Wes Regan on Building a Better Vancouver Through Policy, Planning & Trust

Can Vancouver be fixed?In this episode of Ship of Fools, Steven sits down with Wes Regan for a thoughtful and hopeful conversation about Vancouver, public planning, government policy, community development, and what it really takes to build better cities.Wes Regan is a Senior Policy Lead with Vancouver Coastal Health and a PhD Candidate at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His work explores public trust, communication, conflict, misinformation, and how communities respond to planning and policy decisions.The conversation covers Wes’s roots, his early work in the Downtown Eastside through the Vancouver Agreement, his role as the founding Executive Director of Hastings Crossing BIA — Canada’s first social-innovation BIA — and his leadership in Vancouver’s community economic development work from 2016 to 2019.Wes also shares insight into the DTES Community Economic Development Strategy, Vancouver’s Community Benefits Agreement Policy, the City’s first Poverty Reduction Plan, and why trust, listening, and long-term thinking matter so much in public policy.This is a conversation about Vancouver’s challenges, but also about hope — and the people working to build better systems from the inside.Listen now and follow Ship of Fools for more real conversations with people shaping culture, community, business, politics, and life in British Columbia.