At the beginning of our Re-imagine Jams, we ask participants to describe downtown Vancouver as they see it today in one word. At the end of the session, we repeat the question, but ask them to describe downtown as they would like to see it in 2040. So far, we have received a lot of interesting response to both of these questions.
To help visualize the responses we have heard to date, we have created word clouds. One interesting observation is the overall variety of responses, with only a handful of people repeating the same words across each jam. While there is some overlap between how people think of our downtown today, and how they re-imagine it in 2040, there is a noticeable trend towards a vision of downtown Vancouver that is more exiting, vibrant and creative.
Downtown Vancouver in 2015
accepting active active alive basic beautiful beautiful busy busy change clean cultured delicious development |
diverse diverse dynamic emerging employment exciting expensive foodie freedom friendly green growing healthy home |
home hub inviting modern moist multicultural open postcard potential quiet rainy restricted safe scrubbed |
shopping shopping simple sophisticated tasty touristy traffic typical urban vibrant walkable young |
Downtown Vancouver in 2040
balanced better bumpin’ clean comfortable communal connected convenient cosmopolitan creative creative cultural defined desirable |
destination edgy energized entertaining exciting exciting exciting exhilarating fabulous fun futuristic gateway green greener |
gritty grown up healthy hello home innovative inviting leader liveable lively loving magical mature modern |
organic positive progressive safe spontaneous surprising sustainable technology trees unique vibrant vibrant |