If you live at UBC, you well know this beautiful place is much more than a university campus. For more than 15,000 people, it’s home.
It’s a privilege to be writing to the campus resident community and to continue the conversation about what it means to live, work, and learn here. As UBC’s President and Vice-Chancellor, much of my role focuses on the university’s academic and research mission, and I have come to appreciate how closely that work is connected to everyday life in our surrounding neighbourhoods.
Nearly half of the residents of UBC’s neighbourhoods are students, faculty, and staff. That matters. It means UBC isn’t just a place people commute to. It’s a place where people live, raise families, build lives, and put down roots. At the same time, more than half of the people who call UBC home are not directly affiliated with the university. Together, they make UBC a vibrant and bustling place where workdays overlap with school drop-offs, where lectures and discovery happen a few blocks from parks and playgrounds, and where community life carries on long after the academic day ends.
This sense of home also exists within a much longer history. UBC and its neighbourhoods are located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people, who have lived on and cared for this land for thousands of years. Recognizing that history matters as we think about how this place grows and how we care for it together.
Last fall, UBC launched Strategic Directions 2025-2030, our refreshed roadmap that sets out how we will focus our efforts in the years ahead. One of our core commitments is to nurture a strong and vibrant UBC community. Our campus neighbourhoods are essential to this goal.
The residential neighbourhoods support UBC in very practical ways. They provide housing, schools, child care, community centres, parks, local services, and cultural programs that support wellbeing and connection. But their value goes beyond the practical. Living, learning, and working in close proximity changes how people connect. It makes collaboration easier. It lowers barriers to participation, and it turns everyday encounters into ideas and partnerships.
The residential neighbourhoods also create additional opportunities for the campus to be used intentionally as a living laboratory for research, teaching, and learning, grounded in real-world context and everyday experience. This is one of UBC’s great system strengths, and one we are committed to building on as the university evolves.
As our community continues to grow in the coming years, the university’s relationship with residents will become even more important. Growth brings opportunity, and it also brings responsibility. Our Strategic Directions emphasize the importance of partnering with purpose— working together, listening carefully, and shaping the future of this place in ways that reflect the needs and perspectives of those who study and work here, as well as those who live here.
Through our deep and ongoing engagement with residents, we know transportation and mobility, ecology and open space are priority interests for residents and the broader community. UBC continues to advocate for the SkyTrain extension to campus as a sustainable, reliable, and accessible transportation option. At the same time, we are focused on planning better ways to move through and within campus neighbourhoods, with safety, accessibility, and quality of life in mind. And, as part of implementing Campus Vision 2050, we are working to preserve green spaces and enhance campus biodiversity by creating ecological parks and naturalizing landscapes.
That’s why our partnership with the University Neighbourhoods Association is so important. The UNA plays an important role in community life on campus and in ensuring that resident voices are part of shaping the places where people live and gather. Through the UNA-UBC Neighbours’ Agreement, valued programs and services are delivered across the neighbourhoods, helping make UBC a great place to live for people at every stage of life. UBC’s neighbourhoods are an integral part of our university’s future.
I look forward to continuing this work and conversation with residents, the UNA, and our partners as we shape what comes next together. Thank you all for being part of this community and for the many ways you contribute to life at UBC.
DR. BENOIT-ANTOINE BACON IS PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.