GREATER VANCOUVER REGIONAL DISTRICT …The Regional Economy Task Force, along with the Regional...

December 5, 2016

GREATER VANCOUVER REGIONAL DISTRICT INTERGOVERNMENT AND FINANCE COMMITTEE

REGIONAL ECONOMY TASK FORCE

REGULAR MEETING

Friday, December 9, 2016 11:00 a.m.

3A Meeting Room, 4330 Kingsway, Burnaby, British Columbia.

A G E N D A1 1. ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA

1.1 December 9, 2016 Regular Meeting Agenda That the Intergovernment and Finance Committee Regional Economy Task Force adopt the agenda for its regular meeting scheduled for December 9, 2016 as circulated.

2. ADOPTION OF THE MINUTES

2.1 June 10, 2016 Regular Meeting Minutes That the Intergovernment and Finance Committee Regional Economy Task Force adopt the minutes of its regular meeting held June 10, 2016 as circulated.

3. DELEGATIONS 4. INVITED PRESENTATIONS 5. REPORTS FROM COMMITTEE OR STAFF

5.1 Update on the Regional Prosperity Initiative Designated Speaker: Heather Schoemaker, Senior Director, External Relations and Ann Rowan, Collaboration Initiatives Program Manager, External Relations That the Regional Economy Task Force receive for information the report titled “Update on the Regional Prosperity Initiative” dated November 28, 2016.

6. INFORMATION ITEMS

1 Note: Recommendation is shown under each item, where applicable.

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Intergovernment and Finance Committee Regional Economy Task Force Regular Agenda December 9, 2016

Agenda Page 2 of 2

7. OTHER BUSINESS

8. BUSINESS ARISING FROM DELEGATIONS

9. RESOLUTION TO CLOSE MEETING

10. ADJOURNMENT/CONCLUSIONThat the Intergovernment and Finance Committee Regional Economy Task Forceadjourn/conclude its regular meeting of December 9, 2016.

Membership: Moore, Greg (C) – Port Coquitlam Hepner, Linda – Surrey Stewart, Richard – Coquitlam

Mussatto, Darrell (VC) – North Vancouver City Robertson, Gregor – Vancouver

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the GVRD Regional Economy Task Force held on Friday, June 10, 2016 Page 1 of 2

GREATER VANCOUVER REGIONAL DISTRICT REGIONAL ECONOMY TASK FORCE

Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) Regional Economy Task Force held at 9:07 a.m. on Friday, June 10, 2016 in the 3A Meeting Room, 4330 Kingsway, Burnaby, British Columbia.

MEMBERS PRESENT: Chair, Mayor Greg Moore, Port Coquitlam Vice Chair, Mayor Darrell Mussatto, North Vancouver City Mayor Linda Hepner, Surrey

MEMBERS ABSENT: Mayor Gregor Robertson, Vancouver Mayor Richard Stewart, Coquitlam

STAFF PRESENT: Heather Schoemaker, Senior Director, External Relations Janis Knaupp, Assistant to Regional Committees, Legal and Legislative Services

1. ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA

1.1 June 10, 2016 Regular Meeting Agenda

It was MOVED and SECONDED That the Regional Economy Task Force adopt the agenda for its regular meeting scheduled for June 10, 2016 as circulated.

CARRIED

2. ADOPTION OF THE MINUTES

2.1 March 18, 2016 Regular Meeting Minutes

It was MOVED and SECONDED That the Regional Economy Task Force adopt the minutes of its regular meeting held March 18, 2016 as circulated.

CARRIED

3. DELEGATIONSNo items presented.

4. INVITED PRESENTATIONSNo items presented.

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the GVRD Regional Economy Task Force held on Friday, June 10, 2016 Page 2 of 2

5. REPORTS FROM COMMITTEE OR STAFF No items presented.

6. INFORMATION ITEMS

No items presented. 7. OTHER BUSINESS

No items presented.

8. BUSINESS ARISING FROM DELEGATIONS No items presented.

10. RESOLUTION TO CLOSE MEETING It was MOVED and SECONDED

That the Regional Economy Task Force close its regular meeting scheduled for June 10, 2016 pursuant to the Community Charter provisions, Section 90 (1) (k) as follows: “90 (1) A part of the meeting may be closed to the public if the subject matter being

considered relates to or is one or more of the following: (k) negotiations and related discussions respecting the proposed provision

of a regional district service that are at their preliminary stages and that, in the view of the board or committee, could reasonably be expected to harm the interests of the regional district if they were held in public.”

CARRIED 11. ADJOURNMENT/CONCLUSION

It was MOVED and SECONDED That the Regional Economy Task Force adjourn its regular meeting of June 10, 2016.

CARRIED (Time: 9:07 a.m.)

____________________________ ____________________________ Janis Knaupp, Greg Moore, Chair Assistant to Regional Committees 18530346 FINAL

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To: Regional Economy Task Force From: Heather Schoemaker, Senior Director, External Relations Ann Rowan, Collaboration Initiatives Program Manager, External Relations Date: November 28, 2016 Meeting Date: December 9, 2016 Subject: Update on the Regional Prosperity Initiative

RECOMMENDATION That the Regional Economy Task Force receive for information the report titled “Update on the Regional Prosperity Initiative” dated November 28, 2016.

PURPOSE To present an update on the progress of the Regional Prosperity Initiative in creating a new public-private collaboration that will enable leaders from local government, business and industry, academia, labour and civic organizations to expand the prosperity of the Metro Vancouver region. BACKGROUND The Metro Vancouver Board Strategic Plan identified an action to “Clarify and strengthen Metro Vancouver’s role in pursuing a collaborative approach to regional prosperity.” The Regional Economy Task Force, on behalf of the Metro Vancouver Board, has taken on the role of convening important stakeholders to facilitate a region-wide discussion on the value of pursuing a collaborative approach to building and sustaining the prosperity in the Metro Vancouver region. The first Regional Prosperity Forum, convened on April 27, 2016, culminated in 36 stakeholder organizations signing on to the forum declaration, which read:

We are committed to improving and expanding the prosperity of the Metro Vancouver region through the creation of a collaborative initiative bringing together businesses,

local governments, academia, professional associations and civic organizations. A follow-up Roundtable was organized on June 16, 2016 to continue the forum discussion with a more specific focus on how to proceed on the proposed public-private collaboration. Following the Roundtable, a Regional Prosperity Initiative Steering Committee was formed composed of 18 organizations that represent the diversity of sectors that have been involved in the Initiative to date along with an Advisory Group of executive leaders from the business, academic, and labour organizations. UPDATE ON THE REGIONAL PROSPERITY INITIATIVE Regional Prosperity Initiative Steering Committee The main task of the Steering Committee is to develop the key elements of a new collaborative organization, including the vision, mission, strategic priorities, areas of focus, scope of services, governance and funding structure and a two-year work plan.

5.1

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Update on the Regional Prosperity Initiative Regional Economy Task Force Meeting Date: December 9, 2016

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The Members of the Steering Committee are:

Joanne Curry, Simon Fraser University

David Fung, ACDEG Group

Michael Goldberg, University of British Columbia

Hussein Hallak, Launch Academy

Anita Huberman, Surrey Board of Trade

Peter Leitch, Motion Picture Production Industry Association of BC

Val Litwin, BC Chamber of Commerce

Rob MacKay-Dunn , Greater Vancouver Board of Trade

Evi Mustel, Mustel Group

Ken Peacock, Business Council of British Columbia

Gordon Price, Simon Fraser University

Andrew Ramlo, Urban Futures

Angela Robert, Conquer Mobile

Patrick Sauriol, DigiBC

Brad West, United Steelworkers District 3

Michael White, University of British Columbia

Robyn Crisanti, Port of Vancouver

Greg Moore, Metro Vancouver The Steering Committee has met three times in 2016 – September 21st, October 27th, November 23rd - and will continue to meet through the spring of 2017. A key focus of the Steering Committee’s work has been to define a vision, mission and purpose statement, develop a shared understanding of strategic directions and areas of focus and to confirm the desired next steps through to mid-2017. Attachments 1, 2 and 3 capture the discussions of the 2016 meetings. Documents supporting the work of the Committee include the Dynamics of Economic Change in Metro Vancouver: Networked Economies and Globalizing Urban Regions – a paper commissioned by Metro Vancouver and written by UBC professors Tom Hutton and Trevor Barnes to describe the global and local factors leading to the emergence of a regional economy in Metro Vancouver (Attachment 4). Metro Vancouver has engaged a consultant to assist in the development of a mission and vision statement. Efforts to date, include the adoption by Steering Committee members of a set of strategic priorities and areas of focus, as outlined below.

Strategic Priorities o Achieving prosperity by aligning business, academic and civic leaders around regional

Plans and priorities o Cooperation on actions designed to strengthen a distinct, sustainable and high

performing urban region

Areas of Focus o Research & analysis

o Marketing & promotion

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Page 3 of 5

o Collaboration

o High impact projects

Finalizing the proposed mission statement and the work with Richard Littlemore is still in process. Another area coming out of the steering committee meetings, was general agreement that demonstrating the strength of regional collaboration would help to establish the profile and credibility of this new organization. Two potential projects were identified that would be helpful: the development and implementation of a regional mobile business licence as well as a regional film permit. If executed well, business activity across the region could be enhanced. Telus has offered to provide financial support for the process required to develop a regional mobile business licence while the film industry will provide staff resources to advance a regional film permit. The next meeting of the steering committee will take place January 26, 2017. Regional Prosperity Initiative Advisory Group The role of the Advisory Group is to provide high level input and advice on the recommendations of the Steering Committee. The first meeting of the Advisory Group will take place January 12, 2017 followed by another meeting in May. Members of the Advisory Group include:

Iain Black (Greater Vancouver Board of Trade)

Paul Faoro (CUPE BC)

Tony Geheran (TELUS)

Kathy Kinloch (British Columbia Institute of Technology)

Val Litwin (British Columbia Chamber of Commerce)

Santa Ono (University of British Columbia)

Andrew Petter (Simon Fraser University)

Robin Silvester (Port of Vancouver)

Tamara Vrooman (Vancity)

John Wiebe (Globe Group)

Jonathan Whitworth (Seaspan)

Yuen Pau Woo (HQ Vancouver). Next Steps The work of the Steering Committee will result in a set of draft recommendations outlining key elements of the new collaborative regional public-private organization, including the vision, mission, strategic priorities, areas of focus, scope of services, governance and funding structure, and a two-year work plan. The Regional Economy Task Force, along with the Regional Prosperity Initiative Advisory Group, will play a critical role in providing early input and feedback into the work of the Steering Committee, including the planned path forward for the initiative at its meeting on December 9, 2016. The proposals coming from the Steering Committee will also be presented to the Advisory Group on January 12, 2017. All input and feedback will be directed to the Steering Committee for

