News Features

City of Vancouver makes use of postsecondary students to advance sustainability

by Charlie Smith on April 20th, 2016 at 1:48 PM
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      Simon Fraser University master’s student Wes Regan has a high profile in the city’s environmental movement. As a founding director of the Vancouver Urban Farming Society, he’s been at the forefront of promoting a more sustainable food system. He is also one of the founding partners of Urban Stream Innovation Inc., which composts food scraps at people’s homes.

      Regan, a former Green party candidate in Vancouver East, has also been the executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association, working on social and economic sustainability. And last month, SFU president Andrew Petter recognized his contributions by awarding him a President’s Award for Leadership in Sustainability at a dinner at the Diamond Alumni Centre.

      “They wanted to acknowledge that there was not just environmental sustainability but there are also social- and cultural-sustainability issues that I’m concerned about and working on,” Regan told the Georgia Straight by phone.

      In his graduate work in urban studies, he’s examining how “retail gentrification” can contribute to the loss of independent local businesses and change the character of neighbourhoods. In January, the City of Vancouver hired him to examine how to retain the social and cultural sustainability in certain neighbourhoods.

      “I’ve been tasked with overseeing the creation of a community economic-development strategy for mostly the Downtown Eastside but also getting at some of the things I’m concerned about in my thesis,” Regan said. “I’m very happy to be working in the field.”

      Regan is one of dozens of postsecondary students in recent years who have been given a chance to work with the city to improve environmental outcomes.

      The senior sustainability specialist at the City of Vancouver, Brad Badelt, told the Straight by phone that much of this has come as the result of two major initiatives linking students conducting research and mentors: CityStudio and the Greenest City Scholars Program. He said there has been tremendous cooperation with city staff, leading to several successful projects coming to fruition.

      “The students get a great experience from it,” Badelt said. “But, honestly, it’s stuff that we as staff wouldn’t have time to dedicate 250 hours to. These reports are often really, really helpful for us.”

      Launched three years ago, City­Studio is an innovation hub underneath the Cambie Bridge where undergraduate students work in interdisciplinary teams. SFU, UBC, Vancouver Community College, Langara, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, the B.C. Institute of Technology, Vancity, and the Vancouver Foundation are all partners in CityStudio, which has a 10-year vision of transforming City Hall into the equivalent of a teaching hospital.

      In 2015 Janet Moore and Duane Elverum discussed at TEDxVancouver how CityStudio emerged as an innovation hub for students.

      Badelt said that Keys to the Streets 2015, where brightly decorated pianos were placed around town for anyone to play, emerged out of CityStudio. Another project, the Recreational Sharing Library, enabled neighbours to store underused sports and recreation equipment on East 8th Avenue where other neighbours could play with it together.

      The Greenest City Scholars Program was launched in 2010 in partnership with UBC and it is only open to graduate students. According to Badelt, they are paid $5,000 to work 250 hours over the summer on a project. At the end, they produce a report and make a presentation.

      “It was really meant to do two things: harness the energy of students to help support our work, but also give students the opportunity to get a glimpse into City Hall and apply themselves to real-world challenges in their own city,” he said.

      This year, there are 21 students participating. One success story was a research project into electric vehicles, which helped the city secure funding for public charging stations from B.C. Hydro and the provincial government. The city’s water-metering policy, which council passed in 2012, was informed by a Greenest City Scholar’s Program research two years earlier.

      Badelt reported that about 12 former greenest-city scholars are now employed by the city and 19 of the projects informed programs or policies. Three others led to the elimination of a policy or program idea.

      UBC’s website features the students’ reports. In one UBC video, PhD candidate Daniel Klein talked about delving into the city’s water data with the assistance of park-board biologist Nick Page.

      “I get the impression that they’re really kind of looking forward to what I come up with, which is really motivating and I’ve really enjoyed,” Klein said.

      UBC PhD candidate Daniel Klein talks about his research into Vancouver's water data.

      A UBC master’s student in landscape architecture, Anezka Gocova, developed a resource guide in 2015 to increase the capacity of community-gardening groups. In one of the UBC videos, she said that the Greenest City Scholars Program helped her learn how to communicate with the public.

      “Approaching the end of this project is both exciting but also a little sad,” Gocova said.

      So what accounted for the sadness? She noted that she made a lot of great friends working at the park board and she was going to miss biking to the office every day.

      UBC landscape architecture master's student Anezca Gocova describes how she worked with the Vancouver park board.

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