Sustainable Cities

Several PT contributors have sent this along. Many thanks to you.
As Mr. Durning says:

“The search for absolute consensus can lead to a state of paralysis” says the author. True. In Vancouver, political vendettas from the old days, vexatious lawsuits that are only meant to hinder, paid trolls that criticize every positive move the city makes, and lack of any direction from the provincial government – and the opposition – makes meaningful dialogue and progress difficult.

Jaime Lerner writes in the NYT “How to Build a Sustainable City“.   Clearly a Paris COP21 topic, but also relevant to the City of Vancouver’s sustainability goals.

Cities have a very significant impact on climate change: It’s estimated that urban areas are responsible for 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. . . .

As the list of megacities grows and as more and more people move into cities from rural areas, every city should prioritize three issues that have great impact on the quality of urban life, beginning to find answers that will sustain our society in the long term: mobility, sustainability and sociodiversity.

When planners are working on mobility issues, cities must take priority over cars; people must take priority over cars. Cars have been in production for a little more than a century, but the space they have seized and the amount of infrastructure investment they demand is extremely high. Cars are the cigarettes of the future….

…. Our priority in fostering urban mobility should be to provide comfortable, safe, reliable, affordable and easy-to-use public transportation. Every mode (train, subway, bus, tram, taxi, bike) has to operate optimally and be integrated into a transit network. Car shares and bike shares like Paris’ Autolib’ or Vélib’ also have their role….

. . . .fragmenting cities into areas with specialized functions such as suburbs, central business districts and downtown areas condemns these spaces and their infrastructure to be idle during long periods of the day or night. A more compact city that supports a diversity of activities leaves more land for conservation, water catchment and farming.