A new community group has sprung up in the Mile-End neighborhood with the ambitious goal to reduce auto use.

Other urban areas, most notably Berkeley, CA have managed to dramatically reduce auto use by aggressively installing berms, stop signs and barricades where only bikes and pedestrians can pass. There is also a more aggressive vandalism/propaganda campaign that has been in effect for many years (see photo, right). It is simply annoying to drive through that city, which was by design.

Mile-end must navigate the murky Montreal political process to achieve its ends.

Source: Car Free Mile-End

Clinging to car-dependence as a way of life or as an economic model for growth is like climbing the smokestack on the Titanic. But I hesitate to extend the metaphor to include the proverbial “lifeboat community” as a way of casting the Mile End. None of the seemingly catastrophic changes that seem to loom is going to happen overnight. Yes we should try to reshape our neighbourhood according to sustainable, sensible principles. And yes, this should involve a dramatic reduction in car use by us all. But this will never happen in a vacuum to the exclusion of our neighbours. Perhaps as a motivating factor we can think of a Mile-End striving to be car-free, or going “car-lite”, as a matter of setting an example for those neighbours who must ultimately be a part of our future.

The City of Montreal unveiled the winning design for 400 new sustainable bus shelters to be built over the next year throughout the city. Features of the winning design from the firm of LeBlanc & Turcott include:

• Solar panels for lighting
• A self-supporting structure
• Modular design for various sizes

Source: Bustler

Drawing inspiration from the STM’s newly minted brand signature, “Mouvement collectif,” the design proposal by Leblanc + Turcotte + Spooner offers a modular, scalable solution. Featuring a self-supporting structure, the concept enables the manufacturing of base models, with the possibility of joining several units together to create variable-size configurations that can accommodate larger or smaller numbers of users.

The design features a communications column, which could house various components including dynamic digital displays and backlit advertising posters. An integrated solar power system will ensure lighting of shelters that cannot be connected to the power grid.

The jury was especially impressed with the potential for integration and modular construction afforded by the winning team’s proposal. In a statement, jury co-chairs Denise Vaillancourt, Executive Director, Planning, Marketing and Communications, STM, and Gilles Saucier, architect and partner in the firm Saucier + Perrotte, noted: “This preliminary design offers a comprehensive array of solutions to the complex problems with which the competing designers were presented. The concept incorporates current technologies, and meets the STM’s comfort and safety requirements.”

Back yard chicken coops are illegal in Montreal and all boroughs, but here is an example of bringing sustainable thinking to an old structure:

Sourse: Transition Times

Chicken Coop

The black chicken coop on display inside the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is sleek, like a chicken-house-of-the-future. The air slats that ring the wooden coop are perfectly parallel, and the square nest boxes that line the back are uniform.

Even the tiny ladder that allows the chickens to climb up to the ledge where they’d sleep looks like it was made with precision — which it was.

But the idea behind University of Colorado senior Jeff Troutman’s coop is decidedly down-to-earth. The architecture student set out to build a chicken-house that could be manufactured easily and inexpensively — and sold at an affordable price to Boulder’s burgeoning set of urban hen-keepers.

“I would love to see it become a functional coop in people’s backyards,” he said.

Keeping a flock of chickens next to the lawnmower shed is a practice that’s taking off across the country and across Colorado, as more and more cities make allowances for backyard birds. Boulder allows them, as do Superior and Longmont.

For proponents like Troutman, who, as a renter, has never had a flock of his own, backyard chicken-keeping is partly about knowing where your food comes from — and where your waste goes.

“That’s the idea behind this — to create a cycle, instead of this throw-out culture,” he said…

“It’s part of our local culture,” Pyatt said of Boulder. “People want to have backyard hens or gardens, but they don’t know how.”

Instead of the old debate over land use: development vs. farms; housing vs. green space, Agriburbia is a clever compromise.

Source: Denver Post

AgriBurbia - Denver CO

Six years ago, Matthew “Quint” Redmond suggested to Milliken planners that a corn farm north of Denver could increase its agricultural value and still anchor nearly a thousand homes.

“I got laughed out of the room,” Redmond said.

Today, Milliken’s 618-acre Platte River Village is ready for construction, with 944 planned homes surrounded by 108 acres of backyard farms and 152 acres of drip- irrigated community farms. The plan is for the farms to feed local residents and supply restaurants while paying for community upkeep. And Redmond, a 47-year-old planner-farmer, has 13 other Front Range projects mulling his “agriburbia” concept.

