Inspired by Cities Around the World, 9 Ideas to Change Vancouver for the Better

There are so many great aspects of our city. One might even say that the mission of this very magazine is to talk about them. But there is plenty that we can improve on, too.

The biggest issues facing Vancouver today all trace back to one central idea: community. From affordable housing to mental health support, what we need more of are holistic, progressive approaches to taking care of our people. To inspire ourselves (and hopefully you), we scoured the globe for innovative answers to some of our most pressing problems, and then asked local experts to weigh in on what we can learn from them. These aren’t silver-bullet solutions, of course—but they do illuminate some possible paths forward.

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Local issue #1: A culture of loneliness

The faraway inspiration: Chatty checkout lanes (the Netherlands)

Social isolation is a major concern among Vancouverites: a 2019 Statistics Canada survey found that, throughout British Columbia, nearly 40 percent of people feel lonely sometimes, while nearly 13 percent feel lonely often or always—numbers that have likely ballooned since the pandemic. As high-rises grow taller, community spaces shutter—and as the cost of living rises, many are left without a sense of belonging.

To combat loneliness in the Netherlands, countrywide grocer Jumbo introduced what it calls “chat checkouts,” which are exactly what they sound like: checkout lanes that invite customers to socialize with cashiers as they’re ringing up their groceries. It’s been so popular—especially with the country’s older population—that Jumbo has rolled out the initiative to over 120 stores.

“As a concept, I think it’s wonderful,” says Mitchell Reardon, a director of urban planning at Vancouver-based consultancy Happy Cities has tried these checkout lanes himself. “Actively enabling this signal that this is a good place for social connection is important.”

Before the naysayers pipe up, let’s be clear: these “slower” checkouts won’t have you waiting for 15 minutes to pay for your bananas while the person in front of you spills their life story.

“From what I saw, it was probably adding two to three minutes,” Reardon says. “In a grocery store, when you have a cashier, you might say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ and then the conversation is probably going to end. This was basically: as bags were getting packed, you were still talking.”

Reardon thinks it’s a nice idea that could be rolled out here, but his bigger takeaway is actually around the types of stores that we prioritize in the city.

“Locally owned grocery stores are effective at enabling the social connection and encouraging the ability for people to interact with one another, while also delivering more affordable food than a lot of the chain stores,” he says, mentioning places like Donald’s Market in East Van. “They just have cashiers, and you talk to each other because you live in the neighbourhood and it’s nice to interact.”

Local issue #2: Derelict social housing

The faraway inspiration: Savonnerie Heymans (Belgium)

Solving Vancouver’s housing crisis is not as simple as building new homes. We need density, sure, but we also need housing that is actually affordable, not to mention intentional—especially for low-income residents.

Savonnerie Heymans is a social housing project in a converted soap factory in Brussels. What sets it apart is the thoughtfulness here: it’s not slapped-together shipping containers (or worse: derelict SROs) that make its residents feel embarrassed about their living situation, further marginalizing them from the rest of society. Rather, it’s a beautiful, design-forward public housing complex complete with amenities like an onsite courtyard, playground, daycare and library.

“We sometimes get hung up on the numbers of units, floor space and most efficient number of bedrooms, and this project is so thoughtful in how it counts for people and how they’re going to live in the space,” says Reardon, who has actually visited Savonnerie Heymans himself. “You get a sense of pride; I talked to a few people, and they were proud to live there.”

With local real estate prices what they are (the average home in Greater Vancouver is around $1.2 million), straight-up replicating the Brussels project here might not be the move. But Reardon thinks there is something to be said for the idea of taking the city’s unused buildings and turning them into housing projects—though, in this case, he’s not talking about former factories.

“I think the biggest opportunity in this city is around commercial space and office space,” he says. (Vancouver’s office vacancy rate is currently around 11.5 percent.) “There are challenges, of course, with converting offices into housing”—find them outlined over at vanmag.com in a previous story—”however, if you can convert a soap factory from the late 1800s into one, then you know there are solutions to do so.”

Local issue #3: Corporate burnout

The faraway inspiration: Four-day workweeks (United Kingdom)

What if we measured success not in hours worked, but in productivity and output? That’s one of the ideas behind the four-day workweek. A 2022 pilot project in the U.K. saw 60 businesses experiment with letting their staff work only four days—without decreasing their pay. The results were positive: average revenue increased by 1.4 percent, 55 percent of employees noted that their work abilities improved and 71 percent of employees felt less burned out.

It’s a cause close to the heart of Vancouver-based HR consultant Klaryssa Pangilinan. “Getting that extra day off per week is very good for people’s mental health and their overall well-being,” says the founder of Kultura Consulting. “And that can lead to increased productivity. Anytime employees are feeling a little bit happier at work, they’re going to be more productive and bring more to their workplace.”

