Saga Cityt, Our communities facing climate change

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Urban planning has great effects on collective choices that contribute to climate change. By defining the shape of a community, urban planning determines part of its energy consumption, and thus, the quantity of greenhouse gases released by dwellers. Nevertheless, it remains largely out of the general debate on this issue. SAGA CITY invites you to learn more about these stakes through to story of the city of Colvert.

This is Mrs. Walker. She’s the mayor here in Labangan,

and lately, her job has been getting more challenging.

One day, she decided it was time for a change…

… to get to the bottom of things, to find long-term solutions.

But where should she start?

She first needed to know if the population shared her point of view.

Well, I didn’t go, but my mother was there. So many people showed up! Apparently, Mrs. Walker had hit a nerve.

The issues brought up by the citizens were the same ones that were bothering the mayor.

And that’s when the mayor realized

that our city’s problems were much more serious than she'd previously thought.

She quickly saw that Labangan was far from being exemplary,

that the citizens didn’t have the quality of life they were seeking.

To sum it up, she had a lot of work to do and she needed help.

Business people, architects, urban planners…

Many specialists were called upon to find solutions.

And as if we didn’t have enough things to do,

Colvert had just received its greenhouse gases emission report.

A very bad report, to say the least!

We obviously had to solve that problem as well.

We were starting to have a lot to do at the same time.

The mayor and her collaborators got to work and after brainstorming,

they understood that by dealing with the greenhouse gases,

Labangan would also be taking care of its other problems.

That’s just what they did and that’s the story I’ll tell you now.

It all started in the 1950s. Up until then, Labangan was… a close-knit community.

Then, after a few years, almost everyone could afford a car.

Since it became easier to move around quickly,

people left the older neighbourhoods to settle in the country.

One street after the other, one house after the next,

… the city started spreading, spreading and spreading.

Today, almost everyone has their own house.

We do.

Our neighbourhood is calm, clean, and safe and most importantly close to nature.

Well, that’s how it was, at first.

We were proud of our new-found quality of life, forgetting that we were building a city dependent on cars and oil.

Cars encourage urban sprawl, making it necessary to buy a car.

And the farther you live, the more you need a car.

I need one a little more than most.

Plus, by thinking it was making the city cleaner and more efficient, we separated the activities.

We used the zoning to avoid industries from polluting houses.

Nice thought!

But by pushing our logic to the extreme,

we made it so that nowadays, our houses, jobs, activities, public services and businesses

are so far from one another that we can’t do anything by foot anymore.

Having a car has become a must.

We use it to do everything.

I’m not the only one to live like that.

Many families even have two or three cars! And boy do we cover a lot of kilometres in one day!

With so many cars, there’s obviously traffic. Tell me about it!

We tried to solve the problem by creating a large boulevard that went around the city centre.

But in the end, it made things worse.

New residential neighbourhoods were created on each end.

And with each new development, businesses started popping up which attracted even more cars.

In a few years, this meant that the bypass road also became very congested.

And since we’re not quick learners, we thought it would be best to build a highway.

We didn’t quite understand that building a faster road would make people want to drive even more and create even more traffic.

So in the end, it’s just a vicious cycle…

For those that don’t have a car, things aren’t any easier.

That’s my mother. Because of her age, she can’t drive anymore.

There are many people like her that don’t have a car.

They’re either too old, too young, too poor or they just don’t want one.

Modern cities are often hostile to these car-less people.

My mother has a great deal of trouble coming to see us.

And more often than not, to make it easier on her, I pick her up, by car.

Same thing when she needs to go anywhere else, like the hardware store.

Today, when we need to buy something,

it’s always a bit further away and we almost always take the car to get there.

So, all in all, the car is ever more present.

Roads, bridges, interchanges, viaducts and parking lots

are all infrastructures that we must build and maintain.

And it’s costly for everyone!

It’s become an asphalt jungle.

It gets really really hot here sometimes!

Well, we really made it happen!

We paved huge surfaces to create parking lots that created heat islands which increase the smog risks that can seriously affect our health.

But instead of solving the problem at the source, we’d rather rely on technology to save us,

even if that often contributes to increasing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Truthfully, we’re all just trying to improve our lives.

For some, it means a bigger TV, a bigger house, a bigger yard, a pool, a spa…

We bought all of those things by thinking it was the best of worlds.

Well why not? We had the room and enough resources!

But now, we can finally see that there's a downside of having all those things !

We’d like to minimize our impact, but we find that doing small things, everyone by himself, is not enough…

And voilà! We had an ordinary city, with all sorts of problems

that were directly contributing to the climate change.

In Labangan, we decided to change things. I say “we” because the mayor wanted everyone to participate.

We agreed on a long-term vision.

Together, we would decrease our greenhouse gas emissions and transform Labangan into a cleaner, greener and a more prosperous city.

To do so, the first thing the mayor’s team did was to reduce the urban boundary.

There would be no construction beyond a certain limit!

If less land is available, developpers will hurry up and snatch up the remaining parcels.

With less and less available land, they’ll build more compact buildings, to house more people and make more money.

However, sacrificing my family’s well-being to go live in a chicken coop is completely out of the question!

But that’s not what we did.

