Lecture 8 - Ups and Downs of Cities

Question 1

What is Canadian city Catch-22

Answer 1

• between sustainability and climate resilience goals.
• long lived backlash amongst planners and urban professionals against sprawling suburban landscapes
• cities that have successfully reversed suburbanization by creating liveable downtowns and compact, complete communities are witnessing serious declines in housing affordability, comprising sustainable cities in other ways

Question 2

What is the classic Canadian suburb “sprawl” responsible for?

Answer 2

• blamed for enabling environments that create enclaves of middle or upper-class socio-economic status
• limiting opportunities for resident health and wellbeing by prioritizing time for long distance automobile commuting over other activities, like physical exercise and social time together with family or neighbours
• living in suburbs, usually not living a healthy lifestyle

Question 3

What are the hidden costs of sprawl

Answer 3

• Transportation
• $13,000/year to won a car
• drive until you can qualify for a mortgage
• 30 percent rule of housing affordability
• city of Langley costlier than city of Vancouver when factoring transportation costs

Question 4

What is TransLink Transit-Oriented Affordability Housing Study

Answer 4

• ultimate goal to expand availability of housing affordable to households earning less than $50,000 annually in transit-oriented locations regions wide
• lower income to live in transit-efficient places both reducing their transportation expenses of housing for these household and cutting down on the larger package of “sprawl-related costs”

Question 5

What are some other cost of sprawl

Answer 5

GHG emissions

• compact urban forms can cut GHG emissions in half when compared with sprawling build form
• biggest impacts on reducing GHG’s: reduce local travel demand, increase use of public and active transportation, discourage private automobile, and zone to promote multi-family and connected housing types.

Question 6

What is development path

Answer 6

sustainable development in cities cannot be encapsulated in any particular list of policies or initiatives

• a complex array of technological, economic social institiaual cultural, and biophysical characteristics that determine the interactions between human and natural systems, including consumption and production patterns in all countries, over time as a particular scale.
• development path needs to not hurt people

Question 7

what has city of Vancouver encouraged?

Answer 7

since 1970s encouraged housing intensification with a focused on “living first” eg, active transportation, ecological landscaping and depaving, increase in neighbourly interactions

Question 8

What is liveability focused development dark side?

Answer 8

most of the rich social mix come from the people who can only afford to stay for coffee, people who can only afford to work there serving the coffee, and people who sleep outside in the high quality public places”

• negative associations
• sense of lifestyles unaffordability, polarizing class dynamics, crowding, loneliness and social isolation, lack of neighbourliness and community life

Question 9

what is the harder part of tackling automobile dependency, inequity, and distinguishing the economic from the liveability value of homes are still in need of solutions

Answer 9

1

Question 10

how to densify outside of downtown?

Answer 10

• secondary suites

Question 11

what is making room initiative for city of Vancouver

Answer 11

• permits duplexes and laneway houses and basement suites on all single family zoned parcels city-wide
• neighbourhoods closer to commercial areas and rapid transit hubs, allow triplexes, quadplexes, and low-rise apartments

Question 12

what are the different housing options

Answer 12

triplex, laneway house, duplex, fourplex, multiple dwelling buildings, low-rise apartment, rowhouse - entrance from the street, townhouse

Question 13

What is climate adaptations and urban resilience planning?

Answer 13

city of surrey’s coastal flood adaptation strategy

Question 14

what is urban resilience as

Answer 14

• adaptive management process of envisioning the future, taking steps toward that vision, taking stock and changing course along the way
• the ability of a community to engage in adaptive management is known as its adaptive capacity
• for example, how a city may begin with an assessment of the risk of certain historical disasters or disturbances, followed by planning for the best techniques and resources needed to respond effectively to each of these

Question 15

What are Metro Vancouver 2040 Shaping Our Future goals?

Answer 15

• Goal 1 react a compact urban area
• Goal 2 Support a Sustainable Economy
• Goal 3 Protect the Environment and Respond to Climate Change Impacts
• Goal 4 Develop Complete Communities
• Goal 5 Support Sustainable Transportation Choices