Topic: land use

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”.

Thinking Beyond Pipes and Pumps: Top 10 Ways Communities Can Save Water and Money

This handbook provides a practical resource on how individuals, utilities, and, most importantly, communities can save water and money. Designed for community leaders, water managers, and policy makers, this handbook seeks to inspire and facilitate action.

It promotes an expanded definition of “urban water infrastructure” that includes innovative physical components, water sensitive urban design, and conservation programs designed to complement existing water supply networks.

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?

Promoting brownfield programs and opportunities in Canada

This guide outlines steps to help you find and engage the right developers and collaborators for brownfields sites in Canadian cities and towns of all sizes.

The guide also includes case studies that offer creative ideas and practical examples that you can apply in your municipality.

The guide is designed for: Municipal staff, such as sustainability coordinators, planners, project managers, economic development officers and chief administrative officers, who are responsible for creating and implementing a brownfield strategy.

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.

New Solutions for Stormwater Management in Canada

The goal of this report is to provide all Canadian local governments with an introduction to stormwater user fees and to the various other tools that they can implement to take an integrated approach to better urban stormwater management through the use of green infrastructure.

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