The Seattle Times sent its reporter Craig Welch to see what all the hype was about on the other side of the border.
Vancouver recently announced its desire to become the world’s greenest city by 2020. As such, Western Canada’s urban hub has set ambitious goals to turn itself into a living laboratory for all things sustainable. …
But how significant is this transformation, really? Is it a revolution or a mix of faddism and savvy marketing? (Save the Planet with rooftop honeybees!) Is this city’s single-minded mission a form of global leadership or, as some residents charge, just plain arrogance? How transferrable is the city’s experience to metro areas in other countries — to Seattle, for example, with its own history of and desire for green governance?
These are complicated questions whose answers may appear simple. But they’re not. At least not yet.
“I’m both somewhat skeptical of these kinds of initiatives but also recognize they can actually make a difference,” says Gordon Price, a former Vancouver city councillor and director of the urban issues program at Simon Fraser University. He was appointed to the panel that ultimately helped set Vancouver’s 2020 agenda. “We don’t mine coal here. We don’t drill for oil. But, of course, we are a port city and we funnel through huge amounts of fossil fuel. Does that count? How? These are big, important questions.
“Nonetheless,” Price says after some thought, “focusing too heavily on caveats tends to trivialize initiatives that can have pretty profound impacts.”
