Greenst City 2020 Action Plan

Canada, Vancouver is ranked one in Canada and second overall in an assessment of North American cities for being the greenest city. Vancouver was thus tasked with launching an ambitious programme full of activities, initiatives, and campaigns in order to engage with its citizens, businesses, and international tourists to demonstrate how Vancouver is a green city. Over 90 percent of its power is from renewable sources. Moreover, it has been a leader in hydroelectric power. Currently, the city is in the process of following the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan project. The object of this plan is to “set the course toward realizing a healthy, prosperous, and resilient future for [their] city” (2012, Greenest City). “It calls on [them] to rise to

The target of this goal is to require all buildings constructed from 2020 onward to be carbon neutral in operations and reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in existing building by 20% over 2007 levels (2012, Greenest City). Comparing to the previous years, the city has already started seeing some positive progress results. Data shows that between 2007 and 2014, over the period when green building policies began to take effect, the greenhouse gas emissions per square meter of newly built buildings decreased by 30% (2017, City of Vancouver). Also, each building is built with a passive design. “Passive design is based on the simple principle that a thoughtfully designed, a better-insulated building can reduce or even eliminate the necessity and costs associated with heating and cooling while staying comfortable for occupants year-round” (2017, City of Vancouver). Additionally, the first passive house in Vancouver, completed in early 2016, had heating bills below $20 a month in its first few months of occupancy for a family of four in the middle of winter (2012, Greenest City). Furthermore, the green building provides several benefits to the local economy. Some benefits include lower operating costs, higher overall return on investment, higher occupancy rates, higher rental rates, and higher building value at a point of scale (n.d., Canada Green Building). This clearly shows that

The target is to “increase city-wide and neighborhood food assets by a minimum of 50% over 2010 levels” (2017, Greenest City). To simply put, the government wants to grow more food in the city and make local food available to their communities. That way, the city can create a stronger local food system that reduces the use of fossil fuels transportations as well as protecting food-producing lands and related biodiversity. So far, there is a 42% increase in the total number of neighborhood food assets from 2010 to 2016 (2012, City of Vancouver). Based on this statistics, the city is more likely to raise another 8% and meet their goal within the next two years. Along the way, there were some successful initiatives that brought the city closer to reaching the local food goal from 2014 and 2015. One of them is providing free fruits to community gardens in parks, city, schools, and private properties. According to the city of Vancouver, “In 2014, the TreeKeepers Program distributed 2,300 fruit trees, growing Vancouver’s overall urban orchard one household at a time”. Another success is building new food gardens at city parks in 2014 for the communities to receive more local foods. In general, by growing local foods within the city, the city will have a stronger local food system while reducing fossil fuels used to transport foods from other places internationally. Moreover, local food