Over the past 20 years, the approach to community planning, zoning, density, transportation and housing in Vancouver has yielded substantial improvements. Continued improvement, however, requires ongoing innovation and creativity.
The City of Vancouver has developed Climate Change Action Plans as well as the EcoDensity Charter. Vancouver was the first city in Canada to adopt The 2030 Challenge for green house gas reduction. City Council has taken that commitment a step further with the stated goal of becoming “the greenest city in the world”.
FormShift Vancouver challenges you to give shape to these goals through ideas and design solutions that will help shape the future of the city...this is your chance to build a hypothetical form of the future, one that is in keeping with the vibrant, ecologically-friendly and sustainable city to which we aspire.
The post-presentation debate brought up some very interesting ideas...
- We encourage development along arterial roads (typically 4-6 stories, commercial/retail at ground level and residential above) because they are transit routes, meaning residents don't depend completely on cars. But these routes are very noisy - few people want to live on them. I can attest to this having turned down several condos while house hunting for that very reason. So how do we balance the traffic, noise and density with the desires and needs of residents?
- The suburbs are growing at a much faster rate than inner cities. How do we move more of that growth to our cities? How do we encourage people to relocate into our cities versus the suburbs? How do we work with suburban communities to help them grow smart?
- Does density = affordability?
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