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Vancouver: Leading Green Building Transitions?

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Green Building Transitions

Part of the book series: The Urban Book Series ((UBS))

Abstract

Vancouver has been widely promoted and recognised as a green city, as reflected in a number of awards and international rankings. This chapter analyses the trajectory of greening with specific reference to green building in Vancouver. It identifies three examples of green building: (1) the University of British Columbia as birthplace of more radical thinking in terms of sustainability, (2) the Olympic Village in Southeast False Creek as green model neighbourhood and (3) Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan as policy strategy to promote green building. Based on these three examples, the chapter highlights the interplay of local and global influences on green building transitions and critically investigates the impacts of these on the city. Reduced carbon emissions and improved quality of life are central to green building transitions in Vancouver, but neoliberal and entrepreneurial objectives together with a shift towards quantified approaches of greening are challenging the former. While leadership is omnipresent in representations and narratives of Vancouver as a green city, greening strategies largely fall into what is commonly considered as incremental and predictable, rather than radical change, thus adding a question mark to leadership claims.

The original version of this chapter was revised. A correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77709-2_12

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Change history

  • 29 July 2018

    Errata to: Julia Affolderbach and Christian Schulz, Green Building Transitions: Regional Trajectories of Innovation in Europe, Canada and Australia Doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77709-2

Notes

  1. 1.

    Rates for diesel and jet fuel lie above, natural gas and propane below the gasoline tax rate.

  2. 2.

    Who developed the Dockside Green Project in Victoria, B.C.

  3. 3.

    http://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/about/board/ (accessed 5 July 2017).

  4. 4.

    The University Endowment Lands adjacent to the UBC campus are managed by the provincial government and are not part of the university.

  5. 5.

    The LivCom Awards were launched in 1997 and focus on international best practice regarding the management of the local environment. The objective of LivCom is to develop and share international best practice, with the further objective of improving the quality of life of individual citizens through the creation of liveable communities.

  6. 6.

    Fritted glass is a glass with small holes in so that gas can pass through, making it more expensive than traditional glass. This is so that solar gain may be reduced, either with or without solar shades on the exterior of the building and as a means to reduce energy consumption.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Kirstie O’Neill

  2. Department of Geography, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, UK

    Julia Affolderbach

Authors
  1. Kirstie O’Neill
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  2. Julia Affolderbach
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julia Affolderbach .

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O’Neill , K., Affolderbach, J. (2018). Vancouver: Leading Green Building Transitions?. In: Green Building Transitions. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77709-2_6

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