Canadian cities are not making adequate progress on climate action. All change toward climate mitigation and adaptation is incremental, happening in small stages, across many sectors over many decades. How do planners and elected officials know if long-term plans will produce the desired results across diverse sectors? Predicting the long-term effects of proposed changes that involve inter-related urban systems, such as land use, transportation, buildings, energy supply, and urban forests is challenging. This research delivers interactive cross-sectoral data demonstrating how changes to urban form and building energy policies may address both climate action and urban livability in long range urban planning.

This project utilized a “sandbox” modeling approach to evaluate, compare, and visualize scalable energy and GHG outcomes of “what-if” scenarios referencing neighborhoods in three British Columbia, Canada cities. The modelling reveals order of magnitude comparisons of land use, mobility and building energy policies commonly implemented in communities in BC. This interactive dashboard communicates the results of this research to planners, the public and elected officials. See related projects below for more information about the research.

View the interactive dashboard here