Step off the curb and try something new in your neighbourhood!

In 2009 the City of Vancouver launched the Summer Spaces pilot to re-imagine public spaces in new and innovative ways. The program ran over the months of July, August and September in four neighbourhoods: Main Street, Commercial Drive, Gastown and Collingwood.

Pilot objectives included increasing public space and community interaction, encouraging the use of sustainable forms of transportation and giving people more space and opportunities to be active.

Monitoring and evaluation throughout the pilot showed that it was successful in helping to build safe, active and inclusive neighbourhoods:

• Summer Spaces created new opportunities for community interaction and increased public space with 24 temporary street closures
• People who attended Summer Spaces used sustainable forms of transportation: on average, 51% of participants chose to walk, 10% chose to cycle, and 13% chose to take transit
• In the future the public would like to have even more public spaces, with 81 per cent of resident survey respondents indicating that they support expanding the pilot

Following the success of Summer Spaces, the City is preparing to create a larger program that increases the range of scale, frequency and on-street activities.

The Summer Spaces 2011 Ideas Workshop (held on December 8, 2010) provided an opportunity for interested community groups and individuals to discuss how other cities are re-imagining their public spaces, and begin developing proposal ideas in a collaborative forum.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal. We enjoyed reading all of your innovative ideas to increase community public space through the temporary reallocation of road space in Vancouver.

Proposal selections will be announced soon.  Learn more about the continuing evolution of Summer Spaces at Open Streets.