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

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and lately, her job has been getting more challenging.

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

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

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But where should she start?

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

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

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

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And that’s when the mayor realized

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

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She quickly saw that Labangan was far from being exemplary,

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

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

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Business people, architects, urban planners…

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Many specialists were called upon to find solutions.

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

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Colvert had just received its greenhouse gases emission report.

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A very bad report, to say the least!

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We obviously had to solve that problem as well.

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

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

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they understood that by dealing with the greenhouse gases,

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Labangan would also be taking care of its other problems.

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

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

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

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Since it became easier to move around quickly,

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people left the older neighbourhoods to settle in the country.

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

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… the city started spreading, spreading and spreading.

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Today, almost everyone has their own house.

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We do.

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

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Well, that’s how it was, at first.

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

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

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

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I need one a little more than most.

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

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We used the zoning to avoid industries from polluting houses.

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Nice thought!

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But by pushing our logic to the extreme,

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

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

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Having a car has become a must.

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We use it to do everything.

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

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

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

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

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But in the end, it made things worse.

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New residential neighbourhoods were created on each end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today, when we need to buy something,

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

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

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Roads, bridges, interchanges, viaducts and parking lots

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are all infrastructures that we must build and maintain.

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And it’s costly for everyone!

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It’s become an asphalt jungle.

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It gets really really hot here sometimes![br]

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Well, we really made it happen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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that were directly contributing to the climate change.

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

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We agreed on a long-term vision.

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

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

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There would be no construction beyond a certain limit!

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

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

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

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But that’s not what we did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We even built new ones!

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But wait! That’s not all!

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

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

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All in one spot!

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

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And it’s a lot greener too!

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

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That also added exciting new uses.

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But we didn’t stop there!

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

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We didn’t hold back. And it works!

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

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

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

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but where they don’t have sole priority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The remaining parking lots were resurfaced.

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

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Specialists call it a landscaped retention pond.

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

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Well, Megan does anyway!

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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A few pedestrian shortcuts, between the badly connected streets,

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

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

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Today, things are good in Tangle Town.

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

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I moved there with my family.

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

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

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Colvert imposed stringent construction rules.

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

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For example, buildings are not exposed to the elements,

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

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The density of the neighbourhood makes the infrastructures more efficient.

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

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

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Speaking of buses,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Our daily trips are a lot less stressful now.

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

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I even take the bus to get there!

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

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Apparently, one shared car can replace 8 individual cars! [br]

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Colvert got the best greenhouse gas emissions grade in the country

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and contributed in its fight against climate change.

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

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

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

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but it’s a model city as well!

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For the mayor, things are better than ever.

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

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

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But, that’s not the case.

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We didn’t all agree at first.

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

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

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In the end, we really lucked out.

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