1. Home
2. Environment
3. Environmental Programs
4. Moving on Sustainable Transportation (MOST)
5. Funded Projects
6. 2010 Plus: Stakeholder Alliance for Advancing Sustainability

2010 Plus: Stakeholder Alliance for Advancing Sustainability

University of British Columbia Design Centre for Sustainability (DCS) is an applied research and outreach organization that demonstrates how design can be used as a tool to stimulate development of more sustainable neighbourhoods, districts, and regions. Transportation is a central element of the sustainable community design efforts. UBC works with citizens and public officials to incorporate and disseminate new and emerging knowledge, tools, and processes for sustainable development into the broader community.

What are they doing?

Many municipalities in Greater Vancouver continue to replicate the “status quo” suburban development pattern of large-lot, single-family homes located in car-dependant districts – districts that are far from jobs and services. This typical suburban pattern is increasingly faulted for its detrimental impacts on health, the environment, social integration, and city budgets. Additionally, automobile-dependent development requires families to spend more on transportation, unnecessarily reducing family discretionary income, in order to get to jobs that are increasingly located where transit cannot serve them.

Conflicts between people, economic growth and environmental protection can most efficiently be resolved through a more integrated relationship between land uses and transportation. Strong sustainability principles and targets can produce more efficient land-use and transportation investments and reduce overall costs of urban infrastructure. Design strategies to reduce or eliminate these conflicts have been successfully implemented in a number of locations in the Greater Vancouver region. What is needed now is a strategy for implementing these proven neighbourhood, district, and municipal scale strategies throughout the region.

The DCS proposes to develop a comprehensive toolkit to describe a practical, viable and implementable vision for a sustainable Greater Vancouver Region. With the "2010 Plus: Stakeholder Alliance for Advancing Sustainability", the DCS intends to sponsor Canada's first ever regional multi-party stakeholder design event (charrette).

In partnership with the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) and the International Centre for Sustainable Cities (ICSC), the DCS will develop a toolkit consisting of a co-ordinated series of publications, workshops, a regional design charrette, and implementation activities. The public roundtable metropolitan-region design effort (design charrette) and associated activities will cover a metropolitan area of more than 300 square miles. The vision produced will be captured in a series of documents, targeted research, and implementation policy tools. Both the product and the process by which it is developed will be shared with the world at the UN World Urban Forum.

Where can you find more information?

Design Centre for Sustainability Website

Date modified:

2012-02-02

Primary navigation