We conducted a case study of UniverCity at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, eight years after construction began, and five years after the first residents moved in. UniverCity is instructive because it adopted many physical design parameters common to New Urbanist communities and concurrently had goals to have low environmental impact This is a case study that integrates metrics of smart growth, and low impact development.

We asked if a development that set out to be “sustainable” could achieve compactness, diversity, completeness and walkability while concurrently achieving low environmental impact. We found that UniverCity was a very compact neighbourhood with a good range of commercial series. At that time only 1/3 of residents were within a 5 minute walk of the high street but all were within 5 minutes of the school and parks. Almost 50% of residents worked or studied at SFU. In terms of its impact on stream habitat the results were mixed— it was not meeting all goals.