by hans peter meyer
"I'm pretty positive about the future... but we need to have the conversations in our communities [that will generate] the kind of mobilization we had in WWII. [This] is what we're going to need now."
Bruce Sampson, Former VP Sustainability, BC Hydro
Extreme storm events in recent winters have brought the cost of climate change home to a number of BC communities and households. The insurance industry is bracing itself for higher costs associated with claims related to climate change, and the anticipated hikes in premiums will hit all of us who own or rent homes and business properties. In a sobering essay on the need for planning models that will help us be effective in our efforts to do more than simply push cash at the problem, UBC's Patrick Condon cites a 2007 British Treasury Department review on the "Economics of Climate Change." The report warns that the financial "costs of correcting this problem were affordable in the short term, but if nothing was done soon, the coming global economic calamity would make the depression of the 1930s look like a period of great luxury."
The science on climactic change suggests that the single most effective step BC communities can take in the face of this threat is to enhance the resilience of our human communities. We do this by conserving, protecting, and rehabilitating the ecological systems in our regions. Conservation, however, only stems the tide. We need also to get at the source of the emissions that our conserved forests and fields are so effective at storing. The problem is that we have an approach to land use and development that makes this almost impossible: approximately 25% of Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from auto exhaust, says Condon, "and this amount is growing." We've grown our communities on the basis of cheap, single occupancy vehicle (SOV) transportation. Sprawling rural and suburban growth has put us in a bind where we it's hard to rationalize public transit, or other service efficiencies, and are now faced with a huge costs as we continue to build roads and bridges to facilitate ever more SOVs. What we need, says Condon, is a "more carbon-efficient relationship between transportation and land use..."
In BC, the people who control the shape of growth are local government officials, civic staff like planners and engineers, and developers. We need, as former BC Hydro VP of Sustainability Bruce Sampson put it, to have conversations at a community level that lead to a general mobilization. We need our elected leaders and our municipal staff -- and those of us who own and develop land -- to seriously look at policies and practices that will address our climate change challenges. Patrick Condon, whose work on sustainable planning has helped make Vancouver an international focal point for these kinds of ideas and practical approaches, suggests looking at our cities and towns as "Machine[s] for Carbon Mitigation" – human-built constructs "capable of extensive adaptation for GHG reduction."
The value of homes, businesses, and recreational properties in BC is an important part of our current prosperity. Sustaining and protecting these values is in the interest of the real estate industry, but also in the interest of individual homeowners, and certainly of local government which is charged, at least indirectly, with providing a policy and regulatory framework to sustain community land and economic values. In his Hot Properties, a report on the impact of climate change on real estate values and the industry, author Nicholas Heap makes several recommendations to planners and regulators. They are consistent with Condon's call for a reimagining of our communities as more "carbon-efficient" and more resilient to climactic change. A partial list includes:
• ensuring that zoning and development guidelines adequately protect residents and local development against identified vulnerabilities to global warming – and the municipality itself from liability [emphasis added - hpm] – when planning or permitting new development, installinng infrastruture or approving retrofits to existing developments;
• recognizing the influence of urban form over greenhouse gas emissions, and implement policies that result in reduced emissions per capita over time.
From these first steps a series of policies would emerge, including general principles like, but not be limited to:
• intensification of town centres by promoting mixed use development;
• reinvestment along empty corridors and brownfields and redevelopment of strip mall type roads;
• promotion of regional planning, alternatives to SOV transportation; and
• protection of existing compact residential development.
Taking these steps now, or having taken them in the past, is helping make a number of cities and towns more carbon-efficient. Sampson referred to a willingness to embrace certain kinds of risk -- not the risk of wishing climate change away, but of trying out new planning and engineering tools that are being developed, even implemented in other parts of the world. As we wean ourselves from the "old business-as-usual" and experiment with new approaches, Condon imagines "[s]treet infrastructure reconceptualized to provide a host of unprecedented ecological and transportation services.…[including] storm water management, ground source heating and cooling, and urban heat island mitigation. Streets might be reconceived for bicycles and pedestrians only, while rooftops cold be converted for 'green roof' community food production and local jobs." Some of this is already happening in North American cities desperate to make changes in dysfunctional transportation and urban design.
Condon is not sanguine about the challenge facing towns and cities, or any of us who live with everyday reality of our carbon-inefficient land use and transportation choices. Nevertheless, a "dramatic reimagining of the city," he suggests, "may be the only one with sufficient capacity to project the 80 percent reduction in aggregate CO2 production that most experts agree would be required by 2050."
