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This paper presents a case study of the obstacles to green infrastructure implementation in the City of Vancouver. This case study has two aims, 1) to better understand the planning and decision-making processes hindering the widespread implementation of green infrastructure across the City of Vancouver, and 2) propose solutions to facilitate the uptake of GI. This paper begins by reviewing existing literature on barriers to green infrastructure implementation. Then, it investigates current perceptions of GI in the City of Vancouver, and what barriers exist to its implementation through document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Proposed solutions to green infrastructure implementation are reviewed and recommendations are provided for the City of Vancouver. It ends with a short discussion on the applicability of lessons learned from the study of Vancouver for other municipalities seeking to overcome barriers to green infrastructure implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of urban liveability has been extensively debated by global agencies and scholars, as evidenced by the New Urban Agenda, in response to the impact of urbanisation. Urban liveability pertains to the ability of urban communities to achieve a high-quality living environment. While participatory planning is often presented as a means of empowering communities to attain better living conditions, it has presented challenges for decision-makers. Furthermore, dominant actors often influence participation processes, benefiting certain community segments. As a result, collaborative planning has emerged as an approach that seeks to address the interests of multiple urban factors by promoting consensus in decision-making. This paper aims to examine the collaborative planning methods that have been used in strategic planning that have empowered the community to participate in the planning process. Content analysis was employed as a research method to explore the empirical evidence of collaborative planning that has successfully empowered community participation in strategic planning and its impact on the liveability of metropolitan areas. Correspondingly, the Melbourne, Vancouver, and Helsinki case studies were selected based on five liveable city indices. This study's findings suggest a positive correlation between the implementation of collaborative planning by the selected metropolitan areas and their status as the most liveable cities. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of collaborative planning in promoting urban liveability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings an urban communication lens to bear on the geographies of platformisation in cities. It does so by drawing on three select instances of platformised materialities in Toronto and Vancouver that represent familiar contours of urban platformisation: mobility (bike and car sharing), last‐mile logistics (on‐demand delivery), and labour (gig work). These examples are worked through Aiello and Tosoni's heuristic of cities as constituting the mediums, content, and contexts of urban communication, respectively. As mediums, platformised materialities in the form of street signs designate exclusive uses of public space by mobility platforms, communicating the spatial conditions of platform urbanism. As the contents of communication, stickers and signs advertising on‐demand meal delivery available at a restaurant venue express the platform‐driven transformation of the social relations that make the delivered meal take place. And as context, broader trends of the platformisation of labour render communication by other, non‐platform‐based materialities – such as posters calling on urban gig workers to unionise – meaningful. An urban communication perspective contributes to geographical scholarship on platform urbanism by nuancing our understandings of how platforms and platform technology capital secure and sustain themselves in cities through their material communicative capacities. Platforms have established themselves as visible fixtures of urban built environments. The physical forms that platforms assume in cityscapes constitute the mediums, content, and contexts of urban communication. Engaging platforms as expressing material communicative capacities nuances our understanding of how platforms and platform technology capital secure and sustain themselves in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of urbanization resulting from population growth is causing a transformation of natural landscapes into built environments, and contributing to a significant rise in air and surface temperatures in urban areas, resulting in what is known as the urban heat island (UHI). Ignoring the UHI effect and use of weather data from open fields and airport locations for energy and thermal comfort analysis can lead to over- and underestimation of heating and cooling loads, improper sizing of equipment, inefficiencies in the mechanical systems operation, and occupants' thermal discomfort. There is a need for computationally efficient urban canopy temperature prediction models that account for the urban morphology and characteristics of the study area. This paper presents the development and application of an artificial neural network (ANN)-based method for generating hourly urban canopy temperature and local wind speed for energy simulation. It was used to predict the urban canopy temperature of a neighborhood in downtown Vancouver and the resulting building energy consumption and indoor temperature in a typical building in the area. The results showed that the UHI effect increased the total cooling energy demand by 23% and decreased the total heating energy consumption by 29%, resulting in an overall