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(upbeat music)
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Our next speaker is Doug Olson,
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who's president of O2 Planning and Design in Calgary,
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where he directs the firm's work in landscape architecture,
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regional planning, urban design, and landscape ecology.
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A graduate of Harvard and of the University of Manitoba.
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He served as an instructor at Harvard and is currently
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an Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary.
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And a lot of his recent work examines the role
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of ecological infrastructure
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and determining sustainable patterns of use,
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development, and conservation.
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And his talk this morning is going to focus
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on GeoDesign for the city region.
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So please welcome Doug Olsen, Doug.
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(audience applauding)
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Thank you.
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Where are we?
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Now we're going, okay.
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I'll just time myself here
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to see how I can stay on track here.
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I know we're a little bit behind,
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so I'll try to pick it up.
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And I really, what I want to talk about is first of all,
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the need for GeoDesign in the city region.
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I promise there will be no definitions
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or framework discussions.
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I think that is so well served by others,
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I'll leave that alone.
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And I want to talk also about some examples
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from my own practice in terms of how we have applied
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this at various scales, most of them in Alberta.
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And I'll talk a little bit,
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maybe in the discussion, about current challenges.
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Well, why do we need to do this?
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With rapid urbanization across the planet,
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I strongly feel, and I think I'm supported by many others,
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that the city region is probably
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the most important planning scale that we have right now.
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It's really where change is occurring.
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There's about five things urban
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that really transform the planet.
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Urban growth, linear infrastructure, agriculture,
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forestry, mining, energy development, and so on.
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Those are the things that are rapidly changing the planet
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and that we need to be involved in
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if we're going to have meaningful input.
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So we've got these GeoDesign tools now,
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and you can't keep up.
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This is my business and I can't keep up.
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And it's just so amazing to see the stuff
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that Eric put forward this morning.
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The kinds of things that we've noted in our own work,
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where there are deficiencies that we really need to address.
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So we've got these tools now that really aid
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in impact assessment and evaluation
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of different alternatives.
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And really can be put forward
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and allow us to communicate more better in the future.
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And it's always changing,
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and that's this dynamic nature of GeoDesign is one
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of the most attractive elements of it.
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Really, the tools are changing and the ways
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that we can engage a collaborative planning environment...
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is really amazing.
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And we're working right across scales.
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And no one's got, I guess, the measure or the point
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that I want to make today is
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that there is no silver bullet here.
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You just don't do one thing at one scale
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and look after everything.
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You really have to be working within
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this nested hierarchy of scales.
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And something I call the Goldilocks Determination,
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at what scale and how much detail is needed?
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And that's really, I find that still after many years
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of doing this, the most difficult thing about the practice,
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figuring out what's the appropriate level of detail
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and at what scale.
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Now, different processes need different scales
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of analysis, obviously, but how much is enough?
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Carl used to say, "Do you need to know how the water moves
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"through the soil profile and be able to model that?
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"Or is it enough to say that the ground is wet?"
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And so I think we really need to know how much is enough.
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And so many of these things are scale interdependent
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that they move back and forth.
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And you if you do something at one scale,
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yes, it does affect a finer scale.
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So making those linkages,
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particularly among formal planning processes, is difficult.
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And that broad scale analysis may
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not provide enough direction to operational
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or fine scale planning that's important.
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And also as you really look at things
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in detail at the fine scale,
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and then you try to aggregate those...
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yes, we have powerful
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and more powerful computers all the time,
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but it can be pretty overwhelming in a practical sense
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as you try to scale up.
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Here's an example of a need to look across scale.
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This is my house in June of this year.
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When we had the worst flood on record in Southern Alberta.
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And it was quite an event.
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It took out a good portion of downtown Calgary.
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These areas were flooded, but these were put out,
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were without electricity for a week.
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And this is the second largest center
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of business in the country.
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And the famous Calgary Stampede,
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underwater, huge areas taken out.
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And this is the most costliest disaster in Canadian history.
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Over $8 billion in this small area alone,
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let alone all the interruption with commerce and business.
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We've known about the urbanization effects
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on watersheds for a long time.
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We've had floods before.
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This is one of our major freeways in June,
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but this one was really something.
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But we tried to look at what has been happening.
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And we've looked at wetlands and ecosystem services
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and the fringe and expansion area,
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annexation area around Calgary.