Condon, and colleagues at UBC and across North America, Europe, and Asia, have been developing a host of tools as part of a general reimagining of our relationship to the land base that we all depend on -- driven by the prospect of economic, social, and environmental chaos precipated by climate change. In themselves, the tools are only part of answer. They range from "smart growth" development principles to "design with nature" alternatives to big pipe engineering to "green building." They include technologies and approaches that reduce pollution and taxes, increase civic interaction and recreation/health. Taken together they represent a shift in how we see ourselves in relation to the land.
The benefits of this shift is more than forestalling the kind of threat forecast by the British Treasury report. As a recent speaker at Victoria's 2008 Gaining Ground conference put it, becoming wiser in our use of land has many benefits, including:
• more mobility choices (including less congestion if we are willing to question the supremacy of the SOV);
• more amenities (higher densities can mean more efficient taxation leading to more choices for recreation and services, the potential for area-wide heating/cooling systems and transportation systems, etc);
• better design qualities leading to higher quality, healthier buildings and neighbourhoods;
• more money in our pockets as we spend less on roads and bridges, as we have more practicable opportunities for affordable housing, and lowered health care costs because we walk more, breathe cleaner air, etc.
Gaining Ground 2008 was an excellent opportunity for elected officials, local government planners and engineers, and those wishing to be on the cutting edge of real estate and land development to see and hear how communities are responding positively to the challenges of climate change. Historically, growth in BC communities has been at the expense of social and environmental qualities. With the kind of "reimagining" of land use and development proposed by Condon, with the kinds of implementation of existing planning tools and knowledge showcased in communities around the world, we are beginning to see examples of how growth can foster positive settlement solutions. In BC, growth and our current attractiveness to the world presents us with an opportunity. As the west coast Village of Ucluelet is showing us, it is possible to reach beyond accepted wisdom, to take the risk of new approaches, and begin to knit a new business-as-usual as we integrate our need for housing and economic development with the natural ecosystems that support our quality life on the planet.
-- 30 --
©hanspetermeyer.ca / 2008
"I'm pretty positive about the future... but we need to have the conversations in our communities [that will generate] the kind of mobilization we had in WWII. [This] is what we're going to need now."
Bruce Sampson, Former VP Sustainability, BC Hydro
Extreme storm events in recent winters have brought the cost of climate change home to a number of BC communities and households. The insurance industry is bracing itself for higher costs associated with claims related to climate change, and the anticipated hikes in premiums will hit all of us who own or rent homes and business properties. In a sobering essay on the need for planning models that will help us be effective in our efforts to do more than simply push cash at the problem, UBC's Patrick Condon cites a 2007 British Treasury Department review on the "Economics of Climate Change." The report warns that the financial "costs of correcting this problem were affordable in the short term, but if nothing was done soon, the coming global economic calamity would make the depression of the 1930s look like a period of great luxury."
The science on climactic change suggests that the single most effective step BC communities can take in the face of this threat is to enhance the resilience of our human communities. We do this by conserving, protecting, and rehabilitating the ecological systems in our regions. Conservation, however, only stems the tide. We need also to get at the source of the emissions that our conserved forests and fields are so effective at storing. The problem is that we have an approach to land use and development that makes this almost impossible: approximately 25% of Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from auto exhaust, says Condon, "and this amount is growing." We've grown our communities on the basis of cheap, single occupancy vehicle (SOV) transportation. Sprawling rural and suburban growth has put us in a bind where we it's hard to rationalize public transit, or other service efficiencies, and are now faced with a huge costs as we continue to build roads and bridges to facilitate ever more SOVs. What we need, says Condon, is a "more carbon-efficient relationship between transportation and land use..."
In BC, the people who control the shape of growth are local government officials, civic staff like planners and engineers, and developers. We need, as former BC Hydro VP of Sustainability Bruce Sampson put it, to have conversations at a community level that lead to a general mobilization. We need our elected leaders and our municipal staff -- and those of us who own and develop land -- to seriously look at policies and practices that will address our climate change challenges. Patrick Condon, whose work on sustainable planning has helped make Vancouver an international focal point for these kinds of ideas and practical approaches, suggests looking at our cities and towns as "Machine[s] for Carbon Mitigation" – human-built constructs "capable of extensive adaptation for GHG reduction."
