WEBVTT

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This is the nature of things.

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More and more people are moving into cities

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and with this expansion, come incredible
demands on the urban environment.

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Can we make our cities
livable in the long term?

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Well, this is pleasant. It’s very pleasant.

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Smart transit, sustainable
housing, new systems for food,

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public works, and energy.

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We know they’re all critical for
a city to grow and stay healthy.

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But with so many people, how do we
protect the air, the water, the soil?

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That’s the challenge.
If a city is neglected

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and fails to adapt and
evolve, it will stagnate,

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decline, and fade.

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We need a new vision, an opportunity
for cities to reinvent themselves.

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Will Canadian cities be
ready for the future?

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[music]

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[music]

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All right, we are on the road. On the road.

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More than 80% of Canadians now live in an urban
setting and I think across this country,

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people living in… in urban areas often
feel well, there aren’t any solutions,

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there aren’t any answers out there. What I hope by
going on this trip is by showing concrete things,

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not just what governments or businesses
are doing, but an ordinary people

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are also part of the transformation. I’m
really excited to see what Canada has

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to offer in terms of what cities
are doing to be more sustainable.

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I want to be proud of my country and I want to see what some of
the examples are for Canadians going in a more progressive way.

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[music]

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The way that we are traveling across Canada in this
biodiesel retrofitted trailer, teaches you, you got limits.

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You can’t just keep fouling
that little living space.

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So I think it’s a very good metaphor for the
challenge that we face on the entire planet,

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so this is a good way to travel. Living in this Airstream,
being in a confined space. We’re gonna be confronted

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with what a city might have
to be confronted with, space,

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how we get around, waste, water, energy.
How does that look?

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Good. I love the opportunity
to travel with my daughter

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for weeks on and we get a long like
gangbusters, so it’s a great time for me.

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Our first stop as we traveled east
to west is La Belle province.

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I have never spent much in Montreal,

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it seems like a very
vibrant happening place.

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Ah…ha… Montreal. When I think of Montreal,
I think of nightclubs, I think of music,

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I think of restaurants.

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I’m interested in finding out if a city can create its own food production
and distribution system. So dad is treating me on our first night in town.

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(inaudible).

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Tomorrow, we explore the world of urban agriculture. First stop,
we are headed into the heart of the city to McGill University.

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See this is John Raphael Park… Uh…ha…
Which is where we are here… Right.

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And the McGill University
is over there Got it.

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And then there is habitat. See how they
are all different. Oh, the gardens too.

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Well, this is great having a separate lane.

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Enjoyable, Dad 75, now. That’s not we need.
As he is getting older,

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he really wants to focus on the big picture.
…or anything that were just… just like…

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I am kind of interested in grassroots local
initiatives. So we are visiting the edible campus

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at McGill University which yields
one ton of produce a year.

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A youth driven organization called Santropol Roulant,
distributes McGill’s harvest to people in need

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in the downtown. Their Director of Sustainability,
Tim Murphy, is showing us around. Welcome.

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Welcome to our garden, this
is the Edible Campus Garden.

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It’s a partnership we have with
School of Architecture here.

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We are in a public space and
McGill is a very beautiful campus,

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so a lot of the work we deal the School

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of Architecture is designing the space, making it not only useful, but like beautiful. We need to look at
all of the spaces that we have that could be put to better use of parking lots, balconies, staircases,

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things like this big concrete plaza.
We got peppers.

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Peppers. Yeah. We use all the produce through different Santropol
Roulant Program. So our organization has really well reputed Meals

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on Wheels program. The people living out

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for lots of the time will receive their hot meals, five days
a week. Umm… oh, that’s really good. The transformation

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that I see in Montreal is incredible. Oh, it’s perfect.
That’s not ready, yet, these are the last for you I can…

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Now, people are saying, we don’t have to bring food in from
the countryside. We’re gonna grow it right in the city.

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Well, we should harvest a few
more and you comeback to

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the Santropol location and volunteer.
Ah… Okay. That’s a good idea.

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I’m gonna do it. And at their nearby headquarters,
Santropol Roulant’s own rooftop gardens

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will yield another two tons of vegetable.

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Nice. Their harvest has turned into healthy
meals for their city wide members.

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There’s something really nice about being raised above,
you know, all that traffic congestion and… Yeah.

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So I need to signup. Yes, you sign
your name so… We are Friday We are…

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So there’s been a garden at
McGill (inaudible) here,

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but then there are some other gardens as well
that you get vegetable from. Actually, uh…

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the volunteers stared a project called
(inaudible) hanging gardens. Nice.