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consideration. Both the Task Force and the Advisory Group will be reconvened to review the Steering Committee’s proposals for governance and funding models in May. Outreach and Engagement In addition to the process of developing a proposal for a new regional prosperity organization, outreach and engagement work will continue, including a roundtable with City Managers and Economic Development Officers to take place January 25, 2017. The Steering Committee has also indicated a strong interest in engaging First Nations and a meeting to begin that engagement will be scheduled for January as well. Regional Prosperity Forum II The individuals and organizations that participated in the Regional Prosperity Forum in April 2016, plus other important stakeholders, will be reconvened in a second Forum to discuss the recommendations and work of the Steering Committee. Regional Prosperity Forum II will take place June 22, 2017. The objective of this half-day event would be to confirm the interest of participants in creating a new organization, based on the recommendations of the Steering Committee, and to proceed with the formation of a new organization based on input from the Forum. The overall goal in 2017 is to garner a broad base of support for organizing and incorporating a new private-public collaboration. Once the organization has been incorporated, Metro Vancouver will continue its central role in facilitating the growth of the new organization. This is an interim process with the intent to engage other stakeholders in providing targeted support and monitor opportunities to attract provincial and federal grants. The long-term goal of the organization is to be self-sustaining with Metro Vancouver providing support and engagement similar to other members. ALTERNATIVES This is an information report. No alternatives are presented. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS It is anticipated that Metro Vancouver will provide support for the Regional Prosperity Initiative for the next two years. The cost of hosting the Regional Prosperity Forum and associated roundtables and meetings as well as contracted services for preliminary research in 2016 was incorporated into the 2016 Budget ($70,000.) Efforts in 2017 will be supported by the $233,997 budget approved by the Board under the General Government Program. The budget provides funding for temporary staff and/or contract resources, consulting services for research and strategy development as well as meeting costs. Starting in 2019, any consideration of Metro Vancouver’s contribution to the organization will mirror those of other members and supporters. SUMMARY / CONCLUSION The Metro Vancouver Board Strategic Plan identified an action to “Clarify and strengthen Metro Vancouver’s role in pursuing a collaborative approach to regional prosperity.” The Regional Economy Task Force provides input and direction to the development of the Regional Prosperity Initiative, with Metro Vancouver assuming the role of facilitator and convener. A diversity of key leaders and stakeholders has been brought together in the form of a Steering Committee and Advisory Group, to

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develop a collaborative approach involving the private and public sector as well as academia, labour and community organizations to identify a process for enhancing the prosperity of the region. Metro Vancouver will continue to support the progress of the Regional Prosperity Initiative Steering Committee and Advisory Group, along with special projects task groups, in the development of a proposal for a public-private collaboration that will advance the prosperity of the Metro Vancouver region. The overall goal in 2017 is to garner a broad base of support for organizing and incorporating a new private-public collaboration, including a second Regional Properity Forum to take place June 22, 2017 to confirm the interest of participants in creating a new organization, based on the recommendations of the Steering Committee. The long-term goal of the organization is to be self-sustaining with Metro Vancouver providing support and engagement similar to other members. Attachments: 1. Summary of meeting discussion for the September 21, 2016 meeting of the Regional Prosperity

Initiative Steering Committee (Orbit #19497640) 2. Summary of meeting discussion for the October 27, 2016 meeting of the Regional Prosperity

Initiative Steering Committee (Orbit #19834989) 3. Summary of meeting discussion for the November 23, 2016 meeting of the Regional Prosperity

Initiative Steering Committee (Orbit #20143906) 4. Dynamics of Economic Change in Metro Vancouver: Networked Economies and Globalizing Urban

Regions paper commissioned by Metro Vancouver (Orbit #19662055)

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1 of 4 | Summary of September 21, 2016 meeting October 28, 2016

Meeting date: September 21, 2016 3pm to 5pm

Location: TELUS Garden Executive Boardroom, 5th floor 510 W. Georgia St.

In attendance: Regrets:

Greg Moore, Metro Vancouver [Chair]

Robyn Crisanti, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority



Michael Goldberg, Sauder School of Business





Rob MacKay-Dunn, Greater Vancouver Board of Trade




Ken Peacock, Business Council of BC





Metro Vancouver staff:

Carol Mason, CAO

Heather Schoemaker, Senior Director, External Relations

Ann Rowan, Program Manager, Collaboration Initiatives

Tess Kitchen, Sr Policy Advisor, Collaboration Initiatives

Meeting Objective: Confirm the role of the committee and begin discussions on forming a public-private

collaboration on prosperity for the Metro Vancouver region.

Meeting documents:

Agenda

Green Paper Framework for a Regional Prosperity Initiative in Metro Vancouver

June 16 roundtable discussion summary

Profiles of other metropolitan prosperity initiatives

Biographies of members of the Regional Prosperity Initiative Steering Committee

Regional Prosperity Initiative Steering Committee Terms of Reference

Project proposal for developing a regional mobile business license (presented on table)

ATTACHMENT 1

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http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/SteeringCommittee-2016-09-21-agenda.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/GreenPaper/docs/1656_PPE_RPI_Green%20Paper%20Dec%202015%20v10%20LR.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/Documents/RegionalProsperityRoundtable-2016June16-meetingsummary.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/Documents/RegionalProsperityInitiativeProfiles.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/Documents/SteeringCommittee-memberbios.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/Documents/RegionalProsperityInitiativeSteeringCommittee-ToR.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/MobileBusinessLicence-projectproposal.pdf


Summary of Meeting Discussions

Chaired by Greg Moore, the inaugural meeting of the Regional Prosperity Initiative (RPI) Steering Committee

opened with a round of introductions, the Steering Committee Terms of References, timelines and deliverables.

This was followed by a roundtable discussion and brainstorming focused on the vision, priorities, governance,

funding, early wins and other issues to frame the outline of a public/private collaboration on regional prosperity

for the Metro Vancouver region. Captured below are the highlights of the discussion.

We bring a range of experience and expertise to the table to achieve progress on what we identify

are our common goals and champion ideas that will get us there

We need to develop a short/elevator pitch that captures what we are doing

Mission/Vision Defining our mission/vision is the first step

Need to define what gap we are trying to fill before we can figure out governance and funding; form

follows function

In general, our mission/vision is to ensure the on-going prosperity of Metro Vancouver region, but what

does that mean/encompass?

o Prosperity includes more than just economic factors

o As a “prosperity” initiative, the human element should be prominent in our mission

o Defining prosperity will require engaging a larger audience

Possibilities for a mission/vision include:

o Supporting and building strong economic sectors

o Attracting and building economic/business clusters

o Supporting the development of a rich and diversified tech ecosystem

o Ensure good jobs and good living conditions

o Maintaining and attracting talent In the region

o Attracting new investment

Priorities The list of what we could do is long and there are numerous other initiatives and organizations working

on issues related to prosperity. We need to identify the gap we fill/our niche.

Priorities for the region include:

o Transportation infrastructure: for people and goods movement

o Affordability: gap between incomes and the cost of housing and transportation

o Education

o Childcare

o Poverty

o Attracting new talent and stemming the tide of graduates going south

o Growth in all city centres

o Protecting and optimizing use in the region’s industrial lands

We should look at the priority issues we have identified and prioritize according to which ones we have

the most potential to influence/those not being addressed through other initiatives or organizations

Caution: shouldn’t spread ourselves too thin

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Governance Governance should be determined after figuring out what the organization is about

The Board of this organization must deliver on its fiduciary and strategic responsibilities and be able to

champion the initiative. The Board composition can’t be based on selecting representatives of certain

groups

Code of conduct/responsibility of members should be further refined in the terms of reference

Funding Strategies Must ensure that the organization has long-term value

Hard to have funding conversation without knowing what services will be delivered and the direction of

the organization

History has shown that the culture here is such that the private sector will not lead this type of effort

though there is potential for project-specific funding from private sector

Government funding

o Potential exists if advocacy is not main focus

o WEDC may be a potential source

o Success with federal and provincial sources will require demonstrated buy-in and cooperation of

municipalities in the region

Short term vs long term funding

Not all revenue sources are good; don’t want to compromise mission

Early Wins Early wins will help to build positive momentum, trust and confidence in the organization overcoming

skepticism

Competition between municipalities have hindered initiatives in the past and undermined statements

about cooperation/collaboration – early wins would help establish a new tone

Regional mobile business license and regional film permitting

o General agreement that work towards establishing a regional mobile business license and a

regional film permitting process should be pursued

o Interest on the part of Telus in leading the discussion on a regional mobile business license

o Interest on the part of Motion Picture Production Industry Association of BC in leading the

discussion of a regional film permitting process

Collaboration in the tech sector

o Developing collaboration in the tech sector could be a good early role for this new organization

o Supporting a high tech ecosystem will require bringing together educational institutions,

researcher and innovators, anchor companies, tech incubators and start-ups together to develop

plans/strategies

o Interest on the part of SFU in organizing a regional roundtable to specifically discuss opportunities

and challenges in this sector

Industrial Lands Strategy

o Area of significant interest to the business community and local government, but longer term

o Metro Vancouver will be undertaking work in this area to support a collaborative response to the

challenges of expanding industrial activities in the region.

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Building the Brand Brand development should be part of the early work of the organization itself – it is not necessarily

something the Steering Committee can undertake

Brand will need to reflect the prosperity definition that captures our goals and aspirations

Key words

o Innovation

o Livability

o Mobility

o Diversity

o Equality

o Cooperation

Brand will need to be captured in no more than three words that will become synonymous with the

organization

The Regional Prosperity Initiative

How do we market the Metro Vancouver Region?

The Metro Vancouver story has never been truly told – the brand needs to frame the story, the region –

not the province

Diversity is key – Metro Vancouver is a very diverse region – can be difficult to define the economy

Why can’t we attract class A business tenants outside of Vancouver?

Do we want to target the growth/attachment of specific industries and businesses?

o The blanket approach to encouraging investment produced a large investment in property that

led to soaring house prices

o Need a sense of how to match opportunities with resident skill base and then how to attract the

talent we need

According to Industry 2030, Food is the #1 industry in BC, can we build on that? It’s a value-added industry

Film – it is a creative industry that is booming

Tourism – it is an industry that provides a diversity of jobs and requires a diversity of skills

Strategic Planning

The vision for the organization should be tangible and one that can be translated into progress that can

be measured

o For instance, #1 metropolitan area in terms of livability – indices exist to measure progress

o The priorities of the organization/scope of activities should be related to the vision

o What is our timeline?

Scope of activities: whose needs are we trying to meet? Businesses, residents or both?

