Rising High, Built to Survive
Vancouver's Broadway Plan fuels a high-rise boom — but are new towers built to survive the Big One? Discover how the city is building earthquake-safe.
Vancouver High Rise
By Elke Porter | WBN News Vancouver | March 19, 2026
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Vancouver's skyline is reaching new heights, and beneath the ambition lies an urgent question: will these towers survive "the Big One"?
Driven by the Broadway Plan — a sweeping 30-year vision approved in 2022 and significantly expanded in 2024 — the city is transforming its central neighbourhoods with a new generation of high-rise apartments. Near SkyTrain stations, tower zones can now accommodate buildings of 20 or more storeys, with no limits on tower counts per block — a significant shift following 2024 updates. Originally targeting 30,000 new homes, the plan now permits up to 41,500 homes, accommodating as many as 64,000 new residents.
These new towers are being built with seismic resilience at the forefront. The vast majority of tall buildings in Vancouver employ coupled walls in one direction and ductile walls in the other as their primary seismic force-resisting system. Engineers are incorporating five key earthquake-proofing methods into modern construction:
- Ductile reinforced concrete shear walls — designed to flex and absorb seismic energy without catastrophic failure
- Base isolation systems — rubber or lead bearings placed beneath a building's foundation that decouple the structure from ground shaking
- Seismic dampers — devices installed within frames to dissipate the energy of tremors
- Deep pile foundations — anchoring buildings into bedrock below Vancouver's soft sedimentary basin
- Coupled wall systems — linked structural walls that distribute lateral forces and improve ductility across the full building
BC's Seismic Danger Zones: A Province Divided
Not all of British Columbia lives with the same level of risk. The province is divided into seismic hazard regions, with vulnerability decreasing as you travel away from the coast and into the interior. The southwest region of British Columbia, where roughly 70% of the province's population lives, is considered the most seismically active region in Canada.
Vancouver sits at the top of that danger scale — Zone 1 — exposed to the full force of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The Juan de Fuca plate, moving toward North America at roughly 2–5 cm per year, is locked against the continent, building enormous strain that causes approximately 300 small earthquakes in southwestern BC each year. Cities in the BC Interior, such as Kamloops (Zone 7), sit far from the active plate boundary. Moving inland from the coast, the frequency and size of earthquakes decreases significantly, with seismic activity in the southern interior dropping off rapidly south of 60°N.
The urgency behind these innovations is real. Roughly 60 per cent of Vancouver's buildings were constructed before building codes were updated to include seismic safety standards. A 2024 assessment warned that if a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck, over 6,000 buildings would be damaged, approximately 300,000 residents could be displaced for three months or more, more than 1,350 lives could be lost, and economic losses could reach an estimated $17 billion.
Schools are on the front lines of the retrofit push. In the Vancouver School District, 47 elementary schools, 6 secondary schools, and 6 annexes are now considered seismically safe, with 6 additional projects in construction or design that will bring the total to 65 safe schools. However, 28 elementary schools and 11 secondary schools still remain at high seismic risk. Since 2017, approximately $360 million has been invested in the Vancouver School District to seismically upgrade or replace 13 schools.
As towers rise along Broadway, Vancouver is building not just for density — but for survival.
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