negative effect on the total energy demand of the building, which was 18% higher in the urban area. The UHI effect also increased the number of hours of indoor temperature above the cooling set point by 7.6%. The methodology can be applied to determine the urban canopy temperature of neighborhoods in different climate zones and determine the varying urban heat island effects associated with the locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs (PWUD) in Canada. However less is known about jurisdictional commonalities and differences in COVID-19 exposure and impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on competing health and social risks among PWUD living in large urban centres. Methods: Between May 2020 and March 2021, leveraging infrastructure from ongoing cohorts of PWUD, we surveyed 1,025 participants from Vancouver (n = 640), Toronto (n = 158), and Montreal (n = 227), Canada to describe the impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on basic, health, and harm reduction needs. Results: Among participants, awareness of COVID-19 protective measures was high; however, between 10 and 24% of participants in each city-specific sample reported being unable to self-isolate. Overall, 3–19% of participants reported experiencing homelessness after the onset of the pandemic, while 20–41% reported that they went hungry more often than usual. Furthermore, 8–33% of participants reported experiencing an overdose during the pandemic, though most indicated no change in overdose frequency compared the pre-pandemic period. Most participants receiving opioid agonist therapy in the past six months reported treatment continuity during the pandemic (87–93%), however, 32% and 22% of participants in Toronto and Montreal reported missing doses due to service disruptions. There were some reports of difficulty accessing supervised consumption sites in all three sites, and drug checking services in Vancouver. Conclusion: Findings suggest PWUD in Canada experienced difficulties meeting essential needs and accessing some harm reduction services during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings can inform preparedness planning for future public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind-Driven Rain (WDR) loading on building facades is a crucial factor for designing sustainable and climate-resilient buildings and preserving historical buildings. WDR loading on buildings has been studied previously but results for such a multi-parameter problem are not generally conclusive. Thus, the relevant provisions of ISO semi-empirical model cannot be applied with confidence for complex building configurations, such as those in urban areas given that the estimated WDR can be more than twice of the field measurements. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of two WDR techniques, namely Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) and Eulerian Multiphase (EM), combined with the steady-state standard k-ω RANS turbulence model (referred to as RANS-LPT and RANS-EM). The results obtained from the RANS-EM approach are compared with the RANS-LPT results reported in the literature for a six-story mid-rise residential building located in Vancouver, Canada. The study considers 13 distinct rainfall events, including stand-alone and urban area configurations with and without overhangs. The RANS-EM and RANS-LPT approaches are evaluated by comparing modeled wind and WDR against wind-tunnel and on-site WDR measurements, respectively. The study found that the RANS-EM requires less computational time and provides more accurate results for the test building situated in an urban area compared to the RANS-LPT. • Quantification of Wind-Driven Rain (WDR) loading on an urban area configuration. • Effects of surrounding buildings on the WDR loading in an urban area. • A comparison of WDR techniques (LPT and EM) in both stand-alone and urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rats are an important issue in cities globally. Despite their ubiquity, perceptions and concerns about rats vary with circumstance and the context in which a person interacts with them. Municipal rat management programs are a service to communities and therefore must be responsive to the varied concerns of their residents. Understanding why communities are concerned about rats can help inform rat management programs to meet the specific needs of their residents. The objective of this study was to identify why the residents of Vancouver, Canada care about rats and what they want done to address them. To do this, we qualitatively analyzed 6,158 resident complaints about rats made to the city's municipal government between January 2014 and May 2020. Using a qualitative descriptive coding process, we found that rats were a priority in a minority of cases. In general, people were more concerned about broader community issues, such as neighborhood disorder, of which rats were one part. Complaints tended to be made when problems were highly visible, nearby, and when the complainant wanted the city to take action to alleviate this issue, particularly when they were in and around their living spaces. The rates of complaints were highest in the most economically and socially deprived neighborhoods and lowest in the most privileged neighbourhoods. We synthesize this information with a view towards understanding how to develop objectives and actions for municipal management strategies that are grounded in community concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth in the international smart city market over the past decade has been tremendous. Fuelled by private vendors and consultants, adoption of smart city technology in many cities has been rapid. How well does the adoption of this technology and the overall design of smart