Need to align vision, mission and scope of activities in order to have a coherent message about what we

are doing and attempting to create

Should distinguish between the organization’s eventual activities/purpose and the near-term activities

Who needs to be engaged that hasn’t been?

o First Nations

o Youth / millennials

o The Province

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1 of 4 | Summary of October 27, 2016 meeting November 18, 2016

Meeting date: October 27, 2016 9am to 12pm

Location: Port of Vancouver Boardroom 100 The Pointe, 999 Canada Place








Greg Moore, Metro Vancouver









Peter Leitch, Motion Picture ProductionIndustry Association of BC



Guest:

Richard Littlemore, strategy writer


Carol Mason, CAO



Tess Kitchen, Senior Policy Advisor, Collaboration Initiatives

Meeting objective: To develop a shared understanding of the vision, mission and functions most needed and

best fulfilled by a regional public-private collaboration.

Meeting documents:

Agenda

Summary of September 21 meeting discussions

Draft “Perspectives on the Metro Vancouver Economy” paper by Hutton & Barnes, commissioned by Metro Vancouver

Greater Vancouver Economic Scorecard 2016 by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade (presented on table)

ATTACHMENT 2

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http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/SteeringCommittee-2016-10-27-agenda.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/MeetingSummary-SteeringCommittee-2016-09-21.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/DRAFTPerspectivesOnTheMetroVancouverEconomy.pdf

https://www.boardoftrade.com/scorecard2016/


Summary of Meeting Discussions

General questions/comments:

Focus now is on developing a vision and mission statement for the organization, not for the region

Question: does the organization need both a vision and a mission statement?

Is this organization “chief steward” for the region’s prosperity? Will the organization enable the region

realize its potential or prosperity?

Organization’s vision The vision statement should be

o Aspirational in tone

o Unique – it should differentiate us from other metropolitan prosperity initiatives

o Short, and thereby easy to commit to memory

o Relatable to the average person

What makes our region unique

o Natural environment

o Patterns of trade

o Sustainability

o Status as a gateway

o Strong links to Asia, business and personal – Metro Vancouver is the most Asian city outside of Asia

Concepts that could be included in the vision statement

o Pacific Rim or Northwest Coast

o Leverage the concept of a gateway: not only trade or in goods, but in knowledge and people

o Regional ‘leadership’ or perhaps regional ‘collaboration’ is more “Vancouver”

o “Shared” prosperity will resonate more with people who work

o “Livability” may be more relatable than “prosperity”

o “Economic vitality and quality of life”

Organization’s mission While there are many organizations in the region doing work to enhance our shared prosperity, the new

organization’s value proposition lies in being able to bring all these pieces together and coordinate them

Important to distinguish ourselves from existing organizations that work in the regional prosperity arena

Pieces to include in the mission

o Engendering/creating a prosperity mindset

o Could touch on outputs like vibrant, thriving…

Geographic scope Should the Fraser Valley, Squamish, Whistler, and Sunshine Coast be included?

o The functional labour market extends beyond the regional district

o Can dilute ourselves trying to be all things to all people,

o Local variances are tough to reconcile in a regional approach

o Prudent to develop a strong core of Metro Vancouver participation initially

o Keep other regional districts apprised of the initiative

o Soften the message that metropolitan economies are now the driver; creates unnecessary

animosities and silos

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o The means for linking other regions into the initiative may be through projects that are more

relevant to them, i.e. tourism and Squamish & Whistler, agriculture and food security with the

Fraser Valley

A few organizations around the Steering Committee table can help bring perspectives of the broader

provincial community

Organization’s services Initially the organization should focus on transactional activities to establish trust, confidence, credibility

and a positive reputation; with maturity, the organization can turn its attention to transformational work

First Nations involvement is essential

The organization needs to reflect the diversity of the region

This organization should leverage what is already happening but should also be encouraging partner

organizations to embrace a regional approach

Services for the organization to consider undertaking

o Connectivity

This is the key gap that the organization is fulfilling – connecting regional parties,

providing context , sharing information, and developing a strong voice for the region on

the good work that is being done in the region as well as what is lacking

Going back to the discussion at the June Roundtable, we can learn and begin to bridge

the gap between businesses and local governments on issues like building codes,

procurement practices and policies

This is the foundational activity, present in all others so may not be a stand-alone

function/service but rather an overarching theme

o Advocacy

This is the bread and butter of other organizations

This organization should be a vehicle for regional coordination, should avoid the federal

and provincial issues that will divide us

Maintaining the unity of the organization may preclude work on advocacy

o Research & analysis

This also represents a gap that this organization could fill, in terms of becoming a central

repository of this information

Leverage existing data sets as well as regional research & analysis, e.g.:

Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s Greater Vancouver Economic Scorecard

website and dashboard

Metro Vancouver (e.g., industrial land info)

Universities and health authorities

Interest in open data delivery system; developing a central online portal and mapping of

industrial ecosystems

Collaboration is key to sharing what already exists

o Action agenda

Transactional initiatives are important

Definitely part of what the organization would do

o Marketing and promotion

Important in terms of profiling, story telling

The brand connects directly with the vision

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o Foreign direct investment?

Should not be restricted to foreign direct investment, investment from within Canada

should be important

There’s an opportunity to assist in the in-bound side of investment

Greater Vancouver Board of Trade has been handling incoming calls but could help in

organizing incoming and outbound missions; it is considering reviving its World Trade

Vancouver Centre

Role should not be to staff this service, but to leverage the various existing organizations’ work

o Cluster development

A service probably for the organization after its initial years

There would be value in a descriptive approach to important existing clusters, for

example, advanced manufacturing including the expertise in submersibles, agri-food

sector, and health & life sciences like the Innovation Boulevard in Surrey

Priorities

Discussion and background documents reviewed so far point to same issues:

o Affordability: particularly in terms of the disparity between incomes and housing costs

o Competition for scarce land

o Transportation infrastructure and public transit

o Matching resident skill set with new jobs/industries & filling the gaps

o Regional collaboration

Metro Vancouver economy: general notes Important to acknowledge the significant role that the resource economy outside of Metro Vancouver

plays in driving our regional economy: 2/3 of the value of exports is resources from the interior

Holistic approach to prosperity should not juxtapose the metropolitan vs. the interior economies

The flow of capital and labour from Asia is a continued key driving force of our economy

Within the category of high tech there is advanced manufacturing which needs consideration in discussions

The discussion on industrial lands needs to be expanded to optimizing employment lands

Need for more research on the impact of the flow of capital and labour into the region

More discussion on relationship of Metro Vancouver economy to that of the rest of the economy

o Codependence between Metro Vancouver and the interior – the gateway handles exports as well

as imports

o In national income accounting, the value of resources is zero until they get to market – it is in

Metro Vancouver where the processing, shipping and sales transpire that values is created

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1 of 4 | DRAFT Summary of November 23, 2016 meeting December 5, 2016

Meeting date: November 23, 2016 9am to 12pm

Location: SFU Surrey Campus Meeting room 4040









Greg Moore, Metro Vancouver











Guests:

Richard Littlemore, strategy writer

Peter Payne, CEO, Health Tech Innovation Foundation

Nancy McKenzie, CFO, Seaspan


Carol Mason, CAO



Tess Kitchen, Senior Policy Advisor, Collaboration Initiatives

Meeting objective: To refine a vision, mission and purpose statement; to develop a shared understanding of strategic directions and areas of focus; to confirm the desired next steps through to mid-2017.

Meeting documents:

Agenda

Summary of October 27 meeting discussions

ATTACHMENT 3

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http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/SteeringCommittee-2016-11-23-mtg-agenda.pdf

http://www.mvprosperity.org/steeringcommittee/Documents/SteeringCommittee-2016-10-27-mtg-meeting-summary.pdf


DRAFT Summary of Meeting Discussions

Presentations

Val Litwin provided an update on the Lower Mainland Policy Alliance, a project of the chambers of commerce and boards of trade in the region to better advance their objectives through collaboration

Peter Payne, CEO of Health Tech Innovation Foundation, presented on Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard, including the drivers leading to the collaboration as well as the challenges but importance in establishing an appropriate governance structure. The organization is now expanding its geographical scope and is moving beyond the health services and technologies sector to include clean tech.

Nancy McKenzie, CFO of Seaspan, presented a description of how the economic benefits of the new non-combat shipbuilding contracts ripple across municipal boundaries. She also described the importance of collaborations in establishing a ship-building a supply chain and labour force after 40 years, including with local First Nations.

Strategic priorities

The Steering Committee was provided 2 proposals for the strategic priorities for this new organization.

Actions - Cooperation on actions designed to strengthen a distinct, sustainable and high performing urban region

Forums: to improve awareness of economic development in global market. Important to engage those who don’t understand the challenges.

Important to get the stories of local industries like Seaspan o Great example of a company identifies the opportunities as well as its needs to succeed o Find the venues to tell the Seaspan story and the regional impacts and benefits that emerge from

industry o Regional infrastructure, like transit, also produces regional impacts and benefits. Local

procurement spreads benefits and jobs and associated incomes and spending are not localized but regionalized

Regionalism - Achieving prosperity by aligning business, academic and civic leaders around regional priorities

Need a common vision. What defines success? How do we focus our efforts? o Which industry? Which clusters?

We are moving to a much more fluid concept of economic development – it cannot be as constrained as before nor will it react as expected to prescriptive approaches

Need to build on the regional assets that exist

Dislike the term regionalism – similar to provincialism and other negative connotations

Where are the “people” in this project? Are we relying on leaders to do the explaining? Should they be engaged directly?

The regional plan we should be building on is Metro Vancouver 2040. It is our vision and has to be added to our regional project.

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Other points

Could we combine the economic development budgets of the municipalities in the region to provide the funding base for this new organization/Metro Vancouver economic development agency?

o Not politically likely o Important for this initiative to have a more diversified revenues and buy-in than to be reliant on

local governments for funding

Instead of struggling to define ourselves at the front end, we should focus on defining success. And then we will be whatever we have to be to achieve this success.

o We’re in the discovery stage – we just need to decide what our stake in the ground is?

The members of the Steering Committee indicated that they generally supported the proposed strategic directions and felt the descriptions of each worked basically for this initiative, but most disliked the term “regionalism”.

Discussion on the Four Proposed Areas of Focus

Four proposed areas of focus o Research & analysis o Marketing & promotion o Collaboration o High impact projects

Delayed until later o Foreign direct investment o Cluster development

Uncertain o Advocacy

Research and Analysis

Compile, through open access other platforms, data and research that supports not only our work but the needs of business and others to be informed about what is going on in this region

What are the other Seaspan stories in this region? Can we tell similar stories about other industries?

The Province will be providing funding to eight spotlight sectors

Collaboration/High Impact Projects

Identify the new funding priorities for the Feds

How do we improve the sustainability of existing industries? o Need an analysis to determine if they are okay? o And what could we do to enhance their viability?