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And we've looked at, we've done studies said,
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"Well, okay, let's keep those places
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"and let's use them as the backbone
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"for an open space system,
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"as we develop into these grain fields."
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We've taken finer scale positions where this is a park
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that's under construction,
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will be going to construction this year,
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actually, that we designed.
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That is all wetland ecosystem that will dropout sediment,
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and so on, and polish water
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from about a 25 square kilometer area.
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And it's a cool place.
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I think it will be quite an interesting environment.
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It's obviously manmade.
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It's basically a machine for treating water,
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but we can't deal with this at that scale.
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This is the province of Alberta,
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about five times the size of Austria.
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And that was this area here, blown up here.
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Here's Calgary, here's this major storm.
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300 millimeters over a couple of days.
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That was three quarters, almost.
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Well, no three fifths, excuse me,
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of our annual precip, fell in three days.
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Most of it in one day, over a very small watershed.
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the Elbow River, which then feeds into and,
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and the bowl as well.
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Huge storm event.
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Unprecedented actually in records, at least.
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Then it has a little bit of power to it.
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This is the Elbow Falls before the flood event.
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That's it after.
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At one point 90% of the volume
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of some of the side tributaries, it was rock.
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So how do you deal with that?
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You don't deal with it just at the fine scale.
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Yes, it aggregates up,
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but you have to look at it more broadly.
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So this is a study we've done on areas that have been,
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first of all, we mapped all the different areas
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of riparian area with a variable with riparian model.
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We looked at their condition and so on,
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but this is we've lost.
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These areas where hammered during that flood.
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And also we looked at the condition.
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So, I'm colorblind, I'm having a hard time seeing here,
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but there's, I believe this is red down here.
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Unhealthy, areas that had no longer had
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the proper bank stabilization,
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the forest that you would expect
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along these areas and so on.
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And this is what happened.
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We got this.
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This particular area lost a hundred meters of soil.
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The only reason it didn't lose more is cause
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they dumped all these emergency groins in.
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So we can't just look at the fine scale.
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We've got to look at multiple scales, the whole Bow River.
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But I'm going to talk now about,
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here's the Bow River in here,
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and the need for nesting it within a larger scale.
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So the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan,
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I'll try not to repeat myself.
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Some of you may have seen this,
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especially if you were in China,
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but there is some new stuff here for all of you.
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But the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan,
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the size of Austria.
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85,000 square kilometers,
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really trying to look at a healthy economy,
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healthy ecosystems, and so-called enriched communities.
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That's the kind of high level talk,
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but those are lofty aspirations.
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How do you go about doing that?
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Creating a plan that will be the overriding plan
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to all subsequent finer scale plans.
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Multiple.
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And it's a wonderful area, it really is.
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My favorite place on Earth,
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we call it the Southern Rockies, that doesn't,
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but so I guess it would be the Northern Rockies
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to you folks.
(audience laughing)
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But this is where "Unforgiven" was filmed
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and Jesse James, and this is classic West country.
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Beautiful, beautiful land.
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But also some very, very important agricultural resources
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and some of the most productive lands
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in the country actually that are heavily irrigated down
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in here, range lands and so on.
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It's got some forestry resources.
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My view is that we shouldn't make like studs
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and Pampers out of it.
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We should probably be managing that forest
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for ecosystem services, with forestry.
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Huge resources, billions, billions of dollars
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of oil and gas.
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We're lucky in Alberta, we have a motherload of energy.
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Wonderful tourism resources.
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And this area back in here really is the foundation
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for our tourism industry.
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Lots of native vegetation still remaining,
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huge chunk down in here.
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And probably one of the largest areas
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of remaining natural grassland in North America.
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And all of these things have like 90,
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all of them in total, there's about 90 different layers
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that feed into these different maps.
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Water resources, huge, hugely important,
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both surface and groundwater.
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So with the idea being that we will...
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that we want to have a balanced land use plan
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for the region where we consider all
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of these different layers.
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We thought about how we would go about doing that.
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Well, it isn't something you would simulate and say,
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"Well, what if we do this?
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"What's the outcome?
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"Well, what if we do that?
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"What are the impacts?"
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I mean, there's not three scenarios here.
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There's literally millions.
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And with this kind of complexity at the area...
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of both extent and complexity in terms of the issues
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that we're addressing,
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it's not the kind of thing I believe
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that you can do by simulation alone,
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unless you've got a month of Sundays.