Redmond, co-founder of the Golden-based design firm TSR Group, travels the country preaching his urban farming and development idea. He envisions a future where the nation’s 31 million acres of lawn are converted to food production. He sees golf-course greens redefined with herbs; sand traps as “kale traps.” He sees retirement homes engulfed by farms and office buildings where workers escape cubicles on farming breaks.

Redmond, along with his born-on- a-farm biologist turned planner wife, Jennifer, sees an urban landscape like none before.

“This is where we are all going to go. We need this,” said Redmond. “Everyone thinks they are so smart by crafting a 2030 plan for the future. I say we need a $180-a-barrel plan, on how our communities can be self-sufficient when oil becomes too expensive to ship food across the country.”

Self-sufficient. Sustainable. Locally produced. Agriburbia incorporates all three concepts.

“Is there a better use of the land than growing your own food right where you are going to be eating it?” said Janie Lichtfuss, mayor of Milliken, which is positioned to become the first agriburbia community.

Perhaps, one day, Montreal might realize a version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, a city of tall buildings surrounded by open space and farms.

This may be an idea whose time will shortly come if food prices ever rocket higher due to transportation costs. Any city in the world could grow fresh, local, organic fruits and veggies using this system:

VertiCrop – The Solution

In a rapidly urbanizing world where the majority of people now live in cities, localization requires that food and fuel be produced in an urban context. At present, there are no examples of a locally sustained urban community anywhere in the world. Urban sustainability is yet to be realized primarily because urban agriculture presents a number of technological challenges. The main challenge is a lack of growing space.

Vertical Warehouse Gardening

Vertical growing is a new idea currently emerging in the sustainability discourse which offers great promise for increasing urban production. Vertical growing systems have been proposed as possible solutions for increasing urban food supplies while decreasing the ecological impact of farming. The primary advantage of vertical growing is the high density production it allows using a much reduced physical footprint and fewer resources relative to conventional agriculture. Vertical growing, hydroponics and greenhouse production have now been combined into an integrated commercial production system, a system that has major potential for the realization of environmentally sustainable urban food and fuel production.

Valcent Products, Inc.

John Rahaim, the Director of urban planning for the City of San Francisco, will give a free lecture sponsored by the McGill University School of Architecture lecture series.

What can we learn from the San Francisco experience? How can we apply these learnings in the context of Montreal initiatives such as “Green Areas”, the “Neighborhoods green, healthy and active” project and various proposals for Rethinking Urban Transportation in Montreal?

The lecture is FREE, in English with simultaneous French translation.

October 5th from 18 to 20h at the McGill’s Macdonald Harrington Building, Room G10, 815 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal. METRO: McGill.

More about John Rahaim: architect, planner and urban designer. Director of Planning, City of San Francisco. Oversees the long-term planning, human development and environmental studies for most physical development of the city.

***Update: Westmount has offered an online poll for residents to cast their votes on which sustainability issues are most important ***

I don’t know what is most disturbing about the process by which Westmount is attempting to institute “sustainable” measures in its borders.

First, Westmount is using the term “Sustainable Development” without any hint of duplicity that the term itself is an oxymoron.

Second,  the public is asked to comment further on 200 “initiatives” which simply smacks of posturing for public input since the real decisions will be left to city council.

Third, and my biggest peeve, is that not one of the sustainable initiatives (except bringing in organic farmers from the outside to set up a farmer’s market) moves the city towards sustainable food production for at least a portion of its diet.

The assumptions of the city residents and politicians seem insurmountable to me. “Of course the trucks from Metro supermarket will continue to arrive FOREVER.”

Nevermind a natural catastrphe, a Flu epidemic, a terrorist attack or just plain scarcity due to soaring food prices down the road. The lack of imagination or simple vision to see the present risks listed above astound me and make me want to live elsewhere.

Overlooking the most basic needs of its community, namely food, water, air, clothing, heat in the winter, will be Westmount’s downfall eventually.

From Joshua Wolfe, Sustainability Coordinator

Thursday, Sept. 10, Westmounters can participate in prioritizing sustainable development actions.

The Action Plan contains over 200 specific actions to make Westmount more sustainable. They were obtained from input from members of the general Westmount public, as well as other stakeholders, and from best practices developed by innovative cities throughout North America and elsewhere.

