Vancouver: city of green aspirations

Vancouver, Canada, recently announced its desire to become the world's greenest city by 2020.

It might be a bit of a stretch. Gordon Price, director of the urban issues program at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University, doubts that his city will surpass the rest of the urbanizing globe—some northern Europeans are no slouches in environmental performance, after all. But even Price thinks the 44-square-mile, 650,000-population British Columbia city has a good chance of being the greenest city in North America.

So says The Seattle Times in a report on Vancouver's environmental ambitions and on how it's trying to achieve them. 

Some of the examples of Vancouver's efforts sound fanciful. A less-than-one-year-old firm, Shift Urban Cargo, delivers goods by having employees pedal the cargo (up to 600 pounds) to downtown locations on unusual pink tricycles with electric-motor assists. 

Other innovations are clearly impressive, long-term commitments. The False Creek Energy Center, for instance, has pumps that capture heat from untreated sewage, transfer the warmth to hot water, and then pipe it throughout a downtown neighborhood, providing "heat and hot water to 1.8 million square feet of homes and businesses," according to the paper.

That's a lot of energy saved. The paper says that "this particular design is the first of its kind in North America and only the third such utility in the world."

The city's goal is to "reduce solid waste by 50 percent, cut residents' carbon footprints by a third and dramatically incrase public transit, walking and bike use," The Times reports. 

The article tells about the installation of bike lanes, the arrival of "product stewardship" programs that make it possible for consumers to deposit old and unwanted goods at disposal facilities paid for by manufacturers, and a general acceptance of "using regulation to force social change."

There's been resistance in some quarters, such as from merchants unhappy to see a lane of on-street parking replaced by a bike route. But the current mayor, Gregor Robertson of the Vision Vancouver party, won relection in November, and his party, which has been described as left of center, won most of the seats on city council. So the green agenda continues.

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