Skip to content

How can we reach our 2020
Greenest City Targets?

Duane Elverum

← Talk Green To Us - Share Your Ideas

My feedback

1 result found

  1. City university

    732 votes
    Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback
    Signed in as (Sign out)
    Close
    Close
    You have left! (?) (thinking…)
    40 comments  ·  GC 2020 » Lighter Footprint  ·  Admin →
    under review  ·  AdminGreenest City Planning Team (Admin, CG2020) responded

    There is a Campus City Collaborative project in the early stages of planning, where all of the post-secondary institutions are working with the City and the VEDC to talk about movement toward the greenest city, with a focus on creation of green jobs.

    An error occurred while saving the comment
    Duane Elverum commented  · 

    This is a vision for a new relationship between higher education and the public world.

    To reach our GC2020 goals, we will need to identify and solve problems with scope scale and speed. At the same time, students need opportunities to learn about the world through their chosen area of study, and they need opportunities to learn about things that the university hasn’t yet identified.

    Canada is one of the most educated countries in the world with more than 50% of our working-age population possessing a college or university degree. At 50%, we have one of the highest rates of university graduates among the OECD countries.

    Despite our success and emphasis on higher education in Canada, we rank virtually at the bottom of 30 OECD countries when it comes to environmental progress in this country. We are able to provide education to virtually anyone who wants it, but it’s clear that the environment is not getting better because of this success. Education is important, but what is education for if the environment is damaged in the process?

    A City University would invite students from all post-secondary institutions to join together with instructors and the city to get their education by researching and solving the most challenging problems Vancouver needs to solve in order to become the Greenest City. Homelessness, carbon, waste, land use, food, alternative energy – these are some of our greatest challenges yet some of our brightest people don’t get to work on them until they leave university.

    Students want a better world, but they have competing desires; on one hand they want to know how to find work that is rewarding and that matters; on the other hand they want to know how they can earn a living without damaging the planet.

    Can we strengthen the relationship between universities and the public world? What would it be like if students could get their education, and maybe even their whole degree, while learning how to make a better world by working towards it?

    Duane Elverum supported this idea  · 

Feedback and Knowledge Base

(thinking…)