The resources in this database provide legal mechanisms, innovative policies, and best practices that planners can use to help their communities adapt to climate change, protect green infrastructure, and carry out sustainable land and water use practices.
Reducing and diverting waste can be an important step in GHG mitigation and Canada’s overall climate change approach. This Policy Brief focuses on economic policy tools to encourage waste prevention and diversion at the final consumer stage. The amount of household waste heading to landfills increased by 18% in Canada from 2002 to 2014. That is in contrast to our peer countries in the OECD where waste has been decreasing. Environmental pricing instruments are an important tool for helping reverse this trend. This Policy Brief focuses on economic policy tools to encourage waste prevention and diversion at the final consumer stage.
This toolkit focuses on how local government in communities of less than 150,000 can use the strategies and techniques of transportation demand management (TDM) to encourage individuals to change their travel behaviour.
The purpose of this Guide is to support the growing number of small communities across British Columbia interested in making a business case for biomass district heating. There may be substantial benefits for communities that approach local energy projects having developed an integrated strategy on clean energy, energy independence, and the transition to a green economy. Small-scale biomass district heating systems can be a centerpiece of such a strategy.
Primary benefits include:
The purpose of this handbook is to support a growing number of small communities across British Columbia and Alberta interested in making a business case for biomass district heating (DH). Small-scale biomass DH systems can be a centerpiece of an integrated strategy on clean energy, energy independence and a transition to a green economy. Primary benefits include:
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.
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
This paper discusses the application of economic analysis techniques to transportation planning, including Cost-Effectiveness, Benefit-Cost Analysis, Lifecycle Cost Analysis, and Multiple Accounts Analysis.
The paper describes specific solutions to these problems, and provides recommendations for producing analysis that is accurate and useful. It discusses specific factors that should be considered when evaluating transportation policies and programs.
Transportation Demand Management (TDM, also called Mobility Management) is a general term for strategies that result in more efficient use of transportation resources. This TDM Encyclopedia is a comprehensive source of information about innovative management solutions to transportation problems. It provides detailed information on dozens of demand management strategies, plus general information on TDM planning and evaluation techniques. It is produced by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute to increase understanding and implementation of TDM.
In 2020, Statistics Canada (StatCan) and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) collaborated on the implementation of a set of proximity measures to services and amenities. CMHC funded this collaboration to generate data and analytical work in support of the National Housing Strategy. The result of this collaboration is the first nationwide Proximity Measures Database (PMD).
The database contains 10 measures of proximity and a composite indicator that combines some of the proximity measures. All measures are at the dissemination block level (a block in urban areas or an area bounded by roads in rural areas), this provides the highest level of geographic resolution currently possible.
This tool can help local governments review their built environment and find how different neighbourhoods have varying levels of amenities.
The Measures of Proximity included in the PMD are:
How to access and find out more: