Vancouver, BC’s Greenest City Action Team—which includes Sightline board member Gordon Price convened by Mayor Gregor Robertson last week revealed its “Urgent Quick Start Recommendations.”
At first I thought this was going to be a laundry list of boring policies with a lot of foot notes. Instead, the recommendations, developed ahead of the 2010 Olympic Games, are kind of a catalog of interesting ideas to make cities more sustainable. Vancouver’s goal: to become the Greenest City on Earth by 2020.
I won’t criticize the document for not addressing BC’s intense election battle going on right now and the possibility that BC’s best-in-the-world cap and trade program may be central in determining winners and losers.
Instead I will call out a few of the ideas I hope Vancouver will follow up on between now and 2020:
An adaptive street LED street light program. Street lighting is really important for compact communities providing a much needed sense of security and safety for residents. But all those lights burn up a lot of energy. I had the good fortune to visit the Lumec lighting lab in Quebec several years ago. They have a lighting fixture that can save up to 50 percent on energy use. Energy saving lighting is a win-win.
Priority permitting process for green buildings . This is an interesting idea that could be yet another incentive for encouraging retrofits and green development.
Make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. There is a whole list of ideas here from reducing speed limits for cars to establishing exclusive bike corridors in the city’s core. When I went to school at the University of California Santa Barbara there were dedicated corridors—bike freeways. You could stand near by and hear the hum of the bike wheels during rush hour. Canada is already a leader in making biking a priority. I hope Vancouver will test out this idea.
Create a public bike sharing program. Bike sharing has worked in Europe and might even be catching on in the United States.Vancouver is a city that could make this work and perhaps learn enough to help start programs in Seattle and persuade Portland to restart the program they put on hold last year.
Create an edible landscaping policy. I love this idea. I don’t know how it solves climate change but it certainly would be nice to have breakfast on the way to work just by stopping by a few hedges and trees. The City of Issaquah, WA, has already implemented this on Gilman Boulevard and offers tours.
The Quick Start Recommendations are truly an ambitious set of ideas. The next step is to make some of them happen in Vancouver and then replicate the best ones throughout Cascadia.
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mynalee johnstone
Vancouver, sooo beautiful but I avoid it. TOO much traffic, everywhere. Carfree cities are the way of the future. No shelter for transit users at airport. No direct bus to ferries or from ferries at Tsawwassen.The WESTcoast express is fabulous but it should run all the time. It is the way to go.People must be fined for driving.Parking needs to be tripled in price.Making pedestrians,especially children and seniors cross several lines of traffic is absurd.Buses don’t even go into malls.Park and ride should be obligatory.Why has the Health Department allowed all this polluting, nerve wracking traffic. The social costs of driving are in the high billions. People spend more on their automobiles than they do on food.They idle. They believe they have the right of way. Driving is the most SELFISH thing people do.Societies have been designed to support the use of automobiles at a huge price. Regulate the use and life will be more LIVABLE.The stress of having to share streets with automobiles is beyond absurd.Collusion of governments with auto companies did this.Make this coming year, the YEAR of the pedestrian.Expose people who drive, like our politicians.and celebrities.Governments should give them transit passes and electric bikes, scooters instead of free cars and high travel expenses.Drivers are mindless beings. I can only support service vehicles. There IS no excuse for driving but people keep finding them. RUDE.People concerned about the enviro and climate change will change their light bulbs but they REFUSE to get out of their cars. Hypocrites!
Jennifer
Wow. Driving is the MOST selfish thing people do? Seriously? My husband and I chose to open our home to foster children and in order to do that it is NECESSARY to have a car. Four children (one infant, one RUNNING toddler, one RUNNING preschooler and a tween) are NOT conducive to walking ANYWHERE but in a park. We’ve done some “walking down the block” like when we go to church – but it is exhausting and there is NO WAY we could carry groceries for six back to our home. We do have SPUD deliver our food – but we have to pick up our CSA – I’d like to see YOU walk 8 km with an infant sling, two children prone to running into danger and carrying a 40+ lb bin of food. I know a lot of people think procreation is bad for the environment – but that is a whole other topic I’d LOVE to chat with you about. My husband has severe ankylosing spondilitis and I have osteoporosis (4 broken bones in the last two years) and we are 35 & 41 and we can walk, and do, as much as possible – he takes transit to work. Wow. I’m just in utter shock that the most selfish thing a person could do is drive. I could think of why these kids are ‘in care’ and it doesn’t even compare to driving…in fact, I’m pretty sure that these moms don’t have licences.