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So we took an approach of spatially explicit,
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multiple objective optimization modeling.
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That's a mouthful.
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We use a program called Marxan with Zones,
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developed out of Queensland, the University of Queensland.
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A tremendous program, very powerful.
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Would love to see it even more integrated within,
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Azry products and so on.
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Then we looked at,
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we had a regional advisory committee representing all
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of the different sectors in the area.
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And we took those 90 different maps
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and we worked through those using a voting system
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with 20 people in the room and a modified Delphi Technique
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where we worked through that.
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And we said, basically,
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"What do you want to keep?
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"How much of it do you want?
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"And how badly do you want it?"
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Those are basically the questions we asked
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and they were lay people, smart, lay people,
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each representing a different view.
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And we had some people, in fact,
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some people didn't want wetlands.
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There was actually, there was one holdout
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who didn't want wetlands.
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There's one in every crowd.
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But we use these to weight our modeling exercise.
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So we use the targets, we set targets for certain areas.
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We set how much we wanted of them of each different piece
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of element of value or landscape values...
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values on the landscape.
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And we modeled that within Marxan.
286
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And we came up with a land use plan.
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And somebody said, "Well, these people need a map."
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I want to talk about for just a moment,
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the political environment on this is
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that when we started this process,
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several people on the steering committee did not want a map.
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No maps on a regional land use plan, if you can imagine.
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00:15:28.650 --> 00:15:31.880
Well, we have a regional land use plan.
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And out of that came a series
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of conservation management areas.
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And I felt that if we achieved this one, for instance,
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which is called the Wild Horse Plains,
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this area of highest biodiversity in the province,
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huge chunk of native grassland,
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mostly publicly held, mostly but not completely.
301
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That would probably have been the most important thing
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I'd done in my life.
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00:15:57.090 --> 00:15:59.340
Unfortunately, the government,
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after they received the advice
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from the Regional Steering Committee to do this,
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has since backed off for completely political reasons.
307
00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:13.270
And this is still in negotiation.
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So it's out for public consultation,
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00:16:15.790 --> 00:16:17.750
but still in negotiation.
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And then we can of course visualize
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00:16:20.040 --> 00:16:22.276
these things at the regional level
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and at finer with a great deal of precision.
313
00:16:27.800 --> 00:16:30.810
Just moving down quickly in scale
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to the Calgary Metropolitan Plan, now smaller
315
00:16:34.960 --> 00:16:37.940
but nested within that larger area.
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00:16:37.940 --> 00:16:41.300
And really something I've showed before,
317
00:16:41.300 --> 00:16:42.820
but there's really three things
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that we're doing at all of these different scales.
319
00:16:46.160 --> 00:16:50.560
There's a defensive strategy of what you want to keep.
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00:16:50.560 --> 00:16:54.620
There's an offensive strategy of where you want to build
321
00:16:54.620 --> 00:16:57.620
and in what form and with what's supporting infrastructure.
322
00:16:57.620 --> 00:16:59.920
And there's of course, a governance strategy,
323
00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:01.790
which is highly political,
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00:17:01.790 --> 00:17:04.340
and how do we make decisions in the area?
325
00:17:04.340 --> 00:17:08.136
The bottom two, I believe are GeoDesign supported
326
00:17:08.136 --> 00:17:12.723
and they can enable a political conversation.
327
00:17:13.890 --> 00:17:17.434
So we have, I won't bore you with the background to this,
328
00:17:17.434 --> 00:17:20.110
but suffice to say there was a lot of stuff.
329
00:17:20.110 --> 00:17:22.400
A lot of analysis went into looking at
330
00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:25.360
what is the composite ecological infrastructure
331
00:17:25.360 --> 00:17:26.450
in the region?
332
00:17:26.450 --> 00:17:28.620
And as we're trying to place the next,
333
00:17:28.620 --> 00:17:32.230
double the population over the next 50 years,
334
00:17:32.230 --> 00:17:35.740
don't put it in here and there's no need to.
335
00:17:35.740 --> 00:17:37.010
There's no need to.
336
00:17:37.010 --> 00:17:38.653
And this is early days.
337
00:17:39.850 --> 00:17:44.850
Nothing like the stuff that Bill Miller's crew is working on
338
00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:47.470
and others here have worked on.
