What Guides Us

Building on the university’s unique history and commitment to reconciliation, we collaborate with students, faculty, staff, residents, and campus Host Nations and Indigenous communities to create a resilient, inclusive, climate-neutral urban campus where teaching, learning and research and complete neighbourhoods thrive. 

Our work supports the university’s academic mission while enhancing human, community, and ecological wellbeing. We work together with campus Host Nations and Indigenous communities to build enduring relationships and enable mutually supportive outcomes. Through engagement with our campus communities, we strive to create accessible, socially-connected urban campuses where people feel safe, included and empowered.

We collaborate with the academic community and Host Nations to imagine and create a place that supports partnerships between the academy, industry, not-for-profit and social enterprise groups. We see the campus as a living lab – a place to research, implement and test innovative approaches in urban planning and sustainability for UBC and its regions.

We champion planning, designing, building, engaging and operating in ways that tackle the climate emergency – returning more to our campus ecologies and communities than what is taken out, creating net-positive impacts for people and the environment, and honouring the land and ecosystems that support the campuses.

We integrate multiple interests, ideas and priorities into a vision for our campuses that meet the aspirations of the university and its communities in the context of uncertainty, growth and change. This includes actively engaging with equity-seeking groups and surfacing often unheard voices. We stay ahead of the curve in planning, design, community building and sustainability by embracing change, learning from others and adapting our practices.