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They found some people in the plateau, who have fruit trees,
but don’t have the capacity to be picking the fruits,

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so made an agreement with these folks, they would come
volunteer to harvest the fruit and one-third of that

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will go to us, we’d use it in our kitchen. A
third of that will go back to the volunteers

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and another third back to the property owners.
And the fruit would otherwise go waste. Exactly.

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Under salvaging and that’s wonderful.

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Okay, that took me that entire time to do one
carrot. You probably can do it in 20 seconds.

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You can take the meals…

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and I will take vegetable. Wow! Ready. Ready. Let’s go. I think
volunteerism is one of the most important things that we can do

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and especially in the city, I think
everybody should be involved in someway.

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It was need to see all these young people
so involved with their communities.

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Hi, Ms. Wong. This is Sarika. Nice to meet
you. They are creating a social dimension

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that isn’t just about the food, but it’s
about getting to know your neighborhood.

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(inaudible).

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I’m making eggs with the vegetable

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that I have got from Santropol. That’s great.
Oh, oh, we are really running low on water. Uh…

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But you got enough water for coffee. Yeah.
And they have about 10 or 11 staff,

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I think, but the rest of volunteers. Wow!
Oh, so this is not a small outfit.

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No it’s really growing. All right, coffee. Yes,
please. Oh, you should have strong your coffee.

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Yes, I like strong coffee.

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Wow! (inaudible).

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Great, thank you.

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But the challenge really
is that 12 months a year.

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If Santropol Roulant is… Santropol Roulant…
…can hookup with something like Lufa farms

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and you can have local fresh food around which
is quite a thing in Canada, very… very exciting.

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I don’t know anything about Lufa.

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Lufa farm is a multimillion dollar greenhouse. They don’t
use pesticides, they only use traditional fertilizers

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and it’s constructed on a massive
industrial rooftop. Holy…

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The first of it’s a kind in the world.

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Four years ago, we started working on developing the concept
for an urban farm, it’s such a complicated project.

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We have to bring in architects, engineers,
communication experts, legal experts,

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insurance experts. We had to go for a year
and a half zoning change and permit process.

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We had to find a contractor and a supplier willing
to take on this project and all to grow tomatoes,

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and we believe that the way to feed seven
billion is to really look very deep into

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what’s available in terms of technologies.
We believe that they are just as nutritious

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as what’s grown in soil. Because
it’s very rare to find a soil

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that’s perfect and it’s constituents of nutrients, but in
hydroponics, we’re able to give the plants what they need.

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Right now, we are actually working on
developing the optimum formulation

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for multiple crops, if you got tomato and
they plant on same irrigation system,

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how do you tweak the nutrient formulation and they have
very different needs sometimes. So we have to find a way

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to strike the balance so that they both grow
ultimately even though they are on the same solution.

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And here all the plants are
grown in coconut fiber.

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Just as ground coconut husk. So why a coconut
husks a good sensory to grow plants.

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This kind of works really well and keeps the right moisture
levels, not to dense, oxygenation are so important.

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And then everything is properly irrigated. The
nutrient formulation is fed in through these lines.

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Anything that trickles at the bottom of the bag is collected in the turfs
on the side here and runs back down to base line fertile, loops backup.

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Uh… That’s really recycling that. Uh… And
what’s this mist that we keep feeling.

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It’s to keep the humidity up in this crop um… One
of the pest problems we have is spider mites

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and they don’t do well at high humidity. It’s
so impressive to see the size of… of a plant.

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They grow like crazy, it’s like 6
feet a week I think. It’s amazing.

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Whatever you are feeding them,
they seem to be doing pretty well.

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So these are three batch tanks, one for each irrigation system.
It’s huge batch. It goes up to the greenhouse from these tanks.

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The exact details of their nutrient
and irrigation system are top secret,

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but we convince Lauren to show us around.
Filter it before and fill the tank.

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So everyday we harvest about 200
heads of lettuce for 200 baskets.

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Just hold them up a little bit and drain them,
and we take it to our harvest station. Okay.

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[music] They are so perfect.
Hey, you are a farmer now.

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Oh, yeah. The reason we have
so many different crops is

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on a daily basis we harvest
a little bit of everything

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and the baskets are assembled with
vegetables harvest the same day.

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We have about 36 drop points around
Montreal and as we have more greenhouses,

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we will have more drop points. Hey, Speed
it up, dad. Okay… okay, here we go.

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A huge advantage of being able to
deliver to your local communities,

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you don’t have to worry about storage and ship-age.
A food system in which we have to bring food

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from 4,000 miles away is crazy as
you know, oil price is sky rocket,

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so this it seems to me as a part of what we should
be looking towards food security in the future.

