Author: corey.burger

Health, active transportation and the city

That walking and biking both makes people healthier and helps with climate change isn’t exactly a shocker, but when The Lancet, a well respected medical journal, publishes a paper to that effect, suddenly it becomes news.  The paper, entitled Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: urban land transport, is part of series in the Lancet on climate change and public health. All of the papers and the accompanying commentary are actually available online, which is rare for an academic journal. Kudos to them.

Ironically, this paper comes mere days after the Oak Bay Council passed a watered-down motion to set priorities for funding various transportation options which explicitly mentions public health in its preamble:

WHEREAS climate change is an issue of vital local, national and global importance and local initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouses gases will contribute to protecting air quality and public health;

The original motion(PDF) was brought forward by Nils Jensen, always a strong supporter of active transportation, who is trying to get the municipality to set priorties in transportation planning. It also directed staff to see where the 2010 budget, already in drafting, could be changed to reflect those priorities and a report for the 2011 budget. Sadly this was too much “the cart before the horse”, as Councillor Cassidy, put it for some, so the motion was amended to merely list the four types of road users with no specific priority. Hopefully the staff report, which will likely be out sometime in mid-2010, will have some information to help sway council members.

Within the planning community, links between climate change and active transportation are already fairly well understood, with the Canadian Institute of Planning’s Climate Change Program, and the message from scientists to planners is that it is time to step up. We in BC are ahead of the pack in terms of planning healthy communities, with the Provincial Health Services Authority’s Healthy Built Environment program, something that caught the eye of the federal Public Health Agency in a report not too long ago. There are also dollars coming down the pipeline from the provincial government’s LocalMotion, which partially funded the Henderson Road bike lane project, and BikeBC programs.

Now that the links between climate change, health and active transportation are getting better known, the last thing we need is a reputable organization showing how having healthier, active and climate conscious communities can save governments money and keep tax increases in check to help sway those last few not yet convinced by the mounting evidence.

LA without cars

Michigan Central Station, Detroit (Photo credit: Matt Callow)
Michigan Central Station, Detroit (Photo credit: Matt Callow)

The subject of empty cities has been getting a great deal of attention recently, with the Life after People documentary and television series, plus the stream of pictures of abandoned buildings, both in Detroit from long economic decay, or newer houses left empty as part of the sub-prime crisis. Flickr’s abandoned pool is a great way to waste a few hours, as is Forgotten Detroit, although it appears that the latter hasn’t been updated in a few years.

But I think it is Tom Baker’s set on a modern LA devoid of cars that is the most haunting and provocative, hence the title of the post. LA, like Detroit, is a city defined by the automobile, although I think LA got the “better” bargain, as they got the sexiness without the industrial pollution of the manufacturing. Even But what Tom has proved is that hideous highways can be turned into art, as can be seen below,  one of the nine images he has stitched together with a great deal of patience and time.

Empty intersection (Photo credit: Tom Baker)
Empty intersection (Photo credit: Tom Baker)

Legalese shows true intent behind climate change policy

Oak Bay is changing it’s antiquated Official Community Plan (PDF) to include some new verbiage about climate change. On Dec 7th, the public will have a chance to speak to council about the issue (PDF). All of this is driven by an agreement between the Province and Union of BC Municipalities and their members regarding combating climate change. This is quite laudable but the actual agreement between the various parties is very neatly undermined by the final section of the agreement (PDF), which reads:

This Charter is not intended to be legally binding or impose legal obligations on any Party and will have no legal effect.

So much for that. More information about the actual amendment as I get it.

Come help clean up Bowker Creek

Browning Park (Image Credit: CRD)
Browning Park (Image Credit: CRD)

The Camosun Community Association is having a Bowker Creek Cleanup this Saturday, Nov. 14th, from 9:30 – 11:30 am in Browning Park.  Bring workgloves and gumboots. (Google Map)

Browning Park is also the site of the next piece of the Bowker Creek Greenway, with Saanich Parks building a paved multi-use trail ala the Galloping Goose. Saanich Parks claims this is the first piece, CRD says the path they built through the BC Hydro lands (yes, those BC Hydro lands) as the first. Regardless, it is exciting to see the trail slowly being knit together.

Although we didn’t get as far as Browning Park, I did manage to join Ian Graeme of the Friends of Bowker Creek Society and Brenda Beckwith’s Grassroots Restoration (Environmental Studies 482) class for a walk along the creek from the Oak Bay border to Hillside Mall. Ian was, as always, a great source of knowledge and inspiration and I hope some of the students caught his bug. Given the headwaters of the creek are in UVic, it would be great to see more UVic students involved. Maybe we will see a few out this weekend.

