A case study of the green building sector in Vancouver

Vancouver is striving to be one of Canada’s most progressive cities in terms of sustainable development, as evidenced by its goal of becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020. A core area of the City’s strategy in achieving this objective is the promotion of green industries, including the green building sector. While there has been significant research on the technical aspects of green building, there has been relatively little on the policy dynamics of the sector. Given that studies of the Cascadia region reveal thriving green building sectors with active policy communities, the absence of a targeted and specific study of Vancouver’s green building sector presents a knowledge gap. The purpose of this paper is to examine the policy processes involved in promoting green building in Vancouver. The research seeks to provide insight into the intricacies of the green building sector and better understand how it responds to and shapes policy. It is hoped that the lessons drawn from the research will contribute to the discourse occurring locally and in other jurisdictions.