"Vancouver has the vision to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. To get there, we’ve defined 10 long-term goals, each associated with a 2020-target. After talking citizens and stakeholders, we’ve created a draft action plan to meet our proposed targets." That is how begin each short video presenting these 10 targets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yNV...) which are :

1.Green economy

2.Climate leadership

3.Green buildings

4.Green transportation

5.Zero waste

6.Access to nature

7.Lighter footprint

8.Clean water

9.Clean air

10.Local food

During my stay in Vancouver, I write about these targets. If you cannot wait to know more about it, here the official website of the project : http://www.talkgreenvancouver.ca/

Today we’ll talk about one of the main goals of Vancouver Greenest City, the one I think may be the most interesting : green transportation. He was a City Councillor in Vancouver untill 2002, he worked several years at the Translink (Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority), and Gordon Price is now Director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University. After he offered me an excellent hot chocolate at the coffee shop across the street, we discussed about the transportation in Vancouver. Talkative, passionate and involved in the projects of the city for many years, he helped me to understand the history of urban planning and transit network in Vancouver in the 20th century. This article introduces the next one in which I will write more about the long-term goal of Vancouver Greenest City.

Vancouver didn’t wait the current mayor to have an excellent transit network. The Vancouver transit system has always been a good one because : the authorities never built any freeway going to the heart of the city. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s, transit system served only poor people. It was neither a social nor a political priority. But in cities without any freeway, such as Vancouver, the transit system had to be treated far more seriously by the politicians ; they have an electric street car network still intact. The street cars came in exactly when the city was expanding very rapidly. So Vancouver was built around its electric street car lanes. In the 40’s and 50’s, the rails were taken out and the overhead wires were installed for the trolley, but the it was basically on the same streets as the former electric cars. It reinforced the urban fabric of Vancouver. A frequent transit network, with buses coming every 15 minutes or even more frequently, still focused on downtown, was built. More recently, Vancouver built the Skytrain, the Canada Line and the West Coast Express. The Skytrain is one of the best in the world, it has a very high frequency. Then the urban development began to occur around the stations and reinforced the use of transit, until a culture is created which sees the transit as essential for the functioning of the city.

The problem of these two assets is that it works only for the city center (the oldest area) and along the Skytrain corridors, but out of downtowm, it’s still car-dependant. In these areas, the urban planning is very similar to what happened in North America and sometimes in Europe after the WWII : Gordon Price gives us a history lesson...

Prior to WWI, european cities were built for pedestrians, maybe for horses, and then for buses, electric street cars, metro... but cities were still very compact. So people chose transit to move. But after WWII, everything was designed for cars. One of the reasons of that disruption is that between the Depression (1929) and the end of WWII, nothing was built. Therefore in the 50’s, the network of people with skills to build good transit systems (labours, architects, craftsmen, planners, developers, financiers, politicians...) had disappeared.

Then, Le Corbusier, a french architect, appeared and applied his ideas of modernism. It was a very utilitarian urban planning, with "banlieues", many freeways... It was a complete break from the traditionnal ways to build the cities. That is how there are now urban regions, and Vancouver is one of them, made of these two kinds of urban forms : the pre automobile dominant way of building, and the post one, with cars for most people.

As long as you have cheap energy, cheap lands, cheap water and cheap money, you can promote a very high quality of life. People always want more space : green, clean and safe suburbs with their own house and their own car... for the individuals, that’s great. But not collectively. At a certain point, the automobile suddenly becomes an enemy. "So what we’ve tried to do here, in Vancouver, is to have more of a balance, where the thansit system works well enough so that it’s a practical choice, as well as cycling, walking, driving, including taxis, car share, bike share..." explains Gordon. Building layers after layers, they get people make the choice between the different ways to move.

The european example

There is a parallel between some european cities (London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris...) and the old part of Vancouver. In these european cities, the political voices of sustainability are quite strong, and above all they never really got into auto-dependance because the old areas were not demolished. Metros, street cars or other rapid transits are still there. These cities deal with the high price of energy. In Vancouver, if people take the bike it may be because it costs much more to have a car.

In a whole, Vancouver took example on how these cities use energy, on their urban design, on transportation... For example, in urban planning, they took example on the design of public spaces, the mix of the different uses, how the buildings take advantage of the sun, how they manage water (which is a huge part of sustainability), how they can get the heat from sewage... The designing of cycle tracks was directly inspired from Copenhagen as the transportation manager of the danish capitol went to make a conference in Vancouver to help them in designing their cycle tracks. So the diffusion of the knowledge is essential for the building of a sustainable city. Maybe this blog could help, don’t you think ?

See you soon, Be green Ben