2. The Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility
uses waste thermal energy captured from sewage to
provide space heating and hot water to buildings in
Vancouver’s Southeast False Creek. This
recycled energy eliminates more than 60% of the
greenhouse gas pollution associated with heating
buildings.
The utility is self-funded: it provides a return on
investment to City taxpayers, while maintaining
affordable rates to customers.
It has been a cornerstone of the City of Vancouver’s
Neighbourhood Energy Strategy and an inspiration for
both public administrations and private developers
across Canada
.
3. In 1991, the City of Surrey decided to move from being an
auto-oriented suburban community with large swaths of
single-use neighbourhoods, to a transit-oriented, mixed-
use urban community. Their strategy was to create new
city centres near the Light Rail Transit stations, including a
university, a city hall, a state-of-the-art public library,
shopping, offices and housing.
As of 2017, a thriving public realm welcomes those who
step out of the Light Rail Transit station and a plan for
stage 2 has been approved. It has become a model for
transit-oriented developments in Canada’s other
metropolitan areas.
4. The Red River Floodway is a 48-kilometre diversion channel constructed in the
1960s to protect Winnipeg. Starting in 2005, it was expanded to improve flood
protection in Winnipeg as well as St. Paul, moving from a 1-in-90 to a 1-in-700
year flood protection. An additional 450,000 Manitobans, over 140,000 homes
and 8,000 businesses benefited from the expanded scope of the floodway.
Already, a major flood has occurred and the floodway is estimated to have
prevented more than $12 billion in damages.
The widened floodway afforded the largest native prairie restauration project in
North America. Existing businesses and facilities came together under an
innovative governance structure to advance this restauration project, which
involves food production, agro-forestry, forage, grazing, carbon sequestration,
habitat restoration, recreation and interpretation. Already a source of economic
development, it promises increasingly diverse benefits as the floodway matures.
5. Regent Park was built in the 1940s and 50s in
Toronto. Its 7,500 residents made it the largest
social housing project in Canada. In the early
2000s, the City of Toronto initiated an ambitious
revitalization plan to transform the single-use,
low income neighbourhood into a mixed use and
mixed income neighourhood for 12,500 residents,
served by a new arts facility and aquatic centre,
and well connected to the rest of the city.
The development is a model in its capacity to
bring multiple institutions together in creating a
vibrant, diverse and inclusive social realm. It also
made use of a variety of financial levers, ranging
from the creation of two innovative financing
schemes geared at lower-income home buyers, to
the use of a partnership with a private
corporation.
6. The Saint-Michel environmental complex was once a limestone
quarry, then a municipal dump, before becoming a beacon of
sustainable development.
Starting in 1995, the city of Montréal gradually transformed the
site into an urban green space, now comparable in size to Mount
Royal Park. It hosts a recuclable materials recovery facility, a
biogas powerplant, a composting site as well as a 5.5 km of
footpath, the headquarters of Cirque du Soleil and, the latest
addition, a stunning soccer stadium with a state-of-the-art wood
structure.
7. Halifax Seaport Farmer’s Market is a
gateway for the discovery, and a trigger
for the redevelopment of the Seaport
Warehouse District. It has the second
largest green roof in Canada, fitted with 23
solar thermal panels and four wind micro-
turbines.
The new market facility has increased the
sales of local produce by 300 to 500%
compared with its predecessor. By
repositioning the production and
consumption of locally grown organic
produce as central to the development of
healthy communities, the Seaport Farmers
Market’ represents a step forward in our
understanding of sustainability.
8. The Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway is the most northern
section of the envisioned Mackenzie Valley Highway,
which will connect Canada’s road network from coast to
coast to coast. The work is being completed using unique
construction techniques that ensure the underlying
continuous permafrost remains protected in a frozen
state.
Slated to open in the fall of 2017, the new highway will
decrease the cost of living in Tuktoyaktuk by enabling
goods to be shipped by road year-round, increase
opportunities for business development, reduce the cost
of job-creating onshore oil and gas exploration, and
strengthen Canada’s sovereignty in the North.
