UVic and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Open to the community: buildings, libraries and collections

The University of Victoria's Gordon Head campus has no gates, fences or admission charges. Anyone can walk in, and the buildings that carry the most cultural meaning are among the most open. The First Peoples House — a social, cultural and academic centre for Indigenous students, designed to reflect Coast and Straits Salish traditions — welcomes visitors to its foyer and grounds, where art and artefacts from Salish and neighbouring Indigenous cultures are on display. Guided tours of the House are offered to the public during Explore UVic events. Across the campus stand carved monuments that can be visited freely at any hour, including Doug LaFortune's welcome figures at the entrance to First Peoples House, Charles Elliott's house posts and S,YEWE Legend Pole, and the Tony and Henry Hunt replica poles in the Quad.

UVic Libraries are open to the public. The Mearns Centre for Learning – McPherson Library and the Priestly Law Library can be entered without a card: visitors are welcome to browse the shelves, use the seating, view the art and use public computer terminals. Residents of Greater Victoria can obtain a free Community Card at the Ask Us Desk with no fee and borrow up to 25 items at a time; those living outside the region can still borrow at no charge, paying only a delivery fee. Special Collections and University Archives is likewise open to everyone — students, staff and members of the public are welcome in the reading room to consult rare books, manuscripts, photographs and archival records — and most library workshops, including sessions on generative AI, are open to the public.

The university's art museum, Legacy Art Galleries, stewards a collection of roughly 18,000 objects and charges no admission at any of its sites. Legacy Downtown at 630 Yates Street is UVic's principal public gallery, open several days a week year-round in the heart of Victoria's downtown. On campus, the Legacy Maltwood gallery in the lower level of the McPherson Library keeps the same hours as the library, and a third exhibition space operates in First Peoples House. More than 2,000 works from the collection hang in buildings across campus and in the community, all free to view.

Recent exhibitions show the range of that programming. The Chorus is Speaking and Rooting for Reclamation opened at Legacy Downtown in September 2024, the latter curated by guest curator Madison Bridal around Black reclamation and featuring local artists. Victoria and Expressionism's Second Wave: The Point Group ran from January to April 2025, drawing entirely on works owned by the university. In autumn 2025 Legacy mounted a retrospective of SȾÁUTW̱ artist Doug LaFortune, whose welcome figures stand at First Peoples House. Opening receptions, artist talks and panel discussions attached to these exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Open to the community: green space

Finnerty Gardens is free and open to the public every day during daylight hours, with no admission charge. The 2.6-hectare woodland garden at the southwest corner of campus holds more than 4,000 trees and shrubs, including over 1,500 rhododendrons and azaleas and around 200 collected rhododendron species — one of the finest collections in Canada — along with three ponds, gravelled accessible paths and dozens of benches. The gardens cannot be booked for private events precisely because they are held open for everyone; groups are asked only to let staff know in advance so they can flag any conflicting activity.

Mystic Vale is open continuously and at no cost. This 4.7-hectare (11.6-acre) ravine of coniferous woodland, threaded by public trails and containing trees estimated at 300 to 500 years old, forms the headwaters of Hobbs Creek and supports more than 75 native plant and animal species. It is one of the most heavily used green spaces on campus, and the Greater Victoria Green Team runs monthly volunteer events there to remove invasive species — an open invitation to community members to help care for the space they use.

Beyond these two, the campus keeps a network of natural areas permanently open: Cunningham Woods, a one-acre Douglas fir stand inside Ring Road; the South Woods second-growth forest; and a Garry oak and camas meadow northwest of Finnerty Gardens, representing an ecosystem type now critically threatened in British Columbia. Together with the campus lawns, plazas and greenway, these areas make UVic one of the largest freely accessible green spaces in the Saanich–Oak Bay area.

Getting to campus: targets, incentives and pedestrian priority

UVic has measured how people travel to campus since 1996 and has held a public target since 2014: that transit, cycling, walking and carpooling should account for 70% of trips to and from campus. The target and the actions behind it sit in the Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 2030 (CSAP), under Strategy 10.3. CSAP commits the university to seven specific transportation actions, including balancing disincentives for single-occupancy vehicle travel with incentives for sustainable travel, monitoring parking pricing, advocating for improved transit service including bus rapid transit, expanding EV charging, and carrying out a biennial campus traffic survey to report progress against the 70% target.

That survey is genuine measurement, independently conducted and published. The most recent report, prepared by McElhanney and issued in April 2024, counted roughly 56,430 daily trips to and from campus. Sustainable modes accounted for 54% of them. Transit was the largest single sustainable mode at 26%, with daily ridership up 24% on the previous survey; cycling held at 7% with peak-period trips up 17%; pedestrians made up 14%. UVic reports these results openly, including where they fall short — the 2023 figure sits 16 percentage points below the target, and auto driver mode share edged up one point. All survey reports back to 1996 are published in full.

