Finally Re-Started

I can proudly say, as of yesterday, I have finally restarted the design process for the floor layout with an effort this time to maximize the sun’s exposure for living areas (align living areas along the south side and utilities along the north) and minimize the floor area in general in order to lower costs and also fit within the District of North Vancouver’s floor space ratios (even with my thicker walls).  In a jet-lag-induced-stupor, I broke out AutoCAD (which I use for prototyping), blew away all the walls on my previous designs and started the process over. I have done this probably a dozen times over the last 10 -12 years and it always surprises me that the ‘next’ design is often substantially different than the last design.  As my priorities and goals change, so does the layout of our home.

For instance, when I intended for this to be a retirement home, I did not worry about what would make the design ‘marketable’, but only on what we as a couple needed and wanted.  This resulted in a 2-bedroom house with lots of extras like a gym, second laundry, office & study, theatre room, etc.  Then about 5 years ago, I came to a realization (my wife also to a lesser extent) during an annual stay at a vacation rental house on Chesterman Beach in Tofino, that I really did not want to live in North Vancouver for the rest of my life.  When I moved here 13 years ago, it was a drastically different place, and I intended to ride out the remainder of my life here.  But, in my view, the North Shore has deteriorated substantially since then.  Traffic is my number one concern.  Because the Upper Levels Highway has reached capacity, a lot of traffic now spills onto Marine Drive and through residential areas.  In my neighbourhood (which has not seen ANY increase in the density of homes), the flow of traffic at a nearby intersection has gone from 2400 vehicles a day in 2008 to over 5000 vehicles a day last March (this increase is generally vehicles cutting through the neighbourhood between the Upper Levels Highway and Marine Drive).  Marine Drive has now become choked for a large portion of the day and it can often take 15+ minutes to get to a nearby mall during the day (10 blocks) when the same trip at night only takes three minutes.  And now the District is supporting heavily increased densities along Marine Drive without any meaningful plan to address the traffic.  Until and unless the North Shore Communities demand that the Province upgrades the highway and bridges, the problem will only get worse.

But I digress. That is a conversation for a totally different blog.  The point is, I do not see that this will be a pleasant place to live for decades (if ever), and so the emphasis of my design will now be marketability as opposed to personalization.  In this region that means bedrooms, the more bedrooms the better.  It does not really matter on what size the bedrooms are and many are filled up with a queen sized bed.  If I were truly building to market demands, I would also add more bathrooms.  Many homes in my neighbourhood have a bathroom attached to each bedroom.  But in my books, this is just nuts.  My generation and my parent’s generation managed just fine with only one bathroom in the house.  Yes that’s right one bathroom!  Can you imagine?

Although I will be building with marketability in mind, I still believe that builders should be providing a legacy in the structures that they provide and not a liability.  So I will be trying to provide the ‘features’ that the current buying public want, but not at the expense of the building envelope and compactness of the home.  I will talk about this and my design process more in future posts.

For now though, I would like to leave you with some thoughts I have as a resident of the North Shore on my return from a holiday to Chicago, Scotland, and London.  I feel I am further up the curve of what I consider a sustainable path through life, just by the programs in place where I live when viewed in contrast to these recently visited regions.

Let me start with Chicago.  This is a LARGE city by Canadian standards (approximately 4-5 times bigger than Greater Vancouver) and there was a lot of waste produced and a lot of traffic.  What was not visible were recycling efforts or car pool/transit lanes.  

When I talked with our drivers, they did not think anything of the traffic, and felt it was acceptable to commute through communities in order to miss the back-up on the highways.  Really???  The City is looking at adding ‘green-wash items’ like bike lanes in the core, but what about the gridlock?  Why not reward drivers who carpool and take transit by allowing those drivers/passengers an expedited path through the gridlock.  This will help solve many of your problems including road capacity (encourages denser passenger ratios), pollution (less stop and go traffic), and less cars means less damage to road structure.

