OVERVIEW
Unused Terrain is a social enterprise aiming to assess and access vacant land in Vancouver. Vacant land sites are an invisible problem in Vancouver yet a potential solution for leveraging Vancouver’s Greenest City Goals!
City of Vancouver’s Healthy City Strategy Plan (2015-2018): “Create a network of services to provide soci
al entrepreneurs with capacity-building opportunities; connect them with existing physical spaces to test new ideas and business models; and explore opportunities to showcase these in public using residual or under-used spaces”
Goal 11 of the Healthy City Strategy aims to, “examine regulations, policies and processes that affect our relationship with and between residents- past, present and future.”
We are housed at CityStudio in Vancouver British Columbia and in the Master’s of Education – Education for Sustainability program at the University of British Columbia.
OBJECTIVE
Identifying vacant sites in Vancouver with the goal to empower and mobilize communities coalescing around a common vision that is portable, scaleable and for interim temporary use with the objective of increasing neigbourhood social capital. Temporary use of vacant sites can be achieved with limited funding and without interfering with the long term development plan, all the while yielding remarkable social benefits for communities. Quick, doable, short term projects will make better use of vacant urban space and address community needs.