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Oh, thank you. Um… You can’t
be eating on the job.

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You have to nourish your worker.

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It’s only when you farm better and farm locally using no land and
you have the direct link with the consumer that you are truly able

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to revolutionize the food production system and
prudentially change the word of agriculture.

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Most of those people, all
of them are young people.

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These are young, smart urban kids and
they’re rediscovering the agriculture.

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Yeah, and from the sounds of it people
want to be involved in this project. Yeah.

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But I’m really excited to see some of the amazing changes happening
on the unknown and forgotten parts of Toronto’s Waterfront.

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The Quebec, Toronto,

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Windsor-Detroit corridor is one of the important arteries
for transporting people and goods anywhere in the world.

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And we’ll experience it firsthand as

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we travel west along the 401, the
busiest highway in North America.

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We are driving on the 401, we are entering
Toronto and I just couldn’t believe

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the number of massive trucks
that were whizzing by us.

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Oh, man, I’m glad you are driving, thank
you. It’s almost get to the truck.

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That would have made the headlines. Oil
truck tries to take Suziko(ph). Yes.

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Look at, all the cars are merging here.
Toronto has the worst

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average commute time in North America,
80 minutes. We are to be ashamed.

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Surely, the challenge should be, lets cut
back on how much time we have to commute,

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that’s crazy. The place
where we’ll be camping

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is in a way kind of an abandoned
area in the heart of the city.

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My guess there is a lot of pressure
to move everybody back into the city.

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People have begun to realize what a tremendous…
Opportunity. …you know, opportunity it is.

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These are great pictures. Yeah,
look at that definition.

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Oh, wow! Yeah. This area one time
was a thriving industrial area.

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The problem is a lot of it’s been badly polluted,
it’s a brown field, you know, people have dump stuff,

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so that’s gonna be expensive to get rid of that… Hmm…
And then the question is how do you do develop this?

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Right. So the fate of this area is
gonna be very… very interesting.

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Now as you look towards this, in the middle of the
city, on water, this land is worth a lot of money now.

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Yeah. So you have never
been down here before.

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Not really alone, here, no. but this is…
Waterfront Toronto is an organization

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that is halfway through a 25-year plan
to revitalize areas along Lake Ontario.

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It’s the largest urban renewal
project in North America.

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Sugar beach, a former parking lot, it’s
just one of their award winning designs.

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So this is the sugar plant here,

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apparently you can smell the sugar, that would be okay.
Oh, really? We are excited to see some of their projects

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to attract families back into the downtown.
John Campbell,

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the president of Waterfront
Toronto is giving us a tour.

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This, our reception committee. Meet Sarika.
Hi… John and James.

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We are trying to find a way as how can we create great urban
spaces and great green spaces that people can actually live

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and raise their families here in downtown environment. We
really want to set a very high standard for sustainability.

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Things like 33% tree kind
of be coverage for example.

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Those kinds of things are built in our sustainability framework which
guides both the designers and the constructers what we are doing.

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All this area to the west of us heading
to downtown is under a flood risk,

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so we haven’t unable to develop here until
we resolve the flooding issue in this part.

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So the primary purpose of this hill is
really to… to function as a brim to protect…

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Correct. Against the possible catastrophe.
We are in a highly industrialized area

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and basically going to have
reinvent a natural system.

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The marsh on this park is part of a close system of drainage
within the park, so the drainage does not go back to the city.

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It’s kept on side, stored on side, you will be treated
and used for irrigation throughout the park as well.

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[music]

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This is really interesting to me, because if I were to look out and I… you
know I’m clearly not a planner, and I think I wouldn’t choose this area

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as a place to put a park. This is
the central block of Underpass Park

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and this is an area that was one
time more of a negative space,

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parking lot, auto body shop, and now we are
taking it back and reinventing the space,

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transforming the space into public ground. I’ve never seen
anything like it. Do the overhangs Sarika, you can do it.

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Yeah, right in these steel toes. Like Sugar Beach,
you are celebrating the industrial heritage.

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In this respect, we are celebrating the infrastructure,
celebrating these kind of moments within the city.

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Now this is a free roof. Yeah. Exactly. Right! See that’s how you have
to look at things right. Right… right. They are saying eventually

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the trees are gonna grow so high that you can
imagine if you are in a car, you look out.

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Nice, I like that. It just gonna really be a
community we build. The people of all shape,

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sizes, ages, income levels can live there,
can walk there, can shop there, work there,

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without having to commute 50 miles to
go to work. Wow, what a difference.

