Places for People Downtown

Places for People Downtown provides a strategy to shape and deliver vibrant public spaces downtown.

Like all cities, Vancouver's public spaces – the plazas, squares, streets, laneways, pathways, parks, and waterfront – are where public life happens. These are the places of daily interaction, and the spaces where we work, play, create, explore, and connect.

Everyone in Vancouver has the right to easily accessible public spaces. As our city grows and transforms, we'll see more people and activity downtown. We need to look at how we can help create and improve public spaces to bring our community together and allow us to grow into a friendly and lively city.

The Downtown Public Space Strategy provides a framework to shape the public realm in Downtown Vancouver over the next 30 years. It also demonstrates the application of this approach to current and future public space policy and project development in Vancouver.

What's happening

While this policy was developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Downtown Public Space Strategy takes on new relevance and urgency in this period of crisis and the period of recovery. The principles outlined in the strategy provide a basis for recovery initiatives during the phased recovery period following the COVID-19 state of emergency, and the future transformation of our Downtown public realm.

In June 2017, we launched Places for People Downtown, a public space and public life planning process for Downtown Vancouver. The aim was to create a downtown public space strategy to establish a vision for a complete public space network that puts people first and promotes downtown as a place for all people to enjoy and participate in public life.

With the completion of the Downtown Public Space Strategy, the Places for People team wanted to thank you for your input and support throughout the process. Your feedback was incredibly valuable to this engagement process and the creation of the strategy.

Smart City Talks | Putting People First: A Dialogue on Vancouver’s Public Spaces

The Urbanarium invited a panel of urban planners and equity specialists to explore issues and opportunities around Vancouver’s public life including considerations for initiatives such as VIVA Vancouver and the soon to be launched City-wide Plan.

Moderator: Derek Lee , PWL Partnership

Speakers:

Jay Pitter , author and placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in urban centres
John Bela , Gehl Studio
Kelty McKinnon , Director/Principal, PFS Studio, Adjunct Professor, UBC

Gehl’s Public Space and Public Life Study

The findings from Gehl’s Public Space and Public Life Study will inform recommendations for the Downtown Public Space Strategy and will support a foundation for future studies in Vancouver.

With the support of over 500 volunteers, the study counted and observed people gathering, walking, rolling, biking, of different ages and genders, engaged in different body postures and activities. The study took place over one weekday and one weekend day during the summer and winter seasons, at more than 115 locations across the downtown — the largest study of its kind in North and South America.

Future public space opportunities

We created the Downtown Public Space Inventory map to identify future public space opportunities as part of our work on the Downtown Public Space Strategy. Open the map fullscreen

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