The programs behind those numbers are substantial. Every student taking at least one on-campus course holds a U-Pass, giving roughly 20,000 students unlimited regional transit at a deeply discounted rate built into student fees. Employees can buy a subsidised ePass for $35 a month, explicitly offered as an alternative to an annual parking permit. UVic is the second busiest transit hub in Greater Victoria, with more than 1,000 bus movements to and from campus on a typical weekday across a dozen routes.

For cyclists, the campus offers more than 4,000 bike parking spaces, nearly 150 rentable bike lockers, a supervised Bike Parkade under 24-hour surveillance, the Campus Bike Centre, showers and change rooms in ten buildings, four free e-bike charging stations and a covered-rack map for the rainy season. The volunteer-run SPOKES program restores donated bicycles and loans them to students, staff and faculty for as long as they are affiliated with UVic, and rents to campus visitors. Modo and Evo car-share vehicles, EV charging and a Flex25 occasional-use parking permit cover the days when a vehicle is genuinely needed.

Pedestrians come first by design. The Campus Plan establishes a modal hierarchy that requires every transportation project on campus to consider pedestrians first, then cyclists and skateboarders, then transit users, then service vehicles, and motor vehicles last. The academic core inside Ring Road is pedestrian-oriented, with vehicle traffic kept to the perimeter. The award-winning Campus Cycling Plan — recipient of the Canadian Institute of Planners' 2019 Award for Planning Excellence, developed through consultation with more than 5,000 people — sets out a "Shared Space" strategy in which pedestrians hold right of way at all times and cyclists slow to walking speed. The Campus Greenway, now under construction in phases, is being built as the primary east–west multi-modal spine across campus, connecting Gordon Head Road to Sinclair Road, with separated pedestrian and cycling paths and physical environments designed to be usable by people across a wide range of abilities.

Working flexibly

UVic operates a formal Flexibility Framework offering three types of arrangement to staff: campus flex (flexible hours, modified work weeks, workload averaging and compensatory time off for roles that must be performed on site), hybrid flex (a combination of on-campus and remote work), and remote flex (fully remote, approved in exceptional circumstances). The framework states plainly that while not every role suits remote or hybrid work, most roles can incorporate some degree of flexibility. Arrangements are employee-initiated, documented through a request form and self-assessment, reviewed at least annually, and cannot be refused arbitrarily. Where collective agreements permit, hybrid arrangements can include modified work weeks — a condensed schedule that trades slightly longer days for a scheduled paid day off, removing commuting trips outright.

The commuting benefit is explicit rather than incidental. Flexible hours are described in the framework as a way to "start or end the workday at non-standard times to avoid peak travel periods, take advantage of transit or carpooling options." The framework's equity rationale notes that employees in lower pay bands often live farther from campus in order to find housing, and that remote work and off-peak scheduling reduce their travel time and cost. Flexible work is also written into UVic's institutional commitments in two places: as Action 9 of the university's Equity Action Plan under the goal of Access and Support, and in CSAP 2030, which directs the university to explore policies and IT supports for remote meetings and conferencing that reduce demand for travel.

Housing that people can afford

UVic's residence system houses roughly 2,300 students plus 181 family housing units, and it is run on a cost-recovery basis rather than for profit. Rates are reviewed and approved annually by the Board of Governors and published openly. The comparison with the local market is favourable: a two-bedroom family housing apartment costs $1,608 a month for 2025–26, against a Victoria CMA average of $1,993 for a two-bedroom purpose-built rental recorded in CMHC's October 2024 Rental Market Survey — roughly 19% below market, with utilities and campus location included.

The university has also been building. The Student Housing and Dining project — the largest capital project in UVic's history at over 32,000 m² — delivered 783 student spaces across two buildings, Čeqʷəŋín ʔéʔləŋ (Cheko'nien House) in 2022 and Sŋéqə ʔéʔləŋ (Sngequ House) in 2023, a year ahead of schedule. Of those, 621 are net new beds, increasing on-campus housing by about 25%. The $235.9 million project was supported by $127.7 million from the Province of British Columbia under the Homes for People plan, on the explicit rationale that on-campus beds ease pressure on Victoria's rental market.

Financial support sits alongside the bricks. The UVic Residence and Meal Plan Bursary provides awards of up to $1,500 to students in residence who demonstrate financial need, assessed against government student loan and grant eligibility. More broadly, UVic awards over $12.5 million annually in scholarships and more than $5 million in bursaries and work-study opportunities, with a dedicated student affordability hub covering housing, food and cost-of-living supports.

