My CityStudio Experience: A Final Word

I was raised to uphold modesty with conviction. Perhaps this originated in how my parents were raised, and how their parents were raised, and how all this has been passed down without much question. The framework of this stems from a religious faith that values selflessness above all else and the pursuit of treating others as you would prefer they treat you. I have broken this chain in the sense that I no longer practice the religious tradition of my family. However, this important lesson, along with the inherited modesty, still exists within me.

As I began to shape my professional career, before this latest round of schooling, I noticed how positions of leadership were offered to me. Whether it was a promotion to take on a managerial role in a design office, or a nomination to be the spokesperson for a small group to argue an issue, people asked that I step up where I was not necessarily already taking initiative. I have always loved the idea of being part of positive change-making, but being a change-agent, upon which a sharpened focus and a heavier burden is placed, has never has sat comfortably with me.

One of the key things I have learned thus far during my three terms in graduate school, and especially with my latest term as a member of CityStudio, is how cultural change does not arrive on its own. Rather, it is made. This simple idea has always rung true with me, but most recently has made it abundantly clear that if I wish to see change, I need to embody it. The days of performing quiet work behind the scenes will not be a luxury for me if I hope to contribute to addressing the big challenges facing our world today in any substantial way. While I know there still is room here for modesty in personality, ways of being involving words like keen, ardent, and eager now court my thoughts of making change. I know, now more clearly than ever, what it takes to be a change-agent.

This lesson for me was carried throughout my experience as a member of The Long Table Series group. From the inception of the group’s creation–helping to corral five people from three disparate groups into one with layered strength–to co-producing the production of the pilot event for The Long Table Series, I have continually found myself in the role of manager…of art director…of curator…and of positions that commanded a suppression of my past ways of being reserved. I must be careful to give recognition to each member of my group, as everyone played a pivotal role to the success of our project, but (I am proud to admit how) my specific contribution was one that involved a role embodied with leadership and vision.

Throughout the semester, with both as a member of the five-person group and with the entire CityStudio core, I practiced listening. From this grew my strength in dialogue. From this grew my ability to lead. Still, I recognize how I need to continually grow my ability to identify and embrace opportunities for leadership. More importantly, I am learning to identify which of such opportunities are more suited for me to take on.

Thanks to CityStudio and everyone who has contributed to its introduction to the world, I have reached a new level of awareness within myself. I am ready to be challenged more, and I am ready to continue to challenge others. Because the issues facing our world are complex, and many quite dire, we must continue identifying our strengths while challenging one another. For me this is what CityStudio was and is about. My fellow classmates and I collaborated around learning and growing together, while identifying and lending our strengths towards ideas to help make human existence sustainable. For our efforts, which were each filled with passion, conviction, and scholarship, I believe the entire first CityStudio cohort should be commended.

Two Questions, One Answer (CityStudio #12)

This week in CityStudio, we have been asked to consider the following two questions: 1. How does your work contribute to the Greenest City Goals?, and 2. How have you changed as a result of this course? At first glance, each of these two questions can appear commonplace and distant from the uniqueness of this course. As one who comes to the program with 10 years of studio design experience as an instructor as well as a practitioner, I have been thoroughly impressed with its uniqueness. Professional practice rarely sources its ideas directly from the classroom. Likewise, the classroom rarely has its ideas implemented in the world beyond the campus. CityStudio bridges these two worlds and this intersection. This is unique and has the potential to be quite powerful.

However, what is interesting about each of these questions is how CityStudio is not the topics in question. Rather, my work and my personal growth are. Upon greater reflection, the wording of these questions makes perfect sense. CityStudio is, after all, a classroom. It should be a vessel for learning and not the subject.

How, then, has my work contributed to the Greenest City Goals? The answer is that it began this summer when I accepted a position that placed me at the center of the Clean Water goal. Since this assignment, which afforded me a perspective from the minds and hearts of those working daily with issues related to potable water supply (consumption) and wastewater removal (cleanliness), the concerns of water has sat front and center in all of my work.

Just this week, during a conversation with a city staff member whose job relates to wastewater removal, I learned something interesting. For the event that my classmates and I are planning for December 10th, we aim to tell the full story of Vancouver's water. As part of this narrative, we are creating maps that illustrate the full cycle of water–its input and output. When I asked for maps illustrating this, I was told they did not exist. Vancouver supplies all of its inhabitants with potable water that is virtually free, and yet it has never marketed its product or attempted to explain its life.

With its Greenest City Goals, the City of Vancouver aims to spread sustainable knowledge. With this, it hopes to foster subsequent sustainable practice across all sectors, to help tackle each of the ten goals. I learned this week how the city has been virtually mute with regards to spreading sustainable knowledge about water consumption and cleanliness. (As my answer to the first question,) this niche is where I find myself. (As my answer to the second,) I accept the role of helping to fill this niche because I understand, more than I ever have, the role the story of water can play in achieving urban sustainability. 

Designing For The Future, Part 2 (LP&M #10)

I traveled home to Pennsylvania last week. The trip measured a distance of nearly 3,500 kilometres. The Boeing 777 I was a passenger on burns approximately 37 litres of kerosene aeroplane fuel every kilometre, totaling 129,574 litres of fuel for this particular trip. Therefore, on average, throughout the flight, the plane consumed nearly 8 litres of fuel every second. I do not recall ordering 1.3 litres of fossil fuel from the flight attendants each minute, but that is what it cost each of the 365 passengers to bring us so unnaturally fast across the continent of North America.

This act, when viewed this way, feels supremely wasteful. Fossil fuels are a unique luxury that the human race will arguably never know again, and we are squandering them. As one of the 365 on that flight, I did this knowingly, but reframed it and weighed values and my desire to be with my immediate family won out. I make such a trip only once per year, and yet I still do it and think very little of this unsustainable luxury the modern world has grown accustomed to. When will we be forced to slow down? When will the skies be clear of everything devoid of birds and clouds again? When will we, as the collective human race, recognize the need and the richness in settling in place?

