Screenshot of the City of Vancouver Shape Your City public engagement website top page
On July 17, 2026, registered users of Shape Your City received an email from the City titled “Shape Your City will be getting an upgrade” (full text below).
The City is moving the site from the American provider Granicus to the Australian company Open Point. The switch is now planned for the week of November 9, 2026, one week after the new Mayor and Council are inaugurated on November 2.
Shape Your City is where residents, media, industry, and probably staff and elected officials go to follow rezonings, development applications, policies and major initiatives, to read the documents, and to see the questions and answers. Since the City has largely moved to online-only notification and engagement, in place of in-person open houses, it is also where much of the public record of those decisions now lives. The current contents range from small individual rezonings and developments to initiatives of massive importance, such as the Rupert and Renfrew Area Plan, Broadway Plan, Villages Plan, and Official Development Plan – which have vast implications for decades ahead.
We are asking the Mayor and Council to make sure this migration keeps all public access to existing links, documents, and Q&A and comment history for the long term, and to have the City answer our questions publicly before the switch is completed. Details are below. Please see “What you can do.”
What the City has told us
We wrote to the City’s Media and Shape Your City teams on October 26 with nine specific questions (listed in the background section below). The Chief of External Relations replied the next day. In summary:
The switch to Social Point is planned for the week of November 9, with “very minimal downtime.”
Only “active and recent” engagement and rezoning projects are being migrated (project information, key documents and engagement summaries), and their URLs will “generally remain unchanged.” The City has not said how it defines “active and recent.”
Records of earlier engagement will be handled under the City’s “records management and retention practices.” It is not clear what that means for what the public can still see.
The new site will “generally look and feel the same,” and details will be shared with Shape Your City members around the time of launch. The City has not said whether community groups or other users will be able to test the new platform beforehand.
Most of our questions were not answered. In particular, the City did not say whether existing links will redirect, where the cutoff for archived projects falls, whether past documents, questions and answers, comments and survey results will remain public, whether the current site will stay available read-only for a time, whether project data will be published as open data, or whether the City Archives were consulted.
Our concerns
Preservation and access to older material. Projects that are closed or older than the City’s cutoff may not be migrated, and rezonings and developments are often referred back to years later.
Broken links. Existing Shape Your City addresses are specific to the current platform. Years of links from CityHallWatch, other media, community groups, and City reports could stop working unless the City sets up permanent redirects.
Transparency and the public record. Past Q&A and comments on rezonings are part of the public record. Passwords will not be migrated and accounts are being rebuilt, so it matters whether the questions, answers and display names stay visible.
Testing and timing. The switch lands in the first week of a new Council’s term, and there has been no public preview or invitation to give feedback.
What we are asking for
That the Mayor and Council ask the City to hold the switch until these concerns have been addressed publicly, or at minimum to keep the current site available read-only for a defined period after launch.
Written answers to our nine questions, and a public report to Council on the plan.
Permanent redirects from every existing Shape Your City address to its matching page.
A clear public cutoff for what is migrated, and a commitment that closed rezoning and development projects, their documents, and their Q&A and comments stay publicly accessible.
Project details (application number, address, status, dates) published as open data.
A preview for community groups and watchdogs before launch.
What you can do
Write to the Mayor and Council (contact information here) and ask them to take these steps before the transition is completed. Please copy shapeyourcity@vancouver.ca, and feel free to copy us.
Background, for the record
Further points
Where will the data be held? The City’s July 17 email says all data will be stored on Canadian servers, as with the current platform. Since BC’s 2021 changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, public bodies are no longer generally required to keep personal information in Canada, so hosting in Canada is a choice the City has made rather than a legal requirement. We would like that confirmed in writing, along with who can access the data. We noticed that the current site already loads scripts and styles from Amazon’s CloudFront network.
