SpongeG
May 6, 2007, 7:27 PM
A tale of three citiesOur green lustre fades as Gateway project paves way for an auto-dependent future, experts warn
Vancouver has always been regarded as the winner in the unofficial Greenest City of the Pacific Northwest Pageant.
Although Portland always makes it into any top-10 list of green American cities, and Seattle is being named more frequently these days as a contender south of the border, their Canadian sibling has always been looked at longingly by both of them.
Most sets of statistics comparing the three confirm that case of environmental envy. The Vancouver region uses less land and less energy per resident. People here own fewer cars and take transit or ride their bikes more often. We have an impressive urban forest, a greenway system and an Agricultural Land Reserve
Portland could take some comfort in its pioneering efforts in bringing light-rail transit to the city and setting limits on growth, along with its kilometres of cycling trails -- double what Vancouver has.
But for years Seattle has been seen, even by its loyalists, as a morass of bad planning and traffic congestion that make it the winner in the competition for most sprawl and highest percentage of residents spewing fossil fuels into the air.
But all that could change dramatically for the worse, in terms of B.C.
The provincial government's plan to build massive amounts of new road space in the Gateway project will significantly alter the region's transportation and land-use patterns.
The provincial government has mainly promoted the Gateway Program as a necessary investment to reduce congestion for commuters and trucks, and it also has argued that road expansion means that emissions will be lowered because vehicles will be idling less as they wait.
The Conference Board of Canada also issued a report last year presenting evidence that building new roads does not "induce" people to drive if the road-building is matched to the population increase. It only affects driving behaviour if the increase in capacity exceeds the increase in driving-age population.
Critics vigorously disagree.
The Gateway project is a "gigantic leap in the absolute wrong direction," says University of B.C. Professor Larry Frank, who is internationally famous for his studies of the connection between obesity and the suburbs. "It will entrench us in an auto-dependent future right in the middle of a climate-change debacle."
A study Frank recently did for the Washington Department of Transport showed that for each 10-per-cent reduction in driving times that motorists experience, typically because more roads have been built, the amount they walk or use transit goes down. That automatically means greenhouse-gas emissions go up.
Preston Schiller, a professor at the University of Western Washington who has studied the transportation systems of the three cities, called the Gateway plan "a big mistake."
"To me, that sort of expansion you just don't do in this day and age."
And former Vancouver councillor Gordon Price, also a close watcher of the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland scene, calls it "a tragic turn in the direction of this region."
"If [the provincial government] does what it says it's going to do, we are going the way of Seattle."
Besides the province's impact on the region's green future, local governments that had been leading the way, Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver regional district, have lost some steam and are starting to be overshadowed by energetic new efforts of many American cities making up for lost time.
Portland is also seen by some as resting on decades-old laurels, and critics of its claim to have succeeded at managing growth point out that it seems to have simply outsourced its sprawl to its neighbour across the Columbia River, the other Vancouver in Washington.
On the other hand, Seattle, which until now has been the perpetual loser in the three-way competition, has recently attracted national attention for its recent commitment to wind power and Mayor Greg Nickel's leadership in the campaign to recruit American cities for a pledge to meet Kyoto goals. It has also aggressively championed the use of alternative types of transportation, like Segways, by its employees.
"There are cities now that are acting with more speed and determination than Portland and Vancouver," says Rob Bennett, a sustainability consultant who has worked in both Portland and, until January this year, in Vancouver. He is now working with the Clinton Foundation Climate Initiative.
He says Vancouver has been a model everyone has looked to for years and has the most experienced and talented team of sustainability experts of any city he's ever seen.
But the city has lost the momentum it had in earlier years.
Local sustainability consultant Mark Holland agrees.
"If Vancouver wants to retain its leadership, it will have to be bold."
Like how? It could decide to become a carbon-neutral city government by 2050. That's something other major global cities have been contemplating but haven't committed to yet.
Holland also notes that the regional district, which had been aggressively promoting sustainability for several years, has gone quiet in the last two.
All of the above is worrying to environmental watchers, because significant decisions on transportation and leadership on green issues can set cities and regions down one path or another for decades to come.
That's been proven by what happened in the past with Vancouver, Seattle and Portland.
Everyone who has monitored the three cities says the same: The decisions those cities made -- or didn't make -- in the 1960s and 1970s determined where they ended up in the 1990s and 2000s.
Of course, local socio-economic conditions played their part.
Like most Canadian cities, Vancouver never allowed its central city to deteriorate, and maintained the tradition of good urban planning. The Canadian government didn't subsidize freeway building in the 1950s the way the American government did. And Canadian bureaucrats and politicians, who get more respect than their American counterparts no matter what we might think, have more leeway to do things unilaterally for the public good, like create agricultural land reserves, build regional train lines, and set planning policies for the region aimed at managing growth.