Big challenges require big solutions. To echo the sentiments of global climate change activist Bill McKibben, who I had the pleasure of seeing speak twice this term, explains how sometimes reconciliations need to be made to achieve the greater good. The education and exposure to ideas that I am receiving by living so far away from those I love has justified my stay here in Vancouver and with the University of British Columbia. I will one day return to the eastern seaboard of North America, but I know that when I do, I will carry with me things I have learned that have the power to the human establishment transition into a more unpredictable era. 

Life on this planet is embedded in the ecosphere, and as with every complex system, there will always be unknown unknowns. Unfortunately, the old paradigm of a belief in finding a singularity in problems and solutions is a falsity. Unfortunately, mechanical thinking cannot be applied to our immense challenges–with economy and with climate.

Of the many things I have learned in this course, I now understand more fully how challenges associated with sustainability are entirely about collaboration and dynamism. Complex challenges cannot be understood or addressed by one mind's thoughts or one person's actions. Sustainability calls for capacity to adapt and for collaboration throughout all professions and walks of life. True collaboration calls for identifying knowledge in others. It requires a trust in others and in their strengths. Everything is constantly shifting in nature…we must collectively shift with it if we hope to plan for a sustainable human enterprise.

Starting vs. Joining (CityStudio #11)

During the summer of 1998, just after finishing up my year of art school foundations courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I began to rethink my decision that a major in illustration was the best route to take. Part of this shift in thought may have come from the fact that I wasn't publishing comic books in my spare time, or transcribing in picture form the frivolities of pop culture instead of writing prose about (topics no less than) overconsumption, but mostly I realized it came from my fear of being self-employed.

I come from a family of teachers, of military servicemen, and of doctors and nurses. Each has joined a school, a branch of the armed forces, or a medical practice. Not one seems to have started or changed such an establishment. Entrepreneurialism, albeit an American ideal, seems to not be in my blood. Some research shows that this trait, at least in part, can be genetic. The cited study, performed by the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College in London, states how "37 percent to 48 percent of the tendency to be an entrepreneur is genetic." This is interesting, but I want to know more about the other 63 to 52 percent. 

In a way, I have spent a good part of my life thinking of the science of genetics as a scapegoat or a means by which to occasionally subvert challenges in favor of familiarity and comfort. It is time I begin to think of opportunity and of life in terms of the percentages that do not refer to genetic predisposition.

Last week I spoke of my idea of "establishing a business that creates products with meaning, in a healthy and meaningful way". This idea has already stuck. I do not plan on letting it leave my consciousness. However, I am curious about this threshold that I have not yet fully crossed. Indeed, I have tiptoed into this land of starting over joining, but never with both feet. I have created art and exhibited it (more than once). I have been a part-time freelance designer and photographer. I have picked up my life and moved 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometres) here to graduate school in Vancouver to, in some ways, begin anew…

I feel it is time for part and parcel; time for both feet. The why not has everything to do with fear of the first time and with failure. Yet, I know well how I learn best from making mistakes and revisiting failures. My experiences with CityStudio have afforded me the confidence to seriously consider using both feet to soon take some leaps I have not yet taken. After all, the world needs us to take risks now…to help revert the risks we have burdening it with for generations.

Beyond CityStudio (CityStudio #10)

With only less than a month remaining in the term, my mind has already begun to ponder the what next. There has been much learning, and there will be the first installation of the Long Table Series, but I am from the cloth of those who keep reaching a bit further. With the nearing of each milestone completion, I begin to fix my sights and prepare for the transition into, hopefully, something embodying two steps forward.

Lately, I find myself getting a bit ahead of myself, thinking of work and time beyond acquiring my masters without yet having begun my thesis. This week it happened again.

The surrealist ideas of Dali came to him upon the edges dreams. My ideas, corporeal ideas, commonly come to me as I am jogging in my Finnish runners through the streets of East Van or commuting due West to school by bicycle or back to prepare dinner. It was during a night ride this week that inspired the creation of a document titled, BIG_ideas. In it were the following words:


A business.

Design and manufacture a new kind of rain barrel
Design and manufacture portable apiary toolkits
Design and manufacture _____X_____

Fabricate all items using cradle to cradle principles
Fabricate all items using recycled/repurposed/nontoxic materials
Fabricate locally/source locally

Sell items to city/town/community that seeks implementation of a pilot program
Sell items to address a systemic challenge needing a new paradigm
Sell items with the promise of additional consultation

Consult as an educator
Consult as a community facilitator
Consult as a researcher

Deliver a functional product
Deliver empowerment and new thought
Deliver positive systemic change

Utilize profit to propagate bigger ideas and more positive change…


It appears to be happening. My past schooling and professional experiences as an industrial designer are beginning to step onto the field of my current focus and approach to design. I decided it was time for graduate school because I decided it was time to go bigger. I know well the potential for profundity in the details and in the human-scale, but my pursuit now personifies macro design and the local-, national-, and biospheric-scale. I aim to steer this subconscious stirring into personal growth.

I have tried to steer clear of doing that which people have asked me to do with my current schooling, have thought I was good at for the past decade, but perhaps there is something to embracing some of this. Perhaps this is the point to the exercise Moura Quayle introduced to the CityStudio cohort last week. Answering the questions, "What do you like to do?…What do you dislike doing?" and, in this case, "What do people keep asking you to do that you would rather not do?" has relevance here. Indeed, everything we make comes from somewhere. Embracing aspects of my work in the past could certainly strengthen my ideas of the present.

This big idea of establishing a business that creates products with meaning, in a healthy and meaningful way…then offering not only the product, but the professional capacity to help facilitate change around the product and within communities…begins to build upon my past. It appears it is never too early to begin to think about building, and building upon, legacy.

Designing For The Future, Part 1 (LP&M #9)

In October, I submitted an essay to this year's Tattersfield Scholarship call for entries titled, Embracing Entropy: A Look Into A Modified Design Aesthetic. "Embracing entropy," I argue, "means doing less with more while aligning processes of nature with those of humankind. Embracing entropy ultimately means designing for change, disassembly and reuse, and with a lighter hand." While it was not selected as the winning piece this year, its core message continues to stir within me, especially within the context of this course, Landscape Planning and Management for Sustainable Landscapes.

