The world’s urban population is expected to reach 6 billion people by the year 2050. Currently, 3.5 billion people live in urban areas. This number doubling of course means that more infrastructure, more food, more water, and more energy will be needed.1 The question is: how do we make our cities sustainable? Several cities have taken the lead on eco-friendly urban planning. One of the most celebrated cities for its efforts towards sustainability is Vancouver, located in .
Green Identity Crisis
Less than a decade ago, the Vancouver government decided to rebrand its city as the “Greenest City” in the world. This rebranding came in the form of the “Greenest City 2020 Action Plan,” which was published in 2012. The action plan was based on the work accomplished in 2009 by Mayor Greg Robertson’s Greenest City Action Team. Impressively, more than 35,000 people from around the world participated, whether online or in workshops, in creating this action plan.2 Gary Stephen Ross, former editor of the Vancouver Magazine, stated of the effort: “There is a palpable sense of participating in a grand civic experiment… This adolescent city is a work-in-progress.” 3 Since it is a relatively young city, Vancouver has a unique blank-slate opportunity to avoid becoming dependent on large industrial systems and to revamp traditional urban planning. The action plan reasons, “Anyone who has walked through a park on the first sunny day of spring has experienced the importance of green spaces.”4
Greenest City Action Plan
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Challenges facing Vancouver
Many of the new . However, many do not like the idea of a global data network monitoring their personal lives.6
In 2013, Nomi Davis, the owner of a yoga and meditation retreat in British Columbia, filed a class action lawsuit against British Columbia Hydro for installing a in her home, which is also where she holds her retreats. The smart meter installed in her home emits 902 to 928 Megahertz of radiation, which the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer considers possibly cancer-causing. Around that time, in July 2013, British Columbia Hydro was granted permission to install 115,000 smart meters. However, they reported that 60,000 people had also so far refused to accept the smart meters.7 The pushback from smart meters is just one example of the struggles that Vancouver will have to negotiate in its quest to become the world’s “Greenest City.”
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Moving Forward
The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan wisely states:
The race to become the Greenest City in the world is both a friendly and fierce competition. It’s friendly because when one city succeeds, we all benefit from the shared knowledge and improved health of our planet, as well as the new opportunities that emerge in the green economy. The race is a fierce one because the stakes are so high.8
Unfortunately for Vancouver, since they are at the forefront of the green urban planning movement, they will be the first to make many tough decisions. For instance, should Vancouver decidedly fight fossil fuel companies or work with them to clean up their business practices? Are smart meters a violation of a citizen’s privacy? How do you put a price on nature? Eventually, the outcomes of these decisions will be the guideposts that other cities will look to in the future. I am definitely looking forward to watching Vancouver navigate these complex questions so that other cities can learn from their experience. Hopefully someday the world will be full of “Greenest Cities.”