339
00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:49.300
We had a paint and sketching tool
340
00:17:49.300 --> 00:17:52.440
where we could paint in land uses in the area.
341
00:17:52.440 --> 00:17:57.180
And we actually did that with avoiding danger, essentially,
342
00:17:57.180 --> 00:17:59.170
technique where you don't build
343
00:17:59.170 --> 00:18:01.030
on the ecological infrastructure
344
00:18:01.030 --> 00:18:04.800
and you use your expert opinion in a collaborative way,
345
00:18:04.800 --> 00:18:08.200
get in and sketch land use solutions.
346
00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:10.280
And they had a number.
347
00:18:10.280 --> 00:18:13.160
We came up with a series of scenarios
348
00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:16.390
and we evaluated them across a whole series of models
349
00:18:16.390 --> 00:18:21.380
from environment to economy and some social issues.
350
00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:23.530
When we came up with a preferred alternative,
351
00:18:23.530 --> 00:18:26.080
and this is the one that's moving forward now
352
00:18:26.080 --> 00:18:27.883
for the Calgary Metropolitan Plan.
353
00:18:29.240 --> 00:18:31.250
And it makes a difference.
354
00:18:31.250 --> 00:18:36.250
64% less footprint and huge reduction
355
00:18:36.550 --> 00:18:39.833
in the cost of public infrastructure.
356
00:18:40.840 --> 00:18:42.457
I'm going to move on to one,
357
00:18:44.910 --> 00:18:46.610
an Integrated Growth Management Study
358
00:18:46.610 --> 00:18:51.610
in the same region, South of Calgary, smaller city.
359
00:18:52.120 --> 00:18:56.050
Where we're looking at using a GeoDesign approach,
360
00:18:56.050 --> 00:18:58.560
or we did use a GeoDesign approach.
361
00:18:58.560 --> 00:19:02.430
We got a whole bunch of data in terms of market demand
362
00:19:02.430 --> 00:19:04.770
and base data, existing plans.
363
00:19:04.770 --> 00:19:07.310
We took those existing plans and policies,
364
00:19:07.310 --> 00:19:09.480
all of the ones that we could find
365
00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:13.890
that people had articulated either in policy or regulation,
366
00:19:13.890 --> 00:19:16.950
and we converted those into a set of models...
367
00:19:20.073 --> 00:19:24.320
and used that to drive what we were doing.
368
00:19:24.320 --> 00:19:26.120
We really wanted to look at,
369
00:19:26.120 --> 00:19:30.850
how much are we developing in terms of accommodating
370
00:19:30.850 --> 00:19:33.850
the populations that were projected,
371
00:19:33.850 --> 00:19:35.650
and their associated land demands.
372
00:19:35.650 --> 00:19:37.130
Where it would go.
373
00:19:37.130 --> 00:19:41.410
And the big driver here was looking at the cost
374
00:19:41.410 --> 00:19:43.730
of public infrastructure.
375
00:19:43.730 --> 00:19:46.550
As I said, there's three things
376
00:19:46.550 --> 00:19:50.800
that really drive decision makers, in my experience.
377
00:19:50.800 --> 00:19:52.993
That's the cost of public infrastructure,
378
00:19:54.040 --> 00:19:58.020
that's employment, and economic development opportunities.
379
00:19:58.020 --> 00:20:01.220
And then water quality and quantity,
380
00:20:01.220 --> 00:20:03.440
because those are regulated.
381
00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:07.120
So those things, almost in every single plan
382
00:20:07.120 --> 00:20:09.310
we've worked on, those are the major drivers.
383
00:20:09.310 --> 00:20:11.730
Everything else are collateral benefits.
384
00:20:11.730 --> 00:20:14.680
As much as we'd like to have biodiversity,
385
00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:16.990
and sense of place, and all of these things
386
00:20:16.990 --> 00:20:18.713
that we know are fundamental.
387
00:20:20.570 --> 00:20:23.790
I'm going to move ahead here quickly,
388
00:20:23.790 --> 00:20:25.230
being given the five minutes.
389
00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:28.690
Although I started mine, it might say I have nine minutes.
