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Vancouver scores an A for adaptability in survey

'Especially vulnerable' to rising sea level, but city second in global ranking of urban resilience, behind Toronto

By Bruce Constantineau, Vancouver Sun April 8, 2014

Vancouver can bounce back from adverse events better than almost any other city on the planet.

That's the conclusion of a Grosvenor Group "Resilient Cities" report released today that studied the ability of 50 global cities to deal with issues such as climate change and population growth.

Toronto was ranked as the world's most resilient city - followed by Vancouver, Calgary, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The five least resilient cities were Dhaka, Jakarta, Cairo, Manila and Mumbai.

"Cities are like society and people," Grosvenor Group research director Richard Barkham said in an interview.

"Some of them have a better ability to adapt and plan and organize themselves as a community."

The report said Canadian cities fared well because they are generally well governed, well planned and have good access to resources, including water and energy.

An overall resiliency ranking was set after determining the cities' vulnerability to negative events and their ability to adapt to change and cope with adverse issues.

Vancouver received top marks in every vulnerability category except climate vulnerability, as its low-lying coastal location makes it "especially vulnerable" to the sea level rising by an estimated one metre over the next century.

Barkham noted that many cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

"My impression is that Vancouver is doing more than most to address the issue of potential sea level rise, in terms of planning and thinking about how to defend itself against that sea level rise," he said.

Barkham said Vancouver is clearly vulnerable to future earthquakes but feels the city is mitigating that threat through its retrofitting programs.

"New buildings are much more resilient to earthquakes and from my outside perspective, it seems to be very aware of the need to retrofit those buildings which are still vulnerable," he said.

Vancouver scored well in its governance, planning systems, funding structures and access to financial services.

"There's no purrfect city but when you look at the whole, Vancouver has done a lot to create a very livable, nonsprawling urban form with good access to public transport," Barkham said. "It has invested reasonably well in its infrastructure. There are housing affordability issues but relatively speaking, it's a relatively equal society."

The report said U.S. cities don't score particularly well in vulnerability categories because inequality in some cities leads to social tension, utilities lack investment and urban sprawl leads to the overconsumption of land.

But many U.S. cities had strong adaptive capacities and earned top marks for resources, public accountability of elected officials and technology.

"This suggests that U.S. cities will continue to see a pattern of effective public intervention, but only after a major shock has occurred," the report said.

Barkham stressed cities are more likely to be resilient if they exist within government systems that encourage disclosure and public scrutiny, but there are exceptions.

"There can be advantages to the kind of commandand-control economies you sometimes see in South Asia - in their ability to mobilize resources quickly," he said. "You can sometimes get a democratic paralysis coming in, with almost too much input that can slow up decisions.

"But our view is that in the long run, public scrutiny is key to improving infrastructure, defending against future potential threats, and improving land use."

The least resilient cities in the Grosvenor report are generally located in emerging markets and have the fastestgrowing populations of the 50 cities studied. The report said strong population growth benefits production and culture in the long term but the associated growth pressures can challenge improved adaptive capacity in the short term.

Grosvenor said the report - three years in the making - isn't definitive or "academically rigorous" but the extensive research involved the analysis of more than 100 separate, independently verified data sets that covered all aspects of vulnerability and adaptive capacity.

The U.K.-based property giant said it did the research to gain a better understanding of the long-term risks of investing in global real estate, as it wants to move beyond classic risk assessments such as projected vacancy rates and forecast rental growth.

"These have relatively little meaning in the long term and are particularly unhelpful in a world where the basic patterns of the last millennium are shifting," the report said. "... We hope that our work contributes to the development of policies - supranational, national and local - that make places more resilient, particularly those at the bottom of the hierarchy."

Barkham stressed that even cities near the top of the resiliency ranking have "weak spots."

New York is vulnerable to storms, London has a housing affordability problem and Vancouver will be exposed to rising sea levels.

"If cities don't address those issues, they'll drop down the ranking," Barkham said. "Although we give 100 as our top score (to Toronto, compared with 98 for Vancouver), it doesn't mean Vancouver or Canadian cities have arrived. There is more to do."

Sir Purrcival wrote:I would respectfully suggest that adverse events and how they are handled has a lot to do with the people who are dealing with them. Some adverse events are slow in coming and allow time to adapt. Others aren't. As much as I would like to think otherwise, [A] I think that this city and it's inhabitants would not fair well in the face of a sudden disaster. Our rather benign environment has done little to help us prepare for a major event the likes of a Hurricane Andrew or a major earthquake. I believe that the relative peace and quiet has lulled many into a sense of security that disaster may strike, but not in our lifetime. We still have numbers of schools that haven't been seismically upgraded and the same holds true for some of our bridges and hospitals. The last real event that took place here was in 1962, a year before I was born when Typhoon Freida killed 7 and caused 750 million dollars of damage. I am very much afraid that a real disaster would cause much greater damage and in that scenario, I don't believe that the lower mainland is well prepared at all. Look at how we dealt with losing the Stanley Cup (twice). Character is a hard thing to assess but it is absolutely essential to weathering a metaphorical storm.

