DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Understand why the Livable Region Strategic Plan matters” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in October 2024
Note to Reader:
Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. The edition published on October 29 2024 features Ken Cameron, a co-author of Metro Vancouver’s Livable Region Strategic Plan. Through his telling of firsthand historical vignettes, he provides insight into why the plan matters, and why we need people who understand the state of mind that lay behind its success.
Understand why the Livable Region Strategic Plan matters
With this edition, we swing our spotlight from Vancouver Island back to Metro Vancouver. Experience in the Metro Vancouver region over the past three decades illustrates WHY AND HOW a set of cascading factors must ALL be in alignment to sustain the livability of a region,
“In 1990, the Metro Vancouver region initiated a growth strategy embodying many Smart Growth principles. The Plan had four pillars: a Green Zone, complete communities, a compact region, and increased transportation choice,” explains Ken Cameron.
In Autumn 2023, he and a group of former colleagues co-authored an article for Plan Canada which was titled The Livable Region Smart Growth Plan that Shaped Metro Vancouver’s Sustainable Future.
Why the Livable Region Strategic Plan matters
“A year ago, a group of us…me, Susan Haid, Hugh Kellas, Christina deMarco, Nancy Knight, Richard White…had meetings with Metro Vancouver planning staff to pass on our knowledge and experience. Our message was, use the strengths of the unique regional planning system you have.”
“We did this in the interest of providing current and future Metro planning staff with some personal background on the people and, in some cases, organizations, that influenced the preparation and adoption of the Livable Region Strategic Plan in 1996 and the subsequent evolution of the planning function.
In the story behind the story that follows the Editor’s Perspective, Ken Cameron concludes by connecting the dots between the provincial housing policy and the impact on the Metro 2050 Regional Growth Strategy.
Planning influencers in Metro Vancouver history:
What the reader should know about Ken Cameron:
He is a former manager of policy and planning for the Greater Vancouver Regional District (now Metro Vancouver), as well as a former adjunct professor of Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University.
Also, Ken Cameron and former Premier Mike Harcourt co-authored with the late Sean Rossiter, City Making in Paradise: Nine Decisions That Saved Vancouver, published in 2007.
Ken Cameron’s responsibilities at the regional district encompassed both the Livable Region Strategic Plan and the region’s first Liquid Waste Management Plan (LWMP). In 2001, the latter established a precedent with a “streams and trees” component that was informed by science.
To Learn More:
To read the complete story, download a copy of Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Understand why the Livable Region Strategic Plan matters.
