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How can we reach our 2020
Greenest City Targets?

GC 2020

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42 results found

  1. Local Food

    Encourage developers to provide commercial space, throughout residential neighborhods, for outlets for locally grown food. Residential development are often required to provide community oriented commercial uses, such as day care.

    Local food markets, distributred throughout the residential neighborhoods, would help support local food growth, and reduce impact on infrastructure by reducing the need to get in the car.

    11 votes
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    Urban agriculture components are now part of the public benefit negotiations for major developments, however the use of these benefits for a neighbourhood hub like this has not yet been contemplated. Options for neighbourhood based distribution of local food are being considered in the draft Greenest City Action Plan.

  2. label local food

    Encourage food retailers to label local food. This would make it easier for people to choose local and support a sustainable, secure food system in the Lower Mainland.

    14 votes
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  3. Protect Urban Farming by changing the laws that get used to shut it down

    Five years ago I moved to Vancouver and started turning the house I rented with friends into an urban farm. But a neighbour (one, out of dozens) thinks food gardens belong in the back yard and used the city's vague and undemocratic "Untidy Premises Bylaw" to have us ordered to remove it.

    If Vancouver really wants to be green, it should start by looking around at the amazing things that ordinary people are already doing to make it that way and stop putting up barriers to their work. This bylaw needs a specific exemption for food gardens, or it needs…

    56 votes
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  4. Indoor farmer's markets and community garden spaces for winter months.

    Create indoor farmer's markets and community garden spaces for winter months in order to support healthy eco-living and eating.

    94 votes
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  5. Incubator kitchens

    Have certified kitchens available for rent for individuals that would like to create a food business- provide business and marketing support.

    13 votes
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  6. Urban Orchards

    Create urban orchards in every neighbourhood ( cherry, apple, fig, berries, plums, apricots and peaches). Employ staff to maintain these and to teach people how to preserve and use the harvest. Graft producing branches to existing cherry, plum, apple root stock.

    48 votes
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  7. Increase the number of facilities available for community kitchens/ food processing

    Are people still interested in joining community kitchens? These were popular a couple of years ago but excitment seems to have died off due to a lack of available facilities.
    Have community kitchen with themes- such as urban singles, local food etc...
    Have these spaces double as urban food processing centres- have commercial kitchens set up to allow groups to come in and process large amounts of local food at harvest time so that it will be available for later us. Host workshops on various low energy food preservation techniques, nutrition, cooking, low energy cooking etc...
    Install large size community…

    7 votes
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  8. Redistribute food that is still edible

    A large amount of fine produce is thrown out or composted, especially from "gourmet" grocers who only sell produce of highest quality.

    Restaurants often throw out food, because they are unable to sell it the following day.

    There are many people in this city who cannot afford, or who do not have the skills to prepare good food.

    Divert this waste from the food industry towards feeding people who could use the food.

    32 votes
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  9. More street food more places

    The City's recent allocation of 17 new street-food licenses is a good start. Let's take it to the next level with street food hubs on city-owned parking lots or under-utilized alleyways. These centres could be modelled after those in Portland and feature a wide variety of local, healthy options. A bonus idea: a plate refund system like at the Folk Fest -- so that packaging and wrap can be minimized or done away with!

    16 votes
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  10. Provide a one-stop clearing house for information relating to local food in Vancouver.

    A local food directory could support residents in participating in the local food economy, advising them of all the various initiatives that are going on relating to food production, processing and retail in Vancouver.

    6 votes
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  11. A Call to Town Hall - Plant Veggies, not Flowers

    A Call to Town Hall - Plant Veggies, not Flowers
    Poverty Reduction, Environment Protection and Community Building

    Goal
    Reduce poverty, involve community, promote healthy lifestyles, reduce personal and city spending, create a well connected and safer community, add natural nutrients back to top soil, and educate about healthy living and healthy food.

    Most cities and towns have multiple flower gardens that are taken care of by city workers. Call your local city hall, ask them to plant hardy vegetables in garden spots instead of the usual flowers. Vegetable plants produce very beautiful flowers that turn into edible veggies like Squash,…

    41 votes
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  12. Make one floor of every condo a "farm floor" with vegetable garden. Feed the city from the city

    Local food production in your own apartment building. A designated "farm floor" could be in the basement of the building where the underground parking is/was. Powered by solar panels on the roof.

    10 votes
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  13. street end community gardens

    The short streets on the end of a typical block are 66 feet wide just like the streets along the front of most residential properties.
    What if we made them 33 feet wide which is wide enough for a laneway a sidewalk and some trees. The remaining 33 feet could be used for community gardens, pocket parks or leased for a standard residential lot. The lot would provide additional housing without changing the character of a neighbourhood.

    2 votes
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  14. 21 votes
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  15. local food production, vertically!

    verticle farming can feed a whole neighbor hood in one city block!!
    http://www.verticalfarm.com/designs.html

    a glass skyscraper that is designed as a climate controlled environment that can grow food of all different varieties,
    vertically.
    weather hydroponic or soil medium, plants are hung vertically against the windows.
    check this link!
    makes so much sense!
    less space used in this multi-leveled complex, and not subject to bad weather!
    check this link above for designs !

    49 votes
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  16. Develop a city-supported urban farming program

    Community gardens and farmers markets are on the rise in Vancouver, but there remains a need for more productive farms (market gardens) to produce significant amounts of local food.

    There are more and more people interested in getting into farming as a livelihood, but barriers such as high land values and low profit margins in traditional farming make entry difficult.

    The City could develop a municipally-supported urban farming program where city-owned land would be affodably leased to prospective farmers for a season to gain experience, earn an income, and produce food for local residents. This could be coupled with a…

    240 votes
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  17. Allow greenouse enclosures around courtyards/patios (ie. do not count these in floor space ratio)

    Promote more variety of local food growth and longer growing seasons by encouraging greenhouses to transform underused residential courtyards and patios into personal food production centers. The City Development By-Laws currently discourage such greenhouses by counting them towards the total floor space of the building, preventing them from being added to existing houses, and forcing developers to choose between an extra room in their house or a greenhouse (guess which option most people would choose).

    79 votes
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  18. Develop a local food hub and expand the availability of local food at a neighbourhood level

    A local food hub would support the distribution, processing and storage of local food, a current gap in the local food system. This hub would then be connected to avenues to access locally produced food distributed throughout the neighbourhoods, making more available food produced locally by farmers outside Vancouver as well as urban farmers.

    506 votes
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  19. Gardens on apartment property

    Most 3-storey walk-up apartment buildings have boring empty front lawns. These lawns could be replaced either with garden plots for the inhabitants, or with landscaping of native plantings to provide habitat for birds and insects. Create a system so that if the people in that specific building weren't interested in gardening, their plot would be assigned to other neighbourhood gardeners. (Since you wouldn't want to replace boring lawns with even more boring empty plots of earth/weeds.)

    81 votes
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  20. Encourage urban food production

    Urban vegetable gardens and container planting can go a long way towards reducing our food miles and our dependence on imports.

    Successful projects in Mexico and Cuba show us that we can produce a lot of food in the city proper, so why don't we?

    669 votes
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