This project needs to happen immediately. Taking an existing form, rather than creating one anew, is a simple choice. We as humans have already made enough stuff. Since the industrial revolution, we have taken countless volumes of raw minerals and, with the help of stores of ancient sunlight, we have transformed these elements into things that are designed to make our lives better. It is due time we repurpose some of these things.
Bus stops are the most numerous of public shelters in this city. And in this city, public transit is accessed by all classes, races, and genders. Schools and public spaces such as parks are obvious examples for permanent installations. Schools would provide education to those most prone to absorb it and foster future change, while parks would provide a direct physical link to that which our actions towards sustainability might secure and protect. These two typologies of spaces would not, however, provide the rapid, routine and diversity of exposure that bus stops can.
Vancouver's Greenest City program has many important voices and aspires to do many important things. However, it lacks a singular concrete voice. Green is foremost a color. Greenest in its modern context implies many things that could be perceived as positive, but now that greenwashing has entered the scene, the word greenest has grown to be as ambiguous as the word sustainability.
In the context of being green or sustainable, our world faces many challenges. The most important however, and those which impact all of us, are the effects of a changing climate. Global Climate Change (GCC) is the worst-case scenario. Every Greenest City goal, not just the Climate Leadership Goal, is, or will be, impacted by GCC. Right now, it has the loudest voice.
Water is the most visible measure of GCC…shrinking glaciers equate to less drinking water and less power generation…drought equates to lessened food security and an increased risk of wildfires…stronger weather events equate to a change in and a loss of habitat and biodiversity. Water, in the form of demonstration projects, could provide the unifying narrative for the Greenest City goals. The need for an increase in a water conservation ethic, as called for by SFU's Adaptation to Climate Change Team, does not only stop wasteful practices with water. It can promote every Greenest City practice. Rain Stops could help educate and promote ways to stop all of our unsustainable practices as addressed by the Greenest City goals.
The Greenest City goal for Clean Water calls specifically for a “reduction of per capita water consumption by 33% over 2006 levels.” Vancouver-wide rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse would complete the work needed to achieve this goal. Harvested rainwater can provide irrigation to food garden plots, community orchards, and pollinator forage gardens, contributing to the Local Food targets. Harvested rainwater could provide irrigation needs to establish the remaining 150,000 trees of the Vancouver urban forest or to any of the green spaces proposed within a 5-minute walk for every resident, contributing to the Access to Nature targets. Implementing Rain Stops would help accomplish the remaining seven goals as well, by providing green jobs by employing people to build them, supporting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging electric bus ridership and a reduction personal miles driven, demonstrating carbon neutral construction, and demonstrating zero-waste and a lighter ecological footprint.
Beginning in the test neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant, each Rain Stop would not only physically exemplify all the goals, it could advertise the success of each of the goals as implemented throughout the city…while demonstrating to the rest of Canada what a new water conservation ethic could achieve.
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