Vancouver shows how Cities can Develop better Urban and Transportation Planning and Development
Where Infrastructure, Transportation and Urban Planning merge.......
- Globally, cities have seen an increase in funding and public demand for improved critical public infrastructure.
- Resilient urban infrastructure requires a long-term planning mindset that considers impacts ranging from scaled electrification to climate change.
- Cities have traditionally approached urban infrastructure through siloed departments, causing a lack of alignment, spending, and redundant work.
- Cities can learn from Vancouver in Canada which has developed best practices for collaborative infrastructure development.
- Cities around the world have become increasingly complex, and leaders are having to solve problems they’ve never faced before. From increased population to climate change, these challenges require a more collaborative approach across city government, which can be difficult when city services have traditionally been organized into silos.When it comes to cities and their large portfolios of infrastructure, there are many stakeholders who have a vested interest: utilities such as power and water, roads and transit departments, public works and community relations, parks and recreation, innovation departments, housing, and many others, depending on the city’s geography, size and structure. Globally, cities have seen an increase in funding and public demand for improved critical public infrastructure.Resilient urban infrastructure requires a long-term planning mindset that considers impacts ranging from scaled electrification to climate change.Cities have traditionally approached urban infrastructure through siloed departments, causing a lack of alignment, spending, and redundant work. Cities can learn from Vancouver in Canada which has developed best practices for collaborative infrastructure development..City leadership can establish the high-level goals for the city such as growth, affordability, or climate preparedness, but these intrinsically have different meanings for every stakeholder. Considering all these factors as part of the city infrastructure ecosystem, the need to find effective, creative, and realistic collaboration methods is critical.In 2022, the World Economic Forum’s Urban Transformation “Building Tomorrow’s Urban Infrastructure” team began looking into how cities are implementing infrastructure governance models. Following the reviews of over 25 city plans, interviewing 11 city infrastructure experts, Vancouver’s approach of collaborative infrastructure governance stood out as a unique and powerful model. Vancouver has strategically positioned itself as a leader of proactive planning across governmental agencies and can serve as a lighthouse model for other cities dealing with shared challenges such as affordability, rapid growth, climate resilience, and citizen well-being. Vancouver's collaborative approach..........
- Vancouver has spent many years developing a governance model that increases collaboration around infrastructure, encourages joint funded projects, and spurs future engagements across the board. This did not happen overnight, nor was this a single iteration that worked immediately. It has been a long-term effort that challenged all parties to actively commit and engage in the collaborative model. This includes dedicated director meetings, transparency of priorities and issues, as well as strategic alignment of departments.The steps Vancouver has outlined for collaborative governance are as follows: 1. Establish and integrate city level priorities into all departments’ plans and programmes utilizing a “layered” system referencing an overall citywide vision, vetted by the community. 2. Connect departments at multiple levels, specifically at the director level, ensuring consistency, collaboration, and coordination throughout. 3. Incentivize the idea of “win-win” models for jointly funded projects in alignment with citywide targets and objectives, creating flexibility of budgets and more available ways to build out infrastructure. 4. Create a centralized approach on programme and project delivery, focused on outcomes and how collaboration can yield those outcomes long-term. 5. Instill a culture that can adjust, evolve, and input feedback from all stakeholders to decrease chances of falling backwards. 6. This process is anchored with an overall citywide vision and land use strategy, called the Vancouver Plan, it was shaped and validated by a wide range of public feedback over a three year period, the highlights of which can be seen in the figure below. ....read on https://www.weforum.org/
agenda/2023/05/vancouver- cities-develop-better- infrastructure-planning- development See also document ...... METRO VANCOUVER REGION.docx -
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