C o n f e r e n c e__P r o g r a m

VIDEO RECORDINGS

 

Conference Themes/Tracks

> Whole-City Change: Sustainability and Climate Change Imperatives

> Market Drivers for Sustainability

> Sustainable Practice and Projects (Development, Design, Infrastructure)

> How Do Places and Institutions Shift, Change and Learn?

Wednesday, May 21 3:00-7:00pm Early Registration: Pick up your name tag, program and delegate package at early registration at the Laurel Point Inn. Come and join your colleagues for refreshments in a relaxed atmosphere, share your projects at the "Sustainability Internet Café" and miss the "registration rush" on Thursday morning. Conference starts promptly at 8:30 am. Laurel Point Inn (Marble Lobby), 680 Montreal St. 5:30-7:30pm Hosted Reception sponsored by Chard Development Ltd., featuring "An Evening with Robert Liberty." You won’t want to miss this opportunity for candid, constructive conversation with one of the Northwest’s most experienced and thoughtful political practitioners. Laurel Point Inn (Terrace Room), 680 Montreal St.

 

Thursday, May 22
7:00 am - 8:30 am	On-site registration and morning coffee, Marble Lobby, Laurel Point Inn
8:30 am - 12:30 pm	Gene Miller, Center for Urban Innovation Deborah Curran, Deborah Curran and Company; Conference Moderator Welcome and Introduction of Conference Themes
	Bruce Sampson, Former VP Sustainability, BC Hydro; Chair, International Center for Sustainable Cities (ICSC) Business Not As Usual: Climate Change and the Need For Step Change
	Robert Liberty, Metro Councilor, Portland Metropolitan Region; former Executive Director, 1000 Friends of Oregon Thomas Osdoba, Director, Sustainable Economic Development, City of Portland Progress Report from the Original Green City
	Johnny Carline, Chief Administrative Officer, MetroVancouver Sustainability as a Complete Platform for City and Regional Policy
	Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress An Ecological View of the Present Moment
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm	Luncheon Jennie Moore, Director, Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship, School of Construction and the Environment, BCIT Sustainability ‘At the Margins’…or Whole-City Change?
	Special Presentation: Honouring the BC Real Estate Foundation
	Luncheon Speaker: Doug Stout, VP Marketing and Business Development, Terasen Gas Inc. Energy Sources, Energy Supply Peaks...and Where Do We Go From Here?
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm	Facilitated workshops and salons Risk-Taking Bureaucracies Thought Leaders: Robert Liberty, Johnnie Carline In the face of current imperatives, is it possible to more fully release the innovation capacities within the bureaucracy and also to better align the bureaucracy and the experimenting cultures within the community and industry? What will allow our towns, cities, regions to say ‘yes’ to experiments and initiatives that ‘break the rules?’ What can we do about structural obstacles that impede the ability of local governments to act on sustainable development? Transforming local government bureaucracy into a responsive and adaptive organizational model is essential for dealing with climate change and related ecosystem challenges. Conversations with Ronald Wright Thought Leader: Ronald Wright An opportunity to discuss with Ronald Wright the historical and cultural qualities, conditions and contradictions that make it possible for the human community to produce such stress on natural systems; and a chance to sharpen your thought about workable and powerful strategies that might change cultural messaging and lead to different and more beneficial outcomes. Vegetation & the Water Cycle in Sustainable Cities Practice Leaders: Lise Townsend, Daniel Hegg, Patrick Lucey and Val Schaefer Vegetation is an important part of an integrated approach to urban design, an approach that is urgently needed in the face of converging global crises (e.g. peak oil, climate change and water scarcity). We show how vegetation functions to deliver critical ecosystem services relevant to urban sustainability, and why this matters for the bottom line. On-the-ground examples are used to illustrate functions related to water and energy flows, as a basis for group discussion about strategies for creating cities that function like forests. Sustainability Leadership Thought Leaders: David Butterfield, Henry S. Miller How do sustainability leaders emerge out of and drive political, organizational, civic, and business environments? What is it that creates susceptibility in some leaders, while others seem never to have the ‘aha!’ moment? Authentic leader commitment to the sustainability agenda clearly galvanizes organizational and public response and accelerates change. How can we better leverage and develop leadership? In the wide-ranging context of sustainable urban development, can we lead more leaders toward authentic engagement with the sustainability agenda? This workshop proposes that if leaders in business and civic life don’t get it, their organizations won’t; and that this crucially frustrates the spread of sustainability culture and practice and reduces organizational poise at a time of great change. Cities and the Climate Action Agenda Practice Leaders: Tom Osdoba, Shannon Parry, Gayle Prest Many urban and regional jurisdictions across North America (with active provincial or state support in rare instances) are engaged in full-on climate action programs. What’s working? Are the goals and timelines aggressive enough? Which programs are gaining traction and making a difference? Are quantitative targets and milestones being met? Are models transferable? What are the obstacles to take-up and fuller engagement? Cities and the Future of Energy Thought Leaders: Graeme Bethell, Chris Corps Cities drink energy. Buildings, construction practices, roads and mobility systems, infrastructure, water and waste systems, land use, ecosystem management are the elements and processes that define a city’s energy footprint. Energy has been a modest line item on most urban budgets, but that is changing very quickly because of rising energy costs, concerns about our energy future, the energy consumption/climate change equation, and a growing movement toward whole-cost accounting that acknowledges the cost of impacts on natural systems. This workshop raises the question of whether cities, towns and urban regions understand and are poised for the possibility of significant and sudden shifts in the energy future, and whether urban planning is factoring in the energy future as a determinant in urban systems.
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Hosted Reception for all conference attendees, sponsored by Trust for Sustainable Development, at Shoal Point (David and Norma Butterfield hosts)