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[music]

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This is Sherbourne Common

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it’s a four acre park in the center of the
(inaudible) district along the Waterfront Toronto.

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The park is designed based on three elements
one is long, one is the wood it can grow,

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and the third most important
feature is water.

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Oh, this looks like a movie set.

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Yeah. This facility takes the… the
future storm water for the freezing

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and also lake water brings it through
piping in open lawn through some wet wells

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and will be flowing through
a series of UV lights

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and then the water gets
pumped to the raised pools

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and it is day lighted at the public park by an artist from
Vancouver (inaudible) where then it goes through further

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bio preparation planting into lower
channel back to the (inaudible).

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Well, we have seen that the water quality in the
inner harbor has improved over the last few years,

00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.999
based on development we have done, we are cleaning the
water, it’s species are plant material coming back again

00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
and fish that I haven’t seen in years. Makes a
lot of sense. This is education about water,

00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
right? The sources of our water, the way it’s
treated, and I think it’s really important

00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
that we make that transition from being as just
where you dump your garbage or your waste.

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
Right. And it’s something we honor and celebrate.
It, very much umm… president for parks

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
and landscape architecture and public space throughout
the city of Toronto and throughout Canada as well.

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
Build the infrastructure, you build the parks,
and then you begin to build development around

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
the park overtime.

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
What I saw in the Downtown Portland
area is an incredible opportunity.

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
People love to be near water,
they love nature, that can become

00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
a radical transformation overtime and that to me
is very exciting. Because not just the development

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
it’s important, it’s the mindset underlying
the way that we develop the city.

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
We really have to think
about what makes us happy,

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
what’s the healthy lifestyle and kind of
reinvasion what we want to be living in.

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
[music]

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
As we attempt to attract
people back to the city,

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
I think our neighborhood have to include nature that’s going
to happen throughout the city so that we can reengage

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
our children with the natural world.

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
The renaissance of the historic brickworks factory
has led to a rediscover of Toronto’s ravine system,

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
so it’s a contrast with the old
brickworks and then here this valley…

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
Sure. So, this apparently was the
area where they dug out all the mud,

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
so went down pretty deep. Oh, look.
Oh, right. Turtles.

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
Those are patent turtles. Oh, that’s great.
This location really came onto the map

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
because of it’s geological heritage.
It had a lot of clay here

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
and so this became a brick manufacturing facility and in it’s heyday it
was the largest of it’s kind in Canada with 40 million bricks a year.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
Whoa! It was in production
until the mid 1980s

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
and then at that point there was not
enough clay to keep up production

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
and it was abandoned for over 20 years. Evergreen has
created a multifaceted place in its old brick factory.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
It’s a brown filed so we had to
build on top of contaminated soil.

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
We created an office space for our own organization
and for other non-profit organizations

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
and a few small bring private sector organizations, like
the ones that are doing the electric car infrastructure.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
You can go and see the old cannons
that are football field in length.

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
So we are very interested in
health of the whole watershed

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
and you see the edgings here are
actually some of the streams

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
and creeks that run through the downtown area.
So, Sarika what is that kind of remind you up.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
When you look at it you see veins, right that’s
exactly what you think off. Right. You see how much

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
the city sort of a living city underneath it.
Toronto has a largest ravine system in the world

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
you know it’s almost the… the
underworld that’s forgotten.

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
Oh, you can see the students. That’s
what I used to do when I was a kid.

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
Yeah… Bringing back memories.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
I loved seeing that class. Maybe. Yeah, who want’s
to hold it. Seeing the children here you know

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
they’re gonna educate their parents as well. I
think it’s great to see the long term value

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
of this, the transants economics.
I think it’s inspiring for us.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
This is Canada’s biggest city and look in the
heart of the city you have got this, wow.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
I always part of Toronto as

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
the big bustling happening city. I never
would have thought of it as sustainable city

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
as I am really impressed that’s actually
happening. So how older you when you moved here.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Well, I guess it was 1945. I wanted Sarika
to see London and Livingston where I grew up

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
and also to experience
nearby Windsor and Detroit.

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
Detroit is a kind of
bounded the hip to Canada,

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
I mean it is our close neighbor here. Detroit
shares the waterway with Canada with Windsor

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
and (inaudible) we have
tunnels and bridges across.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
Detroit grew up basically
as one industry city

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
and in many ways Detroit, I think
becomes a warning of the hazards

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
of this thoughtless kind of development.

