Photo by Patrick Meehan (Twitter)
Last November 27 the FCSNA Speaker Series presented a panel on “Sustainability and Sea Level Rise in False Creek.” The panel included three experts: Angela Danyluk, the Senior Sustainability Specialist for the City of Vancouver; environmental consultant and local resident Yael Stav; and urban designer Scott Hein.
Angela Danyluk described the City’s approach to the climate emergency, with particular attention to the inevitability of sea level rise (apparently not as bad a threat here as in some other parts of the city). Her emphasis is on planning for shoreline flood protection, working with communities to design creative approaches to adaptation. She announced an upcoming consultation process for False Creek under the Sea2City Coastal Design Challenge that will be part of CityPlan, and invited the audience to keep in touch with the City’s work through its website.
Yael Stav focused her talk on the local and practical things we can do, individually and as a community, to adapt and thrive within a more climate-constrained world. She pointed to the major environmental impacts of practices we often take for granted, such as food waste, and encouraged us to think creatively about how to live more sustainably with and within natural processes.
Through several slides Scott Hein presented examples of what has been done elsewhere and what might be done here to design for environmental resilience through major infrastructure projects. He advocated creative solutions that contribute to ecological security in ways that recognize the history and identity of this place, take advantage of its water setting, and with both beauty and practicality establish distinguished gateways to False Creek and the urban environment.
A lively discussion followed the dense and informative presentations. Although no recording of the event is available, readers can get a fuller sense of the content through the presentation slides at: http://www.falsecreeksouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Sustainability-Slides-REDUCED.pdf