Landscape planning and management essentially practices projection of land use and development. Sustainable landscapes, as understood throughout this course, are those where human and natural systems can exist in concert while achieving the "highest level of utility, productivity, beauty, and stability." The anticipation of this pairing to produce sustainable landscapes requires that work be performed dynamically and with understanding that ecological systems are open systems, where energies can enter into or leave the system at any given time. Currently, Earth, in both its human and natural systems–the global economy and the climate–is facing unprecedented energy flows that could produce shifts in known paradigms at any given moment.

The global economy has never been so complex and so interconnected as it is today. Complementarily, the CO2 levels in the planet's atmosphere have never been so great during the existence of humanity. Without belaboring the details of how these systems have arrived at this juncture, the consequence is that each are currently geared more for collapse than we have ever known them to be. Does, then, a status quo for ways of doing business still exist for professions embedded within each of these systems? Furthermore, if it is true that professional practice profits primarily from standardization, how might the future of the professions of planning and landscape architecture be sustained? I would argue that answers for each of these questions lie within the embracing entropy argument.

Future constraints of the planning and landscape architecture professions can be simple to envision. There will continually exist less raw resources (as populations rise and demands increase), including both the human construct of money and the physical construct of resources such as oil…and there will exist a climate with increasing unpredictability. With less to build with and more to build for, a new status quo will arise. Professional standardization, in pursuit of profit and economic sustainability, will most likely find its closest ally in nature. In place of manufactured (and resource-intensive) pastoral and modern aesthetics, such workhorse landscape typologies as reconstructed wetlands and riparian corridors could become poster children for development. They could offer a glimpse of this new aesthetic that allows natural processes take care of themselves and the landscape in our rapidly changing world.

Before the advent of reductionist thought brought on by the Age of Enlightenment, the belief that nature knew best was more prevalent throughout the collective global society. The pendulum swing may have taken a few centuries to complete, but it appears that it's headed back this way. The seemingly inevitable transition into new paradigms for climate, resources, and economy requires an embracing of this ancient ideal.

Delivering Inclusion With Rain Barrels (CityStudio #9)

For the second time during the last month, I have heard the same key piece of information regarding the hearts and minds of Vancouverites. Of all the categories, including such prevailing topics as affordability in housing and daily life, people who live here rate inclusion, or a having a sense of belonging, as their primary indicator of happiness. According to Vancouver Foundation's 2010 Vital Signs report, "regardless of our religion, race, colour, age or gender, we [Vancouverites] all want to feel that we belong, and can make a contribution to our society. By developing connections with each other, we build trust, and this is what keeps our community strong and vital."

City Councillor Andrea Reimer, during her second visit to CityStudio, first brought attention to this document and its statistic. Just this week, Jennifer Bailey, the city's Water Quality & Conservation Program Manager, echoed this information. She recently attended a workshop on community-based social marketing where many presented case studies suggested how people embody a very strong need to belong. A large body of research has illustrated how social approval of our behaviour is generally quite important to people. In contemporary North American society, this need has grown more acute as people increase their use of computers and cars and further physically isolate themselves from their communities.

The ironic beauty of the first of The Long Table Series events, our contribution to CityStudio, is how we plan to turn another aspect of social isolation in Vancouver–the ever present rain–into something that can help to inspire the opposite. The event will include opportunities for the community to gather to meet, learn, and collaborate around practical projects for engaging directly with water quality and conservation. At the heart of this will be the rain barrel, an object that transcends scale with regards to its ability to impact water quality.

At the residential scale, rain barrels physically connect their users to the source, inspiring awareness about consumption. They defer use of a potable supply of water and grow gardens with stored rain. At the city and regional scale, they have the collective power to defer rainfall from the storm sewer system, stop combined sewage overflow events, and keep False Creek clean and healthy for the likes of spawning herring, feeding whales, and sporting humans.

Each aspect of the event will be framed in a way that demonstrates social approval of the desired behaviour. Rather than motivate people to act by offering a prize (such as a free rain barrel), which is temporary and is shown to not compel them to consider acting differently, we will connect people to each other in the name of health and healthy, bountiful local waterways. Suitably, the first of the series will be known as, Water Table: Collaborating to grow community with harvested rainwater. It will bring the high level concepts of what the city wants to become the greenest to our own backyards so that we all can become part of the solution.

Lessons From Canada's Most Trusted (LP&M #8)

A few days ago, I saw Dr. David Suzuki speak in person for the first time. “The Global Eco-crisis: Is it too late?” was the title of his sold-out talk, and that had me a bit worried. I was not worried of becoming overwhelmed as one might when they begin to assess the health of the ecosphere, but rather worried that I might not hear of any hope during a time in which I no longer wish to use the dire diatribe as a means to inspire change.

"Is it too late?" he asked. "It is late, very late," he replied "but it will never be too late for me." For the entire length of the speech, lasting well over an hour, he explained why the fight is still very real and how we should go about taking up arms. He spoke directly to the youth, reminding us that the future is simply a human construct and how it is this trait, the human trait to plan ahead, that makes our species unique. He decried it is imperative the youth become more politically involved because of how they have more of a future to lose.

Like the idea of a future, the economy is also a human construct. David Suzuki spoke of the things that are truly valued–things regarding family, experience, and the natural world. Such things, things we value more than any manufactured good such as the cherished kitchen cabinets his father made as a gift for David and his wife's first home, are viewed as worthless externalities with regard to the economy. Just as the nonexistence of the future could be argued, the same could be said about the economy. The laws of nature, on the contrary, are irrefutable and unchanging.

"In a city," he reminded us, "our perception of the world changes…[and] it's easy to think we are unique creatures where we only have to worry about our jobs…to buy the things we want. In cities, the highest priority is the economy." Furthermore, because money "doesn't represent anything but itself" and those in power only seem to be representing money and the corporate cause, the public must be those who take up the call in defense of natural systems, of biodiversity, and of healthy air, water, and soil.

Despite his ability to make eloquent connections between human culture and the natural world, his lecture did not present to me any new scientific findings or conclusions. His only hint at ecosystem services was a singular mention of the phrase, "…ecosystems and the services they can provide." However, all of this did not leave me at a loss. Rather, I stood up from my seventh row Chan Centre seat a bit taller during the generous ovation. If David Suzuki, Canada's most trusted person and famed environmentalist, was not telling me anything I didn't already know about our struggle to reverse the damage we have done to our planetary home, perhaps I have been brought up to speed. If ecosystem services were not quite mentioned, perhaps this way of thinking is indeed vanguard. I left feeling it was time to conclude my broad sweep of knowledge regarding this essential concern. It is time to focus, to dig deeper, and to develop my contribution.

