Lexington, KY - As part of an ongoing effort to bring Lexington new thinking to guide its development, The Planning for Livability and Sustainability: Lessons of the Vancouver Achievement for Lexington and the Bluegrass conference brought leaders from the city of Vancouver to the UK Boone Center on May 30 to share their experiences and perspectives. The conference, arranged by Ernest Yanarella and Richard Levine, UK professors and co-directors of the Center for Sustainability, drew a crowd that included Lexington leaders. The conference was sponsored by the Kentucky Environmental Education Council, the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection and the Office of the President at the University of Kentucky.
"This shows how a city can change when it commits to a course," said Ian Smith, manager of development for Vancouver, Canada. "Local government needs to take a role for the future. Things can't be left to chance." With images of Vancouver appearing on a large screen behind him, Smith told of Vancouver's history and current developments.
Vancouver, located about 140 miles north of Seattle, topped the Economist's World's Most Livable Cities 2008 list and placed fourth in the 2008 Mercer's Quality of Living Survey. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has set a goal for Vancouver to be the Greenest City in the World by 2020. The 2010 Winter Olympic Village in Vancouver, currently under construction with Smith's oversight, is aiming to become a LEED Certified Neighborhood Development - an entire community of buildings designed to attain LEED Gold under the U.S. Green Building Council pilot program.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, university academics in Vancouver rallied the public to oppose penetration of their downtown by freeways. The success of that opposition accelerated exodus of an already eroding industrial base, which left unoccupied brown land. "Vancouver was struggling in the 1980s," Smith said. "Its direction was uncertain. Decisions had to be made. When you talk about the survival of the downtown core, you have to have people living there. They make art galleries work, theaters and culture - jobs, too. There has to be a commitment of the city to the public realm. We sat down with developers and the public. Find what you agree on and move forward with that. Developers in Vancouver now look back and they like what they have now."
Smith sees the 1986 World's Fair and the beginning of clean-up and robust development of the abandoned industrial sites as a turning point for the city that has led to a dynamic and careful approach to development.
The Vancouver Development Permit Board evaluates any development applications that will have significant impact on the community, which may be indicated by scale, context or public controversy. The board comprises four public servants that have city government positions in development, planning, engineering and management. An advisory panel, which includes six architects, two professional engineers and two landscape architects, advises the board. The Vancouver planning department has close to 100 employees, 60 of them professionals. Public amenity requirements for developments include parks, indoor recreation space, public art and child care.
"Developers got pushed," said Smith, "but they got better prices for their more livable communities." The Vancouver city population in 1986 was about 430,000; it's now about 600,000. Smith said that in the last five years Greater Vancouver has had a population growth of 25 percent, 55 percent of which has occurred downtown.
As a result of city planning, the city, which is bounded on three sides by water, has 16 miles of continuous public waterfront walkway. It has 1,000 acres of public parkland in the downtown, and preserved historic legacy buildings. Sixty percent of the downtown population doesn't drive cars. Smith said that transportation design now puts pedestrians first, bicycles next, followed by public transit and then other traffic flow. Green strategies for sustainability abound - passive solar design, heat capture from sewage systems, recycling/reuse programs and more. The city promotes urban agriculture - rooftop and balcony gardens, community gardens, school gardens, and farmer's markets. City residents without space for growing food will be provided a garden spot, Smith said.
The presentation sparked what amounted to a short breakout session, during which some Lexington leaders addressed matters in Lexington. Vice Mayor Jim Gray passionately stated the need for competent, visionary leadership in the city's civil service.
"We are visitors to this process," he said, speaking of elected officials.
David Mohney, Downtown Development Authority chair and UK professor, said a competent, professional staff is needed to support a vision for downtown development.
Councilmember Diane Lawless said it's time to revisit the city's charter. She thinks a city manager is needed. "Now's the time to adopt a master plan," she said.
Steve Kay, consultant, pointed to CentrePointe and the approved placement of a chain-store pharmacy at the east gateway to downtown (where Main and Vine converge) as developments that highlight the need for design standards.
Ian Smith, showing his leadership style and drawing on his Vancouver-based experience, took the floor again and suggested that design professionals at UK could offer their services free of charge to the developers of the CentrePointe project in order to facilitate a more green and urban-community friendly design. It all makes one wonder at what could evolve over time in Lexington.
Mark Roseland, a professor and director of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at Simon Fraser University, and author of the book Towards Sustainable Communities: Resources for Cities & Their Governments, said that we're entering the twilight of the oil age. With food prices rising, he observed, "Climate change is the biggest regressive tax in the world." He said that sustainability's time has come. "Sustainability is not trendy - not a fad. It represents a new way of thinking about and acting upon the world. It must be a long-term commitment." Once sustainability was cast in economic terms, he said, people started to get it. "We have to live off the interest, not the capital," he said.
The conference ended with a hair-raising presentation by Richard Balfour, architect and researcher with Vancouver Metro Planning. With a series of graphs, maps and aerial photographs and discussion of scientific research, peak oil and climate change, he made the case that we need to act now to create sustainability - not just for ourselves, but to help lessen the burden on the next generations.
To learn about sustainability at the University of Kentucky, go to www.uky.edu/sustainability.