The four proposed areas of focus was an outcome of the previous meeting and this discussion confirmed that these four areas of focus still garnered support.

In summary, members agreed to the strategic priorities and areas of focus, as outlined below.

Strategic Priorities o Achieving prosperity by aligning business, academic and civic leaders around regional plans & priorities o Cooperation on actions designed to strengthen a distinct, sustainable & high performing urban region

Areas of Focus

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o Research & analysis o Marketing & promotion o Collaboration o High impact projects

Discussion on Vision and Mission

Richard Littlemore captured through a presentation the discussions of the previous meeting that he felt were relevant to the development of a vision/mission statement for the new organization. He then provided the following for consideration and discussion as a Mission statement:

The public-private Metro Vancouver Prosperity Office is the go-to source for excellent, up-to-date

information about the attributes, assets and unrealized opportunities in the West Coast’s most livable and

sustainable community – and Canada’s Asian-Pacific gateway. By its actions, the Office will:

Create a more prosperous, globally competitive, livable and sustainable region.

Build the collaborative capacity of the people, businesses and governments in the Metro Vancouver

region to promote prosperity, livability and environmental sustainability for all.

Leverage Metro Vancouver’s economic, geographic and social advantages to increase prosperity for

every enterprise and every municipality and to improve livability and sustainability for all.

Facilitate economic development and coordinate opportunity among public and private partners to

fully realize the full potential of all.

A fulsome discussion followed and a revised mission statement is being drafted for the consideration of the Steering Committee. Once it is signed off, it will be circulated more broadly and incorporated into a one-pager bringing together the strategic priorities and areas of focus with the mission statement.

Next Steps

A quick update on the work to establish a task force tasked with developing a Regional Mobile Business Licence as well as one on Regional Film Permit was provided.

Dates for the Steering Committee meetings, those of the Advisory Group and the proposed Regional Prosperity Forum II were presented.

Steering Committee

Thursday January 26, 9am to noon

Thursday February 23, 9am to noon

Thursday March 23, 9am to noon

Thursday April 27, 9am to noon

Wednesday May 24, 9am to noon

Advisory Group

Thursday January 12

Thursday May 11

Regional Prosperity Forum II: Thursday June 22, half day.

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Dynamics of

Economic Change in Metro Vancouver

Networked Economies and Globalizing Urban Regions

A REPORT PREPARED FOR METRO VANCOUVERNOVEMBER 2016

ATTACHMENT 4

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Dynamics of Economic Change in Metro VancouverNetworked Economies and Globalizing Urban Regions

Prepared for Metro Vancouver by:

Trevor Barnes

Department of Geography Faculty of Arts University of British Columbia

Tom Hutton

School of Community and Regional Planning Faculty of Applied Science University of British Columbia

November 2016

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Dynamics of Economic Change in Metro Vancouver 1

Contents

Summary ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3

Contours of Economic Change in Metro Vancouver ................................................................................................................................4

The Importance of Metropolitan Economies: Global Processes & Local Outcomes ..................................6

The emergence of world cities in advanced economies and urban systems .........................................6

Implications of a shift to a services-based metropolitan economy .....................................................................7

The importance of specialized industrial clusters ......................................................................................................................8

The spatial organization of metropolitan economies .............................................................................................................9

Structural processes and the power of local-regional contingency ...............................................................10

Metro Vancouver’s Development Trajectory ...................................................................................................................................................10

The Organization of the Metro Vancouver Economy: Opportunities and Challenges .............................12

Metro Vancouver’s Economic Geography: External Circuits and Comparators ................................................16

Toward a Collaborative Regional Governance and Networked Metro Vancouver Economy ..........17

Appendix I. Notes on Sources and Methodology .................................................................................................................................... 19

Appendix II. City-Regions and Economic Development: Twelve Key Texts .............................................................20

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2 Dynamics of Economic Change in Metro Vancouver

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Summary

The economy of the Metro Vancouver region has been fundamentally restructured over the past three decades, shaped by global processes, but always mediated by local and regional factors. The 1980s were a decade of change, including a deep local recession caused by a steep decline in resource industries and their associated services. This was followed by the emergence of a new development trajectory shaped by markets, capital, and cultures of the Asia-Pacific – the leading growth economies of a globalizing world.

A signature event of the 1980s was the Expo ’86 World Exposition, showcasing advances in transportation systems and technologies. Metro Vancouver’s first fixed-rail transit line, linking Vancouver’s downtown first to New Westminster and then to the nascent regional town centre of Surrey, facilitated the emergence of a regional economy and an increasingly cosmopolitan society. Both processes were enhanced by immigration from the Asia-Pacific. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games represented another hallmark event for Metro Vancouver, with important venues situated in Richmond and North Vancouver as well as the City of Vancouver and Whistler.

Foundational features of Metro Vancouver’s economy are the strategic gateway complexes of Port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, and Vancouver International Airport (YVR), consistently ranked as the leading airport in North America. The airport and cruise ship terminal underpin the important visitor economy of tourists, convention delegates, and extended family members. In addition, higher education and related advanced research institutions, the health and medical complex, firms providing finance and business services, and property development companies comprise cornerstones of Metro Vancouver’s economy. New and growing clusters of specialized industries and labour include film and video production, telecommunications, social media, green industry technologies, aerospace,

and high-value food and beverage production. The latter are supported by the agricultural operations within the region and into the Fraser Valley. Many of these clusters are increasingly represented throughout Metro Vancouver, contributing to the emergence of a true regional economy.

Looking forward, Metro Vancouver’s economic prospects are enhanced by many factors. These include international connectivity, higher education institutions, cultural diversity, unique regional ecological assets, and positive place-identity, all supported by commitments to quality public infrastructure and services. These provide a platform for economic development, opportunity and widely shared prosperity if supported by the right governance model and policy levers.

But our study also discloses some problematic conditions and factors. These include a serious mismatch between housing and labour markets within the region, the lack of propulsive-scale firms in major sectors compared to leading metropolitan economies, land supply constraints, transport congestion, and detrimental social conditions including poverty, polarization and inequality.

In our view, moving forward to a dynamic, sustainable and high-wage economy will require a new approach, one more closely aligned with the models of the most successful advanced metropolitan economies, and attuned to our region’s specific conditions and potentials. More specifically, a prosperous Metro Vancouver requires, with some urgency, a more effective collaborative and regional approach to development, a complementary program promoting a more fully networked economy, an innovative approach to managing critical land resources, and a commitment to a more effective use of the human, social, cultural and institutional resources that abound in the region.

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Purpose and ApproachThe purpose of this report is to describe and analyse the extended regional or metropolitan economy by looking backward over the last 30 years and projecting into the future. We draw on concepts from academic literature in urban studies and planning, as well as empirical sources.

We intend to delineate Metro Vancouver’s principal economic advantages and drivers that are its sources of prosperity as well as its weaknesses and challenges. This involves identifying growing and profitable economic clusters, agglomerations of similar and connected kinds of economic activity, as well as their forms of labour market, employment characteristics and levels of remuneration. Not all clusters are equal, of course, nor do they necessarily interact and cumulatively reinforce one another. Each cluster exhibits its own unique and specialized tendencies.

The conceptual framework derives from concerted work carried out by Canadian and international scholars on changing inter- and intra-metropolitan economic relationships. This work includes our extended engagement within larger collaborative economic research projects on the dynamics of urban growth and change, cited in Appendix I. The topic of urban economic change has been a rich research vein, deep and productive (see Appendix II for important examples). We also make use of the now significant body of scholarly work completed by researchers based in Metro Vancouver, which is both theoretically suggestive and empirically dense. Empirical sources include Canadian census material, BC and Metro Vancouver statistics, and industry and area-based reports including selections from the Conference Board of Canada.

We begin with an overview of how Metro Vancouver’s economy evolved over the last decades, followed by a discussion of the importance of metropolitan economies as the driver of development in a globalizing economic context. We then offer a profile of Metro

Vancouver’s economic pathway, taking into account the industrial restructuring of the past three decades, together with implications of a shift in development orientation toward the Asia-Pacific. Next we address the organization of Metro Vancouver’s economy, underscoring the importance of specialized clusters, and a discussion of growth opportunities and more problematic features, and close with a summary of observations concerning regional and collaborative approaches, network formation, and industrial land.

Contours of Economic Change in Metro VancouverDuring the last 30 years Metro Vancouver’s economy has undergone a sea change. Its old self is now barely recognisable. Large swathes of the old landscape where the economy was once embedded are no longer detectible.

Until the first half of the 1980s, Metro Vancouver functioned as a local control, finance, distribution and processing centre for British Columbia’s resource or staples economy. The principal resource was the “Green Gold” of forestry, as UBC scholar Patricia Marchak once described it. Other staples that were managed, financed, and distributed within the region included coal, fish, agricultural commodities and a variety of minerals. There was even a small stock exchange on Howe Street that raised capital from “penny stocks”, primarily for speculative mining ventures. Decision-making and financial services were concentrated in downtown Vancouver, and included corporate headquarters like MacMillan-Bloedel’s prize-winning, Arthur Erickson-designed, head office on Georgia Street. Processing and distribution functions were dispersed around Burrard Inlet and the inner suburbs along the Fraser Estuary.

The forestry sector became more capital-intensive, and forests more accessible. From the 1970s, as companies continued to operate in ecologically sensitive, old-growth forests, there was increasing conflict between logging companies, conservationists and First Nations.

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Greenpeace, which was founded in Vancouver in 1971 to oppose nuclear testing, joined with other local activists to oppose some logging operations especially in coastal British Columbia, leading to what was known as the “war in the woods”. This dynamic of oppositional politics and public protest on resource-based economic activity can be observed in the current controversies around the shipment of coal and the transportation of oil by pipeline in and through the Lower Mainland.

The world came to Vancouver for “Expo 86”, signalling a changed relationship between Metro Vancouver and the rest of the world. At the same time, wider forces of globalization were taking hold, including the opening up and expansion of economies hitherto closed and stagnant, like China’s and India’s. Moreover, as Metro Vancouver began to move towards “world city” status, its relationship to the rest of the province altered, particularly in relation to its staples economy. From about 1986 Metro Vancouver began to decouple, to separate itself, from British Columbia’s historically diverse, sometimes lucrative, sometimes depressed, resource economy. The metropolitan economy became much more varied, incorporating knowledge- and technology-intensive specializations, with new industries and clusters.

The impact of global forces also changed the face of Metro Vancouver. There was the loss of resource corporations headquartered in the downtown core (most notable was MacMillan Bloedel which was bought out in 1999 after more than a decade of financial turmoil) and a reduction of manufacturing jobs, often unionised and well paying. In 2014, only 5% of Metro Vancouver’s employment was in manufacturing. This is a much smaller percentage than for Toronto or Montreal, but comparable to London and Hong Kong, which have undergone extended and deep restructuring processes.

