminate local insight and narrative towards new design possibilities that may not be captured in prevailing policies and regulations.”

The project is being conducted using the PlaceSpeak platform, developed in Vancouver with the support of the National Research Council of Canada. PlaceSpeak makes it possible to engage with people online within specific geographical boundaries while protecting individual privacy.  

PlaceSpeak founder, Colleen Hardwick said, “By collecting feedback from residents in the fifty neighbourhoods in Vancouver, it will be possible to demonstrate how crowd-sourcing public policy can be conducted in an open, transparent, authentic and confidence-building manner.”

Have your say now: http://placespeak.com/abc