390
00:20:28.690 --> 00:20:31.010
But... (chuckles)
391
00:20:32.910 --> 00:20:37.420
Nevertheless, our approach was to get a defensive strategy
392
00:20:37.420 --> 00:20:41.710
and offensive strategy, develop planning units,
393
00:20:41.710 --> 00:20:45.200
look at infrastructure requirements, and so on,
394
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:46.820
and come up with some recommendations,
395
00:20:46.820 --> 00:20:50.290
as what is the most cost effective way for the city to grow.
396
00:20:50.290 --> 00:20:53.020
So we came up with this defensive strategy.
397
00:20:53.020 --> 00:20:57.360
A lot of modeling behind that, vulnerability modeling.
398
00:20:57.360 --> 00:21:01.145
Some suitability for residential, industrial,
399
00:21:01.145 --> 00:21:04.430
and other commercial opportunities.
400
00:21:04.430 --> 00:21:07.800
We had a whole modeling environment that we could use.
401
00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:09.030
We could use sliders
402
00:21:09.030 --> 00:21:12.480
and not for weighting the different models
403
00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:15.500
and the maps would come out correspondingly.
404
00:21:15.500 --> 00:21:18.193
Thanks to Christian Goss on that.
405
00:21:19.030 --> 00:21:21.670
And here's how it kind of came out.
406
00:21:21.670 --> 00:21:23.420
Here's the baseline.
407
00:21:23.420 --> 00:21:25.720
And then we started looking into these planning units,
408
00:21:25.720 --> 00:21:29.990
how we would develop them sequentially
409
00:21:29.990 --> 00:21:32.350
and with each sequence, each planning unit,
410
00:21:32.350 --> 00:21:35.186
as it came online it had infrastructure
411
00:21:35.186 --> 00:21:37.460
that was associated with it.
412
00:21:37.460 --> 00:21:40.310
Suitability models were then run again,
413
00:21:40.310 --> 00:21:44.553
because if it's proximity to infrastructure,
414
00:21:46.265 --> 00:21:48.580
then you have to do this in a dynamic way.
415
00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:51.660
So we moved through that is phase two,
416
00:21:51.660 --> 00:21:54.400
phase three, phase four and so on.
417
00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:59.010
And each time you don't see the defensive changing much,
418
00:21:59.010 --> 00:21:59.843
but there are,
419
00:22:00.684 --> 00:22:04.340
we recognize what we're losing in some of those areas,
420
00:22:04.340 --> 00:22:09.340
but those were areas that we felt had the least cost to them
421
00:22:10.150 --> 00:22:11.620
from a defensive point of view.
422
00:22:11.620 --> 00:22:12.600
So they don't change much,
423
00:22:12.600 --> 00:22:15.393
but certainly the other suitabilities do.
424
00:22:16.270 --> 00:22:21.270
Then we looked at the way that infrastructure would step out
425
00:22:21.490 --> 00:22:25.883
in these different phases in the most cost effective way.
426
00:22:31.723 --> 00:22:34.760
I'm gonna skip this one other than to show you that
427
00:22:34.760 --> 00:22:37.170
and move to the last one.
428
00:22:37.170 --> 00:22:42.170
But this is using City Engine to show what the rules were.
429
00:22:43.410 --> 00:22:46.980
First of all, the rules, zoning and current rules,
430
00:22:46.980 --> 00:22:49.000
and what happens if we change those rules?
431
00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:52.850
And we just, this was simple massing.
432
00:22:52.850 --> 00:22:55.370
And then we calculated a pile of statistics.
433
00:22:55.370 --> 00:22:57.550
And I want to say that the learning from this was,
434
00:22:57.550 --> 00:22:59.310
this was a huge learning process for us,
435
00:22:59.310 --> 00:23:02.100
not the most successful project, by the way.
436
00:23:02.100 --> 00:23:06.730
But it was a huge learning in that we tried to do too much.
437
00:23:06.730 --> 00:23:08.177
We let the client tell us,
438
00:23:08.177 --> 00:23:09.915
"Oh, you've got to measure everything."
439
00:23:09.915 --> 00:23:14.915
And we did, we measured lots and lots of different things,
440
00:23:15.430 --> 00:23:18.310
statistics and more statistics and so on.
441
00:23:18.310 --> 00:23:21.980
The Goldilocks Determination, what is enough?
442
00:23:21.980 --> 00:23:22.970
What do you need?
443
00:23:22.970 --> 00:23:24.400
What are the drivers here?
444
00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:26.750
That's very, very important.
