Follow this link to view presentations from the CaGBC Study Tour 2015
Vancouver has set out to be the World’s Greenest city in a friendly challenge to the rest of the world. This is becoming a competitive space as the World‘s mayors and cities realise the PR value of the title. However Vancouver may well be in the running and it won the World Green Building Council’s Public Sector Leadership in Green Building in 2013. It’s not hard to see why, with the mountains and the sea ever present in the glassy down town it is one of the cradles of environmentalism. Remember it was the birth place of Greenpeace. I attended the Canada Green Building Council conference and city tours organised by World GBC with the kind support of the Canadian Embassy in Dublin.
Bio diverse landsccape at Olympic Village
I also had a chance to sit down together with representatives of 25 GBCs with Andrea Reimer the Vice Mayor of Vancouver and her sustainability team who are tasked with delivering the ambitious goal. Her advice was that the first step is let the experts set the goals. This has to be based on science, not the whim of the politicians or the populace. This is one thing that the Vancouver plan does well. There are clear numerical goals. These are impressive and set out under three broad categories: Zero Emissions, Zero waste and healthy eco systems. The last of these includes access to nature, clean water and local food. Within these are a series of sub targets such as ensuring that 95% of citizens are within 5 minutes walk of green space. All new buildings are to be climate neutral by 2020 with an overall cut of 33% in the citizen’s ecological footprint by 2020.
For Step 2 you need the buy-in and the ideas from the citizens to achieve the goal. They invested nearly 1 million Canadian dollars to do just that, leading an engagement process that went out to the population. The advice was don’t have town hall meetings, as these only work for the, axe grinders who talk and don’t listen. Instead they went out to the people with street events, street parties, on line social media etc, engaging those who would never turn up at a meeting. This created ideas and ownership of the strategies to be adopted. This meant that when the strategy was adopted it had the buy-in of the citizens. The political parties who sought to rubbish the greenest city strategy found themselves dumped from office in the subsequent election.
Whilst people want to see action on the ground immediately make sure that there are well implanted roots. The clear advice was to embed the policies well to avoid the risk of green shoots been ripped up by subsequent administrations. In terms of process since 2010 have had a 19% rise in Green jobs in the areas of Green building, local food, and green transportation, increased local food production by 30%.
This is a bike friendly, pedestrian friendly city. I can testify that it was a joy to cycle around the downtown city. There are no teeth shattering sneaky drain covers to be maneuvered around on the comprehensive network of smooth cycle lanes. They admit they are not Amsterdam but they are working on it. Sometimes it is the damn obvious things that work best, like simply locating bicycle racks right next to the main entrance of an office or shop. Such an obvious way to normalise cycling, and not the embarrassed Irish way of hiding the lunatic cycling aunt around the back.
Controls for the Living machine treating the black water for the University of Vancouver.
LEED is well embedded and it’s rare to pass a large construction site that did not trumpet its targeted credentials, often LEED platinum. It is easy to see why they have targeted more holistic sustainability through LEED rather than just energy efficiency. In a province where electricity is as cheap as 5 cents a kwh it is hard to sell energy efficiency and the closeness of the natural environment means that it may be easier to sell other criteria.
It is by no means perfect, it’s hard to square some of the newer constructions including the all glass 63 storey Calatraveque twisting Trump tower currently under construction with sustainability. The summer had arrived unseasonably early and the all glass apartment tower block where I stayed was beginning to overheat. They admit they have issues with things like thermal bridging, with no great consideration visible in even the newer buildings. This looks set to change with the Passive House approach now on the menu, as part of their ambitious greening plans.
They still have work to do on social sustainability evidenced by the concentrations of homeless, drug addiction in areas of lower east side sitting cheek by jowl with hirsute hipster gin joints and micro-breweries.
However the determination and planning is inspirational. Andrea Reimer’s advice was that when getting started, it is easy to overestimate what can be achieved in a year but easy to underestimate what can be achieved in 5. She did not let us go without making each of us pledge one personal step to set about greening our own native city.
Pat Barry, Executive Director of IGBC attended the study trip sponsored by the Canadian embassy.
Vine plant shading on the University of Vancouver