In October 2025 the Province approved $121 million toward a further 510-bed residence — 150 studio apartments for graduate students and 90 four-bedroom units for upper-year undergraduates — designed to be zero-carbon, fully electric and LEED Gold certified, on a total budget of $178 million with UVic contributing $57 million. The project is aimed specifically at students who currently rent off campus. Provincial capital decisions in Budget 2026 have pushed its completion date to 2034; UVic continues to advocate for the funding to be reinstated, as does the District of Saanich.

For employees, UVic provides direct financial support toward housing rather than housing stock. The Home Loan Support Program offers newly recruited full-time faculty, librarians and senior excluded staff a 15-year interest-free loan of $50,000 toward the purchase of a first owner-occupied residence on Lower Vancouver Island. Relocation assistance covers eligible moving costs and can reimburse house-hunting trips to Victoria for a new employee and their partner. UVic also runs an off-campus housing listing service open to staff and faculty as well as students, and short-term furnished apartments are available on campus for arriving and visiting employees. At the regional level, UVic has contributed to the Saanich and Oak Bay Housing Needs Assessments and the Saanich Housing Strategy, the instruments through which local housing affordability for residents and employees alike is assessed and planned.

Planning and building with our neighbours

UVic is unusual among Canadian universities in that a municipal boundary runs through it: about 60% of the campus lies in the District of Saanich and 40% in the District of Oak Bay. Each municipality's zoning bylaw governs the use of campus land, most new capital projects require a development variance permit, and municipal councils are the approving authority. UVic also follows both districts' tree removal and replacement bylaws. Collaboration with local government is therefore not optional — it is built into how the university develops.

That relationship is structured through Engaging with Our Neighbours, a community engagement framework finalised in 2012 and applied to every land-use and development project since. Campus Planning and Sustainability staff meet three times a year with representatives of the surrounding Community Associations to present projects in planning or development. UVic has contributed to the Housing Needs Assessments for Saanich and Oak Bay, the Saanich Housing Strategy and the Cadboro Bay Local Area Plan. It is working with the District of Saanich on road upgrades and a cycling and pedestrian crossing at Gordon Head Road and Midgard Avenue that will connect to the western segment of the Campus Greenway. The biennial transportation survey is shared with both districts to support capital project approvals and joint discussion of roadway, traffic, cycling and parking issues.

The 510-bed housing project shows the framework in practice. UVic ran two rounds of public engagement during 2025 — preliminary concepts in January, then design proposals in September and October through stakeholder presentations, two open houses (one held off campus at Gordon Head Recreation Centre) and an online survey. More than 450 community members took part in the second phase alone, and UVic published a What We Heard report. Feedback shaped the design toward a compact form that preserves green space and strengthens pedestrian and cycling connections. When the Province delayed the project in Budget 2026, Saanich Council passed a resolution urging that funding be reinstated, citing the pressure that displaced students place on the district's private rental market — a reasonable indicator of how the municipality views UVic's role in local housing supply.

UVic builds to demanding standards. British Columbia requires all newly constructed public-sector buildings to achieve LEED Gold or equivalent certification, and UVic goes further, requiring all new buildings and major additions to meet LEED v4 Gold or an equivalent standard such as Passive House or Zero Carbon. Every new building on campus since 2007 has been constructed to LEED Gold. The Student Housing and Dining buildings are certified to both LEED v4 Gold and the International Passive House Standard — among the largest Passive House projects in Canada, with Cheko'nien House confirmed as certified in 2024. The National Centre for Indigenous Laws, which opened in 2025, is a hybrid mass-timber and steel building targeting LEED Gold, designed to protect the Bowker Creek watershed, with wood from trees removed on site reused as exposed structural elements and smaller trees donated to Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. The Engineering and Computer Science Expansion and High Bay Research and Structures Lab, built from regionally sourced mass timber, are rated LEED Gold v4 and designed to meet the Canada Green Building Council's Zero Carbon Building Standard, with the High Bay also targeting Zero Carbon Certification from the International Living Future Institute.

Where UVic builds matters as much as how. The Campus Plan directs compact growth onto land that has already been developed, so that new floor space comes at minimal cost to trees and natural areas. The High Bay Research and Structures Lab is being built on the former Parking Lot A; the Engineering and Computer Science Expansion is a six-storey addition to an existing building on a site identified for future development in the 2016 Campus Plan, chosen expressly to minimise land disturbance and tree removal. The Student Housing and Dining project replaced two older residence buildings. The proposed 510-bed residence would occupy part of Parking Lot 5, converting surface parking in the heart of the existing residence precinct into housing — a trade-off local residents themselves endorsed during consultation, one summarising it as "less parking and more housing, win-win." In every case, the university has chosen previously developed land over undeveloped ground.