By opening itself up to the world, and spurred by federal and provincial policies around immigration, Metro Vancouver benefitted by attracting people, investment capital and businesses. Its historical ties helped it forge particularly strong connections to Asia (more than half the globe by land area and population), becoming a gateway city for that continent. In this sense, Metro Vancouver shared in the wealth created in places half a world away. There were costs to this strategy of greater engagement with the Asia-Pacific, though, including the current inflated housing market and a widening social divide.

Infrastructure, investment and new management systems have been critical to Metro Vancouver’s international trajectory. The establishment of Port Metro Vancouver in 2008, comprising the previously independent Port of Vancouver, the Fraser River Port Authority, and the North Fraser Port, enhanced the impact of port activity. The port1 and the Vancouver International Airport, owned by Transport Canada, a federal agency, enhance Metro Vancouver’s strategic gateway role, and more especially the region’s – and Canada’s – connections with the Asia-Pacific that constitute the most influential circuit of growth and change in the region.

1. Port Metro Vancouver was renamed the Port of Vancouver in 2016.

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The Importance of Metropolitan Economies: Global Processes & Local OutcomesWe are now in the age of metropolitan economies. Over the course of the 20th century, metropolitan-regions, large extended urban areas like Metro Vancouver, have emerged as the principal drivers of global economic growth and change. They are places where talent congregates and where economic innovation and creativity as well as corporate decision-making occur, affecting not only local and national but international economic spaces. Finance capital, including venture capital, accumulates in these urban centres and global supply chains come down to earth as production, distribution or retail centres; specialized forms of economic activity such film production, or high-tech innovation, or financial services agglomerate and cluster; and migrants from the four corners of the world journey, bringing skills, resources, and cultural knowledge. Further, the very diversity and density of activities found in metropolitan economies enhances economic productivity through internal and external economies of scale, producing a virtuous cycle, where prior growth and prosperity creates yet more growth and prosperity. Large metropolitan regions power the global economy.

Pulling from the academic literature, there are four important features of metropolitan economies.

The emergence of world cities in advanced economies and urban systems

First, large international metropolitan regions are c “world cities”, a term coined by Peter Hall during the second half of the 1960s, and further developed and refined especially during the tidal wave of globalization of the 1980s and 1990s. World cities are places where the work of globalization is done. London, New York, and Tokyo are at the very top of the world cities hierarchy. Those metropolitan regions perform their functions,

especially finance and corporate control, around the globe and around the clock. But there are other levels within the world cities hierarchy. In the second rung, which would include such metropolitan regions of the global north as Paris, Frankfurt, Sydney, Los Angeles, and Chicago, are so-called “multiplex cities” containing ensembles of banking, management, scientific innovation, media and creative industries. Within the high-growth East Asian region at the same hierarchical level are Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, with Shanghai especially posing a challenge to Tokyo’s apex global city status in the East Asian realm. Each of these cities projects significant global reach while serving as local management and banking centres. And within the Global South, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and Mexico City comprise sites of head offices, banking and trade as well as increasingly advanced industrial production.

Within Canada, metropolitan Toronto is also on the second rung of the hierarchy, while other large Canadian metropolitan regions are on the next step down. They are important nationally, but they don’t interact with the whole world, only a part of it, often trading on past historical linkages with particular regions. In Metro Vancouver’s case, it is the connection with parts of Asia that is important. A useful idea linked to world cities is “transnational urbanism”. This is the notion that an important connection among world cities, in fact, partially holding them together as an overall system, are contemporary patterns of migration in which migrants continue to live in two places at once. Transnationalism is increasingly practiced because of the ease of international transportation, ever more permeable boundaries, and the possibilities of holding two citizenships, or at least one citizenship and a residence visa.

Germane to Metro Vancouver, transnationalism has been associated especially with the Chinese diaspora. It is linked to what Aihwa Ong calls “astronaut families”, the opposite of nuclear families that are characterized by family members all staying in the same place. Astronaut families, in contrast, are split between

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different places, with different members of the same family at different times spending periods at each of those places. For our purposes, the importance of transnationalism is that it provides yet more glue in the bond that holds world cities together. Transnationalism brings thick connections, literally embodied, holding together the extended metropolitan regions between which people’s lives are geographically split.

Within the world cities of the global north, and particularly, metropolitan economies found within Canada, there are broad common features. First is deindustrialization, the decline of mass manufacturing employment that began in the 1970s and reached a nadir during the 1980s. Clearly, those cities that historically relied on manufacturing were most affected. In Canada’s case they were found mainly in Ontario and Quebec, which comprised Canada’s industrial heartland, while more peripheral regions specialized in the resource industries. (This pattern was captured in Canadian economist Harold Innis’s ‘staples theory’ of development published almost a century ago.)

Given Metro Vancouver’s small manufacturing employment, deindustrialisation had limited effects, although at particular sites they were transformative. For example, the former industrial areas of the north and south sides of False Creek have become primarily residential and associated with the new economy. Mills along the Fraser River demonstrated greater longevity but are now transforming also into new urban spaces. An important issue here is “resilience”; that is, the ability of a given metropolitan region to bounce back following a significant traumatic event such as deindustrialisation or deep recession. Metro Vancouver’s resilience was especially robust following the decline of the provincial resource economy during the first part of the 1980s. It was then that Metro Vancouver remade itself, taking on a second life.

Implications of a shift to a services-based metropolitan economy

The second common feature among metropolitan economies has been the rise of the service economy. Within the largest metropolitan regions this has meant the growing prominence of an educated, credentialed professional, scientific and cultural workforce. Such workers are part of a larger shift in the economy towards a post-industrial society, and first recognised in embryo during the early 1970s by the American sociologist, Daniel Bell. The post-industrial economy replaced the old manufacturing economy. Post-industrialism’s principal product is not tangible – such as cars, stoves, two-by-fours – but intangibles: knowledge and information. Because what is produced is different, the workers who make it are also different. They are valued for their creativity, education and mental agility, which have been acquired and credentialed by the institutions of higher learning they attended. In Richard Florida’s terms, this portion of the workforce forms a new urban “creative class”, which through its high income, its preference for urban residences, and its particular retail consumer aesthetic, has reshaped the form and internal dynamics of large metropolitan regions.

The other form of service work carried out in large metropolitan areas, such as retailing, food and beverage, and personal services, generally does not require sustained levels of education and training. That work mainly serves the needs of the local metropolitan population. Financial rewards for this kind of service work are not as high as for the creative class. In Metro Vancouver’s case, this part of the service sector also satisfies the needs of visitors, tourists and short-term residents, as well as transnationals. For one of the functions of Metro Vancouver is, as Elliot Siemiticki put it, “a resort town”: an overstatement perhaps, but a term with resonance in the Metro Vancouver urban imagination.

There is a significant regional aspect to services development in Metro Vancouver. Complexes of

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specialized office and retail activities are key to the growth of regional town centres, exemplified by Surrey Centre, Burnaby’s Metrotown and North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay. They have embodied key planning goals since the original regional growth management strategy, The Livable Region 1976/1986. Further, that remains in the current Metro Vancouver 2040, comprising an important continuity in Metro Vancouver’s extended development narrative.

The importance of specialized industrial clusters

A third common feature among the larger extended metropolitan economies within Canada, and other global northern countries, are clusters of new economic activity, especially in high tech, design, social media and cultural industries. Such clusters: attract capital, especially venture capital, and talented, high-paid skilled labour; help forge international connections; and are a source of scientific and cultural innovation. The activities are clustered because of agglomeration economies, which result from the high degree of interaction, both formal and informal, among firms forming the geographical cluster. Agglomeration advantages include the establishment of schools and educational programmes to train labour employed in the cluster; the splitting of costs among firms for production space and equipment; the setting up of business associations and lobby groups to further the interests of the cluster; the sharing of information among firms about new markets, products, techniques, and labour; the emergence of specialized services, say, in finance, to meet specific needs of the cluster; the opportunity for a more fine-grained division of labour, and hence greater cluster productivity; and a relentless drive within the cluster for innovation and advantage spurred both by internal cooperation and competition. The point is that clusters have an energy, dynamism and vigour brought about by their very collective character. Any firm located within the cluster both raises its own competitive profile and, in so far as it contributes to

the collective, raises the cluster’s competitive profile too. Competitive advantage lies outside a firm, even the industry, residing instead in the aggregated production complex, the cluster, and the associated concentrated geography.

In addition, certain kinds of institutions and networks are key to the growth of such clusters within advanced economies of city-regions. Foremost among these are major research-based universities. They train and educate the high-level labour central to the most successful urban-regional economies, and also attract major national and international funding for all kinds of research, notably in the domains of applied science, telecommunications, transportation, medicine and health, and architecture and the built environment. The arts and humanities are also important foundations for advanced urban-regional economies, as they help to promote the creativity and cosmopolitanism associated with great world cities such as London, Paris, and New York. Increasingly, too, the strength and operating characteristics of networks (which may include production, business, social, cultural, or institutional networks) constitute defining features of the most advanced metropolitan economies. Manuel Castells developed this idea in his landmark study, The Rise of the Network Society (Wiley-Blackwell 1996). More recently, drawing on an extended program of comparative research in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Michael Storper’s The Rise and Fall of Metropolitan Economies (Stanford: 2015) compellingly shows the critical roles played by the interactions of economic specialization, human capital and institutions in the economic success of city-regions in the twenty-first-century. Finally, Allen Scott has underscored the centrality of knowledge, creativity and social connectivity in Social Economy of the Metropolis: Cognitive-cultural capitalism and the global resurgence of cities (Oxford 2008).

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The spatial organization of metropolitan economies

A final common feature is explicitly spatial, the increasing geographical fragmentation of metropolitan regional economies. “Urban splintering” means that different spaces within the metropolitan region specialize in different kinds of economic functions and forms of employment. The different parts are not conventionally integrated into a single, uniform-type of economy. Rather, as one commentator suggested, the different spaces are held together by “mutual gravitational attraction”, with in some cases large geographical gaps between the nodes. The idea of a fragmented, multi-nodal, multi-specialised city-region, a splintered metropolis, has been investigated empirically, demonstrating an increasingly complex spatial structure.

Typically, three kinds of different spaces within the metropolitan region are recognised. First, there is the inner city zone around the city centre, which is increasingly residential, subject to the juggernaut of gentrification, and bound up with high-end forms of retailing, public and private consumption and spectacle. Industry here takes the form of cultural, design-based and technology-intensive spaces of the new economy, or “neo-industrial” as it has been called, and a leading development zone for world cities such as London, San Francisco and Shanghai. Second, within suburban districts we observe specific nodes and activities such as manufacturing, retail and business centres, industrial parks, universities and technical colleges, research and development campuses, and airports. Finally, there are peri-urban spaces, anywhere from 50-100 kilometres outside of the downtown core, which make the transition from the rural to urban functions. This zone can include new residential spaces along with public and commercial services as well as transportation infrastructure, and industrial activity requiring large footprints or cheap land prices and rents.

