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.