You can build green, walkable neighbourhoods in Alberta, say Strathcona County experts — you just need a little help from the SuN.
Peter Vána and Bard Golightly spoke Thursday night to about 35 people at the St. Albert Senior Citizens' Club about two walkable communities they built in Strathcona County. The talk was part of a series of sessions on sustainable development.
Centre in the Park is an urban village in downtown Sherwood Park that features a district heating system and some 680 condo units, all within walking distance of stores. Designed and built over many years, it is now completely sold out.
Emerald Hills is a new project being built north of Sherwood Park. Featuring a range of local businesses, housing types, and a central community garden, it now has 52 occupied homes and several stores.
These developments helped create the SuN LIVING model, says Vána, the associate commissioner of infrastructure and planning for the county — a model for building sustainable urban villages. "It's about how we're changing the way we think and reducing our impact."
SuNny neighbourhoods
The SuN, or Sustainable Neighbourhood, process is a different way of looking at development, Vána says. Instead of pitting developers and regulators against each other, it emphasizes collaboration.
The process starts with massive 50-plus-person design sessions that bring all parties in the development process together to hammer out a common vision of what they want their neighbourhood to look like. This vision helps keep people on track, Vána says — whenever someone balked that an idea was "against the rules" for Centre in the Park, he'd say, "Let's look at the vision and write the rules around it."
Those sessions set targets for carbon emissions, water use, jobs, waste and other measures. Participants then model different designs to see which ones meet the targets.
To encourage walking, for example, planners added underground tunnels to Centre in the Park to help seniors get around during winter. They also pushed roads towards the outside of the development, making it easier to get around the place by foot than by car.
To reduce energy use, Centre in the Park's community centre was built to a LEED Gold standard. It now uses the same amount of energy as a building one-third its size, Vana says. Emerald Hills will soon be heated by a district heating system that should prevent 3,600 tonnes of emissions per year — equivalent to the energy use of about 306 homes.
Going green didn't make these homes more expensive, says Golightly, chief operating officer of Christenson Developments. Efficient insulation costs more, he explains, but lets you reduce the size of your furnace, keeping costs down. Many green materials, such as VOC-free paint, also now cost the same as regular ones. "There is no [price] premium."
Key is leadership
St. Albert resident David Klippenstein says his son lives in Emerald Hills, where you're just a seven-minute walk from the nearest grocery store. "You don't have to drive. It's easier to walk."
Klippenstein credits the success of Emerald Hills and Centre in the Park to the leadership of people like Vána and Golightly. People resist change, and their efforts were key to breaking down that resistance. "They're risk-takers. They're doing things unconventionally."
St. Albert needs to follow Strathcona County's lead and get more of these compact, walkable developments, Klippenstein says. "We've got to make better use of land because it's expensive to service."
