Increasing knowledge and trust to overcome barriers to green infrastructure implementation: a Vancouver case study

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a case study of the obstacles to green infrastructure implementation in the City of Vancouver. This case study has two aims, 1) to better understand the planning and decision-making processes hindering the widespread implementation of green infrastructure across the City of Vancouver, and 2) propose solutions to facilitate the uptake of GI. This paper begins by reviewing existing literature on barriers to green infrastructure implementation. Then, it investigates current perceptions of GI in the City of Vancouver, and what barriers exist to its implementation through document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Proposed solutions to green infrastructure implementation are reviewed and recommendations are provided for the City of Vancouver. It ends with a short discussion on the applicability of lessons learned from the study of Vancouver for other municipalities seeking to overcome barriers to green infrastructure implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Vancouver
• green infrastructure
• implementation
• knowledge co-production
• planning

Acknowledgements

We want to thank staff from the City of Vancouver’s Green Infrastructure Branch for their support with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The GI Branch is a team within the Engineering Services Department who are responsible for green infrastructure across the City.

2. Ethics for the research was approved by Simon Fraser University for project #30000202 Equity Factors for Green Infrastructure Implementation.