Games Over

Vancouver’s Olympic Village and Convention Centre were the media-pleasing centrepieces for what was touted as the most sustainable Olympic Games ever.

But headline projects can be a double-edged sword. While they embody admirable principles, they risk absorbing enormous amounts of a city’s energy and distracting people from the fact that the city itself has changed very little.

For Vancouver, these two ultra-green developments are icons of a larger shift. Rather than being exceptions that prove the rules of unsustainable urbanization, they have helped change the rules. The city has used these two developments as a springboard to push the limits of green building practises throughout the city.

Both developments are about as photogenic as it gets. The mixed-use Olympic Village—one of only two LEED Platinum neighbourhoods built so far—is a green builder’s fantasy. Powered by district energy and local renewables, with a greywater system and a carbon-zero building, it’s been called the world’s greenest neighbourhood.

In the early days, when cities were just pushing their way onto the environmental stage, one or two successes like these would have been enough to establish a city’s green cred. But too often cities get stuck in the individual project stage. After having pushed their way onto the stage in frustration over the lack of climate change action at higher levels of government, cities too become better at making promises than delivering results. In fact, only a handful of cities in North America have managed to meet their emissions reduction targets.

In Vancouver’s case the bar is set particularly high. The city has committed to cut emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050, as well as to have all new buildings in the city be carbon neutral by 2030. At GLOBE 2010 Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robertson, said Vancouver would be “the world’s greenest city” by 2020. A few exceptional developments aren’t going to get them there.

Luckily, they’ve created an opportunity to use the Olympic developments as living laboratories to revise code restrictions, step up regulation and increase skills within the building industry.

Brent Toderian, Vancouver’s director of city planning, is straightforward about the need to put these projects to work. “These developments are powerful because they are very symbolic. They embody a model of urbanism that raises the bar both locally and internationally. But what good is a model if it doesn’t change business as usual? What’s the use if it doesn’t make everything that comes after it better?”

Exhaust flues were designed (with odour control) to look like a stainless steel hand rising beside the bridge with LED fingernails that change colour to depict the amount of energy demanded by the new Southeast False Creek and Olympic Village. Credit: Sandwell

Changing policy to change a city

In the era of the iPod we all love innovative new technology. That fascination is just as strong in sustainability circles. But the frustrating truth for planners, developers, and many homeowners is that while the technology is there, the right to use it is still elusive. “So many years, even decades, after a wonderful model has educated a city, you’ll hear stories about the details of the model still being illegal in other parts of the city,” says Toderian. “You have to change business-as-usual really quickly in order for the model to have real power.”

Vancouver is on its way to removing the barriers in local codes that block new designs in the rest of the city. The City has changed its wall thickness and insulation approach; it has added rules to allow encroachments on streets for architectural elements that add to passive solar shading; it now allows penetration of height restrictions where it accommodates solar panels or access to green roofs.

“These things were all piloted in the Athletes Village, but they very quickly turned into city-wide rules,” says Toderian.

As well as opening up new opportunities in the code, the City has also used increasingly stringent regulation to push developers in the right direction. Where other cities have focused more heavily on providing incentives, Vancouver has established regulations and a formal negotiation process that pushes developers to provide social benefits and certain levels of environmental performance. “Vancouver can link much of its success in progressive city building to strategic regulation,” says Toderian.

An example of this strategic regulation came just before the start of the Games, when the City passed a new policy that, by early 2011, will require all developments applying for rezoning to meet LEED Gold standards. The city is now also requiring development of two acres and up to do feasibility studies on district energy systems, and to build them if they are found to be feasible.

In addition to the code amendments and regulations that flow directly from the Olympics, the City has implemented a Green Homes program, introduced in 2008. Its requirements and bylaw amendments are expected to cut energy use in newly built one- and two-family homes by 33 per cent.

Just a Vancouver thing?

The balance Vancouver has struck between regulation, code reform, and incentives may not work for all cities. Vancouver is one of a small number of Canadian cities with a charter that gives it greater power to regulate the building industry and change code requirements. It has also been in a rapid state of expansion over the past two decades, further fuelled by the Olympics, which put the city in a stronger negotiating position when making demands on developers.

But that doesn’t mean cities don’t have other options. Between 2005 and 2007, Rob Bennett led the development of the City of Vancouver’s Green Building Strategy and worked on the Olympic Village. He went on to work for the Clinton Climate Initiative and then to found the Portland Sustainability Institute where he’s currently executive director. He points out that regulation on its own is  not a silver bullet for increasing environmental performance. Research has shown that buildings that comply with efficiency regulations on paper often underperform in practise.

While he doesn’t dismiss the importance of regulation, Bennett says it won’t get us where we need to go on its own. It needs to be coupled with incentives, education and encouragement that can create a real market transformation within the local development industry.

“A catalytic project, whether it’s Vancouver’s Olympic Village, or a smaller town’s first foray into green building, can help do that,” says Bennett. “At their best they can trigger a profound cultural shift within the industry. They can align new ideas in regulation and development, and create more cost-effective procurement pathways for those who are in the trades. If they do those things, they’re really worth it.”

Bennett also emphasizes the need for cities to nurture innovative local designers and builders. Outliers in the development community can come up with locally relevant techniques and designs with game-changing impacts on cost and performance. A city can play an important support role by making room for experimentation and facilitating links between builders, researchers and industry.

Continuing to raise the bar

Toderian and Bennett both agree that success doesn’t come from a one-off revision of building codes. It’s about establishing a new approach to development that continuously updates requirements and removes barriers. Vancouver’s new LEED Gold rezoning standards, for example, are an upgrade of 2008 regulations that required LEED Silver. Within a few years, its district energy requirements are also slated to expand to include developments of any size along key corridors and nodes. The Vancouver approach has been to continuously move regulation forward, providing clear timelines to allow industry to adapt, and support to help build skills within the design and development community.

But don’t expect a cakewalk, Toderian warns. “The industry will never say that it’s ready, but it can adapt [to new regulations]. Municipalities have to be bold because experience has shown that the private sector won’t get there on its own fast enough. As a city you need to know where your building and architectural industry is, where your development industry is, and then move that industry forward.”

Exceptions that change the rules

What’s next for author Douglas Coupland’s City of Glass? Those trademark towers are in for a change. Efficiency guidelines will bring new building materials into the crystal-scape of the Vancouver’s downtown. But the biggest challenges are what to do with existing buildings and how to protect affordability.

Existing buildings account for the majority of many cities’ emissions and they have a very slow turnover rate. For Vancouver, addressing that problem will require creative thinking around incentives, financing and workforce creation. Plans in cities like Toronto (the Mayor’s Tower Renewal Program), Portland (Clean Energy Works) and New York (Green, Greater Building Plan) are providing some good examples of what that might look like.

Affordability is another tough nut to crack. Vancouver’s high real estate prices may be the cost of success. But both the city and the province will have to work hard to make sure that the city doesn’t become an enclave for elites and investors. As Toderian points out, protecting low income and modest market housing is essential to Vancouver’s city building project, both socially and environmentally.

Talking about changing codes or sparking a shift in development culture isn’t nearly as captivating as looking out over the new Convention Centre’s green roof, or strolling through the streets of the Olympic Village. But it’s only by changing the written and unwritten rules that govern how Vancouver—or any city—is built that we are going to get close to where we need to be.