Friday, May 23
7:30 am - 8:30 am	On-site registration and morning coffee, Marble Lobby, Laurel Point Inn
8:30 am - 12:30 pm	Jon Fink, Director Global Institute of Sustainability and University Sustainability Chief, Arizona State University, Phoenix Sustainability: Today’s Education Imperative
	Peter Ladner, Councilor, City of Vancouver; Vice-Chair, MetroVancouver Moving Toward the Natural City
	Shannon Parry, Sustainable City Program Coordinator, City of Santa Monica Santa Monica: A Champion for Whole-City Change
	Graeme Bethell, General Manager, Corix Sustainability From Under the Ground Up
	Henry S. Miller, CEO, Henry S. Miller Partners David Butterfield, President, Trust for Sustainable Development The McAllen, Texas Charrette: Sustainable Masterplanning for the Heart of a City
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm	Luncheon Chris Corps, President, Asset Strategics; Past President, RICS Canada Patrick Lucey, President, Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting Cash Flow From the Sewage Stream: Whole-System Approaches that Make Money For Cities
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm	Facilitated workshops and salons Crafting Sustainability Policy to Survive Politics Thought Leaders: Peter Ladner, Sadhu Johnston, Robert Liberty If politics practices the art of bending without breaking, how do political leaders—even those who have a passion for the urban sustainability agenda— deal with the concern of those interests who argue that sustainability is a risk to the economy, or community stability, or lifestyle preferences? At this time, is the political messaging forthright, or are politicians having to moderate the case for sustainability? How is the ‘do less’ message faring in our high-consumption culture? Are we crafting and implementing durable policies and programs to have long-term impacts that can survive economic exigencies and the short-term mandates of local elected officials? The University as a Force, Not a Place Practice Leaders: Jon Fink, Judy Walton (Acting Executive Director, Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education), Ingrid Kazjer-Mitchell and Will Low (Faculty of Management, Royal Roads University) Advanced education institutions across North America have, in fact, taken up the numerous challenges associated with climate change and sustainability. All, in a variety of ways, are seeking relevance in these fields of study and concern. But, in many education institutions, as with many civic administrations and corporations, sustainability is ‘the third door on the right,’ rather than the complete culture of the organization. Is there a greater internal and external role for our universities and educational institutions? How do we accelerate the social and institutional response to climate change and similar urgencies in the context of educational institutions? How does sustainability become the centerpiece, the core value, of civic, corporate and public culture, and can our education institutions play a major role in such a transformation? Tools for Managing the Municipal Sustainability Program Practice Leader: Colin Grant, assisted by Siraz Dalmir Sometimes, for municipalities and other organizations, the hardest thing about sustainability is not the values, but where to start and how to structure a program. This problem often stymies sustainability progress, because the most precious resource in municipal and regional structures is capacity for program execution. This interactive workshop will use carbon neutrality and the Western Climate Initiative as test issues, and apply the Visible Strategies ‘see-it’ software framework to connect the dots between ambitions, strategies, goals and outcomes. The Visible Strategies tools are being used currently to guide Mayor Martin Chavez and the City of Albuquerque. That city is about to launch its Albuquerque Green ‘see-it’ site to the world. Is Small Beautiful? Better Processes for Integrating Sustainability into Towns and Small Cities Practice Leaders: Mark Holland, Chris Jensen, Felice Mazzoni Issues of capacity, leadership and resources for smaller cities and towns may be entirely different than for big cities and large urban regions. Is there a unique suite of tools and strategies for smaller urban places that will allow them to propel their own sustainability ambitions? Is it possible that goal-setting and the marshaling of community resources and support are, in fact, the hidden strengths of smaller urban centres? How do such sustainability intentions and programs hold together in the face of growth pressure, or significant changes in the economic ecology? Changing the ‘State of Practice’ Through Industry-Educational Institution Collaboration Practice Leaders: John English, Dean School of Construction and Environment, British Columbia Institute of Technology; Barry Brown-John, Outgoing Chair, BC Real Estate Foundation The sustainability ‘movement’ is a fusion of values and policy shifts on the one hand, and changes to vast bodies of practice in a hundred different professional fields on the other. The challenges of rapid ‘re-habituation’—the re-education, the changes in professional reflex, the re-tooling, the technical adjustment—are enormous. Successful engagement and collaboration between technical institutions and other learning centres and an extraordinary range of practitioner constituencies is critical. Land use, ecosystem sensitivity, construction, valuation, engineering, surveying—the list is endless, and the message that there are no ‘externalities’ anymore is a daunting one to deliver. How are our training and program delivery centres responding? Is industry engagement happening as fully and quickly as needed? Do we need new institutions or new mandates for existing ones? Who is providing outreach and building the connections between the institution and industry? Infrastructure—Moving From Burden to Resource Thought Leaders: Graeme Bethell, Patrick Lucey, Chris Corps A staggering amount of urban resource and capacity goes into the capital, operating and maintenance costs of infrastructure. These investments go largely unquestioned by most of us who simply want pothole-free roads with freshly-painted dividing lines, and plenty of water when we turn on the tap. But engineers and urban utilities professionals know all too well the initial and continuing costs of all these services: water, roads, sewage, garbage disposal, and more. Much smarter and more sustainable strategies exist now for alternative energy generation, energy-capture, alternative road standards, water re-use, less capital-intensive distributed systems, and more. This workshop, featuring Graeme Bethell of Corix and Patrick Lucey of Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting, will transform your ideas about the potential for rethinking all of these options.
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm	Hosted Reception, sponsored by BCIT, Terrace Room, Laurel Point Inn