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
Architect Christopher Marcinkowski is
meeting us back on our side at the border

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
to reveal some imaginative and ambitious
ideas that could pave the way

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
for North America cities to adapt and flourish. So
what’s wrong with cities in North America today?

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
The problem is that you can’t
talk about vision now.

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
When you talk about big visions, the assumption is that’s
bureaucratic, it’s authoritarian, and it’s top down,

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
and there isn’t this… this sort of
ambition anymore about what cities can do

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
and what cities can become, and so I think now we
have to do is really look at what are the things

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
that we perceive as being negative, but that we could actually
maybe tap into and reframe leverage into something positive.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
You know we have a project that we are
working on that was looking at sources of

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
uh… greenhouse gas production and the fact
that you could use carbon dioxide actually

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
as a building block or something rather than
something that was destroying the environment,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
and so the basic idea is that there are all these different
point sources of carbon and so one of the things

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
that we looked at is things like the peculiar tunnels, that’s
2000 feet, one of which is Detroit-Windsor tunnel that we have…

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
It’s right under us here. It’s right under us here. They
all have to be ventilated, they all have to evacuate

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
the airflow through them. If we were able to
just capture a bit of that carbon dioxide,

00:23:55.000 --> 00:24:00.000
we could actually use it to fuel an agricultural production
algae either for nutraceuticals, food, biofuels.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
CO2 plus sunlight perfect breeding ground for algae. Absolutely. But instead
of taking that industrial process and putting on the outskirts of the city

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
like we tended to do in the 20th century, it’s
actually put that in the middle of the city.

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
And then take the infrastructure
that’s required it actually capture

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
and hold and deliver the carbon, and turn that into
an amenity for the city that actually improves

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
the quality of the life of the place. But this is the vision I mean we can see
that the people are using this as a public space. Right. So we have this idea

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
that it would somehow move. Oh! Ah… Whoa!

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
In reality this… this system would work whether that thing
was fixed or not and can really work in any configuration,

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
but this idea of reusing
infrastructure is essential,

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
and this idea is again a spectacle. We have
got to learn to imitate nature… Right.

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Where there is no such thing as waste… Right. I mean one organism’s
excretion becomes another organism opportunity. Exactly.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
And when we talk about sustainability
of cities I mean that really is

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
the definition of the sustainable city. Should be… should
be. It’s an opportunity, I love that idea. We’re already…

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
It’s gonna be a long trip now. We are
going to Alberta tonight. I know. Yeah.

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
I haven’t spent anytime in Alberta before
so this is gonna be interesting for me.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
And later you see what they
do with their garbage.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
[music]

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
A city has demands very much
like our individual demands,

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
you gotta fuel the body, you gotta
fuel the demands of a city.

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
We then ultimately have to deal with our waste.
I first heard about Edmonton’s waste crisis

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
many… many years ago. Nobody
wanted to take Edmonton’s garbage

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
and so out of that came this recognition.
We gotta deal with our waste ourselves

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
and that everyone has a part to play. Whoa!
Look at all those solar panels there.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
Local architect, Shafraaz Kaba is
taking recycling to a whole new level.

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
Every architect dream is to design their own house
so. It’s almost everything in the house has a story,

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
so for example, lets
start with on the side,

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
this is carbonized wood, it’s a opportunity to use Pine
Beetle Kill that’s devastated Alberta and BC first this year.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
Yeah, there is a lot of that wood around. Yeah. You
put any type of wood in his specialized vacuum cans,

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
it takes all the oxygen out of it and it bakes
the wood through and through essentially.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
It gives a property that hopefully will not rot.
So we are testing it out for the Canadian climate.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
We were trying to find interesting
ways to reuse everything,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
we possible could that would
have gone typically (inaudible).

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
This is actually the back of the
church pew. I was able to use here

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
as door casings and benches… Nice wood I mean I
wonder while you can get this quality of wood today,

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
exactly. so I really think a lot of the…

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
the future for really high quality wood is gonna
be taking out of old buildings and… Yeah.

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
And all these are the few benches… Yeah… yeah. So
we want to take advantage of the deep window sills.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
It’s grooved, I know. it’s perfect. So you
have to make church, in case, comfortable.

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
We reframed a lot of stuff from the
house that was gonna be demolished.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
One of the things we did on land,
well, it is used to cast our sink

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
which weighs about 200 pounds.
I got a (inaudible) bathtub

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
and I picked up 25 solid core Downton doors.
Wow! So all of those … For nothing. For nothing.

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
Jees… This is a reclaimed gym
flooring from the school…

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
Ah! I thought it looking at her. The gym, we thought it would be really
cool to leave the gym lines as this is our homes cooling stairs. actually.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
So I think I’m gonna put you at work.