Compliance with legislation. From our research, it appears that the B.C. legislature passed Bill 22 in November 2021, making significant amendments to FIPPA. Organizations must complete a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) before implementing new software, cloud services, or systems that process or store personal data. They must implement reasonable security measures under Section 30 of FIPPA, taking into account the sensitivity of the information and the privacy risks associated with foreign jurisdiction access.
Why and at what cost? To our knowledge, the reason for the change and its cost have not been stated publicly. The July 17 email says the new platform “was selected through a competitive procurement process.”
Link rot is the largest practical risk. Each project and document link on the current platform will probably break unless redirects are set up.
No Council oversight? As far as we can tell, the switch was handled entirely by staff, with no specific City Council oversight, and importantly, with no engagement with users or the public. City’s Supply Chain Management office published RFP PS20251465-TS-RFP, “Provision of a Digital Engagement Platform for Shape Your City,” on Oct 3, 2025. It closed Oct 28, 2025. It is not clear whether the decision was made entirely by staff, or by the Bid Committee. Meanwhile, Civic Lens payment data shows the City paid Granicus Canada $429,324 over 2022 to 2026.
City email of July 17, 2026 (as received)
Thank you for being a registered user of the City of Vancouver’s Shape Your City digital engagement hub.
The City of Vancouver is excited to share that we will transition Shape Your City to a new platform in fall 2026. We are keeping the same URL (shapeyourcity.ca). The new Shape Your City platform will have improved features, such as the ability to sign up for emails to receive updates about all new engagement opportunities.
Your data. Shape Your City will be migrated from a platform hosted by Granicus to the Social Point platform hosted by Open Point. Social Point was selected through a competitive procurement process. All data will be stored on Canadian servers, as is the case with the current platform. We are committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information is collected, used and disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Your password will not be migrated. You will get a notification once our new platform launches to reset your password.
Migration timeline. Data migration will begin in early August, and we expect the new site to launch in late fall 2026. In the meantime, our existing shapeyourcity.ca site will be live for you to keep informed on engagement projects and rezoning and development applications. The page will have about 2 days of downtime in late fall before the new platform launches.
We will notify you by email when the migration process is complete and you can explore the new site. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to shapeyourcity@vancouver.ca.
Thank you, The Public Engagement Team
Our questions to the City, October 26, 2026
Timing. What is the planned launch date, and which dates will the roughly two days of downtime fall on?
Existing links. Will every current link redirect permanently to the matching page on the new platform? If not, which addresses will stop working?
Archived projects. Will all closed and archived projects move across, or is there a cutoff date? Will the indexes of active and archived rezoning and development applications be kept, and accessible to the public?
Attached documents. Will past documents, such as drawings, open house boards and engagement reports, be carried over and stay linked to their projects? (Example: a project application booklet at shapeyourcity.ca/53401/widgets/226604/documents/174707.)
Questions, comments and survey results. Will past Q&A, comments and survey summaries stay publicly visible, with the same display names of those who write in? What happens to them, given that accounts are being recreated and passwords will not be migrated?
Legacy copy. Will the current site stay available read-only for a period after launch, so that anything that didn’t migrate can be found and checked?
Machine-readable access. Will the new platform offer a public API, an export, or a data feed? Will project details (application number, address or coordinates, status, dates) be published on the City’s Open Data Portal as CSV or JSON?
Preview. Is there a preview or test version that community groups can look at before launch?
Records. Have the City Archives and the Records team been consulted about keeping the engagement record of past rezonings, developments and consultations? Please also confirm in writing where the data will be hosted and who will be able to access it.
The City’s reply, October 27, 2026
Shape Your City is designed to support active and recent public engagement activities. Records for previous engagement activities will continue to be managed in accordance with the City’s records management and retention practices.
The new platform will generally look and feel the same but will provide an improved user experience with upgraded functionality.
The transition is planned for the week of November 9, 2026, with very minimal downtime. Existing project information, key documents and engagement summaries for active and recent public engagement and rezoning projects are being migrated to the new platform. URLs for these projects will generally remain unchanged.
Additional details about the updated platform will be shared with Shape Your City community members around the time of the launch.