Toward the sustainable city : Vancouver's Southeast False Creek

This dissertation takes an ecologically-based view of sustainability to investigate the planning process and analyse the outcomes of planning for Vancouver’s model sustainable community, Southeast False Creek (SeFC). SeFC has achieved LEED-ND Platinum rating for environmental design and received a UN Livability Award (2010). Following Rees (1995) and Lombardi, Porter, Barber and Rogers (2011), I examine how central actors in the Southeast False Creek planning process conceived of and approached urban ‘sustainability’. I identify their influence on policy making, plan implementation and sustainability outcomes. I also assess the community using scientifically determined metrics of sustainability: per capita greenhouse gas emissions levels and ecological footprints. Through in-depth interviews and detailed document analysis I found that central actors in the planning process approached urban sustainability from a perspective that resembled a ‘three pillars/status quo approach’, i.e., sustainability can be achieved through improvements to environmental performance and without significant changes to existing socio-economic systems, cultural beliefs or values. Southeast False Creek, rather than being a breakthrough response to global ecological change, was planned as an incremental improvement over existing local models of development. Southeast False Creek makes limited progress toward sustainability when sustainability is defined through scientific metrics such as ecological footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. I find that achievement of the published goals and standards for the project could yield per capita ecological footprint reductions of approximately 5% and per capita greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 8% from the Vancouver average. Scientifically determined requirements are in the range of 75 – 80% respectively (WWF, 2007; Weaver et al., 2007). Although Southeast False Creek does not model ecologically sustainable living, the City’s experience in planning this community may have yielded some bureaucratic, political, industry and public support for efforts toward that goal in future city developments.Applied Science, Faculty ofCommunity and Regional Planning (SCARP), School ofGraduat