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
Wow! That’s hard. Press it against…

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:58.000
Press it against. And pull that trigger,
awesome. Whoa! That’s right. Yeah, that’s it.

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
I’ve never done that so, you gonna
let me try. Okay. Oh! He is a pro…

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
He’s showing off. Yeah.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
Really… You got a spectacular view of the
valley. Yeah. But you also have this.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
That was the clincher. For… for
me that is Edmonton with river,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
valley, park, and then the refinery.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
For me it’s… it’s almost poetic, we are pointing our solar
panels right at the refinery in an interesting gesture.

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
You can’t give them the… the fickle finger
that No That’s gonna be a photo (inaudible).

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
Exactly this is the
future, I get use to it.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
One person can make a huge difference,
imagine a whole city can do.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
Edmonton waste management
site aims to keep over 90%

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
of the household waste out of
landfill within the next few years.

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
No other Canadian city is as efficient or as
forward thinking in dealing with their garbage.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
I don’t know why Sarika, I feel really sad…

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
What do you mean? Well because a few years ago these…
these must have been state of the art people proudly

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
put them in their homes and then they end
up in this kind of ignominious piled to be.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Yeah! Well… Big junk. This is what happens, you know, on the
good side of things most people probably throw out in landfill.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
Yes, in the old days this
all went into landfill,

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
this site started out as a
landfill site back in 1975

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
and then in the 90s we knew we gonna be getting
near capacity and then that started the city

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
on a large diversion program,
that’s about 550 acre site,

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
we are building a future waste for
biofuel facility to collect landfill gas

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
from the landfill and it produces
about 4.8 megawatts through engines

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
that we have on site. We’re kind
of a one stop shop for waste.

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
[music]

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
Uh… This is a busy place. So this is primarily TVs in…
Yeah, That were like… That area is just… That area…

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
Just for the cathode ray tube,
that’s the old style TV. I see.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
They don’t wanna smashed up the… the
CRT, they want to remove it whole,

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
so they all dismantle all the plastic, the printed
circuit board, and pull out the yolk that’s

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
the back copper piece at the end, so everything gets
segregated and at the end you just have this glass piece.

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
That’s because the cathode ray
tube has got mercury or some…

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
It’s got a lot of lead in it. That’s… Although
I think it’s over 10-15 pounds of lead.

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
Oh! that. In that… in that tube. Really.

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
This is start of our recycling process

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
and running 13-15 tons an hour
through so that line is moving.

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
So how much did you say was newsprint.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
About 70% of what’s going in so quite far paper
is the largest pile. Those are all trees.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
There are we check on this line,
cardboard, crockware, plastic,

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
garbage and rigid. Okay. So each one have to go into
individual bucket. Oh! I think you are messing it.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
Oh, my god! Yeah… yeah.

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
Yeah, it’s… Edmonton is leading

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
the way of thinking about waste. It’s a resource.
It’s a large compound stood in North America,

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
we produce about 60,000 tons of
compost a year. 60,000 tons.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
Holy! Look at it all.

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
It creates job, reduces the
emissions into the atmosphere.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
This is the biggest amount
of compost, I’ve ever seen.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
And you can recover useful things
out of it, like soil, like energy.

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
This is our finished (inaudible)
stock from our recycling facility,

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
it’s a mixture of mixed plastics and mixed
papers that are screened out from the process.

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
Now, this is the end product of that
whole separation shredding process,

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
but it is now fuel or
fodder for something else.

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
Yes, this is the future of
thermo waste management,

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
so the material from the processing line that we
are in prior goes to a bubbling bed gas of fire,

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
which is the largest
vertical structure there,

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
where it runs out about 750 degree Celsius, so… so
we are getting it down to a gaseous stage first.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
We actually scrub the Co2 out, so it’s
really a Co2 mutual project at the end

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
and that Co and hydrogen,

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
the gas its converted to a liquid methanol in our
case. So it’s kind of holy grail of technologies.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
This really is the future, the
past is out across the way

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
our old landfill that is now shutdown so.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
Energy from garbage, this has
just turned my (inaudible).

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
What are you doing?

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
I’m studying my French.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
Edmonton’s youngest and greenest counselor,

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
Don Iveson paid us a surprise visit. This is
kind of a theme that dad and I have noticed,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
you know from all the different cities that we have been to,
especially I used to even think, young people want to see change.