Both Portland and Vancouver were smaller, off-the-radar cities in the late '60s and early '70s when young progressive types started getting interested in urban issues. Seattle was double their size and had had a booming manufacturing and port sector for some time. Given the highway-building proclivities of the day, that made it a prime candidate for a massive road expansion.
"Our freeway system was largely complete by the '60s," says Patrick Mazza, from the Washington office of Climate Solutions.
Still, each city made decisions in that crucial late '60s-early '70s era that set them on the road to their green or not-so-green futures.
VANCOUVER REJECTED FREEWAYS
"The turn for both Vancouver and Portland was saying 'No' to freeways and yes to transit. The rest is details," says Price. Portland took the federal money it was entitled to get for building freeways and used it to start its light-rail network. Vancouver said no to a planned freeway, but the region had to wait until 1986 for the province to put money into the first line of the SkyTrain network.
Vancouver city went one beyond Portland in the 1970s, when the TEAM council of the day pushed the concept of a downtown that welcomed, even encouraged, residential living. The 50,000 new residents on the peninsula who have moved in during the last 10 years, the towers, the parks, the seawall, and the community centres -- all are the result of that push under then-mayor Art Phillips 35 years ago.
That has turned Vancouver into the poster child for urban environmentalists around the world, who praise the city for the way it has made density attractive, thereby fostering a way of life that promotes walking and cycling and reduces the amount of land needed to absorb thousands of new residents every year.
Seattle went the other way, rejecting proposals for regional mass transit twice in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ever since, Seattle has become legendary for devising one transit plan after another, only to have each one shot down by one coalition after another of opponents. Ironically, that happens in spite of the fact that the Seattle public shows signs of wanting to do the right thing environmentally. Bruce Agnew, of the Cascadia Project, notes that sales of hybrid cars are higher per capita in Seattle than anywhere else.
But those individual efforts have been overwhelmed by the paralysis over creating a regional transit network. The result is that it now has traffic congestion of awe-inspiring proportions, massive sprawl, and every bad environmental consequence that goes with those two.
In spite of that, Seattle got named as one of the top 10 green cities by National Geographic's recent Green Guide listings in 2005 and by a San Francisco group, SustainLane, in 2007. As well, Mayor Nickels was featured this month in Newsweek as the leader of mayors taking the lead on environmental action.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=d0720ce9-ea0d-48e5-927e-5a810e961ff2
Vancouver has always been regarded as the winner in the unofficial Greenest City of the Pacific Northwest Pageant.
Although Portland always makes it into any top-10 list of green American cities, and Seattle is being named more frequently these days as a contender south of the border, their Canadian sibling has always been looked at longingly by both of them.
Most sets of statistics comparing the three confirm that case of environmental envy. The Vancouver region uses less land and less energy per resident. People here own fewer cars and take transit or ride their bikes more often. We have an impressive urban forest, a greenway system and an Agricultural Land Reserve
Portland could take some comfort in its pioneering efforts in bringing light-rail transit to the city and setting limits on growth, along with its kilometres of cycling trails -- double what Vancouver has.
But for years Seattle has been seen, even by its loyalists, as a morass of bad planning and traffic congestion that make it the winner in the competition for most sprawl and highest percentage of residents spewing fossil fuels into the air.
But all that could change dramatically for the worse, in terms of B.C.
The provincial government's plan to build massive amounts of new road space in the Gateway project will significantly alter the region's transportation and land-use patterns.
The provincial government has mainly promoted the Gateway Program as a necessary investment to reduce congestion for commuters and trucks, and it also has argued that road expansion means that emissions will be lowered because vehicles will be idling less as they wait.
The Conference Board of Canada also issued a report last year presenting evidence that building new roads does not "induce" people to drive if the road-building is matched to the population increase. It only affects driving behaviour if the increase in capacity exceeds the increase in driving-age population.
Critics vigorously disagree.
The Gateway project is a "gigantic leap in the absolute wrong direction," says University of B.C. Professor Larry Frank, who is internationally famous for his studies of the connection between obesity and the suburbs. "It will entrench us in an auto-dependent future right in the middle of a climate-change debacle."
A study Frank recently did for the Washington Department of Transport showed that for each 10-per-cent reduction in driving times that motorists experience, typically because more roads have been built, the amount they walk or use transit goes down. That automatically means greenhouse-gas emissions go up.
Preston Schiller, a professor at the University of Western Washington who has studied the transportation systems of the three cities, called the Gateway plan "a big mistake."
"To me, that sort of expansion you just don't do in this day and age."
And former Vancouver councillor Gordon Price, also a close watcher of the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland scene, calls it "a tragic turn in the direction of this region."
