YVR uses futurist vision of 2037 to spur interest in next development phase
Robot servers and travel assistants. An indoor “vertical garden” growing produce for restaurants in the terminal. An automated parking facility where the building parks the cars. Holograms everywhere.
Those are just some of the creative ideas introduced by futurist Nikolas Badminton in a series of “design fiction” stories that envision what Vancouver International Airport could look like by 2037. The concepts are part of the airport’s effort to spur community interest in the next phase of the airport’s YVR 2037 Master Plan, with workshops being held on Sept. 14 and Sept. 17 and a large-scale “open house” on Oct. 12.
Craig Richmond, the president and CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority, said Badminton’s “stories” are a fun way to encourage the public to thing about what they would like to see at YVR in the next two decades.
“Can I say robots will be here in the next few years? I can’t say for sure,” Richmond said. “But who thought five years ago that driverless cars would be a thing today? Just think about 20 years ago and how far we’ve come, with everything from smartphones to iPads … you name it.”
The YVR 2037 Master Plan comes as the airport hit a record of 20.3 million passengers last year, with projections showing that number rising by a million passengers annually for the next few years, driving plans for another terminal expansion.
Among his ideas, Badminton included some more realistic concepts — fast-track immigration processing and fully automated check-in. Another suggestion was for a YVR Business District, where an innovation hub featuring top Canadian aerospace start-ups would allow for networking opportunities with foreign firms, Richmond said.
“It’s a fun process, but we’re dead serious about this,” Richmond said about generating a wide range of concepts. “We want great ideas. We’ve never been shy on taking an idea from anywhere around the world and using it, if it works.”
Among the most plausible vision of Badminton’s concepts is the fast-tracking of passengers flying in and then transferring to another outbound flight without requiring a Canadian visa. Richmond said YVR has been working with Ottawa on the plan, which would allow, for example, a Japanese businessman to fly to Brazil through YVR without a Canadian visa.
“We are working with (the federal government) so that people can use Vancouver like they do Heathrow or Dubai or Singapore,” Richmond said. “We built the airport for it. … We’re good at it, and we need to take advantage. There’s no impediment to this except government policy.”
For more information on the consultation process, as well as for submitting comments or ideas on how YVR could expand, the Airport Authority’s website can be found at www.yvr2037.ca.
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