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
Hi. The reason why 89%
of Edmontonians recycles

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
because their kids hold their parents accountable. You know grade four
children have been coming out to the waste management center for decades.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
So some of its generational cultural and
some of it is… is through really good

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
social marketing, which waste management has been going
really… really well here in Edmonton for a very longtime.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
You know this whole facility
has been really 25 years

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
or more in the making and it indicates
that it does take a generation sometime

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
to make meaningful change. That’s a great story. How
long the trip is it in back into town on your bike.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
It’s gonna be a long ride. But it’s
worth for three days, so I figured…

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
That’s right. Oh! Yeah. Okay. Thanks for
coming out. It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
You heard so much about the economy so its
important we can’t afford to do this or that, but…

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
Yeah. The city has got no one to pass it on to. Um…
So you got to deal with a lot of these big issues.

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
But I do like how we have seen
each city do things uniquely.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
Yeah. There hasn’t been one method that
they are all trying to implement. Exactly.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
I’m kind of nervous about going back to Vancouver because
we have seen such great things and Vancouver was to be

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
the greenest city in Canada, so if it doesn’t… Well that will
be good if we can say to the people in Vancouver, hey look…

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
Yeah. You think you are good, but… but gosh

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
I have been so much excited and inspired
by what we have seen on this trip.

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
I’m glad. It’s really, very uplifting. Well, dad
you are getting all spiritual in your old age.

00:34:55.000 --> 00:35:03.000
[music]

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
I was sorry to say goodbye to
our trustee trailer in Alberta,

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
but I can’t wait to fall a sleep in my
own bed to night. So nice to be here,

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
not even raining. Transit is key to the
sustainable development of any city

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
and my friend, Sadhu Johnston is meeting us
at the airport to outline this connection.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
He was Chicago’s highly successful Environmental Chief
and now has a similar role with the city of Vancouver.

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
How’s your trip. Yesterday,
long but… Good trip.

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
Absolutely excited. Yeah. Everyone always
says what’s the greenest city and it’s like

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
there are amazing green solutions in virtually every city to go (inaudible).
Exactly. That’s what we found out. Exactly. That was so exciting,

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
hop on the (inaudible) we will head into downtown. Right…
right. I haven’t ridden this thing, yet. You are right.

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
[music]

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
50% of (inaudible) are new to transit that was
built to have an expected rider (inaudible)

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
about an 100 thousand a day by 2013
and we exceed now with a near one.

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
Really. And the canon line
has provided an opportunity

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
for us to rezone the entire corridor to built that city in those
areas and the residents were overwhelmingly supportive of that,

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
they recognize, you got a transit line
that is the place to build density.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
Here you are creating a pathway to
allow for… for more urban housing.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
Definitely and it’s not just the urban core,
the suburban areas are building more densely

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
around their transit nodes as well.
About 12 years ago,

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
the city passed a new transportation
plan, a ten year transportation plan

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
and for the first time that the plan fundamentally
said we’re not gonna build our city

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
for the car, and so they reprioritize and
they said our first priority in the way

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
that we design and build and maintain
our city it’s the pedestrian

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
and then it’s the bike and then it’s transportation
public transportation and then it’s the private car.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
All these new developments that I talked about that we
are building on the canon line and other neighborhoods

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
(inaudible) are in developments. We
see those as… as almost eco hubs.

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
They can be places that conserve the rest of the
neighborhood, not just for transit, but for energy as well.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
The Olympic Village stops here.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
We recently built a district energy system,
this is the first sewer heat system

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
in North America. We can take
that heat out of the sewer water

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
and we are using it to heat the entire Olympic
Village and then the entire neighborhood around it.

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
This is the Cambie bridge, you see
those pipe like things sticking up,

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
under that is where that heat removal from
the warm sewage water is taking place.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
Oh! That Sadhu mentioned.

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
Yeah… yeah… yeah. It’s kind of nice like
(inaudible) you remember the water system that…

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
Yeah. Became a piece of art. Yeah. But,

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
Yeah, its pretty grate. I thought a good place for us to start
is that the University of British Columbia, my (inaudible).

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
It setting new standards in green design
and smart city building. Up first,

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
dad and I wanna checkout their future district
energy plant powered by local wood waste.

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
It’s very unique kind of combined heat and power plant,
that really the innovative part of this project.

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
A double bank for you which is great. Yeah. I think what’s special about it
is that it is right here on the campus of University of British Columbia.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
Wood waste and particular in… particularly in
urban areas is still a significant component

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
what goes into the landfill

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
and so we are diverting it into our facility, converting
it through our gasification process into a synthetic gas,

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
which we put into high efficiency gas
engines that produce electricity

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
and heat, and the heat choose to heat the
campus and the electricity is used to offset

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
the power that the university buys
from the… from the power company.