Ian talking to the class
Ian talking to the class

The new trail section is partly funded by the LocalMotion program from the Provincial Government, which also put money towards the Henderson Road bike lanes. LocalMotion has been an excellent source of money for bicycle and pedestrian projects over the years, as you can see from the full list of funded projects (PDF).

The next question is: who will step up to the plate and finish the next section? It wouldn’t take much to take Oak Bay’s section from good to truly world class, some of which involves connecting the parts that already exist already have together. Victoria could do wonders in reversing their short-sighted decision to culvert their section of the creek in the later part of the 20th century. Time, and a lot of community effort, will tell.

Notes from Saturday’s Active Transportation forum

For those interested in active transportation (biking, walking and transit) Saturday’s forum was a great place to be. Hosted by the Community Association of Oak Bay, participants at the day long forum not only learned about new initiatives in the local area, such as the CRD Bike/Ped Plan, as well as what other cities have been doing. Michelle Kirby has a great write up at the Community Association’s website, plus there is the Times Colonist article, so I won’t repeat what they said.

For me the most exciting part of the day came last, with a short brain-storming and group discussion about various improvements to bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Thanks to Sue for supplying us with a few larger maps for drawing and sketching. Lesley Ewing has compiled a list of them and I will be sharing some of the best over the next little while.

All in all, an excellent day. Watching the rugby players in the rain made an interesting backdrop to the whole event.

Oak Bay News web fail

Mis-posted story on Oak Bay News website
Mis-posted story on Oak Bay News website (Click for larger screenshot)

The web is filled with fail, as I pointed out the other day, and it appears that Oak Bay News is no less guilty than anybody else, as can be seen on the right.

Given how strict most old media places are about posting, I really wonder how this slipped through. Might it have been somebody getting access that they shouldn’t have?

Oak Bay is looking for a few good people

…to serve on various boards and committees. The terms run for one or two years and start in December. So which committees need people?

Advisory Design Committee

This group works with developers and builders looking to construct new buildings in the municipality from a design perspective. However, all applicants must be registered architects with the Architectural Institute of BC, which has a fairly stringent application process.

Oak Bay Parks and Recreation Commission

They oversee the running of the various facilities and programs that Recreation Oak Bay runs. Interest in parks and recreation recommended.

Recognition of Renovation and Building Achievement Awards Panel

This little known group hands out awards for new developments and renos.

Heritage Committee

The Heritage Commitee is responsible for the historical archives, researches various historical mattesr and maintains inventories of historical properties, including those on the Heritage Register as well as a whole host of other responsibilities. This is not the Heritage Advisory Panel, which deals more directly with the Heritage Register and other regulatory matters. The full division of labour between them and the Heritage Foundation is clearly explained on this Heritage Oak Bay page.

The deadline for applications is Tuesday, November 3rd. and needs to go to Lorraine Hilton, the municipal secretary. Full details here (PDF).

http://www.aibc.ca/fta/application-process/default.php

Followup on the ethical purchasing workshop

Greening the Inner-City has picked up on my blog post on the ethical purchasing workshop. He correctly takes me to task for not mentioning the Community Benefits Agreement that was put in place as part of the Olympic Village construction. It had some truly amazing results, training more people than originally planned with a great retention rate. It is a good example of where a city can leverage a large amount of money into large benefits for not only the local community but also the businesses, as they are getting more trained construction workers which are always needed in this part of the world, bust or no bust.

So in my defense, I was there at the tail end of about 12 hours straight of volunteering, having started at 6am and there was just so much interesting information in the workshop, it is really hard to capture it all in around 750 words.

Gaining Ground Summit Day One

Yesterday was the first day of the summit and after more than 12 hours of volunteering, I am glad the day is finally over, even if it was information-packed and fun. This morning brought the first of eight plenaries, all of which I managed to miss because of my volunteer work, but I will hunt to see if I can find any videos online. The whole program can be seen online.

After an excellent lunch in one of the Pan Pacific’s dining rooms and much kibbitzing amongst us volunteers, mostly students, about the real reason we volunteer was for the free food. As a workshop support volunteer, I ended up in the Sustainable Green workshop, something I never would have chosen myself but ended up quite enjoying. The focus was building sustainability into all procurement and purchasing policies. The moderator and one of the speakers was Tim Reeve of Reeve Consulting, who were working with the City of Vancouver on their new procurement policies.