The value of homes, businesses, and recreational properties in BC is an important part of our current prosperity. Sustaining and protecting these values is in the interest of the real estate industry, but also in the interest of individual homeowners, and certainly of local government which is charged, at least indirectly, with providing a policy and regulatory framework to sustain community land and economic values. In his Hot Properties, a report on the impact of climate change on real estate values and the industry, author Nicholas Heap makes several recommendations to planners and regulators. They are consistent with Condon's call for a reimagining of our communities as more "carbon-efficient" and more resilient to climactic change. A partial list includes:
• ensuring that zoning and development guidelines adequately protect residents and local development against identified vulnerabilities to global warming – and the municipality itself from liability [emphasis added - hpm] – when planning or permitting new development, installinng infrastruture or approving retrofits to existing developments;
• recognizing the influence of urban form over greenhouse gas emissions, and implement policies that result in reduced emissions per capita over time.
From these first steps a series of policies would emerge, including general principles like, but not be limited to:
• intensification of town centres by promoting mixed use development;
• reinvestment along empty corridors and brownfields and redevelopment of strip mall type roads;
• promotion of regional planning, alternatives to SOV transportation; and
• protection of existing compact residential development.
Taking these steps now, or having taken them in the past, is helping make a number of cities and towns more carbon-efficient. Sampson referred to a willingness to embrace certain kinds of risk -- not the risk of wishing climate change away, but of trying out new planning and engineering tools that are being developed, even implemented in other parts of the world. As we wean ourselves from the "old business-as-usual" and experiment with new approaches, Condon imagines "[s]treet infrastructure reconceptualized to provide a host of unprecedented ecological and transportation services.…[including] storm water management, ground source heating and cooling, and urban heat island mitigation. Streets might be reconceived for bicycles and pedestrians only, while rooftops cold be converted for 'green roof' community food production and local jobs." Some of this is already happening in North American cities desperate to make changes in dysfunctional transportation and urban design.
Condon is not sanguine about the challenge facing towns and cities, or any of us who live with everyday reality of our carbon-inefficient land use and transportation choices. Nevertheless, a "dramatic reimagining of the city," he suggests, "may be the only one with sufficient capacity to project the 80 percent reduction in aggregate CO2 production that most experts agree would be required by 2050."
Condon, and colleagues at UBC and across North America, Europe, and Asia, have been developing a host of tools as part of a general reimagining of our relationship to the land base that we all depend on -- driven by the prospect of economic, social, and environmental chaos precipated by climate change. In themselves, the tools are only part of answer. They range from "smart growth" development principles to "design with nature" alternatives to big pipe engineering to "green building." They include technologies and approaches that reduce pollution and taxes, increase civic interaction and recreation/health. Taken together they represent a shift in how we see ourselves in relation to the land.
The benefits of this shift is more than forestalling the kind of threat forecast by the British Treasury report. As a recent speaker at Victoria's 2008 Gaining Ground conference put it, becoming wiser in our use of land has many benefits, including:
• more mobility choices (including less congestion if we are willing to question the supremacy of the SOV);
• more amenities (higher densities can mean more efficient taxation leading to more choices for recreation and services, the potential for area-wide heating/cooling systems and transportation systems, etc);
• better design qualities leading to higher quality, healthier buildings and neighbourhoods;
• more money in our pockets as we spend less on roads and bridges, as we have more practicable opportunities for affordable housing, and lowered health care costs because we walk more, breathe cleaner air, etc.
Gaining Ground 2008 was an excellent opportunity for elected officials, local government planners and engineers, and those wishing to be on the cutting edge of real estate and land development to see and hear how communities are responding positively to the challenges of climate change. Historically, growth in BC communities has been at the expense of social and environmental qualities. With the kind of "reimagining" of land use and development proposed by Condon, with the kinds of implementation of existing planning tools and knowledge showcased in communities around the world, we are beginning to see examples of how growth can foster positive settlement solutions. In BC, growth and our current attractiveness to the world presents us with an opportunity. As the west coast Village of Ucluelet is showing us, it is possible to reach beyond accepted wisdom, to take the risk of new approaches, and begin to knit a new business-as-usual as we integrate our need for housing and economic development with the natural ecosystems that support our quality life on the planet.
-- 30 --
©hanspetermeyer.ca / 2008
