Celebrating Green Infrastructue Program: Showcasing Innovation Series Launched in Greater Vancouver Region
2005 CONSULTATION WORKSHOP:
In May 2005, the Green Infrastructure Partnership conducted a Consultation Workshop in collaboration with the Regional Engineers Advisory Committee of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The “Celebrating Green Infrastructure Program” is a consultation outcome.
The Goal: Build Capacity
The goal of the Showcasing Innovation Series is to build regional capacity through sharing of green infrastructure approaches, experiences and lessons learned as an outcome of ‘designing with nature'. The series is a building block process — each time the objective is to raise the bar when celebrating successes in Greater Vancouver municipalities. Organization of the series has been made possible by seed funding provided by the Stormwater Interagency Liaison Group (SILG), a technical committee of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
Showcasing Innovation: A Provincial Pilot
According to Paul Ham, Chair of the Green Infrastructure Partnership, “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. Our intention is that the Greater Vancouver pilot will provide the inspiration for similar Showcasing Innovation Series on Vancouver Island and in the Interior.”
For more information on the program, please click here.
The first in the series – Showcasing Innovation in North Vancouver – successfully used a lane, an arterial highway and the Maplewood community as real-life examples that informed participants about the benefits of innovation. For details of this event, please click here. Representatives from a dozen Greater Vancouver municipalities were in attendance, as well as other organizations (including the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Greater Vancouver Regional District).