As a resident of Greater Vancouver, I was also shocked at the lack of recycling generally available in the City.  For any city in any part of the world, recycling just makes common sense.  Yes there is an expense to do so, but let’s consider the savings.  The pickup costs are largely offset by the reduction in garbage pickup volume.  Reduced garbage volume means less pressure on the landfills.  Much of what is normally recycled are often items that do not readily break down in landfills and can often leach all kinds of nasties into the surrounding soil and groundwater.  By recycling them we can reclaim many of the materials in the products we throw out.  This reduces costs to remediate dumps, reduces manufacturing costs (recycled material is by its nature pre-processed and so often easier to incorporate into a manufacturing process than raw material and usually much cheaper to purchase as well), and of course recapturing raw materials puts a lot less strain on the diminishing natural resources on this planet and reduces our need for their exploitation.

Scotland also lacked any visible recycling program, and I felt horrible, throwing away plastic, paper, and glass while there.  With a total population of just over 5 million (less than Chicago) and a land mass of 30K square miles compared to Chicago’s 1487 square miles, their logistics challenges for collection is understandable.  But I am sure that the Country could come up with some innovative methods if they put their heads to it.  For me, it felt almost barbaric,  like living with an attitude that stated - Not a problem – we have LOTS of room to just dump it.

The other surprising point for me in Scotland was the food.  It was generally heavy (meat and potatoes or seafood and potatoes), and often lacked the addition of fresh vegetables.  Salads were never a standard part of the meal in most locations we visited.  One server just could not understand that we wanted vegetables with our dinner and not chips. Near the end of our trip, I remarked on this to a Chef at an Inn in Gairlock, and the son of one of our neighbour’s.  He advised that the growing season in Scotland just does not support the production of produce.  Indeed in my travels, I did not drive by even one farm, lots of fields of grazing sheep, but no crops of any nature.  He advised that the vast majority of the Countries’ food is imported from the nearby European neighbours.  They apparently do not even eat a lot of lamb and instead export that product because it is generally too expensive for the ‘locals’.  Fortunately, he followed up our conversation with a large salad course to our meal that was a welcomed addition. 

This, however, got me thinking about the sustainability of that type of culture, and the need for innovative solutions.  If we can grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in the Vancouver region, why can’t others?  It made me realize that a lot of the things I take for granted back home are really very innovative and environmentally responsible, compared to the practices in many other parts of the world:

• We generally have car pool and transit lanes on many arterial routes into and out of the cities (still LOTS of room for improvement).  We provide special parking for small cars, electric cars, and co-op cars.
• We recycle a lot of our trash (the percentage is growing all the time – the District of North Vancouver recently introduced a food waste recycling program) and if our Municipalities are unable to provide recycling pick up or drop off, there are companies like Pacific Mobile that provide drop-off service for many non-compostable products that we as a society would otherwise throw out. 
• We have available to us locally grown and raised produce.  I can even go to a major chain and buy vegetables and fruit grown locally in BC (far less often as we should be able to, but it is a start).  And if I am willing to split my shopping trip up, I can buy fresh and often organic meat and vegetables from smaller stores or directly from the producers.
• We in BC enjoy one of the cleanest electricity grids in North America if not the world. 
• We in BC have much better building standards for insulation, soon to be air tightness, and requirements to keep water out compared with much of the world.

I leave you with this thought:  

WIKI describes “produce” as a description that is often implying that the products are fresh and generally (being made available) in the same (region) where they were harvested.  

Think about this the next time you pick up a bag of grapes, melons, or even snap peas at the local supermarket.  Look at the labels for where the ‘produce’ was grown.  I think you will be shocked.   

Now, think of all the actions required to get the product from where it is grown to the shelf that is now in front of you.  Think of the fuel burned in trucks, boats and planes to move that product. Think of what chemicals and pollutants the ‘produce’ may have been exposed to back in the growing country.

Ask yourself. “Are these sustainable practices?”  I know my answer!