GEOG 346: DAY 15

Jobs Close to Homes

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS Hope you had a good reading week. Did anyone go to the

Climate Change Symposium? Can we get a brief report from the San Francisco field trip participants?

How are you making out on your research projects? Today we will debrief from the neighbourhood walks on the

Thursday before reading week and discuss Chapter 5 in Condon.

I also have some other announcements and an idea for the third mini-assignment.

The smart growth self-study courses are still available – see http://www.smartgrowth.ca/courses/. To do the courses you have to create an account for yourself.

The topics are Housing Choice   Vibrant Complete Communities   Smart Building Design   Renew Existing Communities   Green Infrastructure   Farmland & Green Spaces   Integrated Regional Planning   Transportation Choice   Community Involvement

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS A major tragedy has occurred. It was announced

today that Vancouver activist, Jim Green, has died of cancer. Jim was our guest speaker at the 2010 Urban Issues Film Festival in November 2010, and played a major role over a period of decades in the Downtown Eastside.

See also the article in The Tyee (in folder) about the most recent project Condon has done with his students.

In addressing the neighbourhoods, reflect on the following:

land use mix & amenities within a relatively short distance

pleasantness and safety issues for pedestrians and cyclists

mobility challenges for seniors, parents and those with disabilities.

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING In the past, industries

and workers used to cluster close together in order to facilitate access.

More recently, separation of land uses became the gospel – partly because of industrial pollution – and, more recently, most industrial jobs have moved offshore. Not many people walk to work anymore, though some do (see charts on following pages).

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING While energy consumption

(and hence GHG production in most places) in the industrial sector in developed countries has declined, along with energy consumption in housing, energy consumption (and GHG production) in per capita vehicle miles travelled (VMT) has been increasing steadily for the past 70 years. This has more than offset the other gains.

Moreover, people are commuting further and congestion is slowing them down. The average automobile traveller in L.A. loses almost two weeks of their life due to congestion, in addition to ‘normal’ travel time.

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING Many metro regions have attempted to get

around this by creating hub and spoke transit systems, but this doesn’t always reflect the real commuting patterns.

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING

In the U.S., city cores have been growing at 1/6th the rate of the suburbs, and city centres throughout North America are somewhat declining in importance in terms of serving as job magnets.

In Greater Vancouver, many if not most commutes are between suburbs, rather than from suburbs to downtown. Richmond has the fast growing rate of jobs of any municipality in Metro.

The commute is longer for poor families who have to find accommodations where they can afford them and often drive long distances to their jobs.

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING As people move out to more affordable working-

class and middle-class housing, their transportation costs go up – often dramatically – something they don’t always take into account when they make their housing decisions.

The situation is so desperate in Vancouver that the City of Vancouver designated one building in the former Olympic Village as rental exclusively for “essential service” workers – policemen and women, firemen, etc., who otherwise can’t afford to live in the city.

In addition to the affordability issue, which we will tackle more on Thursday, municipalities are beginning to dismantle the “one use, one zone” mentality in recognition of the fact that, with changes in the economy, most so-called industrial jobs do not have the negative adjacent land use impacts that they had in the past.

JOBS CLOSE TO HOUSING As Condon notes (p. 82), “In 2006, direct

fossil fuel combustion in the transportation sector accounted for 26.3 percent of total GHG emissions in the United States. However, total life cycle emissions for the transportation sector are estimated to be 27 to 37 percent higher than direct fuel consumption…. When production, air-conditioning, vehicle maintenance, and infrastructure consequences were added… the cumulative percent of total GHG emissions in Canada…rose to an astonishing 52 percent.”

Even if we all switched to driving electric cars, the load on the Earth’s resources would still be immense.

Toronto Montreal Calgary Edmonton Vancouver Winnipeg

9.4 8.2 8.1 7.8 7.4 6.1

Median Commuting Distance (In Kilometres)