cities align with the needs and preferences of residents? In this paper we examine this question using data from a unique survey of residents in three large Canadian cities: Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The survey includes perceptions of both the importance and maturity of 23 policy or service areas, grouped along four dimensions (Services, Governance, Social and Economic). The results indicate that there is a misalignment in certain service and policy areas between the types of projects that cities are pursuing and the preferences of residents, indicating the need for broader and deeper engagement with the community in the design and implementation of smart city plans. • Survey results highlight disparities between residents and their municipal governments in smart city development • A gap exists between the preferences that residents place on certain smart city initiatives and where local government direct investment • Cities are aligned with technocratic institutional logic, underpinned by a close collaboration with the private sector [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy of density agreements, allowing extra density for condominium developers in exchange for affordable housing units, is seen as an example of the neoliberalization of urban governance in North American and European cities. The consensus of scholarship on urban neoliberalism has suggested this practice is indicative of the rise of the entrepreneurial, market-orientated local state. Through a study of urban development in Vancouver, British Columbia. I illustrate how exchanging density for affordable housing also operates on the basis of gift giving. In doing so I integrate Karl Polanyi's framework of substantivism, which highlights various forms of economic exchange including markets, redistribution, and reciprocity, into research on urban governance. Applying the principles of substantivism to the case of Vancouver, I argue that reciprocity obfuscates the negative effects of the privatization of affordable housing provision by making social welfare contingent on increasing profits for developers, concealing the role of political power in land-use decisions, and gentrifying low-income neighbourhoods. These findings hold implications for the study of urban politics, the neoliberalization of affordable housing, and urban-economic research more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sex differences exist in children’s obesity rates, dietary patterns and television viewing. Television continues to be a source of unhealthy food advertising exposure to children in Canada. Our objective was to examine sex differences in food advertising exposure in children aged 2 to 17 years across four Canadian Englishlanguage markets. Methods: We licensed 24-hour television advertising data from the company Numerator for January through December 2019, in four cities (Vancouver, Calgary, Montréal and Toronto) across Canada. Child food advertising exposure overall, by food category, television station, Health Canada’s proposed nutrient profiling model, and marketing techniques were examined on the 10 most popular television stations among children and compared by sex. Advertising exposure was estimated using gross rating points, and sex differences were described using relative and absolute differences. Results: Both male and female children were exposed to an elevated level of unhealthy food advertising and a plethora of marketing techniques across all four cities. Differences between sexes were evident between and within cities. Compared to females, males in Vancouver and Montréal viewed respectively 24.7% and 24.0% more unhealthy food ads/person/year and were exposed to 90.2 and 133.4 more calls to action, 93.3 and 97.8 more health appeals, and 88.4 and 81.0 more products that appeal to children. Conclusion: Television is a significant source of children’s exposure to food advertising, with clear sex differences. Policy makers need to consider sex when developing food advertising restrictions and monitoring efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LGBTQ2S municipal governance is a contentious policy domain that is often publicly framed as 'morality' or 'niche' politics, yet urban sexuality scholars have shown its fundamental dissonance and incommensurability across spatial scales. Within polycentric city‐regions aspiring to 'progressiveness', LGBTQ2S‐supportive municipal social inclusion policy is further subject to arrhythmic diffusion. In this article we introduce the neologism of scalar arrhythmia (a biomedical metaphor that parallels the pace of diffusion with the irregularities of a heartbeat) in conjunction with scale‐contingent coalitional moments (spatiotemporal junctures that bring people together to enact social change) to advance an urban social justice agenda. We argue that the analytical vantage point of scalar arrhythmia reveals differences in the longitudinal temporal (a)synchronicities of peripheral municipal inclusion policy diffusion and locates transformative scale‐contingent coalitional moments. Through an analysis of the interplay of diffusion processes and mechanisms across the adjacent peripheral municipalities of Burnaby, New Westminster and Surrey in Canada's Vancouver city‐region, we demonstrate provincial–municipal hierarchical 'coercion', core–periphery metropolitan relocation 'imitation' and municipal inter‐peripheral contagious 'competition'. While peripheral patterns of scalar arrhythmia rupture Vancouver's illusive progressive regionalism, the concept offers civic leaders an inventorying opportunity that redirects attention away from cursory LGBTQ2S policy performances towards substantive policy integrations and local innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]