By talking together, we understood that we could rebuild the city on itself,

reorganize it and create more compact neighbourhoods, without stepping on each other’s toes.

It’s pretty simple: here’s how we did it.

First, to have an animated and strong downtown, we asked two big employers to move there.

Apparently, it’s good for real estate and businesses. One thing’s for sure, big changes started to happen.

More people were around, more businesses and more services too.

Main Street came back to life and it’s now pleasurable place to live, work or walk around and meet people.

Well, at least my mother can’t stop talking about it!

We have to admit that the city made a huge effort to make the streets, public squares and parks more enjoyable…

We even built new ones!

But wait! That’s not all!

On the other side of the river, there were old abandoned industrial buildings.

With the city’s help, the owners renovated them to house stores, businesses, and even housing.

All in one spot!

I never thought it would work, but there’s definitely a lot more life in the neighbourhood now.

And it’s a lot greener too!

South of the city, we transformed the train station into a bus terminal.

That also added exciting new uses.

But we didn’t stop there!

We created a neighbourhood which was friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists.

We didn’t hold back. And it works!

Nancy and I, we love to relax on the new pedestrian street.

It’s lively and there are all sorts of people there too!

Meanwhile, Megan plays with her friends on a shared street where cars aren’t banned,

but where they don’t have sole priority.

All in all, the street has become accessible again, and it’s also become safer and fun for everyone.

It’s no longer just a transit road for cars…

… even if Megan still finds the way to scare us.

On the other side of town, we gave the shopping centre a new life by making it the heart of a new neighbourhood.

There was a lot of space around the buildings, so we decided to use it better.

We built a multi-level parking lot in which there are more spots, in less space.

That’s how we took back the surface parking lots to build new buildings.

And in no time, that neighbourhood became almost as lively as downtown!

The remaining parking lots were resurfaced.

Instead of being directed into the river by the sewers, the rainwater infiltrates the soil or is drained towards a pond.

Specialists call it a landscaped retention pond.

With the trees we added, the heat islands almost disappeared. Everyone enjoys it much more.

Well, Megan does anyway!

Here’s the neighbourhood where Nathan’s best friend lives. We like to call it “Tangle Town”.

It’s the kind of suburb where there are bungalows, no services, and where the twists and turns make the way three times longer than a direct route.

The city wanted to make it into a more complete area.

So it built community centre in the heart of the neighbourhood.

Then, it changed its rules and suggested measures to increase the area’s density and make it possible for stores and businesses to settle.

Activity attracts more people, and more people attract more activity.

A few pedestrian shortcuts, between the badly connected streets,

and a new bike path make it possible today for the children to avoid detours… well, adults too, for that matter.

With more people living in the neighbourhood, the city was able to offer a good bus service on a reserved lane.

Today, things are good in Tangle Town.

Upstream, the city built a new neighbourhood near the old mill.

I moved there with my family.

From there, it’s easy to enjoy nature, and not impact it too much.

That was the goal when we decided to build an eco-friendly neighbourhood.

Colvert imposed stringent construction rules.

The neighbourhood is more compact and the housing is better planned.

For example, buildings are not exposed to the elements,

and they therefore use less energy and produce less greenhouse gas.

The density of the neighbourhood makes the infrastructures more efficient.

The more people are served per kilometre, the more bang for our buck.

People, a bustling city, a reliable bus service… I get it, now!

Speaking of buses,

while we were creating neighbourhood centres, we had to think about linking them with a good collective transportation system.

The old mill links to Tangle Town, the train station to the shopping centre and they all connect through downtown.

What’s good about those transit lines is that they’re reliable.

The bus shelters are comfortable; and there are benches and time tables indicating when the next bus will come.

And since it’s efficient, more people want to use it and move closer by.

It’s so popular that the city’s thinking about increasing the service!

Our daily trips are a lot less stressful now.

Nancy works in the neighbourhood and I work on the newspaper’s presses, downtown.

I even take the bus to get there!

At the same time, the city has decreased the number of parking spots downtown and allocated a few to car-sharing services.

Apparently, one shared car can replace 8 individual cars!

And, there’s also the self-serve bike service. I haven’t tried it yet, but I hear it’s really useful because there are stations everywhere.

Now, we can travel around the city without using our car.

Thanks to all that, Colvert is starting to feel a lot better.

But we’re far from being done. We have many other projects to tackle.

First of all, we need to make the bypass road friendlier for all.

Then, we will replace the most popular bus lines with a light rail system.

Finally, as an alternative to the highway, we’ll connect Colvert to neighbouring cities by putting the train back on track.

That’s how, with smaller and more important decisions,

Colvert got the best greenhouse gas emissions grade in the country

and contributed in its fight against climate change.

We used this challenge to completely review the way we developed and organized our city.

Today, we’re happy to say that we live in Colvert:

it’s not only a nice, clean and prosperous city…

but it’s a model city as well!

For the mayor, things are better than ever.

She exceeded the populations’ expectations and I think she’ll be in office for a while.

You may think this was just a fairy tale, where everything just magically happened.

But, that’s not the case.

We didn’t all agree at first.

We were afraid of making sacrifices by changing the way we lived.

But the biggest step we had to take was changing our way of seeing things.

In the end, we really lucked out.

And, me, a little more than most! And I’m really proud to say that…