Topic: community planning

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.

Passive Design Toolkit for Homes

The toolkit has been written to inform City staff and the design and development communities about passive design. While covering best practices, the toolkit addresses the specific needs of Vancouver and outlines a succinct definition of what ‘passive’ means for Vancouver. This toolkit can be used as a reference for best practices, and considered complementary to design guidelines and policy.

Our Farmlands, Our Foodlands…Our Future

The people of the Capital Regional District (CRD) are actively seeking solutions to a sustainable food supply for the Region. This is especially challenging when farming is faced with rising land costs, labour shortages and
an aging farm population. This report summarizes the knowledge and recommendations gained at the conference on these challenges. It discusses key strategies, tools, and resources currently being employed, or that could be employed in the CRD to address these critical issues.

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis

A thorough article on LCC applied to buildings, with links to further resources. Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a method for assessing the total cost of facility ownership. It takes into account all costs of acquiring, owning, and disposing of a building or building system. LCCA is especially useful when project alternatives that fulfill the same performance requirements, but differ with respect to initial costs and operating costs, have to be compared in order to select the one that maximizes net savings.

Life in metropolitan areas: Dependence on cars in urban neighborhoods

This article by Statistics Canada reviews travel demand and behaviours in various types of communities including urban, suburban and small communities. The article finds that neighbourhoods composed primarily of typically suburban dwellings and located far from the city centre were characterized by an appreciably higher level of automobile dependence.

Land Use Impacts on Transport – How Land Use Factors Affect Travel Behavior

The paper examines how various land use factors such as density, regional accessibility, mix and roadway connectivity affect travel behavior, including per capita vehicle travel, mode split and nonmotorized travel. The information is useful for evaluating the ability of smart growth, new urbanism and access management land use policies to achieve planning objectives such as consumer savings, energy conservation and emission reductions

Innovative Infrastructure Financing Mechanisms for Smart Growth

The report looks at the potential for infrastructure financing mechanisms to contribute to smart growth. Each of the mechanisms has its advantages and disadvantages, success factors and barriers to success and may be applicable in specific circumstances. The report examines all of these issues in the context of specific case studies and draws some more general conclusions as to which mechanisms appear to have the most promise in Canada.