Grey Whales In The Sewers (CityStudio #8)

How does one do it? How might someone psychologically connect the water a family flushes down its drains, or lets pass over its roof and directly into the storm sewer, with the grey whale? During May of last year, a mature grey whale visited False Creek presumably to feed on some of the herring that returned to spawn here a few years prior. False Creek, for most of its early history until halfway into this century, was an industrial hub for Vancouver. Sawmills, ports, and rail yards for the historic Canadian Northern Pacific Railway and the Great Northern Railway companies dominated this landscape and with heavy industry came heavy pollution. Such industry no longer resides here. Instead, its property has been replaced by glass towers, backdropped by the arboreal vastness to the north.

The grey whale, a keystone species, and the herring should proudly symbolize hope. Development is not innately nature-adverse, as the decisions we make in its name can easily be. We live in an era of mass extinction and rising consumption. It is hopeful to see creatures that we have kept at bay for so long in the name of progress, return to a place they called home long before we did.

Industry will inevitably return however. As all fossil fuels peak and continue to grow more expensive, the world will again look not so small and easy to traverse, and industry will return to the region. When this happens, what waterways will we allow it to populate? Does it matter? Water is all connected and water is patient. It will take its time flowing back towards the Pacific if it needs to, and with it, our pollution it will bring.

Before we forecast this era, it would be in the best interest of the grey whale and their fellow creatures if we begun to connect something with those who live in glass towers and beyond…All water is connected. Since the earliest life, Earth has been a blue planet. For hundreds of millions of years its water has been the same water, cycling over and over and over through the hydrologic cycle. Clean water means life for whales and fish and humans. Relearning this idea, the idea of all water being one water, is central to the goal of keeping water clean.

The iconic rain that is Vancouver's winter was transpired by the vast temperate rainforest to the north. Countless trees perspiring as they grow taller and thicker provides the moisture that becomes the snow that falls on our olympic slopes. This snowpack is what feeds our three protected watersheds–Capilano, Coquitlam and Seymour–which provide us the water we drink from our taps, wash our whites and darks, and sprinkle our prized lawns. This same rain, too warm for it to still be snow, also falls upon our roofs and runs off of our roads. Drains, both those in our homes and those in our streets try to capture all of this used water. Yet, much of it finds its way into the streams that run unseen beneath our feet, into False Creek, off to the Burrard Inlet, and out into the Pacific Ocean. Here the cycle begins again as clouds form and drift eastward, yet again, over Earth's largest body of water.

There are hurdles of scale, but all water can be visualized as one water. Imagining can lead to believing…believing to understanding…understanding to caring. Grey whales do not travel our sewers, but we can imagine them there, hunting for schools of tasty amphipods.

Lessons From a Zen Master (LP&M #7)

A week ago, Shunmyo Masuno, the head Zen priest of Kenko-ji temple in Japan, came to speak at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. At first, I found this location for the event to be a bit strange. Having not visited this building before, I anticipated something on par, with all its colorful facets of stimulation for children, as Science World. Yet, after reflecting upon his presentation, I understood the particular suitability of this choice.

The sun had set by the time I arrived, but the uplighting of the formal modernist structure gave it a royal prominence reminiscent of some holy mitra pretiosa. The modesty of a monastic life was certainly not embodied in its form. The space within which Shunmyo Masuno spoke however, was adorned by wood paneled walls and a low stage, and evoked a more appropriate simplicity. He opened with such sentiments as, "if the shape is perfect, there is no room for culture or beauty."

That night Shunmyo Masuno came to Vancouver to speak of his zen dryland garden creations and of "imperfect beauty beyond perfection." He spoke of how beauty is not fixed but rather changes over time. He shared the majority of his 17 projects and when it came time to answer questions, he stepped away from the podium and the comforts of his scripted presentation and proceeded to answer our queries with eloquence greater than our assumed mastery of a tongue barely second to him.

I left understanding the juxtaposition between his words and images and the forum in which they were delivered. The stark symmetry of the architecture offered only a proud and static snapshot of the era in which it was built. It was during an era that commonly embraced humankind's theoretical decoupling from the environment. The modernist ideal helped usher in technology as the new savior and a harbinger of utopia. Shunmyo Masuno reminded us of a truer wisdom.

"If the snake drinks the water, water becomes poison. If the cow drinks the water, water becomes milk." As designers, the work that runs through us has the power to either destroy our surroundings or nourish them. We are of nature, embedded and wholly reliant upon the health of the ecosphere. If we designers are our work as the Zen priest reminded us, our creations should be nothing but nourishing and biocentrically aligned.

Greenest City Junkie (CityStudio #7)

This week we were graced with the presence of Sean Pander, the Assistant Director for the Sustainability group with the City of Vancouver. We typically pair our guests to balance and broaden perspectives, but this guest did not need any accompaniment. The first ninety minutes passed without him missing a beat, thoroughly filling the air with inspiration and all things related to making this city live up to the expectations my classmates and l each have for it.

As part of the discussion, he gave each group pointed and inspired feedback regarding their ideas. When it came time to discuss our project, now the synthesis of two previously separate ideas, Mr. Pander struggled. His inability to visualize it had much to do with how we presented the idea to him. Each member in our group felt compelled to supplement the initial description. Such clarification would not have been needed if we had our elevator speech nailed and our spokesperson anointed beforehand.

In a way, however, our inability to deliver conciseness forced Mr. Pander to question us with more of a critical disposition. Discouragement could have been received as a result of his struggle with envisioning Water Table: A Long Table Event, but since four of the five members of my group are designers, we all welcomed it. After all, a strong critique most often leads to great leaps in the growth of ideas.

As with any public event, Mr. pander explained how the city learned to always "go to the public" rather than "expect the public to come to them." Furthermore, "water is not sexy," he stated and explained how it might be more difficult to rally people around that topic than it was around, say, food. Lastly, "behavior change never happens in information rich environments." Rather, people need need simplicity and to not be overburdened with data...and after they are behind the singular idea, they need to take the next step on their own soon after, or the idea has a strong chance of being lost on them.

