Sustainability Scholars Program

This project examines alternate compliance approaches for private sites that may face specific constraints for meeting the City of Vancouver's rainwater management requirements. The policy, legal and financial barriers and opportunities for advancing alternate approaches are identified within Vancouver's current context, and successful approaches from Portland, Washington D.C and City of North Vancouver are documented. Possible approaches and next steps are identified for the City of Vancouver.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: rainwater 

This report recommends methods to calculate the economic value of Vancouver's parks for three key benefits: tourism, recreation, and physical health; and briefly covers other benefits including property premiums, stormwater management, air quality and temperature regulation. This project will help Vancouver Park Board to secure funding for park maintenance, planning, and future development.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: sustainable development & green economy, nature valuation

This report presents regenerative planting design strategies for green rainwater infrastructure (GRI) in the road right-of-way. It suggests that connectivity is embodied by designed plant communities, and that the plant community approach contributes to the vision of the Rain City Strategy. Included are innovative methods, case studies, and conceptual frameworks that have potential to lower maintenance needs while enhancing communities and biodiversity through planting design.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: biodiversity, ecological systems, water

This project aims to address the challenges associated with urban freight and last-mile delivery by advancing the City of Vancouver's knowledge of existing loading assets. Includes the development of a framework and pilot for compiling a comprehensive and systematic inventory of both public and private loading facilities as well as a discussion of the opportunities, challenges, and recommendations for a future expansion of the inventory.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: transportation, urban freight

This project analyzes how redevelopment may affect changes in the type of businesses that occupy commercial space (e.g., chain vs. independent stores) over time. Through statistical analysis, the study presents findings on business type occupancy, longevity and vacancies to confirm the extent to which new development favours chain businesses. Recommendations include ways the City can better support independent businesses in occupying new commercial retail space.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainable development & green economy

Further to the declaration of a climate emergency by the City of Vancouver in 2019, this project aims to contribute towards the work needed to transition the Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) to 100% renewable energy by 2030.  The report identifies baseload and peak technologies to further explore in light of the findings. The project involved a global literature review and qualitative interviews with district energy specialists.  

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: green buildings, leadership & behaviour change

The purpose of this project is to understand how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted city-facilitated childcares and to explore opportunities for the City of Vancouver to better support resilience in the non-profit childcare sector. This report includes a literature review of the childcare sector in the current context of the pandemic and an analysis of the interview responses from city-facilitated childcare operators in Vancouver.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: social sustainability, childcare

This report analyzes data provided through the HOT2000 program to determine the efficiencies of different typological design decisions seen throughout metropolitan Vancouver and greater British Columbia. It will quantify how different architectural decisions impact energy efficiency, with a focus on TEDI, MEUI, and other costs to the homeowner or builder. These findings will help influence the BC Step Code in regards to how architectural design choices can have an impact on energy consumption.

Partner: BC Housing
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy, step code

This project supports the planned renewal of the Regional Ground-Level Ozone Strategy (RGLOS) for Metro Vancouver. Specifically, the project investigated the background levels of ground-level ozone from the decommissioned Marine Boundary Layer Station (MBLS) in Ucluelet, B.C. One main focus was to find the underlying trend of background ozone over the seven years of operation of the MBLS after removing for seasonality and other contributing variables.
The project also explored the impact of precursor emissions on MBLS background ozone levels, classified geographic source regions of ozone levels on a given day based on back-trajectories, and compared MBLS to ozone trend levels at other Pacific Northwest monitoring stations.

Partner: Metro Vancouver
Keywords: air quality