Topic: community planning

Healthy Built Environment Linkages Toolkit

This Toolkit is intended to support the inclusion of health considerations within community planning and design. It is designed as a quick reference to the body of research evidence which describes how our built environment can influence population health. The concept of a “healthy built environment” is considered through a holistic perspective including five core features:

  1. Neighbourhood Design
  2.  Transportation Networks
  3.  Natural Environments
  4.  Food Systems
  5.  Housing

This Toolkit is written for health professionals to assist them in articulating well informed and credible responses within local government planning processes and decision making. However, it can readily be used by other stakeholders

Complete Communities A guide to geospatial land use assessments for British Columbia’s communities

The Complete Communities guide is intended to support local governments in advancing identified community goals through creating more complete communities. It focuses on the process of undertaking assessments to inform land use decision-making, including consideration of housing need, supply, and location; providing transportation options including increased walkability; and making connections to infrastructure investment and servicing decisions.

The guide is intended to be a resource that provides a pathway to elevating the conversation about complete communities in B.C., assisting  in developing a scope of work to seek technical advisory services (if desired), and guidance for technical staff who are completing work “in-house”.

The Path to “Net-Zero Energy” Buildings in BC

This paper looks specifically at the necessary components of a roadmap to make new complex buildings net-zero ready. It describes the environmental and economic case for a deep efficiency pathway, reviews some of the targets and policies adopted in leading jurisdictions, and then articulates ten key policies to get to “net-zero ready”.

Focusing on the uptake of energy efficiency technologies in new buildings, this paper does not explicitly address the role of on-site renewable energy, the unique challenges related to the low-rise residential sector, nor the goal of reducing energy in the existing building stock—though some of the policies discussed in this paper can also support these other aspects of a broader building sector energy and emissions strategy.

Sustainable Urban Landscapes: Site Design Manual for BC Communities

The Site Design Manual for BC Communities is rooted in several and extensive efforts to develop alternative development and engineering standards for the design of new (and for the retrofit of existing) communities in British Columbia. With the cooperation of citizens, government organizations, and related agencies, these efforts have been motivated by a shared belief that integrated processes and principles are crucial ingredients in the development of more sustainable communities and urban regions.

Sustainable Neighbourhood Development

This guide provides top-line, how-to information about the planning and development of sustainable neighbourhoods, offering practical solutions to common challenges. It answers
important questions about sustainable neighbourhood development:

  1. What is a sustainable neighbourhood, and how can I make the case for pursuing this kind of development?
  2. What are the major challenges, and how can they be overcome?
  3. Where else in Canada has this been done successfully, and what factors led to that success?
  4. Where can I go for more in-depth information?

Six Steps to Sustainable Community: A Guide to Local Action Planning

Local action planning is the process of creating a strategic document that outlines specifically how your municipality will achieve a selected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target. The resulting document, called a local action plan (LAP), is the third milestone in the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program.

This guide covers the development of a community-wide local action plan (LAP), that is, Milestone Three in the PCP program. The information provided here also applies to the development of an LAP for a corporation or similar organization — although with some minor procedural differences. (For example, internal working group meetings are held instead of public consultations.)
The step-by-step overview in the next section, Begin planning, shows how an LAP is developed. All of the steps are illustrated with examples from planning undertaken by PCP members. The subsequent section, Sustainability Snapshots, profiles 11 communities at various stages of the LAP process. All but one are PCP members. The remaining sections offer insights, lessons learned and additional resources to guide your municipality as it designs its own LAP.

Green Energy as a Rural Economic Development Tool

The purpose of this project was to undertake a series of activities that will help rural BC communities and First Nations affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) epidemic, better understand the potential opportunities of Green Energy development and its potential contribution to rural economic development and diversification. The project was designed to work directly with a number of small rural communities in the interior of BC. Many rural communities in BC have expressed an interest in learning more about green energy development and in potentially developing their own Green energy project (e.g. a micro-hydro IPP).

Powering our Province

This report seeks to identify opportunities for rural communities in BC to become engaged in the clean energy sector.

The findings for this study are based on extensive secondary research supplemented by opinions and insights gathered through in-depth interviews with a representative sample of Independent Power Producer (IPP) companies in BC, as well as clean energy technology developers/ manufacturers, provincial and municipal government agencies, First Nations communities, power utilities, and other key stakeholders.

Many rural communities and First Nations, as well as the provincial government, are interested in exploring how the development of clean energy resources can contribute to economic growth and diversification. This is especially true for forestry-dependent communities in the interior of the province in areas affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic and the collapse of the US housing market.

This report identifies five immediate business and employment opportunity areas for rural communities related to clean energy development. These are:

  1.  Skilled trades and construction;
  2.  Community and First Nations engagement;
  3.  Scientific and environmental monitoring;
  4.  Plant operations and maintenance; and
  5.  Indirect business support.

Renewable Energy Guide for Local Governments in British Columbia

The guide looks into renewable energy. Renewable energy includes sources of energy that are neither derived from fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, natural gas and propane) nor from nuclear power. Renewable energy also includes the recovery of waste heat that would otherwise be lost, even if that heat is produced by non-renewable energy sources.

This guide does not address energy efficiency, which can often provide cost-effective emissions reductions and savings. Renewable energy should be considered alongside other energy initiatives, including energy efficiency, sustainable transportation and sustainable community planning.