My group took each comment and each criticism to heart, and we are now galvanized in a way that should drive us through to the end. I feel confident about where we are headed. Likewise, my confidence regarding where I might be headed in the year or so beyond this course is also growing. After our discussion with Sean Pander, a few of us had a moment to chat with him as he prepared to head home by bicycle to his young family for dinner. I thanked him for gracing us with his presence and as a response, he looked at me with recognition from one of the few times prior to this where I had met him and said, "you are becoming a bit of a Greenest City junkie, aren't you?" He knew me as the graduate student who worked with Jennifer Bailey and the topic of water conservation this summer as a Greenest City Scholar. Perhaps he will eventually also come to know me as the Vancouver water guru who helped bring about a sea change around the reverence to water. Maybe I will even figure out how to make it sexy.

Tackling Ecosystem Services, Part 3 (LP&M #6)

If global climate change is the game changer, the planning focus of cities needs to be building capacity for resilience. The adoption of ecosystem services (ES) by the planning departments of cities could foster an increase in biological diversity within their boundaries and, in turn, improve their capacity for resilience. Despite the constant existence of unknown unknowns, planning efforts would be more appropriately spent concerning the known unknowns–the fact that there are unknown thresholds with regards to natural systems.

There is a reciprocal relationship between ES and community resilience. ES are the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems. Resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a disturbance, or pulse of energy that threatens a departure from its current state (the state that humans have grown accustomed to), by resisting this force and rapidly recovering. To ensure resilience, ecosystems need to maintain a high level of ecological function. Likewise, the level of ES provided to humans is directly related to the level of ecological function that ecosystems maintain.

To demonstrate this relationship, one could take a look at Apis mellifera, the honey bee. Honey bees are commonly known to provide the regulating ES of pollination, an added $15 billion value ES in the United States alone. Pollination, is an integral component to the productivity of the urban food system. If colony collapse disorder was to spread further and wipe out the honey bee species, urban food systems would become fragile and less productive, having to rely upon the more ineffective pollination services from the likes of hummingbirds, butterflies, and wind. This fragility equates to lower resilience and a greater potential for susceptibility to crossing the unknown threshold of the ability for the natural system, pollination from the Apis mellifera, to ever provide its particular ES to the human race again.

While honey bees are just one species, planning efforts could benefit other species by planning with them principally in mind. Providing a diversity of bee forage spread throughout a region, while supporting natural beekeeping on a broad decentralized scale, would build resilience into the systems upon which boney bees need to thrive. In return, this would support an increase in resilience in the pollination services upon which agriculture depends to also thrive.

Water Table: A Long Table Event (CityStudio #6)

At the heart of the Rain Stops concept was the goal to connect everyday people to information regarding the Greenest City Goals. The information, supplemented by palpable demonstration projects, would be portrayed in a fashion to empower action. Therefore, it assumed: Information + Demonstration = Action.

Missing from this empowerment equation however, is one key ingredient: community. Phrases like "sea change" and "tipping point" and "paradigm shift" all come to mind when considering behavior change. And while an idea might originate in one person's mind, the spreading of that idea cannot take place without community. Community spreads, strengthens, and supports ideas. Where places such as bus stops exemplified insularity, places such as long gathering tables evoke the opposite. They inspire meeting, talking and learning. For this reason, I have agreed to join forces with another group at CityStudio working towards the installation of a Long Table in various public outdoor locations throughout Mt. Pleasant.

With our powers combined, WATER TABLE: Long Table Event No. 1 has been created. It aims to primarily do two things: 1. Connect people to people and 2. Connect people to ideas. This project takes its first step as an event to introduce a social artifact–the Long Table–to the neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant to test its feasibility as both a temporary metaphorical artifact and one with potential physicality and permanence.

One of the challenges of Vancouver becoming the greenest city is its ability to connect its residents to action. The goals are high level and often do not offer sufficient methods to connect Vancouverites to meaningful actions they can perform in their daily lives to contribute to achieving the goals' targets. Therefore, the programming of this table will be structured around each of the ten Greenest City Goals and its several targets.

WATER TABLE: Long Table Event No. 1 will focus upon the Clean Water goal as well establish visible connections to other goals, as was proposed by Rain Stops v.1.1. The event will have two visually inviting components to it to facilitate connecting people to people and people to ideas. The table event will bring people together, whereas the various water demonstrations will bring implementable ideas of water conservation to the people. Visualize a map of the sewers, a map of Vancouver's lost waterways, a demonstration raingarden, glass jars housing water specimens from various waterways of the city, an umbrella art installation, demonstration rainbarrels, a portable public drinking water fountain…it is due time programming of this event begins.

Salmon, An Ecosystem Service (LP&M #5)

Vancouver is situated amidst a temperate rainforest and thus receives more precipitation than most of the planet’s major cities. The water we drink comes from one of the three protected watersheds to our north. Our water comes from snowmelt. It comes from trees transpiring and rain falling. It is some of the purist freshwater in the world.

Because it rains for nearly 9 months each year, we can easily fall for the myth of infinite water. However, the other 3 months experience drought…while all 12 months face greater uncertainty each year as global climate change takes hold. Yet, concerning ourselves with how much we use is just as important with knowing how we use it. Because Vancouver is covered mostly by impervious surfaces, the toxics pollutants left by our vehicles and materials we use to build things is delivered by runoff that finds its way into the streams and sewers that run beneath our feet, into False Creek, off to the Burrard Inlet, and out into the Pacific Ocean.

The pollution we leave today has a direct affect upon the spawning salmon of tomorrow. Over 190 species of plants and animals, from algae to humans to whales, depend on the livelihood of salmon. For salmon to thrive, these creatures need clean water in both freshwater streams to spawn and ocean depths to grow into adults.

By taking a look at salmon through the lens of a cascade diagram, we can quickly surmise that the upper two tiers of the diagram consist of the natural features and ecological functions of the clean water habitat(s) of the salmon. The lower two tiers, those that reflect directly the benefits to humans–ecosystem services and the benefits derived from them–are the salmon.

