Daniel Pearl attended the Canadian Green Building Council's third national conference last June 12 & 13 in Vancouver, where 1300 green building professionals gathered. Here is a summary of his presentation :

TITLE : STRETCHING CURRENT PRACTICE:

Reviving Dormant Suburban Eco-tones While Compacting and Rejuvenating Existing Neighborhoods.
 

CURRENT CONTEXT

A recent symposium at MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology) asked the following question: “What are the opportunities facing the modern city in a period of global climate change and resource depletion?” Existing North American cities not only bear witness to aging physical infrastructure - built way beyond our planet’s ecological footprint limitations but even more challenging, they continue to anchor active layers that established a generation’s social infrastructure. One of the most primed opportunities for extensively renewing our built fabric - both infrastructure and quality of life via “greening and densifying”, is in our “diffused suburbs” mostly built in the 1950’s and 60’s, and their neighboring fringe industrial belts straddling the inner city-cores.
 

HOPEFUL PRACTICE
 

A new neighborhood in Montréal is being carefully planned to make a 70% ecological footprint reduction practical and convenient for its residents to achieve while improving quality of daily life. The goal is simple. This project envisions a neighborhood that strengthens community, provides a healthier quality of life, is economically viable and restores nature to live within the limits of our finite resources. It is being designed for Zero Carbon and Zero Waste by 2020, using design principles of walkability, mixed use, connectivity, compactness, regeneration and community. Stretching current practice will heavily depend on transforming how communities partner with their developers, where ethical city building and profitable rehabilitation will need to co-exist.