Of course, not all these ideas can be put into practice immediately. In addition to the concerns listed in this Plan, the City must maintain its infrastructure, parks, lighting, and ensure the effectiveness of current waste management practices, etc in a sustainable manner. Of the many actions listed in the 6 chapters* of the Sustainable Development Action Plan, City Council has developed a short list (see attached). The Sept 10 meeting will focus on prioritizing among these for 2010. There will also be time to discuss more long term actions.

Thursday Sept. 10 7:00 pm

Lodge Room, Victoria Hall

The Sustainable Development Action Plan is scheduled to be adopted by Council by early October. Municipal staff will then calculate the personnel and resource costs of implementing these priorities.

If you would like to provide input on priorities and cannot attend the Sept 10 meeting, fill out the survey at www.westmount.org/sustainable

Feel free to email your comments, reactions and suggestions.

*The six chapters are:

1. Energy & Greenhouse gas reduction
2. The three waters: Water, wastewater and precipitation
3. Nature & Biodiversity
4. Public Health
5. Wasted Resources
6. Access and Transportation

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (www.greenroofs.org) is offering a course from their Green Roof Professional (GRP) accreditation program in Montreal on September 30th. The course is Green Roof Design 101, the first of the 4 GRP courses. The venue for the course hasn’t been announced yet.

For more information about the course  or to register, see the link below:
http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=a67deeae-9b93-4805-ac37-9ec9873b55cc

(A piece of information not mentioned through the link is that there is a discounted student rate of $200.)

If Montreal is to become a sustainable city, there’s some serious work to do. How do we get there?

On Friday, June 19th at Collège Notre-Dame auditorium (3791 Queen Mary), from 6 to 8:30 p.m, Richard Bergeron will tackle these questions. Bergeron is the city’s anti-car, pro-environment political party leader (and urban planner).

He’ll also be joined by two other locals, Dimitri Roussopoulos, publisher and founder of the Urban Ecology Centre and author of several books, including the forthcoming The Rise of Cities, and Dr. Pierre Gauthier, professor in geography and urbanism at Concordia University and author and editor of the recently published Montreal at the Crossroads: Superhighways, the Turcot and the Environment.

$20 at the Door, but includes refreshments.

3791 Queen Mary, near Cote-des-Neiges Metro.

Source: Hour

I just can’t beleive that wood stoves on the island are responsible for significant air pollution in the winter.

One look at Decarie “expressway” during a snow storm, and you know that cars are far more damaging to air quality than 15,000 homes burning clean, EPA-approved wood stoves that burn efficiently and cleanly. The only question is: do people have clean buring woodstoves or are they just creating bonfires in their back yard?

Via: Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL – The number of days of poor air quality on Montreal Island shot up to 68 last year from 44 days during 2007, the city’s air-quality watchdogs said Saturday.

The Réseau de surveillance de la qualité de l’air, or RSQA, placed the blame for that deteriorating air-quality performance squarely on fine-particulate air pollution – largely caused by the use of residential wood heat.

“The contribution of wood heat to fine-particulate emissions continues to grow and amounted in 2006 to about 61 per cent of the total estimated emissions,” the body’s freshly released eight-page annual report for 2008 states.

“That’s much more than the portion attributable to transportation – 14 per cent – and even industrial sources, at 22 per cent,” the report added, citing a national pollution inventory produced by Environment Canada.

Sulphur-dioxide levels measured in the air over Montreal Island, meanwhile, dropped an average of 24 per cent last year compared with 2007 levels.

Atmospheric concentrations of benzene dropped 27 per cent, the RSQA also reported.

For both those pollutants, “those are the lowest levels in 40 years,” declared Alan DeSousa, mayor of the St. Laurent borough.

Those results were largely due to a crackdown on industrial and petrochemical operators on the eastern part of the island, DeSousa added.

He is also the member of the city’s executive committee responsible for sustainable development and the environment.

“The 2008 results are an encouraging sign,” DeSousa declared.

“In the last 25 years we’ve reduced industrial pollutants by 50 per cent,” he added.

But, he said, “fine-particulate emissions is where we have the most work to do.”

On April 28, Montreal city council unanimously passed a bylaw that outlaws the installation of new wood-burning appliances such as stoves and fireplaces.

While Montrealers won’t be able to install a wood-burning stove in their homes, wood pellet, natural gas and electric stoves are still allowed.

And no measures have been taken to deal with the 50,500 households across the city of Montreal equipped with wood stoves or fireplaces when the bylaw was passed.

If all those Montrealers use them for nine hours at the same time, DeSousa said, the air pollution produced would equal that of 1.5 million cars driving 18,000 kilometres.