But first up was Bob Purdy of the Buy Smart project, a project of the Fraser Basin Council. Around since 2005, they are a gathering place for the various governments and other groups to talk about sustainable purchasing policies and new ideas. His talk was high level, speaking about the trends, such as corporations starting to take social responsibility, or at least the veneer of it, seriously. General awareness is growing and their are success stories, such as he showed Walmart’s “sustainability” work. I am not exactly sold on Walmart being a green retailers, but they do control a good chunk of the Canadian market, so what they has a huge impact, regardless of what people think of them. He also emphasized that the of the major problems was the lack for concrete action, as many companies fail to do anything about their sustainability policies.

Next up was David Graham, Manager of Supply Management of the City of Vancouver. He spoke about, in his own words, “where the rubber met the road”. Vancouver is centralizing much of it’s procurement and at the same time, embedding sustainability principles into the new policies. These also build on Vancouver’s existing Ethical Purchasing Policy, which only covers agricultural products and clothing. While still in draft, the new policies are expected to go before council in November.

One of the questions raised was about compliance. Like bylaws, the City is going to take a complaint-based approach, due to lack of resources to carry out a lot of auditing, something the last speaker, from Transfair also touched on. I think that while I can understand why they are taking a complaint-based approach, I suspect the city is going to take a lot of heat when problems come up as people and organizations dig deeper into certain suppliers. This is especially true given that the city’s stated goal is not to cut off any supplier right away, rather work with them to raise their them up to the standard.

Last up was Michael Zelmer of Transfair, the Canadian labelling partner of the international Fair Trade Labelling Organization. His major point is that certification is actually about a relationship of trust. The purchaser must trust that the product actually meets the standards it claims to follow. As it impossible for a consumer to have a relationship with every single supplier, this is where the certification body comes in. It creates the single trusted source for the consumer, one that can be independently audited and determined.

Another key point he made was about what the fair trade label means, “that the product meets the certification”, and what it doesn’t, “that the company is ‘good'”. I think this is a key point, especially as Cadbury’s has recently announced that all Dairymilk bars are going to be made with fair trade cocoa and sugar. As the price of Dairymilk bars won’t rise brought us back to Vancouver, where the Vancouver Parks Board had decided to start selling fair trade coffee and chocolate bars, they chose to completely replace their coffee but had kept mainstream candy such as Dairymilk for fear of losing revenue.

All in all, it was a good little workshop. The four presenters worked well together,as they had all worked together at various points and were able to play off each other. The crowd was small, but that was apparently true for most of the workshops. Discussion amongst the volunteers led us to suspect that a lot of people either left for lunch and didn’t come back or headed out after lunch. Why this is we couldn’t come to a consensus, but is probably something the organizers, who have been doing a great job, might want to look into. Apparently this year is almost twice as big as last year’s at Royal Roads. On the topic of posting, I will try and post something about each day, but I refuse to pay $15/day for wifi at the conference centre and lack it where I am staying. Actually, being away from my email has been quite liberating.

Weekly news roundup

The Times Colonist is running a series of articles called Outlook 2010, covering a vast variety of issues around Victoria. Two today caught my eye:

In other news, everybody’s favourite forestry company property developer Western Forest Products is off selling land again (Times Colonist), this time in the north Island area. This as the CRD has now drafting a new bylaw governing the Juan de Fuca lands that include those WFP is trying to develop.

What really gets me about these removals from the Tree Farm Licenses is that are an explicit violation of the social contract that timber companies signed up to when they took on the TFLs. In return for access to Crown lands for forestry, the companies had to operate local sawmills and manage their private lands “sustainably”. Guess the second two parts of that agreement have kind of been forgotten, as the Times Colonist article says,

Cash-strapped WFP wants to concentrate its forestry operations on Crown land and needs capital to renovate its mills.

This kind of bait and switch isn’t exactly new, as the Dogwood Initiative points when looking at the Dunsmuir land grant for the E&N.

In a slightly better note, they have discovered a use for broom: biomass fuel (Goldstream News Gazette). While that broom is going to other places, I wonder if enough broom could be pulled out of some of the other parks in the region to feed Dockside Green’s biomass plant. As far as I know, they are still looking for biomass to burn, a task made harder by the lack of sawdust and wood chips from the shutdown of many of the mills on Vancouver Island.