The geography of economic activity within these spaces of the metropolis include the central business district (CBD) comprising financial and corporate office activity; industrial districts, which accommodate manufacturing, warehousing and distribution; special-purpose zones for major ports and airports; and retail districts which may include specialized retail areas as well as major shopping centre complexes. But these economic spaces are not immutable, and are subject to forces of change, reflecting the rise of new industries (and decline of others), the impacts of production and communications technologies, and global forces. Digital technologies, corporate downsizing and changes in the structure of labour have impacted central business districts, with retail, technology firms and consumption activities infiltrating the CBD. The decline of traditional manufacturing and resource industries, as in the Metro Vancouver case, have produced employment losses, but represent resources for new industries, especially in the technology and creative industry sectors. ‘Cultural quarters’, typically including creative industries as well as ancillary consumption activities such as restaurants, cafes and bars, have emerged as significant economic spaces of the metropolis.

But again pressures of change are apparent, pointing to the fluidity of space and function in the metropolis, and we acknowledge three examples:

• The idea of industrial spaces shaped by largely localised production networks of labour and suppliers must be modified by the increasing use of outsourcing, enabled by digital production and communications technologies, essentially ‘stretching’ the territorial scope of modern production systems;

• The patterns of retail activity in metropolitan areas are increasingly subject to the growing trend toward e-retailing and online shopping; and

• Globalizing cities such as New York, London, Toronto and Vancouver are exposed to large inflows of capital from international sources, placing upward pressures on land prices, and a powerful tendency toward more profitable land uses displacing others in the process.

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Structural processes and the power of local-regional contingency

The processes of deindustrialisation, the growth of the service economy, new economy cluster formation, and urban splintering are found across Canadian metropolitan regions, indeed, across metropolitan systems of the global north. They indicate a degree of convergence among metropolitan economies. Within this high-level frame there can be significant divergence across the urban systems within and between countries, however.

For example, Metro Vancouver’s historical ties to Asia, which began before the province was a province, and Vancouver was Vancouver, clearly has influenced both the current pattern of immigration to the metropolitan region, and the economic consequences. Metro Vancouver has a far higher proportion of ethnic Chinese (19%: 402,000 ethnic Chinese population) than Calgary (7%: 75,401 Chinese population), or the Seattle-Tacoma metropolis (4.1% ethnic Chinese). Neither had a historical relationship to China like Metro Vancouver. The reversion of Hong Kong to China by Britain in 1997 and the promotion of Asian immigration by the British Columbia and Canadian governments through the immigrant entrepreneurial programme in 1998, along with the rise over the last quarter century of East Asia as a titanic economic power, have brought immigrants and wealth to the region.

Another example of Metro Vancouver’s uniqueness has been its changing relationship with the wood-products industry. Historically, Metro Vancouver was embedded within the province’s forestry sector; trees were the local natural resource endowment that produced the greatest income and wealth. That, as we will discuss in some detail below, changed during the early 1980s, so that forestry was no longer an industry on which wealth and income could be counted. Compare that to Calgary whose local resource endowment, oil, continued to generate wealth and income, and at some periods, enormously so. It never faced Metro Vancouver’s crisis during the 1980s, until now at least.

Seattle-Tacoma’s economy was also initially based on the forest economy. However, in the 1920s the Boeing Corporation established its operations there. Making planes increasingly became a new source of wealth and income, and through the linkage to electrical engineering, helped create that metropolitan region’s high-tech economy.

The larger point is that while extended metropolitan regions may experience common processes like deindustrialisation, service sector growth, and new economy clustering, how those places deal with those processes, and the economic consequences, will be different because of particular determining local geographies and histories.

Metro Vancouver’s Development TrajectoryThe provincial staples economy, most prominently forestry, fishing and mining, initially drove the development of what is now Metro Vancouver. Downtown Vancouver was the corporate decision-making and finance centre, and the Port along with warehousing along Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River were principal sites of physical storage and distribution. Processing was carried out across the Lower Mainland. In Innis’s language, Vancouver developed as a “local metropole” for British Columbia’s natural resource economy, performing key financial, management, processing, and distribution roles.

Some of the municipalities within Metro Vancouver were connected directly to staples production, such as fishing in Steveston (now part of Richmond), logging in North Vancouver, agriculture in Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge and the Langleys, and the milling and pulping in New Westminster. Municipalities such as Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam were prime for suburban development because of their proximity to the downtown core and the extensive green space that was available.

From the late 1970s, BC’s three principal staples industries, fishing, mining and forestry, began to

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experience difficulties. Over-fishing resulted in declining catches. Global competition, especially from South America, decreased investment in BC mining. And the forest industry that formerly produced fifty cents of every provincial dollar was beset by a series of crises that included valley-by-valley environmental protests, prohibitive US import tariffs, green-driven consumer boycotts, First Nation blockades, and, most recently, the pine beetle infestation. The consequence was a “de-coupling” of the Metro Vancouver economy from the mainstay of resource production in the rest of the province. Among other things this resulted in the closing of Vancouver’s resource-focussed penny stock exchange in 1999, shrinkage and in some cases eradication of corporate headquarters, and elimination of staples processing jobs (the White Pines Division on Southwest Marine Drive in the City of Vancouver closed in 1999 and Canfor closed its Panel and Fibre Mill in New Westminster in 2007).

It was within this context of the decline that a new Metro Vancouver economy emerged, showing remarkable resilience as it thrived in a post-staples economy. As the character of commerce changed, Metro Vancouver became significantly post-corporate, with fewer head offices than comparably sized metropolitan regions. In 2014, there were 240 head offices in Metro Vancouver with 15,000 employees, compared to 386 head offices with 41,276 employees in Montreal, and 215 head offices with over 32,000 employees in Calgary. (Source: Statistics Canada Table 528-0002).

Metro Vancouver’s post-staples economy took on the hallmarks of post-industrialism. Employment soared in the service sector. In 2011, there were 95,000 workers in professional occupations that climbed to 130,000 in 2015 (Source: Statistics Canada Table 282-0131) and helped to produce the creative class. At the other end of the spectrum there were numerous lower-paid jobs in the form of personal services, from shop assistants to wait-staff in restaurants to taxi drivers. Further, studded across Metro Vancouver were also a variety of clusters of intense economic activity, some traditional ones organized around the Port and YVR as well as newer

clusters involving video-game production, the design of social media platforms, and film and TV production. Each of these clusters had their own distinctive geographies, in part made available by clearing space that was formerly occupied by defunct staples activities.

Metro Vancouver also encompasses a large and economically important agricultural sector. The Agricultural Land Reserve contains over 60 thousand hectares, or about 22% of the regional land base, and includes 2,800 farms (Metro Vancouver website). Metro Vancouver’s agricultural sector, which includes major produce, berry and dairy farming, employs over 8,000 workers, and contributes almost $800 million in gross farm receipts. Further, Metro Vancouver’s agricultural areas provide key ecological services to the region, forming a critical part of the region’s green spaces (together with wilderness and recreational lands) which comprise over 60% of Metro Vancouver’s total land area.

Finally, there has been urban splintering. Municipalities that formerly had been linked into the metropolitan staples economy asserted a measure of autonomy, specializing in new forms of activity, such as high-value forms of production and service provision, including film and TV production studios in North Vancouver and Burnaby, Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, and high-tech industries situated in Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey.

It was as its new post-staples self that Metro Vancouver emerged as a lower tiered world city. It has significantly rescaled its geography over the last thirty years. Its old self was tied to the fortunes of the staples industries of the province’s interior and Western Canada. Now Metro Vancouver serves and is linked to the world. Consequently, while in 1991 Metro Vancouver’s population was 47.5% of British Columbia’s, in 2015, that share increased to 53.7%. (Source: BC Stats)

Metro Vancouver’s principal global linkages are through the trading circuits, metropolitan regions, and cultures of the Asia-Pacific. The city is now a node within a larger vibrant network of Pacific Rim flows of people,

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money and ideas. Government at all levels has been an important lubricant fostering trade missions, investment incentives, educational exchanges, and opportunities for migration. Particularly important was the state’s role in managing the large-scale immigration of entrepreneurs from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Apart from the lure of an established community of ethnic Chinese in Vancouver, this class was persuaded to move to Metro Vancouver in 1986 because Citizenship and Immigration Canada added an entrepreneurial stream to its Business Immigration Programme. That programme was cancelled in 2014, but over its course tens of billions of dollars were landed in the British Columbia economy, and Metro Vancouver’s in particular. Metro Vancouver’s economy from the mid-1980s was incorporated within the Chinese diaspora’s Pacific Rim transnational flows.

More recently, there have also been expanding connections with Europe and with emerging economies of the Global South, especially those of South Asia and Latin America. This larger rescaling of Metro Vancouver is partly a result of deep structural forces bound up with globalization, innovation and competition, but it is also a consequence of contextual local factors. They have included Metro Vancouver’s innovative residential development, ecological stewardship, distinctive urban design, and commitment to rapid transit and ‘active transportation’ approaches. Such home-grown factors have established Metro Vancouver as an admired and emulated region, generating positive associations that have served to attract new enterprises and skilled workers.

The Organization of the Metro Vancouver Economy: Opportunities and ChallengesWithin the context of Metro Vancouver’s economy, we can recognise two main organizational levels. The first is anchored by major institutions regulated and in some cases supported by the state that include the strategic gateway infrastructures of the Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport (YVR), higher education institutes such as the University of British Columbia,

Simon Fraser University, BCIT, and Emily Carr University, and major hospital and medical facilities. The second is a more granulated economic landscape primarily of small- and medium-sized privately owned enterprises (SMEs) within the service sector. Metro Vancouver lacks the propulsive multinational corporations found in cities like Toronto, Seattle and San Francisco. Consequently, it is reliant on the dynamism of the SME sector for generating employment, sales, revenues and trade. Within the SME sector, for example, video game firms and social media start-ups have played key roles in innovation, product development, and generating employment opportunities, especially for younger workers who have high levels of education, entrepreneurial drive, and cultural capital.

At the first level of big institutions, both YVR and the Port are critical. YVR is the second largest airport in Canada, with more than 20 million passengers passing through it annually and 271,000 tonnes of cargo. There are 400 businesses at the airport, directly generating $1.1 billion in wages. The Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada, with 28 separate terminals spread across the metropolitan region, handling just shy of a fifth of all of Canada’s merchandise international trade. It is the third largest port by tonnage in North America (eclipsing New York), employing 47,700, and generating $10.5 billion. Two of the terminals are for cruise ships, which have twice as much traffic as Canada’s second most important cruise port, Halifax. In both cases, YVR and the Port play a crucial gateway function for Metro Vancouver, literally connecting it to the rest of the world, solidifying its status as a world city.

