Vancouver – Green Urban Planning and the Technologies of the Future

The world’s innovation regions are located where high tech, economic power, and creative potential come together. Vancouver offers its residents a quality of life matched by few other cities in the world – not to mention a wealth of smart mobility options.

It’s a little past eight, and Toby Reid is standing at the living room window of his house in North Vancouver, as he does every morning. He’s looking at Burrard Inlet, the sea inlet that separates his part of the city from the downtown skyline. Reid is drinking a cup of coffee while his eight-month-old daughter, Sophie, crawls around at his feet. Mount Seymour and Grouse Mountain rise up behind Reid’s one-family house — like the skyscrapers of Vancouver, they’re only 15 minutes away. “Time to go; the next bus is mine,” says Reid as he shoulders his laptop bag. His trip to work is timed down to the minute because he uses four and sometimes even five different modes of public transport. Down the block is the 228 bus, which gets him in four minutes to the SeaBus, the ferry that carries him across the inlet right to the center of Vancouver.

“That’s the best part of the morning,” says Reid, a young entrepreneur. “You get a great view of nature – and a few minutes to think.” After the SeaBus docks, a stream of commuters heads up the ramp to Waterfront Station, Vancouver’s old central railroad station, where transcontinental trains used to arrive from Montreal and Toronto. These days, the station is home to the three lines of the SkyTrain system, which transports more than 300,000 passengers every day. Normally, Reid would switch transport modes now and take the Canada Line three stops to the Olympic Village and then hop on an express bus to the west end of the city. That’s where the campus of the University of British Columbia is located, and also where Reid’s company, Solegear Bioplastics, rents office space.

But today is going to be another day when Reid spends most of his time downtown. He’s here to meet a man who has applied for the job of Chief Financial Officer at Reid’s startup. “Taking my car would have been a real pain. There’s really no reason why I should have to deal with all the traffic jams and drive around looking for a parking space,” the 37-year-old says as he walks by the conference center on the waterfront promenade. Ten minutes later he’s sitting in the lobby of the Westin Hotel at Coal Harbour, where he checks his e-mails on his BlackBerry and prepares for the interview.

car2go has been operating in Vancouver since June 2011.

The shiny glass and metal skyscrapers that surround the new buildings in the Coal Harbour district are symbolic of the booming economy of this city on the Pacific. With 5,039 people per square kilometer, Vancouver is one of the most densely populated cities in North America, according to the most recent census from 2006. Some 600,000 people live together here within an area of 114 square kilometers; the metropolitan region as a whole has around another 1.8 million. Experts believe the population of greater Vancouver will rise to three million by 2030. The city of Vancouver itself is situated at the tip of the Burrard Peninsula and surrounded by water on three sides. It ends in the north at one of the biggest city parks in the world. As a result, urban planners and architects have no place to go but up for their projects.

Vancouver is also a true melting pot of cultures – a “hinge” between America and Asia and a city that has always attracted immigrants. It was settled by the British, who were followed by gold diggers. Its wealth of lumber and fish made it rich, and today it remains a key port and transshipment center for goods on their way to and from all over the world. Nevertheless, the things that really make Vancouver successful in the 21st century are its unspoiled nature reserves and a well-educated workforce that’s extremely innovative. One out of every three Vancouver residents has a university degree, for example. Despite ongoing population growth (an 18 percent increase over the last 15 years) and a high cost of living, Vancouver is still considered one of the best places in the world to live. For example, the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Mercer international consulting firm regularly rank Vancouver among the cities with the best quality of life.