Not only this, salmon can fall into each of the four categories of ecosystem services, as outlined by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. They are a provisioning service in the form of a food source. As a third-tier carnivore, salmon can act as a regulating service in the form of biological control. They provide cultural services regarding spiritual and religious views, educational value, recreational and ecotourism value, and a sense of place to the Cascadia region. Lastly, they can be seen as a supporting service through their stature as a keystone species and their ability to help provision the region's temperate rainforest habitat.

Salmon therefore are an ecosystem service. In order for this to remain, keeping our waterways clean must be a priority for sustainable development. Clean water means life for both salmon and humans.

20x20, PechaKucha (CityStudio #5)

Last week we hosted the first ever CityStudio PechaKucha event. If we were able to successfully impose purity upon our presenting guests, everyone present would have witnessed 20 images total, each for 20 seconds, from each of our 9 partner course presenters. Instead, some presented none, while others yet: videos. The idea of PechaKucha was invented by two architects in Tokyo. Architects, very much like the designers who have adopted this presentation format worldwide, like to package things particularly prettily. Not long into our night, it was made clear that other ways of thinking were present – ways that package themselves differently (or not at all).

As the presentations wound to a close, we heard various takes on words of wisdom from each of our honored guests. They ranged from praise for our abilities to push the boundaries in such a short amount of time…to warnings of our need to know policy for any idea to work…to various accolades shared between people who have helped to make CityStudio a reality. I watched. I listened. I took pictures, mostly, as a volunteer photographer for the evening, and throughout it all, I thought back to my idea of Rain Stops. It was no longer sitting right with me.

As a graduate student with an agenda, it is often easy to lose sight of those who came before you and those running in stride with you. It would be ideal to constantly be engaged with dialogue and exchange as we are each Thursday evening at CityStudio, but reality often finds me spending most of my time in my own head. Bus stops embody a physical manifestation of this insularity. We have all experienced the lack of interaction with others in such public spaces. Looking forward or at one's mobile while minding business only your own is easy. Interacting with others takes effort…working with others also takes effort. How, then, might this project become stronger by working with others? What have others started that I might be able to contribute to with my ideas?

I am reminded of a lesson taught to me when I was a fourth year undergrad. I was studying industrial design at the Rochester Institute of Technology and was an officer for the student chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Our regional conference that year was at the Rhode Island School of Design where Eva Zeisel was our keynote speaker. (She is now 104 years old and still designing.) One of the first things she spoke of was regarding the title of the IDSA professional publication: Innovation. "Innovation," she warned, "is defined as creating something entirely new out of nothing. Such a thing is impossible and trying to achieve it is naive." Instead, "everything we make comes from somewhere," she shared. By recognizing this, we revere the past and all the essential thought and work that led to the ideas of the present.

For Rain Stops to sit right with me, I need to better understand that which has come before me and that which I am working alongside with. There are people and groups in this city who care deeply about water. Whatever grows out of my original idea will be enriched by working with others. If there was one lesson to be gleaned from the PechaKucha event, it is that there are many people working towards the singular (sometimes elusive) goal of sustainability and that by working together, we can go further, faster.

Tackling Ecosystem Services, Part 2 (LP&M #4)

We know that nature is a complex adaptive system. Systems theory has taught us that with such systems, the relationships between its parts are nonlinear, often nested, and have unknown thresholds. Any forces acting upon a complex adaptive system can interrupt its processes, have its ecological threshold surpassed, and deliver it into a new paradigm altogether.

Enhancing or maintaining biological diversity is the best we can do to address the potentially dire case of a surpassed ecological threshold. Because they can only be identified once they are surpassed, the key to increasing a city's resilience and making it more sustainable is to reduce its demands and strain upon the biological diversity (and subsequent ecosystem services it supports) within its geographical limits while recognizing and drawing upon its regional assets. This is about relocalization. This is about shifting the contemporary model for quality of life to one that embraces one planet living and frugality over consumption.

Despite the wholly anthropocentric definition of ecosystem services (ES), they currently offer the greatest hope to raising the stature of nature in our current economic paradigm. If ES can grow as a model to drive sustainable development, while they grow with richness in definition and understanding, biological diversity could be maintained and enhanced. If not for its rapidly changing climate, such an approach might maintain this planet's ecological thresholds within their current paradigms.

Global climate change is still the game changer. We could succeed at all of this–using ES to maintain biological diversity to, in turn, achieve resilient cities–and yet, a changing climate could tip any number of ecological thresholds into paradigms unfit for human existence. How, then, might ES be used to help human settlements transition into this era of great uncertainty? What might they teach us about transitioning into a post-fossil fuel world? Because of global climate change, ecosystem services must address mitigation and transition.

Rain Stops v.1.1 (CityStudio #4)

By now, the idea of Rain Stops has had a full week to, well, soak in. Audits were made by classmates, professors, and friends and all have helped to remove the idea from any vacuum. In the case of this idea, version 1.0, I was warned that, as a designer, I might gravitate immediately to a form before working out the idea. And because this idea is to be a demonstration project, a live research lab, form should be secondary. I mulled this over, but still feel a bus stop is the most appropriate form.

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.

Lessons in Central Park (LP&M #3)

As one who worked as a professional designer for the decade between this and my last university experience, I have the luxury, and the burden, of a first-hand understanding of the disconnects between theory and professional practice. In my second reflection, titled "Adaptive Management," I spoke of one of the largest challenges facing its adoption. Adaptive Management (AM) can work if projects receive enough funding to implement programs that track and help anticipate the inevitable variabilities that arise with complex adaptive systems.

One of the strengths of this course is its application of the ideas presented in class to the 2010 Surrey Bend Regional Park Management Plan. This plan is for an ecologically sensitive 348 hectare site on the Fraser River to the southeast of Vancouver. Upon re-reviewing the 116-page plan, I came across a bit of inspiration that could provide an insight into addressing costs associated with AM practices. In the conclusion of the section titled, "Protecting Natural Area Integrity," recommendations were made to implement a research and monitoring program to study the site, especially its hydrology and bog ecosystem, as well as providing phasing and adaptive management strategies "to test and observe the environmental impacts of trail and facility development and to adjust the program as necessary" (P. 35). Such recommendations could be costly to implement if it is a sub-consultant who is to perform the work. However, I am instead reminded of the idea of parks conservancies, specially Central Park Conservancy, and the more affordable and creative model they provide.

