The streets of Vancouver are full of stories — showcasing histories spanning decades, they are lined with old structures that stand as silent witnesses to the city’s evolving landscape.
However, many of these heritage sites face an uncertain future. For our project, we analyzed the protection status of Vancouver’s heritage sites, examining the divide between those with legal safeguards at municipal, provincial, or federal levels and those with recognized heritage value but no formal protection. While some sites benefit from legal designation, many remain vulnerable to redevelopment and demolition, particularly in high-growth urban areas.
This discrepancy raises important questions about whose history is preserved and whose is erased. By mapping the distribution of protected and unprotected heritage sites across the city, this project highlights gaps in conservation efforts and provides insights into which neighbourhoods and structures receive priority. The inconsistencies in heritage protection shape Vancouver’s historical narrative, influencing what is remembered and what is lost.
As you will see on this site, we have employed data visualization as a central tool in our analysis to make this issue more accessible to all kinds of audiences. By converting raw data into interactive and engaging formats, users can explore trends, compare protection levels, and gain deeper insights into the dynamics of heritage recognition. Our intended audience includes city planners integrating heritage conservation into urban development, conservation organizations advocating for stronger legal protections, historical societies conducting research, and community activists concerned about the erasure of local history. Through intuitive visual storytelling, this project aims to provide stakeholders with the tools to analyze trends, advocate for policy changes, and engage in informed discussions about the future of heritage preservation in Vancouver. By shedding light on these disparities, we hope to spark meaningful dialogue and encourage stronger efforts to safeguard the city’s rich architectural and cultural legacy.
Tools We Used
Analytic Steps
The primary datasets we used were relatively easy to understand due to their well-organized attributes, and this allowed us to quickly conceptualize key aspects of the data without extensive preprocessing. Since most of our data is geographically structured, we naturally leaned towards map-based visualizations, and focused on presenting existing data in a way that made heritage site distribution, classification, and historical context more accessible.
To support our visualizations, we conducted extensive research on Vancouver’s historical development, including neighbourhood histories, community movements, and shifts in heritage designation policies over time. We incorporated sources spanning from the 1980s to the present to ensure a comprehensive and well-contextualized understanding, and following that, we wrote detailed supporting narratives for our visualizations, ensuring that the heritage data was framed within its historical and socio-political context rather than being presented in isolation.
Our Data Story
Our information visualization project reveals the limitations and biases embedded within the Vancouver Heritage Register, highlighting how heritage conservation in the city is not neutral but shaped by historical power structures and systemic inequities. Through these visualizations, we invite the public to critically examine the ways in which heritage sites are categorized: Who decides what is worth preserving? What narratives are prioritized, and which are erased?
A key insight from our analysis is the disproportionate conservation of certain areas over others. Downtown Vancouver, for example, has the highest number of protected heritage sites, many of which are military-related. This pattern raises questions about whose histories are deemed valuable and who is making those decisions. Meanwhile, many shell middens, sites of immense cultural and historical significance to Indigenous communities, often ancestral villages and burial grounds, have minimal protection and even lack coordinates in the dataset. This omission directs our attention to whose heritage is safeguarded through official policy and whose is neglected, contributing to the ongoing erasure of Indigenous presence in the city.
More than just numbers and categories, our visualization seeks to spark critical reflection and curiosity: Who has the right to define Vancouver’s history? What does heritage protection say about the city’s values? What stories are we preserving for future generations and what stories are we allowing to disappear? By questioning these structures, we hope to empower viewers to engage with their city more thoughtfully, advocate for more inclusive heritage policies, and uncover the rich, complex histories that shape the places we call home.