GC 2020
248 results found
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Educate young: Add agriculture, renewable energy, sustainable development to highschool ciriculum
Inspire the youth to take action and educate on the importance of sustainable living practices.
26 votesIdea shared with Vancouver School Board; will be considered in City of Vancouver’s ongoing engagement activities as well. Very important to engage all of our community’s diversity.
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Bring community gardeners together with those who have extra yard space
Create a program for homeowners & community gardeners to work together. For example, elderly people who want to stay in their homes but can no longer maintain their yards, would have their yards maintained by gardeners, in exchange for garden space in the home owner's yard to grow food.
69 votesA great idea and one that has already been started by City Farmer. Check out the great tool they have created to link those with space with those looking for space to garden: http://www.sharingbackyards.com/browse/Vancouver,BC&welcome_box=3
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9 votes
The majority of existing brown and greyfields in Vancouver fall under existing redevelopment plans.
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Encourage Influential People such as James Cameron (Avatar), to disclose impact of big corporations
on the environment, and encourage change. James Cameron is the Director of the movie Avatar which had a message of how big corporations, Mining are affecting the environment and raping the earth.
4 votesThe Greenest City Action Team is our home-grown influential team, and others are always welcome: http://vancouver.ca/greenestcity/background.htm#team
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mobile community gardens in empty lots
Community gardens could be setup in the gated empty lots around the city. The lot owner could put up a sponsorship sign so they get the free advertising of supporting something helpful to the community. The garden could be setup in a way that it could be moved to another lot when the original lot was eventually put to another use.
32 votesDraft Greenest City Action Plan includes a strategy to increase community garden plots of a variety of scope and scale.
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Improve Neighbourhood Roundabouts to provide for safe pedestrian crossing
Neighbourhood roundabouts are being developed across the city. These roundabouts serve to maintain a comfortable traffic flow for cars and cyclists on residential streets. Unfortunately, due to their design, these roundabouts fail to provide security for pedestrians since there are no visual cues to suggest that pedestrians even have a right to cross the street. In a local classroom survey, grade 4’s exclaimed that they feel unsafe crossing at these roundabouts and I regularly see uncertainty in the eyes and actions of pedestrians crossing at roundabouts.
There are a number of ways to improve this situation. Here are two examples:
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6 votesAll new traffic circles are designed to keep cars and bicycles out of the pedestrian crossing areas.
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Playing Movies Like Avatar, in Major Public Places, showing the reality & impact of big corporations
Making the largest impact in the shortest time, can make the difference. Continue funding Movies like Avatar which expose corporate America's environmental habits, and showing them on large public movie screens and starting change from the top. Companies with thousands of employees and systems, should be forced to change there habits, to reduce there carbon footprint. Public awareness may force the change that might otherwise take years.
4 votesGreat idea, and you are encouraged to suggest it to Fresh Air Cinemas and all of the community organisations that sponsor outdoor movies in the summer, including many of the Business Improvement Associations: http://www.freshaircinema.ca/; http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/cityplans/bia/index.htm
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Create a Senior Citizen's Sustainability Advisory Panel to mobile seniors knowledge on sustainabilty
Not sure that more degrees/planners is gonna make much difference...need solutions now...I say learn from the Cuban urban food production experience - they turned to the knowledge of all the seniors in Havana who knew how to grow food as most grew up in rural areas prior to revolution and then migrated to cities. WIthin 6 months, local seniors were teaching ourses at universities while the food geneticists and experts were in teh classroom learning how to do things without oil/fertilizer. There are many seniors in Vancouver who know how to grow food, fix machinery and make the most of…
16 votesThe draft action plans have been informed by over 100 different organizations in the community, and this is a great idea to build on that engagement work by outreaching to a specific demographic in our community.
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Create a "Greenest Block in the City" award - winner gets a kickass prize!
Modelled after Greenest Block in Brooklyn, where every block in Brooklyn competes to have the best gardens and grow the most food - friends in Brooklyn go nuts for this - lots of fun - winning block gets a great prize like street improvements from city - see"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/08/presenting_the.php
24 votesGreenest City awards are included in the Draft Greenest City Action Plan.
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Ban grass lawns
Green lawns look nice but they consume a vast amount of water, we could reduce the amount of water used if we a) had maximum sized lawns allowable in private residence. b) Banned the planting of grass for lawn areas, there are a number of plants that you could use to create a green walkable space that consume little water to sustain, why then do we waist so much water on grass lawns, alternate style of ground cover could be looked at.
7 votesThe City does not limit the amount of lawn, but does limit the amount of impermeable surface allowed. We encourage alternatives to lawns through the water wise landscape guidelines. Strengthening education programs in supprt of alternatives to lawns is part of the plan.
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Bike & Pedestrian Bridge across False Creek
A bike and walking link that spans that spans over False Creek from Charleson Park on the south side of the creek to David Lam Park on the downtown side.
This site is one of 4 that the city recently identified as a potential location for a bike bridge crossing.
Take a look at the designs that Emily Carr students came up with:
http://blogs.eciad.ca/elverum/2010/03/05/design-for-bikes-bridging-false-creek/10 votesThe pending active transportation plan provides an opportunity to consider ideas such as this.