It sounds great, but it does raise the question of how to handle salary. Pangilinan outlines three main options: reduce hours and reduce pay to match; pack the four workdays with more hours to account for the third day off and keep salaries the same; reduce the workweek to four days and still do not reduce pay. “I’d like to see the option where your pay stays the same, but you just work less hours,” she says. “It may not work for all companies based on their business model, but I don’t think pay should just be based on hours. It’s productivity and output.”

Many of the companies that participated in the U.K. trial have continued with the four-day workweek. As for Vancouver, Pangilinan says there’s no reason companies here can’t adopt the model. She suggests starting with a three- or six-month test to see how it goes.

Local issue #4: Disappearing arts and culture spaces

The faraway inspiration: Huashan 1914 Creative Park (Taiwan)

Vancouver is home to so many creatives and artists, but community arts spaces are becoming harder and harder to come by. Perhaps we could pick up an idea or two from Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park: a former distillery that has been converted into a thriving cultural hub. With a mix of food vendors, shops, studios and rotating arts programming, Huashan is a true third space: a community-minded place for people to gather and connect around culture. Such permanent spaces are not easy to find in Vancouver, but Reardon argues that perhaps permanence isn’t what we should be seeking.

“It’s really hard to work with, say, private-sector developers to deliver this,” he says. “That art space is rarely going to be the highest and best use in terms of the retail rent.”

Taking inspiration from the type of arts programming and retail residents at Huashan—as well as Vancouver’s own City Centre Artist Lodge—Reardon suggests that we transform more empty, to-be- developed urban spaces into temporary arts and culture centres.

“Giving artists the space to be able to do these creative things, ideally with opportunities for the public to see and interact with the artists and their spaces as well—to me, that would feel like a more applicable approach here in Vancouver,” he says. “It would be, at least, a more practical way to unlock more spaces for artists that are not currently being used.”

Local issue #5: Drug-use stigma

The faraway inspiration: Decriminalization (Portugal)

When the provincial government significantly rolled back its decriminalization policy last year, the public sentiment was largely that the program was a failure. But Kora DeBeck—distinguished professor at SFU’s School of Public Policy and a researcher at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use—wants to correct the narrative.

“I think it was very much marketed to or presented to the public as a response to the overdose crisis and to the toxic supply of drugs,” she says. “But what is decriminalization? The only thing that decriminalization does is address one very small piece of criminalization: it makes it so that people can possess small amounts of drugs, and they won’t be charged or have those taken away. And that is important, but the supply of drugs remains unchanged.”

Decriminalization is a key element of harm reduction, lessening friction between the police and people who use narcotics to stay alive. (During decrim’s first year here, there was a 76 percent drop in possession offences from the year prior.) It also weakens the strain on the justice system, not to mention that it helps stamp out the stigma surrounding illicit drug use.

Contrasting the public’s perception of decriminalization in B.C. is Portugal’s experience, which has been widely celebrated as a triumph. DeBeck notes that the context is different in the European country, where there hasn’t been the same type of fentanyl or housing crisis. With that in mind, perhaps the biggest takeaway from Portugal’s success story is messaging.

“I think it is very much being transparent and clear with the public that this is a very small intervention that does nothing to address the supply of drugs, and it is the toxic supply of drugs that is killing people” says DeBeck. “Symbolically it’s huge, and it makes a really big statement—but actually looking at the problem of the toxic drug crisis, it’s a very small intervention.”

Local issue #6: We still don’t have enough doctors

The faraway inspiration: Team-based care (the Netherlands)

In B.C., there are currently 400,000 residents without a family doctor—about six percent of the population. It’s a multifaceted issue, to be sure, but one of the solutions proposed by working doctors in the province is team-based care, which is already implemented—and successful—in countries like the Netherlands.

Team-based care involves multiple people coming together—doctors, nurses, pharmacists, assistants—in order to take some of the strain off of physicians and thus better serve patients. Currently in B.C., doctors essentially work alone, even if they are part of a clinic with other physicians: each one has their own regular patients, with maybe a little bit of support from a receptionist. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, family clinics are set up with other workers such as practice assistants, who help ease the load on MDs.

“In the Netherlands, almost everyone has a family doctor, but it’s because primary care is organized in a very different way,” says Goldis Mitra, an MD in North Vancouver and a vocal advocate for bringing team-based care to the province. “They’ve created robust teams in most family practices that help support that full spectrum of care, so that the family doctor leads the team that actually cares for a much larger number of patients.”

Right now, Mitra says, physicians are bogged down with administrative work, along with smaller tasks such as taking out stitches or dressing wounds—things that could reasonably be done by trained primary care nurses or physician assistants. This would help with physician burnout, and would also allow doctors to see more patients—and to focus on the more complex needs of those patients.

As for how we get there? Mitra says it needs to start with the province. “We need a real commitment by the government to develop highly efficient teams in primary care practices,” she says. “We then need to study those teams to understand what specific team members, team structures and workflows allow for the increased capacity to care for more patients, and to provide all the patients with high-quality, guideline-based care.”