Central Park Conservancy was established in 1980 to return Central Park to its original Olmstedian splendor from its decline and peak of squalor in the 1970s. The new model, as public-private partnership, enabled the organization to raise over 70% of the funds needed to restore the park from private sources. Currently it is seen as the model for sustaining parks and provides fundraising and management advice to anyone seeking assistance with parks throughout the world.

In the case of Surrey Bend Regional Park, a conservancy could be established as part of its plan (the original agreement between New York City and the Central Park Conservancy was for 18 years, and was reaffirmed for another 8 years in 2006) as a means to fund the monitoring and research programs needed to implement adaptive management of the site. A park conservancy largely runs as volunteer organization with a board of directors and a few staff. Instead of hiring sub-consultants to provide the work needed for monitoring and maintaining the park, volunteers could perform a large percentage of the work once programs are established.

In our current economic climate, where funding streams continue to constrict, it might become a best practice to adopt the time-tested practice of asking for help in new and creative ways. It might be in the best interest of those working out the details of the 2010 Surrey Bend Regional Park Management Plan to consider the establishment of a Surrey Bend Regional Park Conservancy to help ensure the park is born with sustainable footing. 

Rain Stops (CityStudio #3)

Last night I decided to leave enough time to walk to meet friends for dinner rather than rush and hop on the bicycle as I typically do. I am wholly aware of the healthfulness of downtime, but it never seems to win the day for me as much as it should. I am glad I gave it a rare priority last night.

As I strolled through the alleyways of Mt. Pleasant and across the vast lawn of Robson park, I watched my breath for the first time this year. I also smelled the damp earth underfoot and could not help being brought back to the days of field sports, under lights, as a young male. It wasn't raining as it had been these past few weeks. Winter seems anxious to arrive early this year.

Halfway to some southern Indian cuisine and the epicenter that is Broadway and Main, a thought I had this summer while researching water conservation for the city resurfaced. I asked myself: "What is an implementable project that can provide a teaching opportunity to the public, a potential for relevant data collection, and a spreading of awareness throughout the Vancouver community regarding the ten Greenest City goals?" And not long after, thoughts of bus stops revisited my mind.

So here's the pitch…I would choose three bus stops in Mt. Pleasant that would reflect as diverse a sampling of the local demographic as possible. I would transform each of these shelters into rainwater harvesting (RWH) stations by designing a means to capture its roofwater into a transparent cistern. The overflows for each bus stop would then feed into a raingarden planted with flowering plants for bee forage or with berry producing shrubs for human forage. 

The key would be to create a design that involved, in some way, each of the ten goals. I aim to tell the story of how water impacts or is impacted by all that we do and aspire to do, especially these ten altruistic goals. I cannot think of a better location to tell this story than in Rain City.

The shelters would be painted a blue-grey-green shade to match the iconic color of lakes fed by glacial melt. The cisterns would be transparent so that those waiting at the stop can watch the falling volume grow before their eyes. (Just 1mm of rainfall falling upon on a roof surface measuring 1 square meter in area yields 1 litre of harvested water. Vancouver receives about 1,155mm of precipitation annually.) The water captured would have its quality lab tested to help support harvested rainwater as a viable source to offset our city's potable water use and spread practices of conservation. The riders would be interviewed prior to the bus stop retrofits and after to try and understand behavior change and the assumed power of design.

Bus stops are owned and controlled by Translink, the transportation partner with the city. Rainwater, as soon as it hits any surface, is under the jurisdiction of the city. Of my concluding recommendations made to the Water Design branch this summer regarding RWH, I recommended they lead by example by implementing several visible RWH projects, introduce RWH incrementally, and supplement water conservation efforts with green infrastructure. This idea could achieve all three.

Adaptive (Ecosystem) Management (LP&M #2)

The theory/practice dialectic strikes again. In our second four hour class, we spoke of a need for better management throughout all aspects of professional practice. The most relative precedent for this exists and is known as Adaptive Management (AM), or Adaptive Resource Management. Adaptive Ecosystem Management is the term used by our guest lecturer, ecologist Dr. Glenn Brown.

Regarding how the natural world has historically been “managed” there is only room for improvement. To date, we have yet to break from from a Newtonian Mechanics mode of thought regarding our relationship with natural resources and systems. Nature is not a mechanical system. As the findings from Buzz Holling, the founder of AM and the systems theory of Panarchy, have taught us, nature is a complex adaptive system. With such systems, the relationships between its parts are nonlinear, often nested, and have unknown thresholds. Any forces acting upon such systems can interrupt a system we have grown accustomed to and throw it into a new paradigm altogether. A common example used to explain this phenomenon is the North Atlantic Cod fisheries crash of 1992.

The primary difference between management practices of old and those of the Adaptive model is simple. AM requires constant modeling and checks of questions and assumptions. Because nature is dynamic and a complex adaptive system, and because we are of that system and not separate from it, we cannot apply mechanical thinking to it. When we do, fisheries can crash. When we do, recessions, like the one the globe has been experiencing since 2008, can hit hard. Yes, economies are complex adaptive systems as well.

Professional practice makes its profit from standardization. AM aims to account for the inevitable variabilities that arise with complex adaptive systems and recognize gaps in knowledge before they irreversibly impact the system. For professional practice to adopt AM as its management model, projects will require increases in funding. Standardization will be limited with any projects working directly with complex adaptive systems such as environment or economy. Approaches cannot remain the same from project to project. Furthermore, with AM, approaches should expect to shift several times within singular projects. Humans are capable of this approach. However, the elephant in the room–the bottom line–currently keeps tightening its belt.

Taking Back the Land (CityStudio #2)

I had the privilege to speak about water with Tilo Driessen, a planner with the Vancouver Park Board, after our dialogue session about creating access to open space. Water, by many accounts, has an impact on each of the Greenest City Goals. And while I am patient and aim to learn as much as I can from the cohort to inform my ways of thinking and understanding the challenges and their potential interventions, water will be my focus throughout my work with CityStudio. Water, specifically water conservation as it relates to Goal 8 of the Greenest City goals, was my research focus with the city during my summer employment with them. Water, specifically how it can be embraced by design intervention and used to create healthier, more resilient communities, will be the focus of my eventual thesis. 