"If [the provincial government] does what it says it's going to do, we are going the way of Seattle."
Besides the province's impact on the region's green future, local governments that had been leading the way, Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver regional district, have lost some steam and are starting to be overshadowed by energetic new efforts of many American cities making up for lost time.
Portland is also seen by some as resting on decades-old laurels, and critics of its claim to have succeeded at managing growth point out that it seems to have simply outsourced its sprawl to its neighbour across the Columbia River, the other Vancouver in Washington.
On the other hand, Seattle, which until now has been the perpetual loser in the three-way competition, has recently attracted national attention for its recent commitment to wind power and Mayor Greg Nickel's leadership in the campaign to recruit American cities for a pledge to meet Kyoto goals. It has also aggressively championed the use of alternative types of transportation, like Segways, by its employees.
"There are cities now that are acting with more speed and determination than Portland and Vancouver," says Rob Bennett, a sustainability consultant who has worked in both Portland and, until January this year, in Vancouver. He is now working with the Clinton Foundation Climate Initiative.
He says Vancouver has been a model everyone has looked to for years and has the most experienced and talented team of sustainability experts of any city he's ever seen.
But the city has lost the momentum it had in earlier years.
Local sustainability consultant Mark Holland agrees.
"If Vancouver wants to retain its leadership, it will have to be bold."
Like how? It could decide to become a carbon-neutral city government by 2050. That's something other major global cities have been contemplating but haven't committed to yet.
Holland also notes that the regional district, which had been aggressively promoting sustainability for several years, has gone quiet in the last two.
All of the above is worrying to environmental watchers, because significant decisions on transportation and leadership on green issues can set cities and regions down one path or another for decades to come.
That's been proven by what happened in the past with Vancouver, Seattle and Portland.
Everyone who has monitored the three cities says the same: The decisions those cities made -- or didn't make -- in the 1960s and 1970s determined where they ended up in the 1990s and 2000s.
Of course, local socio-economic conditions played their part.
Like most Canadian cities, Vancouver never allowed its central city to deteriorate, and maintained the tradition of good urban planning. The Canadian government didn't subsidize freeway building in the 1950s the way the American government did. And Canadian bureaucrats and politicians, who get more respect than their American counterparts no matter what we might think, have more leeway to do things unilaterally for the public good, like create agricultural land reserves, build regional train lines, and set planning policies for the region aimed at managing growth.
Both Portland and Vancouver were smaller, off-the-radar cities in the late '60s and early '70s when young progressive types started getting interested in urban issues. Seattle was double their size and had had a booming manufacturing and port sector for some time. Given the highway-building proclivities of the day, that made it a prime candidate for a massive road expansion.
"Our freeway system was largely complete by the '60s," says Patrick Mazza, from the Washington office of Climate Solutions.
Still, each city made decisions in that crucial late '60s-early '70s era that set them on the road to their green or not-so-green futures.
VANCOUVER REJECTED FREEWAYS
"The turn for both Vancouver and Portland was saying 'No' to freeways and yes to transit. The rest is details," says Price. Portland took the federal money it was entitled to get for building freeways and used it to start its light-rail network. Vancouver said no to a planned freeway, but the region had to wait until 1986 for the province to put money into the first line of the SkyTrain network.
Vancouver city went one beyond Portland in the 1970s, when the TEAM council of the day pushed the concept of a downtown that welcomed, even encouraged, residential living. The 50,000 new residents on the peninsula who have moved in during the last 10 years, the towers, the parks, the seawall, and the community centres -- all are the result of that push under then-mayor Art Phillips 35 years ago.
That has turned Vancouver into the poster child for urban environmentalists around the world, who praise the city for the way it has made density attractive, thereby fostering a way of life that promotes walking and cycling and reduces the amount of land needed to absorb thousands of new residents every year.
Seattle went the other way, rejecting proposals for regional mass transit twice in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ever since, Seattle has become legendary for devising one transit plan after another, only to have each one shot down by one coalition after another of opponents. Ironically, that happens in spite of the fact that the Seattle public shows signs of wanting to do the right thing environmentally. Bruce Agnew, of the Cascadia Project, notes that sales of hybrid cars are higher per capita in Seattle than anywhere else.
But those individual efforts have been overwhelmed by the paralysis over creating a regional transit network. The result is that it now has traffic congestion of awe-inspiring proportions, massive sprawl, and every bad environmental consequence that goes with those two.
In spite of that, Seattle got named as one of the top 10 green cities by National Geographic's recent Green Guide listings in 2005 and by a San Francisco group, SustainLane, in 2007. As well, Mayor Nickels was featured this month in Newsweek as the leader of mayors taking the lead on environmental action.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=d0720ce9-ea0d-48e5-927e-5a810e961ff2