Port Moody social wellbeing design guidelines
Shared spaces can be designed to nurture social connection, trust, and belonging for diverse residents. (Happy Cities)
How can policy create happier, healthier multi-unit homes?
Multi-unit housing is becoming increasingly common in cities across B.C., with new direction from the Province to speed up development and offer more housing choices.
As cities increase housing supply, it is crucial that to also make sure that new housing equally supports resident health, happiness, and inclusion.
To address this challenge, the City of Port Moody hired Happy Cities to create a set of Social Wellbeing Design Guidelines for new multi-unit housing developments. The Guidelines use incentives (such as floor area exclusions) to encourage housing developers to include social features and shared spaces in multi-unit housing of all scales.
Port Moody becomes the first municipality in B.C. to implement incentives and design guidelines for multi-unit housing that supports social wellbeing for residents. The policy is designed to work with the City’s existing sustainability guidelines, showing how solutions to address social connection and sustainability can work together to create stronger, more resilient communities.
In 2025, Happy Cities worked with Port Moody again to update the document and develop additional guidelines for family- and age-friendly homes. This update included incentives and best practices for home layouts, sizes, interior design features, storage, and balconies. Council passed the updated document in February 2026.
How does the policy work?
This incentive-based policy offers detailed design guidelines and criteria for supporting social connection and wellbeing through six different design opportunities:
Site layout and use
Prominent entrances and active transitions
Purposeful parking
Social circulation
Shared amenity spaces
Family- and age-friendly homes
For each, the guidelines offer detailed guidelines and rationale for designs that support social wellbeing. To facilitate the inclusion of these shareds spaces, developers that comply are eligible to receive various incentives, such as reduced parking requirements, or exclusion of the social space from the overall floor area calculation, which helps reduce the cost of adding social features and amenities.
The Guidelines also offer considerations for best practices in social programming and policy after a building is complete.
Dive deeper
The Port Moody Social Wellbeing Design Guidelines are featured in a series of inspiring policy case studies, published in 2024 as part of the Building Social Connections project.