445
00:23:26.750 --> 00:23:30.113
In this case if you get that one wrong,
446
00:23:31.300 --> 00:23:34.660
then your credibility is gone...
447
00:23:34.660 --> 00:23:36.707
or amongst some, anyway.
448
00:23:36.707 --> 00:23:38.840
Who may not understand what goes into this stuff.
449
00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:43.840
So less is way better in this environment, I would say.
450
00:23:44.100 --> 00:23:46.280
And we used it in City Engine,
451
00:23:46.280 --> 00:23:48.500
all these procedural buildings and so on,
452
00:23:48.500 --> 00:23:52.870
to look at different ways that the place would go.
453
00:23:52.870 --> 00:23:56.190
This is my last project, but an important one, I think.
454
00:23:56.190 --> 00:23:58.450
Much finer scale.
455
00:23:58.450 --> 00:24:03.450
This is a design charrette that we use City Engine in
456
00:24:05.030 --> 00:24:09.083
for an area about 900 acres.
457
00:24:10.910 --> 00:24:13.520
So it's a master plan, basically.
458
00:24:13.520 --> 00:24:14.730
It's going to be an outline plan,
459
00:24:14.730 --> 00:24:18.270
an actual outline plan, highly contested though.
460
00:24:18.270 --> 00:24:20.780
There had already been an area structure plan for it.
461
00:24:20.780 --> 00:24:22.470
There had been a park plan for it.
462
00:24:22.470 --> 00:24:25.453
There'd been a drainage plan for it, none of them meshed.
463
00:24:26.700 --> 00:24:29.660
And so it wasn't that there wasn't consensus
464
00:24:29.660 --> 00:24:31.620
among the public, the public didn't really care.
465
00:24:31.620 --> 00:24:34.770
This is a West end industrial area,
466
00:24:34.770 --> 00:24:37.730
but the city departments certainly did.
467
00:24:37.730 --> 00:24:42.730
And so we used this process, pardon me.
468
00:24:45.320 --> 00:24:49.050
A process where we used stakeholder selected indicators.
469
00:24:49.050 --> 00:24:50.927
At the beginning, we said,
470
00:24:50.927 --> 00:24:52.747
"How are you going to judge this plan?
471
00:24:52.747 --> 00:24:55.003
"How is plan A going to be,
472
00:24:55.977 --> 00:24:59.650
"how will we support that plan A is better than plan B?"
473
00:24:59.650 --> 00:25:02.620
So wanting everybody on board,
474
00:25:02.620 --> 00:25:05.500
we invited senior people within all departments,
475
00:25:05.500 --> 00:25:06.560
as well as their...
476
00:25:10.170 --> 00:25:14.260
assistants to come up with the indicators.
477
00:25:14.260 --> 00:25:15.140
So we then went away.
478
00:25:15.140 --> 00:25:17.461
We built models and so on.
479
00:25:17.461 --> 00:25:21.810
And we started going through the development
480
00:25:21.810 --> 00:25:22.890
of the charrette.
481
00:25:22.890 --> 00:25:24.870
And there were things about development,
482
00:25:24.870 --> 00:25:26.590
we had to make money on this thing.
483
00:25:26.590 --> 00:25:29.660
It could not lose money to develop this area.
484
00:25:29.660 --> 00:25:31.670
It had to handle stormwater.
485
00:25:31.670 --> 00:25:34.790
It had to provide a regional park and it had to have
486
00:25:34.790 --> 00:25:38.550
some environmental issues relating to biodiversity.
487
00:25:38.550 --> 00:25:40.530
And in this case we had 29.
488
00:25:40.530 --> 00:25:43.080
That's quite a few, but Christian, I must say,
489
00:25:43.080 --> 00:25:46.940
got it to the point where it was not a one button push
490
00:25:46.940 --> 00:25:48.840
to evaluate all these, but it was two.
491
00:25:50.730 --> 00:25:53.184
And we love the new tools and we're looking forward
492
00:25:53.184 --> 00:25:55.740
to making it more efficient, yet.
493
00:25:55.740 --> 00:26:00.740
But there were indicators with these kinds of values.
494
00:26:00.780 --> 00:26:03.740
And we did an analysis of the area.
495
00:26:03.740 --> 00:26:07.570
Some SWAT analysis,
496
00:26:07.570 --> 00:26:10.170
really looking at opportunities and constraints.
