Social Policy: research and data toward a healthy city for all

Social planning in Vancouver—working toward a healthy, equitable, socially sustainable city for all—relies on a strong foundation of research and data. We use a number of different data sources to understand how change happens in the city, and how it is experienced by different individuals and groups. We work with community partners to share information, build capacity, and foster ongoing conversations about the future of the city.

Social indicators and trends

We track social, economic, and demographic indicators and identify trends in each of the city’s neighbourhoods.
Following the full release of data from Canada’s 2016 Census of Population, we've created city-wide and neighbourhood profiles. This work continues a series of social indicators and trends publications that we've published since the 1990s, with changes in format to meet the needs of the community. The 2019 Social Indicators and Trends series provides 23 comprehensive profiles for the city as a whole and each of Vancouver’s 22 established local planning areas.

We've engaged with the community, particularly non-profit organizations that we support through grants, throughout the development of these profiles and used their feedback to ensure that they provide useful and accessible information.
Healthy City Strategy monitoring and reporting

We monitor progress on targets and indicators in support of the Healthy City Strategy, Vancouver’s social sustainability plan.
Our Healthy City Strategy is its policy framework for a socially sustainable city. It includes a vision of A Healthy City for All, and principles, goals, targets, and actions to work toward this vision.

Data and research are central to the Healthy City Strategy. We monitor a number of population targets and indicators for each of the Strategy’s goals, helping understand where Vancouver is making positive change toward health, and where more work is needed.
- Download an overview of Healthy City goals, targets, and indicators (789 KB)
- Access data for each of the Healthy City Strategy’s goals
- We work in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health to access and share data about the health of the population. This includes the My Health My Community survey , which provides neighbourhood-level data on a wide range of health indicators.
Social infrastructure

We map social facilities like childcare centres, social services, and food assets to understand access across the city.

Social infrastructure includes the spaces, programs, services, and relationships that enable people to be healthy, connected, and engaged in their community. Vancouver’s social infrastructure ecosystem is shaped by the non-profit sector, all levels of government and the community as a whole, and understanding the makeup of social infrastructure in Vancouver is a key social policy research area.

We enable social infrastructure through a number of tools. We track and analyze data from grants, licenses, facilities, and other sources to map different types of facilities, such as childcare, social services, or food assets. This supports our work on projects like the Social Infrastructure Plan, efforts to enable childcare spaces across the city, and the ongoing implementation of Vancouver’s Food Strategy.
Community capacity building

We work to build data knowledge and capacity in the community.

Data is the beginning of a conversation, not the end. Sharing and translating knowledge in ways that are accessible and meaningful to the community is a core work area.

We work with community organizations, particularly those funded by the City’s social grants, to help understand trends and issues in their community. We give presentations, respond to questions and build capacity across the community.
Decolonizing data

Social data and research have played an integral role in reinforcing inequitable systems of power, and there is an urgent need to develop new approaches that centre the knowledge of equity-seeking communities.
Vancouver is situated on the unceded homeland of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) , Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) , and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) . As a City of Reconciliation, Vancouver must critically engage with its own identity and reimagine its understandings of jurisdiction, sovereignty, laws, and institutions on these homelands.

Vancouver is a racially and culturally diverse city, home to many groups including a large and diverse urban Indigenous population. But research and data collected about equity-seeking groups are too often deficit-based and serve to reinforce systemic oppression, barriers, and unequal relations of power. Indigenous people and members of other groups have not had their assets, strengths, needs, and hopes for the future reflected in policy.

We're exploring new research methodologies, processes, and tools to shift this paradigm. This has included prototyping ideas within our Solutions Lab and engaging scholars to explore different aspects of how Indigenous knowledge can be more meaningfully incorporated into this work. This work continues.

Healthy City Scholar reports:
- Indigenous Wellness Indicators: Including Urban Indigenous Wellness Indicators in the Healthy City Strategy (13 MB) (Kathleen Heggie, 2018)
- Indigenous Equity Data: Substance Use, Mental Health, and Wellness (Rachel Wuttunee, 2019)
Selected Indigenous data governance resources:
- First Nations Information Governance Centre
- British Columbia First Nations’ Data Governance Initiative

Other City data

Areas of the city

Vancouver is made up of smaller neighbourhoods each with its own character, but on the website, we use areas, not true neighbourhoods, to focus information for particular parts of the city. Find out about these 23 defined areas; their amenities, news, events, and more.

Data and maps

Analyze and use our open data and maps to do research, discover trends, make informed decisions, and develop apps.

Contact us

socialpolicyresearch
@vancouver.ca

Social Policy: research and data toward a healthy city for all

Social indicators and trends

Healthy City Strategy monitoring and reporting

Social infrastructure

Community capacity building

Decolonizing data

Other City data

Areas of the city

Data and maps

Data sources and partnerships

Statistics Canada

Community Data Program

My Health My Community

Human Early Learning Partnership

BC Adolescent Health Survey

Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study

Contact us