Vancouver’s model of sustainability

Hosting the 2010 Winter Games is allowing Vancouver to steer its development towards sustainability and social inclusivity

When Vancouver and Whistler won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, it was the catalyst for several high-profile urban development projects in Vancouver. First, there was a USD 1.8bn 19km rapid-transit train line to link downtown with Vancouver International Airport and the suburban community of Richmond. Then there was the expansion of the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The Athletes’ Village is being built at a cost of USD 180m

And now, a thicket of construction cranes has risen over the southeast corner of Vancouver’s False Creek. A total of 16 new environmentally friendly buildings are being constructed to act as the athletes’ village for the Games and as socially inclusive residences afterwards. The former industrial precinct boasts a vista that includes Vancouver’s downtown skyline.

The City of Vancouver owns 20ha of southeast False Creek. The athletes’ village site occupies 10ha of this area. In early 2006, the City of Vancouver awarded the athletes’ village site to Vancouver –based developer Millennium Development Group for its winning bid of USD 180m.

After some initial controversy over design of the neighbourhood, a design for the Olympic athletes’ village emerged that hits most of the sustainability targets set out for it. The internationally-renowned Vancouver-based architect Arthur Erickson had a hand in the project, participating in the design team for a community centre in the development and one of the apartment blocks.

Village legacy plans
During the 2010 Winter Olympics the athletes’ village will house up to 2,200 athletes. After the Games, it will become a neighbourhood of 1,100 homes with shops, green-space parks, a boating centre and a waterfront walking and bicycle path. At either end, it will be served by transit stations that will make it, according to planners’ claims, the city’s most accessible neighbourhood.

Larry Beasley, a private consultant and former co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver, says the Olympic Village development is “one the great set pieces of the city for our generation.”

The development will set standards for sustainable development – standards that Beasley is convinced consumers will demand in the future.

From development to sustainability
Vancouver has been significantly redeveloped since the 1980s. The trendy Yaletown neighbourhood, which faces the southeast region of False Creek, incorporates elements that epitomise Vancouver’s redevelopment. High-rise apartment towers are surrounded by so-called “podiums” of townhouses that line the streets, which are animated by shops and restaurants and linked to public spaces and parks.

As redevelopment of Vancouver’s downtown spread out from the centre, Beasley says there was a desire to “push beyond the already successful approach to city building we had established from the mid-1980s on, and really achieve a model for sustainability.”

The identification of the southeast False Creek site as the athletes’ village in Vancouver and Whistler’s bid to host the Games presented a tremendous opportunity to expand the boundaries of environmental sustainability.

Vancouver has already been lauded for its approach to building pedestrian and public-transportation oriented forms of housing, which city residents have flocked to. “What we hadn’t done up to then was put an aggressive environmental frame on [development],” Beasley added, when it came to constructing the city’s physical infrastructure.

“This,” Beasley said, “was our opportunity to do that.”

The green village
The village, which after the Games will go by the name Millennium Water, has been designed to the Gold standard of the environmental certification scheme Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED). There is a strong emphasis on environmentally sound building materials. Wood used for cabinetry and flooring in the housing project will be sustainably raised and harvested.

A sustainable approach to utilities is also being taken. All electric and water appliances will be highly efficient. Heating and cooling will be achieved by capillary tubed radiant-tile systems that draw their energy from a “neighbourhood energy utility,” which utilises waste heat from city sewer lines.

The new neighbourhood will also have a small footprint on the city’s skyline. The Olympic Village, or Millennium Water, is being built as a series of low to mid-rise apartment blocks. It will not mirror the high-rise developments that define Vancouver’s downtown.

The development’s unassuming profile on the horizon will prove, says Beasley, that Vancouver is not “a one act town” when it comes to urban development. “Southeast False Creek is going to show that the Vancouver model of development is about quality urbanism in different forms, according to the circumstances of the place that is being developed.”

This modest scale is already being reflected in further private development being built in the vicinity of the Olympic village site.

Almost inclusive
There were compromises, however, in the mix of housing included in the development. Initially, the development was to have included a range of housing, from luxury homes to socially supported residences for the poorer.

The Millennium Water development will include 250 units of social housing. However, plans to include up to one-third of its units as so-called “mid-market” housing — units designed for lower-income earners who don’t qualify for social housing but can’t afford Vancouver’s expensive property values — were scrapped.

Beasley says it is unfortunate that this compromise was made, but believes the overall project still stands as a model for the rest of the city. “Models are, if they are good models, incredibly influential – because consumers see that sustainability is possible, and once they see it’s possible, they kind of expect it.”