Local issue #7: The mental health crisis

The faraway inspiration: The Public Health Agency of  Sweden (Sweden)

In a given year, 19 to 26 percent of British Columbians will experience mental illness. And of the estimated 84,000 children and youth in B.C. with a diagnosed mental disorder, less than one-third are receiving mental health care. Our current system, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, waits too long to provide adequate access to services and care, which exacerbates the problem—and costs our province an annual $6.6 billion. But preventative care works—not just for our minds, but for our wallets, too. According to the World Health Organization, every $1 spent on mental health treatment results in a positive return of $4.

Perhaps we should take cues from Sweden, where a progressive, holistic, multifaceted mental health approach has been widely celebrated—and successful. The Nordic country’s proactive strategy includes government-supported digital resources (such as apps rooted in cognitive behavioural therapy), school-based programs that focus on early intervention, the integration of mental health care into the primary care system and the reduction of social stigma through campaigns and education.

“I noticed that there was a focus on community based care [in Sweden], and I thought that was really powerful,” reflects Mitra. She points to North Vancouver, where one of Sweden’s strategies—integrating mental health into primary care—is already starting to take root.

“Our primary care network has a number of mental health clinicians, who are essentially allied health providers with a background in social work or counselling and who I can refer to as a family doctor to provide short-term, free mental health support,” she says. “It’s counselling, how to do mindfulness-based meditation—but also an understanding of how to navigate other mental health supports. They work in a team-based model with our offices, and they have been incredible.”

As for why it’s not more widespread in Greater Vancouver, Mitra opines that resources are tight. “We are stretched for funding across our health care system,” she says. “The key here is going to be doing the research to understand what interventions in communities are having a significant positive impact on patients and their  trajectories, and spreading and scaling those interventions. From the experience of many of the physicians working in my community, this would be one of those types of interventions.”

Local issue #8: Quality of life for our aging population

The faraway inspiration: San Sebastián’s Age Friendly City (Spain)

B.C.’s senior population is growing; it increased by 41 percent from 2013 to 2023. As more and more residents move into older age, we need to do more to ensure that all of our citizens have what they need to stay involved and integrated into society.

In the coastal Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastián, a wider project called San Sebastián Age Friendly City includes a heavy focus on its older population. This comprehensive strategy covers everything from housing and accessibility to medical care—but, crucially, it also includes facets for leisure, culture and social interaction.

“What was neat about this was ensuring that seniors had opportunities to interact with one another, and interact with multi generations and share their experiences,” says Reardon. “They also had a steering committee that included seniors, organizations that support seniors, and municipal and regional staff. Enabling this policy and directing it together with the people who are affected by it—I think that’s really, really valuable.”

For Reardon, that multigenerational connection is the biggest concept for Vancouver to adopt.

“I think it’s really good for intergenerational connection to occur,” he reflects. “It’s a way to build empathy among young people. It’s a way for seniors to have a sense of purpose, which is really good for your long-term health and well-being. There are so many values to the intergenerational elements; I think there is space for more support within that realm, particularly when thinking about broader social goals.”

Regardless of our age, we’re all growing more isolated, more addicted to our phones, more insular. Reardon is convinced that looking up and out—looking at each other—is the path forward.

“All of these initiatives are helping to foster culture and connection in communities,” he concludes. “Sustaining and strengthening the community is one of the most important things that we could be doing as a city right now.”

Local issue #9: The rising cost of groceries

The faraway inspiration: IslaVista Food Co-op (U.S.A.)

Inflation has hit every aspect of our lives, but perhaps nowhere more noticeably than in our grocery stores, where the cost of food is seemingly ever-rising. In Santa Barbara County, the Isla Vista Food Co-op is combatting this with its community-led, community-first approach. By working with local growers, advocating for proper access to healthy groceries and actively engaging in its neighbourhood, the co-op is an inspiring case study on food sovereignty.

Of course, building a co-op is no easy feat—especially in Vancouver, where land is scarce and pricey. “Co-ops are hard,” says Happy Cities’ Reardon. “It takes a lot of time and effort from a lot of people, and that in itself can be a challenge. Then you add in the cost of retail space, or real estate if you’re going to buy something, and these become real barriers to any sort of community-driven approach to creating a food co-op in Vancouver.”

Still, Vancouver can be inspired by Isla Vista without copying it. For Reardon, this means encouraging more small, independent businesses in the food space. “With anything that we can do to support local business within our communities, the benefits are extensive,” he says. “Being able to encourage local grocers, and making it easier for them to enter the market, I think, is really important.”

He also mentions making it easier and more accessible for people to grow their own food, even if it’s just in a raised garden bed on a small strip of grass between a building and a sidewalk.

“Imagine,” Reardon says, “if that was the norm.”