Concerning our first goal focus PLAY, when asked, Mr. Driessen explained that Vancouver’s parks currently embody a negative role with water. Due to their consumptive practices, including provisions for summertime irrigation and potable water supply for water features such as fountains and lakes, parks are not particularly seen as positive. They are not equally as positive with their consumptive practices as they are with their abilities to provide amenities benefiting health and healing for the public. How, then, can we expect people to change behavior and adopt water conservation practices if the places we create to help them find respite through the experience of nature practice over-consumptive habits?

Vancouver, like every city, could increase its greening efforts throughout its underutilized and forgotten pockets. Anywhere there is soil, or could receive soil, should also receive plants. We could expound upon this and take back some of the land from cars and decommission roads. Turn double-lanes into single lanes; turn single lanes into multi-modal non-automobile pathways; turn verges and bumpouts into gardens; turn laneways into wildlife habitat and pedestrian “escape routes” to the larger network of city park space. Approximately 30% of Vancouver’s landmass is covered by roads. If Shanghai uses 7.4% of their entire landmass for roads…New York City: 22%…Paris: 25%…Vancouver should be able to work with less and do more with greenspace. 

Before increasing greening efforts, or even while increasing its greening efforts, there is a fantastic opportunity to improve upon Vancouver’s existing green open spaces. This opportunity is through water. Rainwater harvesting, raingardens, integrated stormwater features––any of such elements could be used to turn the negative aspect of our parks into something positive. Such a design intervention would teach creative water use, habitat restoration, and above all, a contagious conservation ethos. 

During the walk the line exercise last week, I learned much more about my neighborhood, Mt. Pleasant. Judging by the ways marginalized spaces were used for growing food, the slogans of bumper stickers on cars, the subject of community event posters on telephone poles, the ways by which the traffic circle islands were planted…all of this, as I was able to more intimately witness during my walk, solidified my belief that this neighborhood is rife with folks ready to aid with the implementation of any these ideas. The key to success will be community engagement. I still have much to learn about this art form.

Tackling Ecosystem Services, Part 1 (LP&M #1)

This course, taught by my advisor, Patrick Mooney, is going to be challenging. I am not speaking of the work load, but specifically to the challenge for me to overcome my preconceptions about the concept of ecosystem services. To help frame the importance of ecosystems for human well-being within the current economic paradigm, the United Nations pulled together 1,360 scientists from around the world in 2001 and published the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment in 2010.  Ecosystem services–the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems–grew from this assessment.

If the goal of this course, the UBC Landscape Architecture program, and ultimately the entire profession is to improve upon the status quo and elevate the profession to a new paradigm in which “doing the least bad” to the environment with design becomes “improving the environment” to a status healthier and more biodiverse than currently realized, taking must be replaced by giving. The very word “services” in the context of ecosystems and the natural world implies an absolute anthropocentrism. It infers taking from the land, rather than giving back to it.

I understand that this reframing is wholly intentional and means to give greater clout to nature in the eyes of those who consciously despoil it for profit, but I fear our time requires a more drastic action. Our time pleads for a shift away from the measure of the natural world in terms of quantifiable resources towards an embrace of biocentrism. We know that we have surpassed Earth’s carrying capacity. Our race’s population boom, thanks exclusively to the resource of cheap and abundant stores of ancient sunlight, has surpassed a sustainable threshold of resource consumption. Those concerned with the unsustainability of this, and with developing a voice for nature, have not yet found a way to slow this runaway train and have now decided to meet the opponent on the same playing field.

I will give this course my undivided, but I do so with a dose of skepticism about trying, yet again, to work within our fatally flawed consumerist paradigm. Perhaps ecosystem services might help begin building a bridge to a better world. I aim to at least hear its argument as I know it will teach me something. Hopefully that something is galvanized hope.

Redefining Quality of Life (CityStudio #1)

In just nine years, Vancouver hopes to be the “Greenest City” on the planet. It plans to get there by addressing ten goals–Green Economy…Climate Leadership…Green Buildings…Green Transportation…Zero Waste…Access to Nature…Lighter Footprint…Clean Water…Clean Air…Local Food–by developing strategies informed by its citizens and outlined by the 2011 Greenest City Action Plan. Becoming the “greenest” is a political goal. It is a marketing campaign. Therefore, one can understand, even expect, a level of skepticism and reluctance from the public throughout the process of getting us to 2020 in the shape we hope to. We are bombarded with marketing campaigns daily that, as most are aware, typically weigh sales over health and happiness. Why, then, believe another?

If asked, the general public would welcome any of the ten goals by title. However, engagement beyond this can often butt up against the measure of quality of life that most in North America enjoy. After all, a policy action that grew from the Clean Water goal did regulate how often property owners can water their lawns.

To understand how a collective society such as Canada could arrive at a point where developing and implementing such a green action plan for even its healthiest of cities is crucial, it is important to understand how contemporary quality of life is measured. It turns out that the current measure can be attributed largely to the work of Edward Bernays, the nephew of Dr. Sigmund Freud. In 1928, Bernays wrote Propaganda, in which he argued for the importance of manipulating public opinion within a democratic society in stating:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

After the industrial revolution gave rise to machines that supplemented workers to produce all the goods needed within a less amount of time necessary to keep laborers busy for an entire work year, marketers such as Bernays himself helped to rethink the model for consumerism as not a model for a reduction in working hours (and an increase in leisure time) but as a rise in productivity so that more goods could be consumed. Today more than ever, the North American culture, both domestic and exported, is steeped in a subjective attachment to consumerism. 

Most of us are beyond busy, trying to keep up with the race to finding wealth to afford us relaxation. Most of us are growing more immune to marketing campaigns and yet, find it hard to imagine the means to escape the consumerist paradigm in which we live. Despite a rise in a public adoption of the phrase "sustainable development," society still remain a helpless glutton and appears unable to change, perhaps until a redefinition of quality of life is forced upon it. Perhaps preemptively working out this definition is the key to Vancouver realizing its coveted green celebrity.