Sea2City Design Challenge

The City of Vancouver is launching the Sea2City Design Challenge (Sea2City) to help inform a framework and vision to guide urban development and ecological revitalization in Vancouver’s False Creek floodplain, a highly valued and constrained urban waterway in the heart of the city. The innovative and exciting design challenge will engage two multidisciplinary teams through a competitive application process to work co-operatively with the City of Vancouver to explore adaptation approaches for sea level rise, expand flood management approaches, and increase public awareness of climate change and sea level rise.

Sea2City will include a creative and interactive public engagement and communications program that will run from September 2021 to July 2022.

Two participating design teams will be selected through a competitive application process to:

• Participate in three rounds of public engagement and activities.
•  Provide a comprehensive design package for a preferred conceptual coastal flood management approach for two sites in False Creek (Each design team will be responsible for two sites).
• Provide illustrative concepts showing where future coastal flood management approaches and/or structures could be developed along the currently unprotected portions of the False Creek shoreline.
• Participate in a one-day, inter-team design charrette at the conclusion of the Sea2City to apply lessons learned through the challenge process to a fifth site.
• Produce a final set of materials designed to inspire and inform the community and the city

The Sea2City challenge sites represent the varied land use typologies found in False Creek along with a range of coastal flood management constraints and opportunities. The sites include high density mixed-use neighbourhoods, mixed-use local commercial areas, and valued parks and public spaces. Participating teams will be guided by the design principles developed through the 2021 False Creek Coastal Adaptation Plan, while evaluation of the concept designs will be directed by shared community values that were identified in the same project. Sea2City will also include additional guidance and input from xwməθkwəy’əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations on whose unceded, ancestral, traditional territories Vancouver and False Creek is located.

More information: www.vancouver.ca/sea2city

Contact: sealevelrise@vancouver.ca