“About 1/3 of the urban landscape is typically covered by road rights-of-way. This creates opportunities to capture rain where it falls and restore it to natural hydrologic pathways. Delta is implementing landscape-based solutions to rainwater management; and is planting an urban forest to mitigate climate change”, states Hugh Fraser.
“The Township of Langley will showcase what can be accomplished with large-scale projects when Council, the community and staff are in alignment and embrace a ‘green culture’. Resource protection – for groundwater supply and fisheries habitat – is the driver for implementing green infrastructure,” states Brad Badelt.
“UniverCity will showcase the fruits of our partnership with the City of Burnaby – first, in developing a shared vision of what a ‘sustainable community’ on top of a mountain would look like; and then, in taking that vision from concept to reality,” states Chris Hartman. In 2000, translating high expectations for UniverCity into practical design guidelines meant revisiting accepted drainage engineering practice.
Experience shows that intra-region communication among local government practitioners is the exception rather than the rule.”Yet practitioners in local government do want to learn from those who are innovating, and they do want to visit projects that are precedent-setting,” adds John Finnie, Chair of the CAVI Leadership Team, “They just need a starting point and a push to get the ball rolling.”
“The purpose of the Showcasing Innovation Series is to celebrate… and build on…the on-the-ground successes that are enhancing the ways communities are being developed and water is being managed. The goal is to promote networking, build regional capacity, and move ‘from awareness to action’ — through sharing of green infrastructure approaches, tools, experiences and lessons learned as an outcome of designing with nature,” stated Paul Ham.
“The Showcasing Innovation Series is a provincial pilot. When we talk to practitioners in local government, it doesn’t matter what the region, the message is the same…they tell us that they are too busy to communicate with their colleagues in neighbouring municipalities. Yet the irony is that there is much to learn by sharing information with each other. At the end of the day, it seems that it takes a third party to bring people together,” states Paul Ham.
Three projects were featured – a lane, a highway and a local community. Participants were taken by bus to see how these projects have been implemented. “Selection of porous pavement to infiltrate rainwater runoff was an outcome of an inter-departmental design charrette where the Water Balance Model was a key decision tool,” reported Richard Boase.
“The focus was on what the City believes it can systematically accomplish on-the-ground, at a watershed scale, now and over the next 50 years by building on the East Clayton experience. The emphasis was on the approach the City is developing under the umbrella of the Fergus Creek ISMP to facilitate changes in how land is developed and/or redeveloped,” reported Remi Dube.
“The Country Lanes Demonstration Project originated from community desire for the City to provide a more environmentally friendly and visually attractive alternative to Vancouver’s existing asphalt lanes. The initiative was further propelled by a policy directive from the City’s Corporate Management Team which encouraged staff to incorporate enhanced sustainability into all the City Operations as a way of doing business,” reports David Desrochers.
In May 2005, the Green Infrastructure Partnership (GIP) conducted a Consultation Workshop in collaboration with the Regional Engineers Advisory Committee of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. “The clear message was to make outreach and practitioner education the #1 priority. This resulted in a reconfiguration of the GIP Work Plan as a set of ten educational elements,” reports Kim Stephens.
