<strong>By <a href=”http://159.203.128.194/tag/michael-brophy”>Michael Brophy</a></strong>
Annual planning conference blends lectures with tours of the GVRD for students across Canada
Minds converged at The Canadian Association of Planning Students (CAPS) Conference in Vancouver over the first weekend of February to discuss the living laboratory of “the most livable city” in North America. Conferences to promote sustainable, economical, and socially inclusive lifestyles are held yearly by CAPS in different Canadian cities with a diverse array of speakers. After much deliberation, Simon Fraser University was selected to host the conference this year, bringing urban planning students from across the country to Vancouver for three days to learn, network, and socialize.
The three-day-long event gave planning students an opportunity to give presentations to like-minded scholars offering a variety of viewpoints from different regions. Workshops were held on themes of professional development for planners and the challenges city officials face in meeting demands from the “occupy” movement to structurally reducing inequality. Tours were put on by organizations such as the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition through which students took part in outings on foot, by bike, and via public transit of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods. The SFU Community Trust offered students a tour of UniverCity’s highly regarded model of sustainable community living. Rides along the Broadway corridor presented students with Vancouver’s transit congestion problems in high use areas.
Walks through “Canada’s poorest postal code”, the Downtown Eastside, were broken into smaller groups to avoid disrespectful observation of the community as the sidewalks are considered the living rooms of many residents of the DTES. Mixed use social housing complexes such as the Woodward’s complex in the Gastown area were presented during walking tours as a way designers could aspire to preserve historic architecture while breaking down the polarization between the rich and poor simultaneously; a concept important to residents of the Downtown Eastside. Walking tours through the impoverished area allowed aspiring city planners time to reflect on ideas of community and land-use discussed at the conference with a practical perspective.
The national summit brought students with undergraduate backgrounds from management to geography and planning programs like the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning together with lecturers and mayors of cities on the vanguard of sustainability to analyze local, national, and international issues, offering solutions for the growing international urban demographic.
Keynote speakers included Gordon Price, director of the City Program at SFU, Larry Beasley, the retired director of planning for the City of Vancouver, and Julian Agyeman, a professor at Tufts University.
Other solutions were offered that were less related to structural planning of cities as well. “Countries which look after social justice have more women in parliament” mentioned Agyeman, author of Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, referring to countries such as Sweden and Finland with approximately 40 per cent of government cabinet positions held by women. “Inequality heightens consumption which further increases the carbon footprint,” said Agyeman.
CAPS‐ACÉAU also teamed with SPACING, a Canadian blog and magazine, for their Vancouver launch party of their second national issue release. The event took place at Canvas Lounge in Gastown on February 3.
