Sea2City Vancouver

Description

Vancouver recognizes the need to plan for future sea level rise and help flood-vulnerable
shoreline, communities and businesses to become more resilient. The city organised the Sea2City
Design Challenge (Sea2City) to inform a framework and vision to guide urban development
and ecological revitalization in the False Creek floodplain, a highly valued and constrained
urban waterway in the heart of the city.
Sea2City invited two teams to investigate the urban future of False Creek. The design team –
which included PWL Partnership Landscape Architects, Deltares, Modern Formline Design and
an interdisciplinary resource team – worked on long-term proposals for the Between Bridges
and Coopers’ Park areas. They created a re-wilding vision for the larger system of the False
Creek waterfront and these concrete sites’ futures in 2100 and beyond, as well as a series
14 of transition stages to get there, including proposals for pilot projects to take the first steps.
The 2100 Re-wilding False Creek vision incorporates the cultural knowledge of the Local Coast
Community (Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation), learning
from these communities’ reciprocal lifestyle with nature. Fundamental to the team’s proposals is the recognition that traditional approaches to urban
waterfronts, which revolve around resisting the water with hard infrastructure, are no longer
effective in an era of rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events. The proposals
thus centre on allowing the city to coexist with the water.

Period	29 May 2024
Event title	2024 Floating Habitat Symposium
Event type	Conference