That global reach is also the case with Metro Vancouver’s major higher-education institutions. The University of British Columbia (UBC), for example, with an annual operating budget of $2.3 billion, takes in over 13,000 international students or 23% of its annual enrolment. The University employs over 15,000 academics, staff and service workers and generates $12.5 billion in revenues. While UBC is the oldest academic institution in the region and traditionally ranks among the top 30 universities globally, there

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is considerable strength in academic and technical training as well as research across the region. Simon Fraser University (SFU) has developed a multi-nodal character. In addition to its original campus on Burnaby Mountain, SFU boasts a major presence in downtown Vancouver, including the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, and the Segal Graduate School of Business and in Surrey, the Bing Thom-designed SFU Surrey City Centre campus that provides a strategic development role while also contributing to the diversity of community life. The British Columbia Institute of Technology has its principal site in Burnaby, but also has campuses in North Vancouver, Richmond, and downtown Vancouver, and constitutes a propulsive force in the development of Metro Vancouver’s burgeoning tech-sector, as does the Centre for Digital Media. The Emily Carr University of Art + Design is ranked as a leading Canadian and international institute in higher arts education, training and practice, and provides a creative stimulus to Metro Vancouver’s important cultural economy sector. Other significant institutions of higher education include North Vancouver’s Capilano University, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (campuses in Surrey, Richmond and Langley), and Langara College in Vancouver.

Finally, there is the life and health sciences cluster which includes the operation of two public health authorities, associated hospital complexes, research facilities and innovation centres with links to both UBC and SFU. In general, these large-scale institutions not only provide basic services for the Metro Vancouver economy, they are generators of considerable income in their own right.

The other level of Metro economic activity is dominated by often small, private sector firms in a disparate set of sectors. There are a few big corporations which act as anchors for a given sector, but the headquarters for those firms compared to those of, say, Seattle giants such as Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and Starbucks, are small fry. There are branch offices of global corporations found within Metro Vancouver such as Microsoft, Electronic Arts, or Sony Pictures, but they are

branch offices with limited budgets and employment, and important corporate decisions are made elsewhere.

Within Metro Vancouver’s SME sector we can identify four main clusters. High-tech is likely the most dynamic, providing green, well-paying jobs that are interesting and draw on Metro Vancouver’s well-educated labour market. In 2011, 58.6% of the population of Metro Vancouver aged 15 and above had a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree, and 34.1% had a bachelor’s degree or higher (Source: Statistics Canada, NHS Profile, Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area: 2011). In 2014, there were 6,226 high-tech businesses employing 58,200 workers or 4.5% of Metro Vancouver’s workforce. For the most part firms were small, and spread across the metropolitan region, although there were geographical concentrations such as Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, East Richmond, and West Burnaby. There were also some larger firms such as Electronic Arts (video games) in Burnaby, and Hootsuite (social media) and Slack (cooperative software) in Vancouver, which provided opportunities for spin offs and outsourcing. The latter two were included within Canada’s five ‘unicorn’ companies (tech start-ups valued at $1B or more) (Vancouver Economic Commission, Report on Technology 2014: Vancouvereconomiccommission.com).

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The second cluster is finance, insurance and real estate, the greatest and fastest growing contributor to Metro Vancouver’s GDP. Clearly, much of the size and advance of that sector is bound to Metro Vancouver’s stratospheric housing prices which are no longer confined to the west side neighbourhoods of Vancouver. Finance alone employs 41,900 people, making Metro Vancouver Canada’s second financial centre by employment after Toronto (Greater Vancouver Economic Scorecard Summary Report 2016: p. 20). Its significance is undoubtedly a result of the close linkages Metro Vancouver has fostered with the fast-growing economies of Asia, especially China. In addition, there is a limited venture capital market with a focus on high-tech enterprises. It is overshadowed, though, by much larger venture capital markets in cities like San Francisco, Seattle and New York.

The third cluster within Metro Vancouver is film and TV production. Taking off during the 1970s as a result of the break-up of the old Hollywood studio system generating “runaway production”, Metro Vancouver’s film and TV industry is located in suburban locations, mainly North Vancouver and Burnaby, but filming occurs across the region. The success of the industry, while clearly depending upon the US-Canadian dollar exchange rate, has been brought about in large part because of a strong coalition among industry partners: firms, organized labour, and the BC government. Investment in film and TV production, much of it foreign, regularly exceeds $1 billion, and when the Canadian dollar exchange rate is low, as it is currently, it edges up to $2 billion.

Finally, there is tourism, also dependent on the value of the Canadian dollar. In 2014 there were 8.9 million visitors to Metro Vancouver who stayed at least one night. The tourism industry is a diffuse category, and the focus is dependent upon both human-made infrastructure and attractions such as Gastown, the Museum of Anthropology, and Fort Langley, and the natural environment, exemplified by the mountains, beaches, riverfront parks and the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. This underscores the importance of both cultural

tourism and eco-tourism for the region. In addition, agri-tourism constitutes a growing segment of the Metro Vancouver economy, including wine, craft beer and artisanal food production. It is exemplified by the Circle Tour of farms in Langley, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Part of the service sector, the tourist industry varies widely in terms of wages and forms of employment. While there are well-paying, full-time, permanent, and even unionized jobs – for example in the hotel sector – the tourist economy also generates many seasonal, part-time, and minimum-wage positions.

If these are the opportunities embedded within Metro Vancouver’s economy, there are also challenges:

• The cost of housing for homeowners and renters as well as rent for start-up businesses is perhaps the most important. While housing price increases have enriched long-term residents, it constrains and disheartens young, trained and talented workers even within the most-high paying professions like law and medicine. In an Ipsos Reid poll of Vancouverites asking about their life satisfaction it was the 25-34 age group with university degrees who were the most dissatisfied (Trevor Melanson, Vancouver Magazine 20 June 2016: p. 54). They were crippled either by exorbitant housing debt, or perhaps even worse, dispirited by the prospect of never owning a home in Metro Vancouver.

• Related is wealth and income polarization among Metro Vancouver’s population. Those who own their houses outright are all millionaires, and depending upon where they live, multi-millionaires. But average incomes are comparatively low. Metro Vancouver’s average family income is tenth against other metropolitan regions in the country. For the critical 25-34 age group, workers with a degree make $36,484 in Metro Vancouver compared to $52,109 in Calgary, $50,664 in Ottawa, and $40,681 in Toronto (Conference Board of Canada, Scorecard for Greater Vancouver 2016: p. 31).

• The lack of corporate head offices, and more

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generally, large corporations, both reduces potential high-paying jobs, but also opportunities for corporate philanthropy and participation in the public life of the city. Seattle, only a little larger than Metro Vancouver, established a cultural events office that uses corporate donations to mount a full programme of civic cultural events throughout the year.

• Metro Vancouver’s technology sector represents a vibrant element of the regional economy, with strengths in certain industries including telecommunications, video game production, software, and aerospace, among others. There are important clusters of technology-based industries and firms, including inner city districts of the City of Vancouver, within which Hootsuite is a leading firm; Discovery Park in Burnaby; and aerospace industries in Richmond. Metro Vancouver also encompasses significant branch operations of technology-based multinationals, including Microsoft. UBC also features important capacity in technology-based research and development, notably in Applied Science and Engineering. Innovation Boulevard in Surrey represents a vivid example of investments that promote synergy between health care, technology, education and business. But Metro Vancouver’s technology sector, relative to those of leading city-regions such as San Francisco and Seattle, is small, lacking multinational firms, propulsive sectors, and ‘critical mass’ in terms of the scale and growth trajectories of technology clusters overall.

• Metro Vancouver’s growth and development potential is shaped – and to a significant extent constrained – by access to capital and skilled labour; these are common to many metropolitan regions in an era of globalization and competition. But a critical constraint on future economic development in Metro is in the sphere of land resources – and more particularly industrial land. In common with other rapidly growing urban regions, there are constant pressures on the land base associated with development pressures driven by capital re-layering, the search for higher returns on investment, and increasing competition for space.

These are common pressures experienced across metropolitan economies generally, but there are issues specific to Metro Vancouver. About one-half of the total territory of Metro Vancouver is dedicated green space – including wilderness and recreational areas, as well as agricultural lands. Overall this is greatly to Metro Vancouver’s advantage in terms of quality of life and the policy goals of sustainable development and the ‘green agenda’. Much of the rest of the Metro land base is allocated to commercial, residential and institutional uses. A large share of Metro Vancouver’s industrial land base is linked to transportation, warehousing and distribution, including those areas associated with Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport – two principal drivers of the regional economy.

We are concerned that the supply of industrial land will seriously constrain the development of critical ‘new economy’ sectors such as engineering systems,

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telecommunications, digitalised cultural industries and the creative sector overall. Land – and more specifically industrial land – should be seen not as a passive asset, but as a strategic resource for economic development. To demonstrate, leading city-regions are characterised by the retention of significant land in strategic locations which serve as the critical sites of innovative, high-value creative, IT and business start-ups, including London (Clerkenwell, Shoreditch and Stratford), Berlin (Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg), Milan (Bicocca), Barcelona (the 22@ project/Poblenou), San Francisco (the South of Market Area), Seattle (Fremont, Ballard, South Lake Union, Duwamish, Eastlake, and Redmond), and Shanghai (Suzhou Creek). These are dynamic areas of important cities, subject to upgrading pressures to be sure, and to what has been termed ‘ industrial gentrification’. But these metropolitan cities have ensured that there are adequate land resources for leading-edge industries and businesses essential to economic dynamism in the new economy.

Metro Vancouver’s Economic Geography: External Circuits and ComparatorsSince the deep restructuring and recession of the 1980s, Metro Vancouver’s economy has experienced growth and change, including the expansion of the region’s services economy, advanced-technology industries, higher education, health care, cultural industries, and a very large consumption sector comprising retail and personal services. Over its existence, the Metro Vancouver region has transitioned from colonial outpost and peripheral centre of the national economy to its inclusion within both the Asia-Pacific and the ‘Cascadian’ region. The latter includes Seattle and Portland and (in the most expansive definition of Joel Garreau’s ‘Ecotopia’), San Francisco.

While there are commonalities between Metro Vancouver and other west coast cities, including its Asia-Pacific orientation, multiculturalism, and ecological values and environmental assets, there are significant contrasts. San Francisco and the Bay Area have emerged

as the world’s leading centre of advanced-technology research and production and the digital economy. The Seattle-four county area in central Puget Sound incorporates global-scale multinationals including Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Costco and others, as well as large operations of (for example) Google and Adobe. These constitute a base of advanced corporate enterprise and high-technology capacity orders of magnitude larger than Metro Vancouver. What is common to these two metropolitan regions, though, is a tradition of commitment to inter-governmental regional collaboration, and active networks of association and cooperation at the levels of sectors, industries, and key individuals: entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors. In Michael Storper’s study of the success of San Francisco over Los Angeles, singled out was the willingness of Bay Area firms in different sectors to work with other firms and branches of local government to facilitate exchange and knowledge transfer.