Sir Purrcival wrote:I would respectfully suggest that adverse events and how they are handled has a lot to do with the people who are dealing with them. Some adverse events are slow in coming and allow time to adapt. Others aren't. As much as I would like to think otherwise, I think that this city and it's inhabitants would not fair well in the face of a sudden disaster. Our rather benign environment has done little to help us prepare for a major event the likes of a Hurricane Andrew or a major earthquake. I believe that the relative peace and quiet has lulled many into a sense of security that disaster may strike, but not in our lifetime. We still have numbers of schools that haven't been seismically upgraded and the same holds true for some of our bridges and hospitals. The last real event that took place here was in 1962, a year before I was born when Typhoon Freida killed 7 and caused 750 million dollars of damage. I am very much afraid that a real disaster would cause much greater damage and in that scenario, I don't believe that the lower mainland is well prepared at all. Look at how we dealt with losing the Stanley Cup (twice). Character is a hard thing to assess but it is absolutely essential to weathering a metaphorical storm.

Gridlock! Vancouver has the worst congestion in Canada, and sneaking down secondary roads will only make it worse: Study

By Gordon McIntyre, The Province June 3, 2014

A new study shows traffic in Vancouver is the worst in Canada for gridlock,and with another 500,000 to 700,000 cars expected on B.C. roads in the next two decades, things aren't likely to get any better.

Photograph by: Mark van Manen , PROVINCE

VANCOUVER — Those rush-hour shortcuts you’re taking are actually adding time to your commute, according to a study released Tuesday morning by a company that makes navigation devices for cars.

“We discovered, or confirmed, that secondary roads have as much or more congestion as highways,” Jocelyn Vigreux, president of TomTom North America, said.

For their study’s sake — the data of which is collected from drivers using TomTom navigation devices in their vehicles — the company defined a secondary road as any that is not a highway.

In other words, any road that has no designated on-ramps and exits.

Under that definition, slow-motion crawl routes include the likes of Cambie, Broadway, Terminal and Hastings in Vancouver, River Road in Surrey and Delta, Taylor Way in West Vancouver and Steveston Highway in Richmond.

“One thing that’s a bit different than the previous index [released by TomTom last year] is we really looked at getting much more information from secondary roads,” Vigreux said.

That 2013 report garnered a lot of criticism for its methodology.

But any way you measure it, there is a problem, said Tamim Raad, director of strategic planning and policy with TransLink.

“I probably wouldn’t choose their method of measure, but we don’t get [worked up] about the methodology,” Raad said. “There is a real problem we have in this region.

“Congestion has a real impact on the economy and the day-to-day lives of people.

“At the end of the day [congestion] really impacts everybody.”

Since TransLink was created 15 years ago, more than half a million people have moved to the Lower Mainland, Raad said.

And since then, 80 per cent more people use public transit than did in 1999, he added.

As for passenger cars, the number registered from 2009 to 2013 in the Lower Mainland grew by 57,000 to 1.285 million, according to ICBC.

That number could jump to two million vehicles in the Lower Mainland in the next 25 to 30 years, according to a recent study by the Business Council of B.C. that predicts the Lower Mainland’s population will grow by a million in that span.

Ridership on public transit, meanwhile, declined by almost five million passengers in 2013, down two per cent from 2012 to just under 234 million paying passengers.

Vancouver is regularly ranked the most livable city in the world, or at least makes it into the top three or four.

So it’s ironic it has the second-worst traffic congestion in North America, according to TomTom, falling behind Los Angeles for the second year in a row (and fifth worst in the Americas).

“A few things jumped out at me, and the first was congestion is increasing,” TomTom’s Vigreux said. “That’s something we see globally and that we see in North America, and we see it specifically in Vancouver.”

Average commutes in Toronto and Montreal actually take a bit longer than the average Metro Vancouver commute. But TomTom measures congestion as the difference in the length of a commute between peak and low periods.

The wasted time Metro Vancouver commuters spend stuck in traffic yearly is 87 hours, according to TomTom.

“Traffic congestion is nothing new and continues to be a global challenge,” Harold Goddijn, CEO of the Dutch nagivation-equipment maker, said. “The traditional responses to congestion, such as building new roads or widening existing ones, are no longer proving to be effective.”

“If you look at only an extra half hour a day, it creeps up,” Vigreux added. “Traffic is a pain, we know that. You look at Vancouver, the city is growing, attracting new people. It’s a city that is morphing and it looks attractive.

“There are bike lanes, more pedestrian areas, better mass transit, and it all takes away a bit of space that used to be given to cars.

“There are two sides to the coin: There is unavoidable traffic and congestion issues; on the other hand, you have a vibrant, growing city trying to make itself better for its people.”

MOST CONGESTED RUSH HOURS IN CANADA

1. Vancouver

2. Toronto

3. Ottawa

4. Montreal

5. Calgary

6. Quebec

7. Edmonton

MOST CONGESTED RUSH HOURS IN THE AMERICAS

1. Rio de Janeiro

2. Mexico City

3. Sao Paulo

4. Los Angeles

5. Vancouver

6. Honolulu

7. Seattle

8. San Jose

9. Toronto

10. Washington

MORE AND MORE CARS ON THE WAY

Yearly increase in number of vehicles insured in Metro Vancouver since 2008:

2008: 1.489 million

2009: 1.512

2010: 1.526

2011: 1.546

2012: 1.563

2013: 1.581

On average, 50 newly insured vehicles hit the streets of Metro Vancouver each day.

TheLionKing wrote:It will continue to get more congested as Mayor Moonbeam and his Vision council continues to push for more bike lanes.

The benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver is $708,500, while a detached home reached $1,159,600, a 17.5 increase over last year.

Robbie wrote:A recent article states that Metro Vancouver home sales continue to soar in summer.

The benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver is $708,500, while a detached home reached $1,159,600, a 17.5 increase over last year.

Thanks for the update, Robbie.

With such bad traffic and skyrocketing real estate prices, I really wonder whether Vancouver will still be listed very high when it comes to articles comparing the most livable cities around the world.