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“By working with the roads people on curb cuts, we have actually come up with variations. Our original detail was quite generic. Now we are able to implement it in various types of curb designs. We are striving to make sure that rain garden maintenance is as easy as possible, including inlets and outlets for drainage. We have evolved the designs so it is EASY CLEAN for all the sediment buildup. Our crews can quickly scoop it with a shovel and be on their way! That change resulted from feedback from engineering operations staff regarding what they wanted to see. We just evolved the design as per their operational needs,” stated Harvy Takhar.

“Good decision-making comes down to a good process. But it also relies on wisdom in terms of balanced advice. The essence of my guiding philosophy as a City Manager is distilled into the three Ts which are trust, time and think. Staff gives good advice and Council makes the decisions,” stated Pete Steblin. “When there is a significant level of trust in technical recommendations, Councils rarely override them. Staff explains recommendations. The Council makes the decisions. Trust is fragile and can easily be broken. When trust is lost, decades of good work can be lost.”

Harvy Takhar is following his passion in unexpected ways. It led him down the green roof pathway to international recognition. He had an epiphany when he recognized there was a gap in green roof engineering. “The idea was to harvest the benefits of green roofs, while keeping them healthy by storing water considering most green roofs adversely affect building systems during the drought. So we added a water cavity, known as the blue roof component, that will feed the green roof portion with capillary irrigation, and it can draw water when it needs it,” says Harvy Takhar.

“I found the opportunity to ‘look beyond the stream’ and address poor water quality from drainage runoff in the Waste Management Act. The opportunity resided in the non-point source provision for Liquid Waste Management Plans. The term non-point source pollution was used by my colleagues in the Waste Management Branch to highlight poor quality of runoff from developed and/or developing lands. But this provision was not being applied to the issue of how land is developed. So, I asked my colleagues, why not use this mechanism to connect the dots between changes to the land and impacts on streams,” stated Peter Law.

“One of the main takeaways from my doctoral work is there is still a lot of disagreements in communication throughout this decision-making process. Within policy itself, there is a disconnect between the way the problem of stormwater adaptation is framed theoretically versus perceived in reality. Theoretically, there is a large focus on adaptation. However, in my research I found that many of those involved in policy still place a higher importance on the political limitations of policy making and the economic costs of project management.,” stated Charles Axelsson.

How green infrastructure is defined guides the types of projects that local governments implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment. “Ecology is not really being embedded in any planning practice, This realization turned my attention towards urban planning and this question, how do you embed ecosystem science and principles within landscape planning to conserve landscapes and landscape functioning quality? It resulted from me thinking about how the social processes shaping landscapes are inseparable from people’s relationship with nature,” Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski.

“City planning often fails to explicitly define “green infrastructure” (GI), but when it does, stormwater concepts of GI are much more prevalent than landscape or integrative concepts. Types of GI vary widely and significantly, and often exclude parks and larger urban green spaces in favor of smaller engineered facilities. Functions of GI are primarily hydrological, although more functional diversity is provided by landscape and integrative definitions of GI. Stormwater concepts appear to engage in greenwashing by purportedly offering the greatest number of benefits,” stated Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski.

“If someone says something is not working – that barriers prevent success – then our challenge for them is: Think about what would make it work, and what are you going to do to make that alignment of goals happen? Our theme is ‘imagine’. Once we know what we want our watersheds and neighbourhoods to look like, the next step is to decide what the tools are that will get us there. What this underlines is that we are all interconnected – our actions influence whether others will succeed, and our own achievement of goals is influenced by how we’re supported,” stated Susan Rutherford.

“Simon Fraser University has been advancing the implementation of green infrastructure at the municipal level through an interdisciplinary approach combining community-engaged teaching, research and outreach. Building on what we have collectively learned, in 2021 we launched a new 12-week online course. We designed the course to have appeal and applicability for professionals from diverse disciplines, especially those seeking to understand green infrastructure’s potential for managing the impacts of urbanization and climate change,” stated Joanna Ashworth.

Vancouver’s narrative over the past two decades has often hinged on densification — how to manage the rise of dull grey towers framed by distant green mountains. But with every megaton of carbon dioxide belched into the atmosphere, the risk of rising seas and increasingly heavy rainfall has pushed the region toward letting more of that forest creep back into the city. Known as “green infrastructure,” the idea is to simulate a natural water cycle wiped out from decades of city building. “We know how to design it,” said Scholefield. “What we’re aimed at now is making it mainstream.”