Saturday, May 24
8:00 am - 9:00 am	On-site registration and morning coffee, Marble Lobby, Laurel Point Inn
9:00 am - 12:00 pm	Sadhu Johnston, Deputy Chief of Staff, Chief Environmental Officer, Chicago Mayor’s Office How Far, How Fast Can Cities Take Sustainability?
	Felice Mazzoni, Director of Planning, District of Ucluelet, BC Chris Jensen, Infrastructure Resource Officer, BC Ministry of Community Services Model Partnerships; Making the Rules Serve the Goals
	Gayle Prest, Manager of Environmental Services, City of Minneapolis Climate Change, Sustainability, and Community Engagement
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm	Lunch Mark Holland, Principal, Holland Barrs Summary and Closing Remarks: Building Capacity for Change
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm	Shoulder Event: Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia Developer's Roundtable: Accelerating Industry Change (This event is now fully subscribed.)

_______________________________


The Gaining Ground program will be organized to deal with a number of current opportunities facing urban centres and regions large and small:

• Where can we find the people who can translate sustainability into new policy and market mechanisms?

• How do we build a legible ‘picture’ of sustainability that will powerfully communicate the why and the what, capture public and constituent imaginations, and give everyone a sense of where this is going? That is, by what strategies can we achieve common cause?

• How do we align policy with the market capacity for innovation, so that policy encourages positive market initiatives?

• What are some of the model projects and initiatives that are proving sustainability ‘on the ground?’

• How can our learning institutions take on a much more significant and influential role in sustainability learning, training and public knowledge?

• How do we convert policy to active process?

• How do we design a clear path toward sustainability goals so all stakeholders will understand their role in helping to achieve outcomes, share enthusiasm for the goals, and understand their opportunities for action?

• How do we achieve buy-in from government departments and business units responsible for code and policy?

• Through what strategies can we enlist broad public engagement with, and support for, climate change and sustainability outcomes, rather than buy-in from just a relatively small technical community?

• How do we create a shared intolerance for non-sustainable practices?

• How do we bolster leadership’s capacity for change management—in civic life, the private sector, and government?