This paper is intended to inform discussions between industry and government policymakers in and beyond Ottawa, Canada about climate change and potential impacts on residential development regulations and corresponding industry practices. Ultimately, both private and public stakeholders must acknowledge the impacts of urban form on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and, conversely, the impacts of climate change on cities, for any meaningful progress on urban sustainability to ensue. Section 1 introduces the basic relationships between urban development and climate change. Urban form is directly tied to energy consumption and GHG emissions, mainly through building and transportation energy consumption. Section 2 summarizes regional changes from climate change projected by various research organizations. Projected weather changes include more severe heat waves, rain and freezing rain in the future, with flooding identified repeatedly as the main concern for the Ottawa region. Section 3 reflects on the potential impacts of more severe weather on buildings and on the building industry. Impacts may include risks to structures and workers, as well as shifting regulations and insurance liabilities. Section 4 provides an overview of changes to government environmental policies that may signal future regulatory change. And finally, Sections 5 and 6 pose questions of interest for future regulators and builders.
Wondering what the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project has been up to for the past four years? Well you’re in luck. We just completed and submitted our SSHRC Midterm report on February 29, 2016 and it’s chock full of details about CFICE’s activities and learnings from Phase I!
Closing the Loop: Community Engaged Pedagogy in Business Courses is a CACSL and Carleton Raven’s Den-funded CFICE evaluation project that looks at the impact on Sprott School of Business’s community partners of adopting a community service learning approach to pedagogy.
Over a number of years and across a variety of courses, Sprott has implemented projects ranging in duration and topic in order to facilitate a ‘practice’ perspective for the students in Sprott’s Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of International Business programs. Sprott has received lots of feedback from students, in the form of anecdotal accounts and more structured feedback exercises, and some feedback from community partners, but mostly the latter was limited to student performance during the actual project and anticipated benefits should the organization adopt the recommendations made by the student teams. Sprott therefore undertook this study to determine the impact their CSL projects made on community partners over a longer term.
This project is still ongoing, with evaluations scheduled for the Fall/Winter term from 2016 – 2017.
In the winter of 2015, when the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project was in the preliminary stages of planning its transition to Phase II, the Community Food Security (CFS) Hub prepared a discussion paper to synthesize collective reflections from hub partners on their proposals for action priorities to be implemented over the next four years of the project (2015-2019). This discussion paper was developed based primarily on interviews conducted with approximately 30 individuals representing the broad array of community- and campus-based partners related to the CFS Hub and reflections from the CFS Hub Management Team.
Following the release of this discussion paper, the CFS Hub gathered additional feedback from CFS Hub participants. at a CAFS meeting in May 2015, and via email for those unable to attend.
Completed for: Peterborough GreenUP , Supervising Professor: Tom Whillans; Trent Centre for Community-Based Education
Abstract:
An urban food forest is modelled after a wild forest, but is intentionally designed and planted with food production in mind. Essentially an urban food forest is a combination of wild forest and orchard. They are made up of a close-knit community of plants that help each other. There are many benefits that an urban food forest can provide. They can improve the environment we live in; help build stronger, more resilient, communities; and can provide a host of economic benefits as well. Urban food forests help us create more sustainable communities that are healthy and enjoyable to live in.
We need to rediscover our past, when we cultivated urban forests, not just for the services they provided, but also for the products as well. It is not just rural forests that can provide useable products. In fact it might even be argued that urban forests can be more productive, per unit of area, because of the intentional planning and design that goes into them. An urban food forest is a community within a community, the plants help and support one another, just as we help support one another in our communities.