ECONOMY, ARTS AND CULTURE

  • 2022 Green Economy, Arts & Culture Platform - PDF

Vancouver is a city of arts, innovation and entrepreneurship, a multicultural tourist destination on the Pacific Rim where resource and technology and creative industries all meet and thrive at North America’s most diversified port. We are a city and a region brimming with culture, and opportunity. With thoughtful planning and land use, nimble and responsive regulations, and progressive green policies we believe in a more just, prosperous, and vibrant city and economy for everyone who lives, works and visits here.

Green Priorities

A VIBRANT ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR ALL

AN EASY PLACE TO DO BUSINESS

PLACES THAT WORK FOR WORKING

GREEN AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

PROTECTING AND DEVELOPING CREATIVE SPACES

BLANKETING THE CITY IN ARTS AND CULTURE

WORK DONE BY GREENS

A VIBRANT ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR ALL

Ensuring an economy that is resilient and responsive to all of our needs and sustainable growth is a key priority. Vancouver Greens will champion:

  • Tourism. Vancouver has seen a reduction in travellers, bookings and hotel rooms since the pandemic. We will work with industry to champion a strategy to construct and scale new hotel beds, while limiting illegal and disruptive short term rentals, and developing a strategy to entice and welcome tourists back to our city and region. 
  • 24 hour economy by empowering a night-time strategy, increasing night transit, expanding live music venue zoning, 24 hour industrial/creative land uses, extended permits and increased hotel capacity.
  • Childcare where people work. Collaborate with health authority and building use department to create new conditions and opportunities for childcare in otherwise constrained and atypical locations.
  • Empowered and responsive Business Improvement Areas, like local residents, BIAs know their communities best and are best positioned to develop collaborative strategies to meet local needs. Greens will continue working with BIAs to find new tools and opportunities to support local small businesses with innovative funding models and city supported street furnishings, cleaning, plazas, and placemaking.
  • Implementation of a just and green economic strategy, focused on low-carbon enterprise and the changing nature of business and climate over the next 10 to 20 years. Working with the Vancouver Economic Commission to induce investment in innovation, business development, and access to seed funding to expand the low-carbon economy and climate-friendly technologies, such as wood frame buildings, modular homes and Passive House construction, as well as local renewable energy partnerships and initiatives.
  • Social purpose and public-serving spaces for common good, for example where new developments require community amenity contrbutions, consider public washrooms or space owned and/or operated by a non-profit or social enterprise for the purpose of community benefit.

AN EASY PLACE TO DO BUSINESS

Greens believe that the City should not only get out of the way, but be a catalyst for business success, including a streamlined approach to delivering services that prioritizes customer satisfaction, leverages new tools and policies, and reduces red tape.

  • Implement a Business Advisory Task Force to work with the business community and advise changes to city processes and services needed to better support local business and economic development.
  • Expand the city’s business office with a focus on customer service and fostering growth of local businesses, expediting a fair, clear and streamlined permitting and licensing process with guaranteed timeline and pre-approved menu of services.
  • Support attraction and retention of employees with housing strategies that include affordable local worker-resident homes.
  • Develop a plan for graduated business licences to alleviate the cost burden on smaller independent businesses; Scale business licence pricing based on size (less for small business, more for larger corporations).
  • Embrace the experimental and make it easier for innovators to incubate new ideas and pilot projects with nimble regulatory amendments and exemptions for provisional and conditional uses. 

PLACES THAT WORK FOR WORKING

The changing nature of work, business, and land-use requires new, innovative and adaptive approaches to work-place options. Greens will:

  • Protect and intensify industrial lands and uses, while improving flexibility for mixed uses to allow uses like retail and food service where there is no net loss of industrial space. Support industrial clusters like False Creek Flats for green and circular innovation.
  • Protect Central Business District, with zoning to support office, hotel and convention use, while making it easier to include child care and other employment supporting amenities.
  • Zone smaller frontages for ground level commercial units on high streets to protect and encourage local shops and vibrant streetscapes, rather than big chain stores.
  • Work with the Province on new split-assessment tax tools that ensure tax fairness for small and legacy businesses.
  • Update applicable building and occupancy bylaws to recognize the changing nature of work making it easier for home-based business, multi use spaces, and shared workspaces. 
  • Make better use of vacant city-owned commercial properties for short term opportunities, leverage empty city-owned assets as incubators for innovative start-ups, creative or cultural uses, shift the City Real Estate department’s mandate for highest and best use to consider public benefits.

