False Creek Flats presenting at UBC Poster Showcase on March 31st, 2014.

Working on this project our group learnt the importance of communication in ongoing projects.  The City of Vancouver stressed the importance of meeting and communicating in order to ensure both sides of the partnership were on the same page.

We found that splitting up the work and allowing group members to become “specialized” on certain topics was an effective way of maximizing the amount of ideas pursued and research done.  In the end we came together to create a finished product that benefitted from the different perspectives that went into creating it.

 

City Studio’s Hubbub Project Showcase Event at City Hall

Our biggest contribution to the community was bringing in fresh, unique ideas for the area’s improvement. The current area is industrial, unkempt, and is tagged as the greenest tech area to work in. Some of our sustainable ideas, including swales, solar panel vehicle charging stations, and recycled sidewalks are in direct correspondence to the city’s Greenest City 2020 and Transportation 2040 action plans. We are confident that these green ideas are implementable and will contribute to the transformation of the False Creek Flats area into a “Green Enterprise Zone”.

Overall, we had a very valuable experience working on this CBEL project, together with City Studio and City of Vancouver. Knowing that we, as students, can contribute to the community directly inspires us to work harder and perceive problems from different points of view, and eventually strive to make the world a better place.

The goal of our project was to provide unique ideas to the City of Vancouver that will be implemented over the next 10-20 years in the False Creek area.  Due to the lengthy timeline of our project we are not able to reflect on the physical implementation of our ideas yet, however or contact at the City of Vancouver, Peter Cohen, was very happy with our finished product.  Peter was pleased with the ideas we have suggested and now it is up to him and his project team to decide on which ideas to implement in the area. We thought this project to be a success judging from Peter Cohen’s reaction to our poster and we look forward to following the progress of the False Creek area in the future.

During the course of our project we had several aspects to work out, mostly with regards to communication and distributing tasks among members. Overall we felt that our approach gave us a reasonably good deliverable and we all worked to the best of our abilities.

As it shows, our team learned several aspects of becoming professionally developed because we learned the process in creating a solution to a given problem. It was a long process creating clear instructions to each other and making sure we didn’t miss any minor details took a lot more time than we had initially thought. We felt that managing our time and having a better line of communication may have made the entire project easier but we did it to the best of our ability under the given circumstances.

What went very well was the effort that each member provided to the project. When it was necessary for our members to complete a certain task, we really pulled through to finish our parts as a team effort. It was also a great benefit to have such supporting individuals to guide us along our project, specifically Peter Cohen, transportation engineer for the city of Vancouver, Dr. Susan Nesbit, Professor for our CBEL project, and Lena, the coordinator and our client contact from CityStudio.

These are the ideas that we are proposing to the City of Vancouver:

1. Street Lights – White LED street lights

• Improves public safety and visibility for all road users
• 40% electricity savings and decreases maintenance cost
• LED lights are more directional that reduces light pollution

2. Solar Panels – Solar powered electric vehicle charging station

• Reduces carbon emissions by supporting low-carbon emission and electric vehicles
• Initial cost will be accommodated by its long term benefits and parking fees
• Propel Vancouver towards a carbon-neutral city

3. Swales – Bio-filter for storm water runoff

• Swales are a sustainable and alternative to traditional storm drains
• Limit harmful effects on the environment and helps with Vancouver’s goal of being the greenest city in the world by 2020
• Easily installed and cheaper to maintain than traditional storm drains

 4. Recycled Sidewalks

• Rubber sidewalks have longer life cycles than concrete sidewalks
• Rubber does not crack from root growth of nearby trees
• Rubber sidewalks lower maintenance and replacement costs

“CityStudio Vancouver is an energetic hub of learning and leadership where students design and implement Greenest City 2020 solutions.”

CityStudio has engaged hundreds of students through the unique inter-institutional campus-city collaboration (C3) to develop projects and research related to urban sustainability that may help the city where they have identified the most need. The Campus City Collaborative (C3) – a collaborative partnership between the City of Vancouver (‘the City’) and six Vancouver post secondary institutions, including The University of British Columbia. CityStudio integrates learning with current projects in the City of Vancouver and in local communities.

CLIENT

For this CBEL project, our client is the City of Vancouver Strategic Transportation department. Two of the city’s strategic action plans, including the Greenest City 2020 and Transportation 2040, both aim to transform Vancouver into world’s greenest city with a focus of prioritizing and promoting foot, bike and mass transit, as well as decrease motor traffic in the city. Key targets for the city by 2040 is to have the majority (2/3) of trips made on foot, bike and transit, to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels and to have the cleanest air of any major city in the world.

PROJECT GOAL

Our project goal is to propose improvement to the False Creek Flats area in response to the City of Vancouver’s 30 year plan of transforming the area into a “green enterprise zone” where thousands of people and industries will work and operate. The city’s goal is to tag the False Creek Flats area as foot and bike accessible industrial land that will support the downtown core and as a greenest tech area in the world to work.

CONSTRAINTS

Our group is aware that in every project, there will be several negotiable and non-negotiable constraints that we should consider. In False Creek Flats Improvement Plan, we have to keep in mind that we are not allowed to remove any railway lines, including the Burrard Inlet, or build tunnels underground. In addition to that, any changes that may affect the Produce Row and Cottonwood Gardens will not be approved due to their cultural significance to this area. City of Vancouver is determined to maintain False Creek Flats area as an industrial area for access to downtown. An idea of building a bike overpass near the northeast corner has been proposed and will be opened to discussion with our client.

STRATEGIES

To achieve our project goal, we will adopt a timeline methodology as we progress. First, we will conduct a team site visit to gather information and experience the area. We will then conduct a baseline assessment with Mr.Peter Cohen, our contact from the City of Vancouver, to discuss areas of improvement that are of interest to our team and seek approval from Mr. Cohen. After obtaining key areas to work on, our team will perform option development. We will research on new technology that will improve the sustainability of the area, as well as case studies from other cities that may be used here in Vancouver. Finally, we will present our solution to the identified areas of improvement on a poster and present the poster in UBC as well as City Studio’s April 1st networking and show off event.