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How can we reach our 2020
Greenest City Targets?

GC 2020

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44 results found

  1. Create a Green Business Certification Scheme

    Create a green business certification scheme that recognizes and rewards businesses that meet predefined criteria.

    57 votes
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  2. Provide rental property owners with small tax break if they provide garden plots

    The city could provide a small tax break (or waive a percentage of the business license fee perhaps?) to rental property owners if they allowed residents to create garden plots. This would be particularly helpful for residents in the West End, where demand far exceed capacity.

    47 votes
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  3. Subsidise local small and family farms

    The farmers market is great! But ridiculously expensive, making it a trendy outing for the elite - rather than a truly useful lifestyle choice available to all. Most people don't know that the reason the GMO / hormoned up / poisoned with antibiotics and mostly imported farm food you can get at Safeway is so cheep is because big factory farms are for the most part subsidized by our governments. If local and regional farmers were subsidized in such a way, an over-all better quality of food would be more readily available - and more people would make the choice…

    44 votes
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  4. Shift transit from buses to light rail / streetcars

    Let's face it, buses aren't sexy. You don't see too many suits riding the bus in Vancouver. Based on what I've seen in other (world-class) cities, trolleys / streetcars / light rail are more appealing to a broader cross-section of the population. If we want to get people out of cars, provide a nice alternative.

    38 votes
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    Streetcars and other forms of light rail have their place in the city — see http://vancouver.ca/streetcar for an example — but it is not practical to replace all buses with streetcars for a variety of reasons. In some cases, the flexibility buses offer (e.g. ability to pass, change lanes) outweigh the advantages of streetcars. The cost of upgrading (particulary if there is no commensurate increase in capacity and level of service) must also be considered, and weighed against other transit needs in the region.

  5. elevated covered bike lanes

    BISU: bike super hwy! elevated, covered bike routes that connect all municipalities and are 4-lanes wide and lit up at night. designed by architects from europe, or frank gehry. will set the standard for the car-less phase of human evolution... sponsored by companies that create contemporary self-powered vehicles suitable for the Bicycle Super Highway.

    31 votes
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  6. Trust & Beauty in Water

    Rainwater collection should be mandatory on all commercial and community builidng with a filtered system that feeds the water to taps or fountains at street level. These should be designed and maintained so they are attractive to passersby, thereby the quality of the water won't be questioned. FREE, CLEAN, POTABLE WATER!

    31 votes
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  7. Granville St=one long garden

    Keep the current pedestrian part of Granville St downtown closed to cars forever and turn it into one long garden. You could have a section for food, a native plant garden and even a butterfly garden. It would be a unique tourist attraction, could be used as an educational tool and would develop community. So get ride of the strange dirty AstroTurf and make the pedestrian only street even better for our environment.

    30 votes
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  8. Use alley ways as bike trails/lanes

    Cyclists often fear vehicle traffic. Why not utilize wide uncluttered alley ways as bike lanes or routes for cyclists to travel on. The minimal vehicle traffic in alley ways is already slow moving. If a few of these bike trails are established in a few city wide corridors it could drastically increase downtown cycling. Instead of taking up more road way, just use the unused alley ways!

    28 votes
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    The Greenest City team does support the idea to make make laneways and alleys more pedestrian (and bike) friendly environments, while maintaining essential functions (e.g. access for loading, parking and waste collection). Having said that, laneways aren’t ideal as designated bike routes for a number of reasons; perhaps most significantly, they don’t allow for safe (signalled or otherwise) crossings from one block to the next.

  9. Industrialize Hemp

    Cannabis Hemp is about so much more than a psychoactive substance. Cannabis hemp offers a natural, renewable source of clothing, shelter, food, as well as ethanol and energy that are fully sustainable. Hemp paper is much more durable than tree paper, and Cannabis Hemp is a hearty plant that will grow well nearly anywhere. The seeds of this plant are a very high protein source, as well as the best source of Omega's available in a plant matter. Hemp Seed as food could single handedly end the world hunger crisis. http://www.jackherer.com/chapters.html is a great resource to learn more about cannabis…

    26 votes
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  10. Make some supermarkets only local food!

    You can bulid super markets only offering local food, and organic food, and for extra make the roof solar power and cover the roof's edge with vines and cool plants! Who is with me?!

    23 votes
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  11. Start using salt water rather than fresh water for sewage systems.

