URBAN FUTURES SURVEY 2012 RESULTS
Politicians, planners and policy makers can now be informed by forty years of comparative data on the changing attitudes of residents in the Metro Vancouver region thanks to the release today of the results of the 2012 Greater Vancouver Urban Futures Opinion survey. The Technical Report results can be accessed here. 
A unique aspect of the Technical Report is the comparison it provides with the results of earlier surveys. For example, provision of health care ranked 3rd in 1990 and 9th in 1973, while air pollution from industry was the top concern in both previous surveys. This reflects the concerted action by government to improve air quality in the intervening years. Similarly, while preserving the natural environment was the most important priority for action in the earlier surveys, by 2012 it had dropped to 4th place, a result which may be attributable to efforts by government to improve water quality through upgraded waste water treatment, to give priority to solid waste reduction and recycling and to protect the region’s working landscape through the creation of the Green Zone.
The two previous surveys were conducted by UBC professor, Dr. Walter G. Hardwick, through face-to-face and telephone interviews. This latest survey, led by Dr. Hardwick’s daughter, was conducted online using PlaceSpeak. “PlaceSpeak was developed as a means to conduct location-specific research on the internet”, observed founder, Colleen Hardwick. “It would have been prohibitively expensive and time consuming to conduct 1,500 interviews using the methods we employed in 1972 and 1990 so we needed to build a tool that would enable verifiable online place-based feedback”.
