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New York City is proposing to turn streets and medians into lush, grassy, visually pleasing places.

15th Street in West Vancouver is a major north-south connector route that links the Upper Levels Highway to Marine Drive. When this busy road was reconstructed, a rain garden was incorported in the right-of-way to have a positive environmental outcome. The success of this pilot project is leading to other rain garden applications within the District.

The Municipality of Delta in the Metro Vancouver region has completed numerous examples of rain gardens and infiltration swales on public rights-of-way. Sarah Howie presented a number of these projects at the 2007 Water Balance Model Partners Forum to illustrate the benefits of landscape-based solutions to solve drainage issues and create community amenities.

The District of West Vancouver has constructed its first green lane adjacent to St. Francis in the Woods Church in historic Lower Caulfeild.

Parking Management Best Practices” is an important new book that will change the way you think about and solve parking problems. It describes more than two-dozen strategies that result in more efficient use of parking resources, and explains how to assemble them into an effective parking management program.

During the summer of 2003, the City of Vancouver constructed three “Country Lanes” as part of a demonstration project to evaluate more sustainable alternatives to regular lane paving. The Country Lane Demonstration Project has also been recognized throughout the Lower Mainland, Canada and internationally with requests for design data from many cities and municipalities. The project has also been an overwhelming success in terms of community involvement and education.

Breaking new ground at the University of British Columbia, the initial phase focuses on revolutionary closed-loop systems – the world's first systems integrating rainwater runoff, wastewater treatment and ground source heating, and a small-scale biodiesel production unit which will transform waste cooking oil into a clean-burning fuel. The project is an educational resource that will evolve over time.

The City of Vancouver has undertaken an exciting new approach to residential street design and rainwater management. Vancouver's Crown Street has become the city's first Sustainable Streetscape. The design uses innovative ideas to integrate transportation into an environmentally sensitive setting. The Sustainable Street demonstration project has provided a design that can be used as an inspiration or template for future street improvement projects.

A number of British Columbia municipalities have embraced the concept of “sustainable streets” and have recently completed flagship projects. The City of Vancouver's Crown Street has the highest profile as the result of a $1.4 million investment in road reconstruction along a three-block stretch in the City's Southlands, an older neighbourhood.