Toward a Collaborative Regional Governance and Networked Metro Vancouver Economy Contemporary metropolitan regional economies are highly complex, increasingly subject to global factors, and varied in terms of industrial structure, enterprise mix, and labour force composition. Progressive development within the most successful metropolitan economies, though, typically follows the same path of collaboration, association and interdependency.

The Metro Vancouver economy is ‘open’ to external factors, creating pressures and opportunities for development. For example: the region is a major importer of capital, but much of this is ‘sunk’ in real estate rather than being directed to business start-ups and operating companies. Inflationary land markets may promote upgrading but they also suppress start-ups that are squeezed out of affordable space.

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The challenge is to think creatively and critically about the future, and more particularly about how governance, policy and planning can shape (or at least support) progressive development in the region. There is already a complex and distinctive governance, institutional and policy regime within the region as a whole. There are in place progressive policies for green space, for mixed-income housing, for sustainable transportation, and for tourism, among other policy sectors. But the governance model for the Metro Vancouver economy is balkanized and fragmented, and generally inadequate for the needs of a modern, contact-intensive, knowledge-based and networked regional economy.

Following the logic of North America’s most successful metropolitan economies, we endorse a commitment to fostering much stronger collaboration among economic agencies and actors across the Metro Vancouver region. This approach starts with an assessment of the collective Metro Vancouver assets, competitive advantages and enterprise structure, and how they could be leveraged by recognizing the diverse strengths and opportunities which abound in each municipality, community and districts within the region. But there should also be commitment to fostering a parallel and complementary network of Metro Vancouver’s industry groups, dynamic enterprises, and key unions and collectives as a means of unlocking the economic potential and possibilities for broader prosperity within the region.

A Metro Vancouver economic agency could effectively move the metropolitan economy forward. The potential areas of focus of this agency are forging strategic and collaborative plans for managing the lands needed for economic development, and more particularly addressing the future needs of leading-edge industries in the technology, creative-cultural and green systems and sectors; developing effective liaison and partnerships with foundational regional institutions such as Port of Vancouver, YVR, UBC, SFU, Discovery Parks, and the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health Authorities; coordinating the development of timely and useful statistical data on Metro Vancouver’s economy;

developing effective marketing for Metro Vancouver’s propulsive sectors, industries and firms; and lobbying for more effective policies and programs for key investment areas such as transportation infrastructure and communications systems, education and training and social development.

The specific institutional structure of a regional economic governance body lies outside the scope of this report, and would be the object of a separate study, undertaken as a structured process of consultation with all interested parties with clear terms of reference. But what we can say is that such an agency would explicitly recognise the current allocation of policy powers, roles and responsibilities among orders of government within British Columbia, where the Government of British Columbia exercises economic development policies and programs for the province as a whole and its constituent regions and municipalities, and where municipalities represent the basic unit of economic development at the local level in B.C. What we are proposing instead would likely take the form of a small, adroit agency with an intent to complement (rather than duplicate) the work of existing bodies, with a clear mission to develop programs not currently undertaken at the regional level, and with input from all of Metro Vancouver’s municipalities. In any event what we are suggesting represents an initiative in flexible governance, aligned with the practices of the most successful metropolitan economies, rather than the establishment of a new level or structure of government with a legislated mandate and permanent powers. We therefore recommend a thoughtful, entrepreneurial approach to development policy in Metro Vancouver as a crucial step toward the strategic goal of building an economy of high-wage enterprises within the key advanced-technology, creative and green economy sectors.

A networked Metro Vancouver economy would involve promoting critical partnerships, liaisons and operating relationships between and among the metropolitan region’s industry groups, institutions, business leaders and entrepreneurs, labour groups, and community

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development agencies, with a view to growing the regional economy through the following (exemplary) collective strategies and actions:

• Promoting inter-firm synergy through the ‘mashing up’ (after Michael Storper 2015) of key, potentially complementary sectors and industry groups, such as film and video production, music, social media, architecture and urban design.

• Sharing market intelligence, including opportunities for sub-contracting and collective marketing ventures, and forming consortia for bidding on major contracts.

• Advocating for local-regional policies for transportation investments, land-use policy and regulation in Metro Vancouver.

• Working with local community economic development agencies to ‘unlock’ larger potentials of Metro Vancouver’s culturally diverse communities and neighbourhoods.

• Cooperating with civic agencies in the creative place-making of Metro Vancouver’s districts, communities and neighbourhoods, in the interests of local job creation, progressive image-building, and marketing.

Establishing these collective mechanisms and action frameworks of the metropolitan economy will require a sustained commitment from government, business, institutional and community agencies and actors, and will deliver benefits over the medium- and longer-term, rather than necessarily generating instant returns.

To conclude: collaboration on economic objectives and a more fully networked economy represent in tandem a promising model for progressive, high-wage development in Metro Vancouver, and for generating sustained, widely-shared prosperity. We’re sceptical of narrow ‘best practice’ models of policy mimicry, as they often represent ‘off the shelf’ solutions to problems and opportunities that necessarily differ from place to place. As we have argued in this report, local contingency and place-specificity are important factors,

as they influence the ways that global forces ‘touch down’ in individual city-regions. But there is at the same time (as we have discussed) clear evidence that a commitment to collaboration and a networked economy offer the best opportunity to deepen and diversify the Metro Vancouver economy, with its complex economic geography, and mix of gateway infrastructures, industrial clusters, and small and medium-size enterprise firms.

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Appendix I. Notes on Sources and Methodology

For this report we have drawn on primary and secondary sources, including an extended and deep literature addressing Metro Vancouver’s development history. The basic trajectory of change since the 1970s – a decade encompassing the origins of formal statutory regional planning in the Metro area, and also the start of an important era of economic change – follows the broad pattern of restructuring of metropolitan industries, labour markets and employment experienced across advanced societies. Change took the form of the expansion of service industries and employment as well as an affiliated ‘new middle class’ of managers and professionals, along with the contraction of traditional resource industries. Vancouver stands as an influential example of this defining process of change.

All this underscores the importance of investigating (and understanding) what makes Metro Vancouver’s economic pathway and structure distinctive, while at the same time assessing Metro Vancouver’s position within extended urban systems, circuits of trade and exchange, and (increasingly) diverse cultures. Vancouver is exceptionally ‘open’ to external influences on its economy, industries and cultures. What follows is a concise description of important research initiatives and programs which we have participated in over the past decade, and from which we have drawn some of the critical insights and observations in our report. We also acknowledge the contributions of our research assistants for this project, Dustin Lupick and Erica Sagert, of the School of Community & Regional Planning, UBC.

Economic Change in the Canadian Urban System. Principal Investigators: Larry Bourne [University of Toronto] and Tom Hutton [UBC]). Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded project National Research Cluster program, 2006-2009. Key findings included a clear tendency for higher growth rates among Canada’s ‘big five’ metropolitan economies (the Greater Toronto Area, Metropolitan Montreal, Metro Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary) relative to medium-size and smaller city-regions, and increasing divergence

in the industrial structure and specializations among metropolitan economies, with both tendencies shaped by a combination of global forces, access to capital and talent, and the strength of local-regional clusters. Key output: Larry Bourne, Tom Hutton and Richard Shearmur (eds.) Canadian Urban Regions: Trajectories of Growth and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press (2011).

Innovation, Creativity and Governance in Canadian City-Regions. A national study of key determinants of economic performance in Canadian city-regions, including an expert international advisory board as well as leading urban economy scholars based in Canadian universities, focusing on: dynamics of innovation and knowledge flows; the role of creativity and talent; and contributions made by new forms of governance in Canadian city-regions. Principal Investigators: David Wolfe and Meric Gertler. University of Toronto; Trevor Barnes and Tom Hutton (et al) Co-Investigators. SSHRC project 2006-2011. Key output: David Wolfe and Meric Gertler (eds.) Growing Urban Economies: Innovation, creativity, and governance in Canadian city-regions. University of Toronto Press (2016)

A Tale of Two Cities: Comparing the Economies of Greater Vancouver and the Seattle metropolitan region. Principal Investigators: Trevor Barnes and Tom Hutton. SSHRC project 2012-2016. Key findings include explaining contrasts in industrial structure between the two regions, and more particularly the greater strengths of Seattle in terms of propulsive firms and advanced-cluster formation shaped by entrepreneur-industrialists, the strength of collaborative governance and inter-sector and inter-industry networks, and commitments to preserving industrial land in the Seattle – Central Puget Sound region.

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Appendix II. City-Regions and Economic Development: Twelve Key Texts

There is a wealth of insightful material on the organization of economies, industries, enterprise and labour within city-regions. Much of this literature deals with the conflation of global processes and local contingency in the economies of city-regions; with the synergy between technology, creativity and skilled labour in the economy of the metropolis; and with the importance of social, cultural and institutional factors in shaping successful, networked economies in city-regions.

In this spirit we recommend the following titles as instructive, research-based and policy-relevant texts, with broad relevance to the Metro Vancouver case.

Trevor Barnes, Jamie Peck, Eric Sheppard and Adam Tickell (2003) Reading Economic Geography. Oxford: Blackwell.

Larry Bourne, Tom Hutton, Richard Shearmur and Jim Simmons (eds.) (2011) Canadian Urban Regions: Trajectories of Growth and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Stefano Breschi and Franco Malerba (eds.)(2005) Clusters, Networks, and Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Manuel Castells (1996) The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: economy, society and culture. Cambridge MA and Oxford: Blackwell.

Stefan Krätke. (2011) The Creative Capital of Cities. Malden MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ronan Paddison and Tom Hutton (eds.)(2015) Cities and Economic Change. London: Sage.

Regional Studies Association (2014) Sustainable Recovery? Rebalancing, Growth, and the Space Economy. Seaford, East Sussex UK: The Regional Studies Association.

Allen J. Scott (2008) Social Economy of the Metropolis: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the Global Resurgence of Cities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michael Storper (2013) The Keys to the City: How Economics, Institutions, Social Interaction and Politics Shape Development. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.

Michael Storper, Thomas Kemeny, Naji Makarem, and Taner Osman (2015) The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Stanford University Press.

P.J. Taylor and Ben Derudder (2004) World City Network: a Global Urban Analysis. New York and London: Routledge.

David A. Wolfe and Meric S. Gertler (eds.) (2016) Growing Urban Economies: Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-Regions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS FOR A LIVABLE REGION

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