Group effort makes proposals for a less car-centric city by 2020.

Credit: Doug Shanks

NEWS: New report imagines a greener Vancouver

The City of Vancouver released its Greenest City Action Team’s 10-year plan last week in a report titled Vancouver 2020: A Bright Green Future. The report, which includes a summary of long-term sustainability targets for the city, is the product of collaborative efforts among the 18-member Greenest City Action Team, which is comprised of city councillors, representatives of local environmental groups, and green-business leaders.

Part of the report, titled “Green Mobility,” discusses the goal of creating a Vancouver in which, by 2020, more than half of trips within the city are carried out on foot, bicycle or public transit . “Great green cities are walkable cities,” reads the report. “Walking is the most environmentally sustainable form of transportation, creating no emissions, no noise, and requiring the least amount of infrastructure… Vancouver could do much more to facilitate walking and cycling, although the allocation of additional space on Burrard Bridge is a step in the right direction.”

As part of efforts to enhance Vancouver’s walkability, the report includes recommendations to connect all primary and secondary schools to existing green spaces, and to increase access to green spaces by ensuring that every Vancouver resident lives within a five-minute walk of a park, beach, greenway, or natural space.

Pedestrian City, a pedestrian advocacy initiative founded by Natalie Ethier, as well as the Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN), have started to explore these and other goals through “green mapping sessions,” the first of which was held last Thursday (Oct. 22) in Mount Pleasant. The mapping sessions aim to create visual representations of the city’s existing green spaces, thereby helping to maximize future use, and hopefully illustrating the need for the creation of more green space. For Ethier, who moved to Vancouver from Toronto this spring, it’s an extension of her previous work with Pedestrian City, which she started as part of her master’s degree in Environmental Science at York University. Her work was influenced in large part by Canadian urbanist Jane Jacobs and cultural theorist Guy Debord, who coined the term “psychogeography.”

“Psychogeography is the study of the effects of the geographical environment —consciously or subconsciously — on the emotions and behaviours of individuals,” Ethier explains. “One of the ways to explore that is through... inventive strategies that take pedestrians off their predictable paths and bring them into this new awareness of the urban landscape.”

One of Ethier’s goals with the VPSN’s mapping projects is to give participants an opportunity to reflect on their neighbourhoods and their sense of place. “As one of the participants noted, it was about connecting the dots between the places and interactions you experience in a neighbourhood — the things that you notice but never put together in the same mental space,” she says.

Connecting with one’s sense of place in public spaces, Ethier says, is crucial for building awareness of the importance of pedestrian spaces and their role in urban life. “Canadian cities, in particular, have changed really quickly and developed around the car, and didn’t give much thought to other modes of transportation,” she says. “I think most people just don’t think that pedestrianism needs to be advocated for, because, for the most part, there are sidewalks everywhere, so you don’t need to go and build sidewalks like you do with bikes.”

Even though she’s fairly new to Vancouver, Ethier says she sees strong interest in sustainable-transportation issues among the city’s residents, and she hopes to expand her work with Pedestrian City to community centres in the future, so she can reach out to more diverse populations. “So far, I’ve found everybody who participates is around my age: mid-twenties to mid-thirties,” she says. “I think it would be really interesting to reach out to children and seniors, to get different perspectives... I think it’s really important to foster a sense of environmental awareness and education within the community.”

Future calls for public participation in the mapping sessions will be posted on the Pedestrian City website, PedestrianCity.ca, along with other pedestrian-advocacy resources.

“You notice a lot more when you’re passing through a space on foot rather than zipping by on a bike,” Ethier says. “There’s just more opportunities to come across new spaces or found objects, or to wander off a path; you really get a sense of what a neighbourhood is like. Jane Jacobs herself said, to get to know your neighbourhood, you have to get out and walk. I think it’s really important that we encourage people to do that.”