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Produce instead of consume
A friend of mine told me his version of eco-tourism: "stay home and shallow breath." Being green means producing more than we consume. We need to think about this at home, in our occupations and in the community. I have a hard time imagining how Vancouver can compete with poorer cities where the people cannot afford to buy stuff and therefore have a lighter footprint. Even the most conscientious Vancouve bike rider can have their carbon footprint skyrocket when their air travel is calculated. But we can always try and there are lots of great ideas being put forth here!
2 votesThis is an interesting take on reducing ecological footprint. Our research tells us that people respond better to positive messaging that activates and motivates them, and that is the likely tact we will take in our communications.
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No Car City: Measure and reduce car passenger miles: If we drive less, a green city can emerge.
What kind a lever can we pull that automatically creates a cascade of green behaviours?
It would seem that very few us would choose to trade our lives for a daily commute, but we do because we don't have much of a choice.
If we aimed to reduce per capita passenger car miles traveled in our cities, we'd be able to begin to free up some of the 30% of city surface area used for cars; it would mean we'd be doing everything closer to where we live, including work. We'd burn less oil, and we'd walk and ride more.…45 votesOne of the 2020 targets for Green Transportation is to reduce distance driven per resident 20% from 2007 levels. One of the major challenges is data — better data sources are needed to monitor progress and set more detailed targets. Odometer readings would be one way to get better VKT numbers, and would be possible with support from the Province and ICBC. Improved regional travel surveys are another possible approach.
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eco zoning
Vancouver like London attracts people from around the world Where London has produced zoning that helps preserve its historic "buzz" we need to produce zoning that preserves our "rain forest" appeal . An eco zone is a modified existing zone (eg. RS1eco, RM1eco ,etc) that is given preferential treatment because of exceptional green practices, these could entail, urban farms, passive solar or passive certified homes. Eco zoning is incentive based, -additional sq footage, or minimum lot size reduction, green house gardens for commercial or personal), green innovation relaxation (eg, allowing wind turbines or large scale water collection (+500gallon) under ground…
5 votesGreen Enterprize Zone team is establishing area and some initial projects including two business incubators
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Require Timer Light Swtiches & Motion Sensors for Lights in Building Code / Existing Bldg Retrofits
It boggles the mind why in North America we light up our interior corridors, parkades and other common areas in buildings 24/7. Motion sensored lights in large parkades and common areas, and light switches on times in corridors and stairwells would keep people just as safe and give them light when it was needed, stopping the energy waste of having lights on all the time. It would also reinforce the conservation mentality that people might then bring into their homes as well.
39 votesThis is addressed in a retrofit pilot program
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Free Door to Door Efficiency Upgrades!
Let's have teams of semi-skilled energy and water efficiency technicians provide at-your-door, free upgrade services. It's easy to be lazy when it comes to making our homes more energy and water efficient. Sometime we just need a kick in the pants!
The City could partner with BC Hydro, Terasen Gas, the water utility, and other utilities and energy providers to establish teams of people that take energy/water efficiency information and products door-to-door. The neighbourhood visit schedules would be advertized and specific visits could be requested by citizens.
Citizens would have a choice between products or could choose not to upgrade.…
11 votesNot free, but we are creating financing tools and incentives to increase affordability of these upgrades
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Cultural Sustainability Ambassadors
Vancouver has one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in Canada. Each cultural population responds to municipally-led sustainability challenges or requirements differently. In some ways, different immigrant populations have more sustainable living knowledge and experience than the mainstream Vancouver culture, in some ways they have less.
The City needs to engage different cultural communities uniquely, determining which approaches work best for which cultures to ensure the uptake of sustainability initiatives -which approaches will be meaningful to which communities.
Examples of this include identify existing social leaders in cultural communities (ethnic, income, age, ability, gender, etc.) and support them in order…
24 votesThis idea is included in draft Greenest City Action Plan, as well as more generally as a Greenest City Ambassadors program.
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Celebrate water! Rain water, river water, ocean water -- let's treat it like we love it!
Some ideas for celebrating water might include...
- Making beautiful rain-powered water sculptures as public art
- "Daylighting" our lost creeks
- Creating new "creeks" (swales) and ponds to manage our stormwater
- Making sure our rivers and ponds and coastlines stay/get clean enough to swim in and fish in and play in again
What are your ideas?
16 votesWhere possible, streams are being daylighted http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/cityplans/stillcreek/index.htm, swales and infiltration bulges are being installed http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/design/green.htm, rainwater is incorporated into public art at the Marine Drive Skytrain Station
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Enable home and building owners to retrofit existing buildings for energy efficiency
Instead of building it all from scratch, let's fix what we already have... Low hanging fruit here. Maybe we need to tie retrofits to property tax bills to create the right incentives.
18 votesFinancing tools (currently under development) may encourage building owners to improve the performance of their buildings rather than rebuild
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Create program for low-income individuals to weatherize existing buildings
Create incentives as well as training program for low income / marginalized individuals to weatherize existing buildings.
Weatherizing (caulking and weather stripping gaps in walls, windows, doors, roof, and floors) is a simple and affordable energy conservation solution that makes a HUGE difference, often with a payback of less than year. There are many existing buildings in Vancouver that are poorly performing due to a lack of weather-proofing.
Think of all the green jobs we could create if people were trained in how to do this, and there were incentives make it easier to implement.
22 votesPilot project underway with EMBERS.
