Community Wellbeing Strategy

We are developing a Community Wellbeing Strategy to help create a City where everyone belongs.

The City of North Vancouver is developing a Community Wellbeing Strategy to plan for the services, resources, amenities, activities, and places that will help our community thrive. The Strategy will serve as a guide for how we make decisions about social infrastructure over the next 10 years.

Sutherland Secondary School’s Global Perspectives students created documentary films on what community wellbeing means to them – watch them now!

What is the Community Wellbeing Strategy?

Planning for community wellbeing means identifying strategies and actions that will help people live healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives in the City of North Vancouver, even as our community, and the world around us, evolves.

The Community Wellbeing Strategy will be our guide for civic decision-making that considers important topics, such as:

community resiliency
neighbourhood design
affordable housing
public safety
discrimination, marginalization, and racism
reconciliation
health and wellness
children, youth, families, and seniors
infrastructure
partnerships and advocacy
poverty reduction

How Will the Strategy be Used?

The Community Wellbeing Strategy will provide:

a vision and goals for our collective future;
strategies to help us meet these goals; and
actions we can take to build a caring City where everyone belongs.

The Process

The new Community Wellbeing Strategy will replace the City's Social Plan developed in 1998. While we have achieved many goals set in that plan, our community and the world around us is evolving. Our community is facing a number of challenges – some are global in nature, many are unique to our region, and others are specific to the City.

A new strategy is needed to provide direction, support decision-making and manage change in this context of changing local needs, shifting demands, limited resources and increasingly complex issues.

The Community Wellbeing Strategy framework was developed based on:

existing plans and policies including the 1998 Social Plan and 2014 Official Community Plan
community input from the You Me Us process in 2018-19, and ongoing stakeholder engagement
current trends, best practices, and precedent research
gaps identified in our current programs and services
public health information
City’s related work on: Housing Needs Report; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Reconciliation Action Plan; Child Care Action Plan; Mobility Strategy; and Environment Strategy

We’ve Developed a Starting Point for Our Strategy

The initial framework for our Community Wellbeing Strategy outlines our early ideas for a vision, goals and set of strategies to help people live healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives in the City of North Vancouver. The input and ideas shared through the Fall 2021 public engagement will be used to help refine this framework and ensure it reflects the values and priorities of our community as a whole.

Thank you for your feedback - our Initial public input period has closed. We'll be using your input to help develop a Community Wellbeing Strategy to help people live healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives in our City. Watch for more feedback opportunities and learn more on letstalk.cnv.org.

Strategy Overview

Draft Vision

A City where everyone belongs.

The vision is intended to recognize that the City must serve a variety of needs. Building a City where everyone belongs is a commitment to progressing health, happiness, potential, and quality of life for everyone.

Draft Goals

Draft Strategies

The 20 emerging strategies are broad statements that provide direction towards achieving the goals. They are organized under four themes:

Healthy Design

Creating places and spaces that are designed to support physical and mental health and resiliency

Create a ’15 minute city’ with daily needs close to home
Grow opportunities for connection and inclusion through the design of social places
Enable physical, locational, and financial access for all to participate in civic life
Build our community’s capacity to respond to and recover from adversity

Human Essentials

Prioritizing essential needs relating to suitable, affordable housing, sufficient healthy food, equitable opportunities, health, and safety

Improve the diversity and affordability of housing of all types, sizes, and tenures
Work to enhance services based on housing as a foundation for addressing complex needs
Improve food system accessibility, affordability, coordination, and access to healthy food
Cultivate a City that is engaged, equitable and inclusive, where diversity is celebrated
Value, foster, and develop strong relationships with the Indigenous community
Increase safety and the feeling of safety for all
Embed mental health into City services and policies, and actively support initiatives

Supporting People

Creating resources and opportunities that enable people to improve their wellbeing in ways that are responsive to their individual needs and experiences

Provide family-friendly services, housing, transportation, employment, child care, etc.
Improve our age-friendly City and foster seniors’ roles and contributions
Improve accessibility, affordability, and quality of child care in the City
Provide a supportive environment to help people move out of poverty
Enhance and expand social infrastructure to meet a range of needs and uses

Working Together

Developing a network of partnerships and support to achieve the City’s objectives together.

Build equitable and supportive partnerships to meet community needs
Champion and advocate to senior levels of government to provide needed supports
Act as an engaged partner with non-profit, social, and community agencies
Shape growth and investment to focus on social priorities and share the benefits of growth

Fall 2021 Engagement Summary

Public engagement on the draft vision, goals, and emerging strategies for the Community Wellbeing Strategy occurred over a six week period from September 22, 2021 to November 5, 2021. The intent of this engagement was to raise project awareness, to reach a broad and diverse spectrum of the community, and to seek feedback on the draft framework. A variety of engagement activities and tools were used to maximize outreach.

Overall, the feedback from the public engagement was positive, and people are keen to see the draft Community Wellbeing Strategy in the next stage. Feedback highlighted both the importance and the ambitiousness of the framework, and the possibilities it will create for the City and its residents.

For more details on the engagement activities and outcomes please read our What We Heard Report.

Key themes that emerged from the engagement included:

The importance and many benefits of strong social connections and the need to develop more community spaces and opportunities for interaction.
Community desire for more affordable housing options.
Building and improving upon community partnerships, local businesses, and non-profit relationships that deliver key services and supports.
The urgent need to consider and address the impacts of climate change.
The importance of equity, access, and inclusion in all areas of wellbeing.
Acknowledgement of the need for greater supports for most vulnerable residents.
The wide range of factors that contribute to and influence individual and community wellbeing.
A desire for neighbourhoods to be more walkable with easy access to amenities and supports, and a greater range of activities in the community.