Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/112499
As residents ���ood into its dense downtown peninsula, Vancouver ���nds itself voted among the most livable cities in the world. steel pipes poke out from under the concrete decks of the Cambie Street Bridge, reaching four storeys into the sky like the outstretched fingers of a giant robot. ���That big hand is proof that many of the things we do in building a green city also improve quality of life,��� he says, including doing double duty as both public art and green infrastructure. Sunk partly into the earth, the hand sprouts from a nexus of tanks and tubes and machines known collectively as the Neighbourhood Energy Utility, one that performs a small miracle: it takes heat from sewage and turns it into power. Once upon a time, smokestacks symbolized all that was toxic about cities. No more. Vancouver���s Neighbourhood Energy Utility emits no odour. But LED lights on its exhaust flues create a hot-pink glow when heat output is high ��� reminders that residents are heating their homes, in part, with their own bodies. Why is this exciting? Well, the plant only works because enough people live and work close together to produce fuel for it. In other words, this system depends not just on thermal, but social energy: a community that will eventually house more than 16,000 in superefficient mid-rise apartments and townhouses on a leafy grid of streets and parks. Built on rehabilitated industrial land, the city���s 2010 Olympic Village is a Disneyland of green design ��� from its rainwater-fed mini-wetland to its narrow, pedestrianfriendly streets. iPad-tapping hipsters have already colonized the new bakery caf��. The seawall buzzes with roller-bladers, strollerpushing joggers and bike commuters. Out30 W E S T W O R L D p28-31,36-37,44-45_Cities.indd 30 >> FALL 2012 VANCOUVER The city���s urban core has been revitalized, in part, with the regeneration of neighbourhoods such as Gastown (above, below) and the development of a nationally celebrated multi-use transportation grid. PORTLAND Considered one of the best public spaces in the world by Project for Public Spaces, the city���s Pioneer Courthouse Square (below, far right) was originally to have been redeveloped as a parking garage. side the new community centre, teams of Lycra-clad paddlers stretch and chat, preparing to launch their dragon boats into False Creek. At the Village���s heart: a waterfront plaza ruled by a pair of gigantic fibreglass starlings that look ready to snap up the children clambering over their feet. ���This integration of urban and wild is so intense,��� says Johnston. ���I love it. We���re demonstrating to the world that we can reduce our carbon emissions while living rich, full, lives.��� This is the new story in urbanism. That concrete can be greener than grass. That when lots of people live and work close together, they use less energy, share more space and transit and, with smaller abodes, buy less stuff. It���s why Green Metropolis author David Owen argues that Manhattan, North America���s densest urban centre, is its most sustainable ��� a city where, as every Big Apple pilgrim knows, human density fuels a wonderful buzz of culture and street life. And now Vancouver, with its diverse multicultural population (35 per cent of Vancouverites are foreign-born) and newly dynamic urban-core neighbourhoods, is following suit. By diversifying its transportation system with a tight grid of trains, buses and bike paths, it has transformed itself into a continental leader in shared mobility, insists public transit guru and author of Human Transit Jarrett Walker. This uniting of wildly different destinations also means it���s easier than ever for urbanist tourists to zip between Vancouver���s coolest neighbourhoods ��� and their 74 community gardens (seven of them downtown). Consider the two rapid-transit lines within a (Vancouver street performers) Jeff Topham, (Vancouver���s SkyTrain) Douglas Williams/maxximages 12-08-17 3:40 PM