    Instead of flushing with fresh water we could be retrofitting and designing sewage systems to utilize brackish water. 30% of the world’s population lives near coastlines and everywhere we flush our most precious commodity, fresh water, down the toilet. Making this change to the City’s public washroom facilities, for instance, would make Vancouver a truly innovative, leading city. Salt water sewage treatment has now been recently been studied and successfully engineered at the Centre for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Texas, so it can be done.

    23 votes
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  12. power fitness centres with existing equipment

    I watched a news story last week about the Nanaimo Athletic Club where management is using energy generated by patrons using stationary bicycles, treadmills and other gym equipment to power the facility's lighting, televisions, fans and other electrical devices. Why not in Vancouver Park Board community centres, especially with new centres opening around town?

    22 votes
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  13. Sewage Treatment options

    There are efective natural ways to treat grey and sewage waters without dumping them into our enviroment without anything but primary treatment. One idea I read used water hyacinth to pureify the water, as the sewage runs though the ponds with the water hyacinth, the plant absorbes all of the waste products as well as any impurities, the result is pure water, yes you have to invest in holding ponds, but as the Hyacinth grow they consume CO2 reduing that green house gas, in fact the plants in the study I read were mulched and used to produce the gas…

    20 votes
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  14. Mandatory Bike License

    If cyclists and motorists are to share the road safely, ALL users of the road should be licensed and have to pass a safety exam. Exams for new drivers should include a section on sharing the road. Cyclist too would be required to be knowledgeable. The license would ensure that both drivers and cyclists are safe and accountable for their driving/riding habits.

    19 votes
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  15. smoke-free housing

    Create incentives and initiatives to encourage and support lung-friendly, affordable multi-unit housing (rentals, co-ops, and condos), which would include bans on smoking, barbecues, toxic scented laundry products, and other common, difficult-to-avoid domestic pollutants so that people with respiratory disabilities can finally have a safe place to live. No one should have to choose between having their health and having a home.

    19 votes
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  16. Environmental public health surveillance

    Make available information on the location of toxic hotspots throughout the city, mapped with public health data on occurrence of thyroid disorders, cancers, neurological disorders, etc. for the purpose of examining social determinants of health and allowing for community response to toxic exposure.

    18 votes
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    Establishing a geographical link to the health disorders listed is very difficult, and subject to other factors outside air quality. The level of monitoring required to achieve the desired outcome is prohibitive.

  17. Ban Smoking in All buildings and Public Spaces

    The only exception would be open spaces on private properties.

    16 votes
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  18. build a landmark green building Art Gallery

    a vibrant art community brings a cultured and an educated population. Vancouver is still a bit of a wild west cowboy town with little in terms of arts
    we need a new art gallery. make it bold, make it spetacular, build it along the water, make it the city's next landmark. not like the library that is lost in the surrounding. we have the luxury of a waterfront - think Sydney Opera.

    16 votes
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    While this idea is too specific to be included in the plan, the draft Greenest City Action Plan does discuss the construction of demonstration projects that can be case studies for the industry to learn from.

  19. Covered cycling routes

    The need for an efficient and safe network of cycling routes is a given, but what about the rain? The problem is how to get people out of their cars and on to their bikes/electric scooters during the long and wet winter months. I would propose running a covered cycling route along every tenth street. A tastefully designed rain canopy could be built wide enough to shelter two lanes of bike traffic. (Half of the street could be left uncovered, and restricted to local cars.) It seldom rains hard enough here to discourage a cyclist on a three-minute jaunt, but…

    15 votes
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    This would be extremely costly to implement. Yes, cycling traffic does go down on rainy days but many people have demonstrated a willingness to ride in inclement weather. Cyclists in European cities continue to cycle in all types of weather. It just requires a change of mindset.

  20. Sustainability is not possible in an environment of economic growth

    The best way we can keep our ecological footprint from taxing more and more of the the planet .... is to stop growing our ecological footprint. Economic growth must stop. Lose the illusion, you simply cannot flaunt supposed "sustainability" PR in a city whose economy depends on perpetual economic growth, this is an oxymoron.

    12 votes
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    This is very important context in which to think about our greenest city work, however it is difficult to figure out how to integrate this into a 10 year greenest city action plan in one municipality. This idea has been shared with our green economy working group as well.

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