GREEN AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Greens know we can grow our economy, provide well-paying jobs, and create a thriving local business community in a sustainable way that protects our city and our planet for future generations. Green will work to:

  • Improve Vancouver’s circularity - with the right to repair, more convenient Zero-Waste drop-off centres, and a Green Industrial Innovation District (GrIID) in the False Creek Flats.
  • Promote investment in local sustainable food production including commissary kitchens, distribution, consumption and food waste management through changes to the zoning by-law, Vancouver Building Bylaw and Design Guidelines.
  • Update the City’s Procurement Policy and RFP process to mandate local, ethical and sustainability considerations in the procurement of goods and services to reflect circularity, reconciliation, and equity.
  • Increase support for community economic development and social enterprises including clean and green jobs for those with employment barriers, community benefit agreements that create local entry level jobs on large developments, and local serving co-operative and social enterprise employers.
  • Support businesses with ethical and low-carbon policies, including paying a living wage and environmental responsibility, by making these practices a condition through public procurement and access to city-owned property.

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

Vancouver is at the forefront of Web3 and frontier technologies, tech and biomedical, circular enterprises, and creative industries. Greens will:

  • Support innovation hubs and clusters for Web3 and frontier technologies, and innovative circular enterprises. 
  • Position Vancouver as an attractive destination for tech companies with complimentary housing, placemaking and tech infrastructure strategies
  • Retain Vacouver’s position as an attractive, competitive, and green option for the film industry by reducing red tape, ensuring there are adequate places, spaces and sound stages,, as well as installing lower-carbon, lower-cost infrastructure such as electrical power drops to replace diesel generators.
  • Foster and support Vancouver’s bio-medical industry through thoughtful zoning that enables innovative research, development, and medical centres adjacent to health campuses.
  • Support the completion of the subway to UBC, working with senior governments, local First Nations and the University to plan and deliver on the Broadway-line and related transit-oriented development.

PROTECTING AND DEVELOPING CREATIVE SPACES

Creative spaces in Vancouver are at risk and disappearing and artists are being priced out of our city. There are actions the City can take to help support the arts and culture community and provide the much needed spaces for it to thrive. Greens will:

  • Deliver affordable creative assets like live-work space, cultural and performance venues, studios and galleries throughout the city with implementation of the Vancouver Plan.
  • Implement density bonusing for cultural use in commercial and industrial zoned new developments. 
  • Make better use of vacant city-owned and commercial properties for temporary creative uses, leverage empty city-owned assets for cultural uses, studio and gallery space, and shift the City Real Estate department’s mandate for
  • Develop the East Side Arts District as an innovative arts cluster by implementing the Green motion to use city powers to provide and protect creative spaces in the community.  
  • Implement the Green motion to create a Cultural Spaces Rent Bank, modelled after the Vancouver Residential Rent Bank.
  • Provide strategic tax exemptions for creative spaces, using provisions that already exist in the Vancouver Charter to target select non profit cultural spaces for limited term property tax breaks.

BLANKETING THE CITY IN ARTS AND CULTURE

Continue and expedite the implementation of the Vancouver’s Culture|Shift Strategy as a driver of a creative economy that supports creative production citywide, with culture precincts and by-law and zoning policies to support creative spaces. Greens will:

  • Protect and support arts and culture, festivals and events as vibrant drivers of community economic development. Support more community events in all parts of our city, year-round, through faster and easier permitting, menu of options, costs certainty upfront
  • Support arts and culture in and on city owned assets including public libraries, community centres and other public facilities, such as providing community hubs, space for meetings and events, arts and culture programmes and lifelong learning as well as wraps, murals and public art on city property where appropriate.
  • Build on City’s commitments to Reconciliation and Equity and advance community-led cultural infrastructure throughout the city. 
  • Position Vancouver as a thriving music hub, by making it easier to find and develop performance venues as well as rehearsal and recording spaces. 
  • Support the indigenous-led 2030 Olympic bid, continue good faith partnership with local First Nations, follow their lead, and assist when asked.
  • Recognize intangible cultural heritage, the places that matter for food, shopping, community, and cultural practice such as the Punjabi Market, Chinatown, Hogan's Alley, Little Saigon, and the collingwood area Filipino hub. Revise the Vancouver heritage registry to recognize and protect those valuable cultural assets. 

WORK DONE BY GREENS

In 2018, Vancouver elected three Greens to Council who worked collaboratively across party lines to expand arts, culture the economy in our city. Greens have worked hard this term to change our City’s policies to better meet the needs of businesses, artists, communities and residents. Unfortunately, too much of our important work has been slow to come back from staff to Council or has not been implemented at all. We need more Greens elected to ensure our solutions are implemented in a timely fashion and in a way that best serves the people of Vancouver.