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
So how much carbon is that saved from being emitted. By
the greenhouse gas calculation about 5,000 tons a year.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
5,000 tons a year that’s a lot. So I just worry
are people gonna be attempted to cut down

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
perfectly healthy trees in this atmosphere.
The cost associated with harvesting

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
and shipping and transporting trees,

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
I think would be prohibited.
Residuals or waste is inexpensive

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
and… and a big part of the economics of a
plant like this is the cost of the fuel.

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
We can’t leave without visiting UBC’s
newly meanted Center for Interactive

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
Research in Sustainability. So tell us
what was the concept behind the building?

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
Well the basic idea was could we build a
building that actually isn’t just less bad,

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
reducing damage or (inaudible) gives back
contribute in a positive way both to the…

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
by physical environment and also to the human environment.
So what that means is adding a building to the UBC campus

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
actually reduces UBC’s energy use,
reduces UBC’s carbon emissions.

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
We have the most ambitious climate change targets
of any of the top 40 universities in the world.

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
UBC has 400 buildings, 400 hectares,
about 15 million square feet.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
Take 400 buildings downtown Vancouver, how many owners
you have to get on board to try and make a change,

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
we can act. I think that’s the challenge
all time. If everything we do does damage

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
then we are in big trouble, but if things
we do can actually make things better

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
whoa… how cool is that. CIRS is not
only a high performance building?

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
It’s also a hub for progressive ideas.
They are new interactive planning tools.

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
Lets residents visualize future development
ideas for their neighborhoods.

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
I wanna do the China town
mixed use (inaudible). Okay.

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
Oh! Ready. Here you go. I think the west
had mid rise go off(ph) would be a nice…

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
Um… Uh… Normally, we would try to put mixed used
buildings along the major arterial streets.

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
My god! It’s like Lego blocks you
can actually fit them together and…

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
The city wanted to look at it zoning from the point
of view being supportive of district energy systems

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
all along the corridor, so what they wanted to
rehearse with the community as these building types

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
are sufficiently dense from jobs and population
point of view, but also have sufficient thermal

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
usage that you could rationalize economically
putting in a district energy plant.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
The building you put on
Sarika has a 179 residents,

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
11 jobs, and it’s a nine-story building.
We could put a row house beside it,

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
so we can compare then, so one of them as
179, one of them as 15 people living in it,

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
so there is a huge density difference
there. Right. What I love about this is

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
it really gives them a chance as citizens
to define what it is about their area

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
that they like and to try to protect
those values as they go into the future.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
Laneway houses are starting to
popup all around Vancouver,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
thanks to a new city (inaudible). Oh!
There it is. Nice little day.

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
Hello. Thank you. Vancouver is the one
that’s really done this almost blanket

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
uh… zoning where they are allowing it and just about
all the single family home neighborhoods in the city.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
There’s probably been 300 permits that have gone out, so this
hasn’t been tried on the scale that… that Vancouver is trying.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
Laneway housing is a great way to infill
space created a little bit more density,

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
but also not completely change the nature of a
neighborhood. No… not everybody wants to live in condos,

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
not everybody wants to live in towers, and so
they are trying to find different ways to…

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
to help neighborhoods densify and the way that’s
appropriate for the space. So it’s a 33 foot long,

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
you are allowed a 500
square foot home. Right.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
That is square feet, that’s small. That’s
much better than I thought it would be.

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
Well, I grew up in a family of six with
less than a 1000 square feet. Okay.

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
The average home being build in Canada now has
one bathroom per person living in that, right.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
It looks like you have everything you need, it’s
just really efficiently setup. It’s good, isn’t it.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
Well, they have only been here for a couple of
months. (inaudible). This blackberry is still ripe.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
I once brought water beetles, see.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
This is my mission, if I could have any,
it would be that we are living in cities,

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
we have all that diversity and culture, and
infrastructure, transportation technology,

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
but we also are in nature and we
are… we are interacting with it,

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
we are engaging with it, we are part of
it every single day. People are ready

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
to make changes, but they don’t know
what’s possible, so I hope that…

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
that by or looking just the tiny bit of
what’s going on, people will realize,

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
there are lots of solutions out there. It
just takes the will to get started I think.

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
So it’s really need for me to kind of see
what young people are doing across the county

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
to become engaged and make
their cities more livable.

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
I cling to hope, nature has
got a lot of surprises

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
and if we give her room pullback
and give her some space,

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:05.000
she may be far more forgiving than we
deserve. So that’s give me great hope.