497
00:26:10.170 --> 00:26:15.170
We then had a charrette where we sketched ideas.
498
00:26:15.550 --> 00:26:20.370
Literally by hand, just diagrams.
499
00:26:20.370 --> 00:26:22.950
That's all they were, they were just diagrams.
500
00:26:22.950 --> 00:26:27.600
Then those were converted into different concepts,
501
00:26:27.600 --> 00:26:29.840
and the concepts then, we put in the street grids.
502
00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:31.303
This is all in City Engine.
503
00:26:32.450 --> 00:26:37.450
I put in the street grids, plotted the blocks,
504
00:26:37.580 --> 00:26:39.560
assigned land uses to them,
505
00:26:39.560 --> 00:26:41.470
assigned different building types
506
00:26:41.470 --> 00:26:45.720
that could go to those units and so on.
507
00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:49.533
Some areas were more heavily developed than others.
508
00:26:51.328 --> 00:26:54.250
And I'll just quickly, I'm almost done here,
509
00:26:54.250 --> 00:26:55.970
go through them.
510
00:26:55.970 --> 00:27:00.970
So these were all generated automatically by City Engine,
511
00:27:04.220 --> 00:27:05.270
pretty handy, actually.
512
00:27:05.270 --> 00:27:10.270
This was the best conflicted stakeholder engagement session
513
00:27:11.860 --> 00:27:13.100
that we've ever had.
514
00:27:13.100 --> 00:27:14.930
It was so successful.
515
00:27:14.930 --> 00:27:19.710
Everybody had input at the beginning to the judgment
516
00:27:19.710 --> 00:27:22.700
of the plan and they saw how it developed.
517
00:27:22.700 --> 00:27:24.810
And they were involved in this over a three
518
00:27:24.810 --> 00:27:28.583
or four day period in developing these different concepts.
519
00:27:29.464 --> 00:27:31.510
And you can see that City Engine puts out
520
00:27:31.510 --> 00:27:34.880
some pretty convincing stuff and pretty quickly too,
521
00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:35.830
I might add.
522
00:27:35.830 --> 00:27:38.100
And then we took a bunch of indicators,
523
00:27:38.100 --> 00:27:41.584
return on investment, first two lost money.
524
00:27:41.584 --> 00:27:44.080
We only had to break even, we were told.
525
00:27:44.080 --> 00:27:47.020
So all these things were going into all the costs
526
00:27:47.020 --> 00:27:50.330
and evaluation models that we were doing went directly
527
00:27:50.330 --> 00:27:52.870
into a proforma, as well.
528
00:27:52.870 --> 00:27:55.790
Which I think that if you do that,
529
00:27:55.790 --> 00:27:58.490
you really have a great proforma
530
00:27:58.490 --> 00:28:03.490
and you can get City Engine spitting out the information
531
00:28:04.860 --> 00:28:09.860
that's needed to go into that, or the 3D GIS Pro app
532
00:28:12.070 --> 00:28:13.900
that they're talking about.
533
00:28:13.900 --> 00:28:16.090
If you can get that spitting out the information
534
00:28:16.090 --> 00:28:19.890
for a proforma, and you can visualize this in a way
535
00:28:19.890 --> 00:28:22.870
that's convincing, I think people will beat a path
536
00:28:22.870 --> 00:28:25.150
to your door as a consultant.
537
00:28:25.150 --> 00:28:26.500
We're hoping, we're hoping.
538
00:28:27.380 --> 00:28:28.213
And they seem to be.
539
00:28:28.213 --> 00:28:31.620
We're getting work on the basis of that.
540
00:28:31.620 --> 00:28:34.370
Then we also looked at employment opportunities
541
00:28:34.370 --> 00:28:35.890
on all of these things.
542
00:28:35.890 --> 00:28:38.163
These are all coming out post,
543
00:28:39.337 --> 00:28:41.750
they weren't done in City Engine at all.
544
00:28:41.750 --> 00:28:46.073
They were done, most of it, in GIS.
545
00:28:47.260 --> 00:28:52.260
Transportation issues, connect transit accessibility,
546
00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:57.320
parks and open space, and the accessibility of open space
547
00:28:57.440 --> 00:28:58.930
from various types of development.
548
00:28:58.930 --> 00:29:03.360
The kinds of pedestrian walkability, cyclability,
549
00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:06.490
all of those things that people were that the kind
550
00:29:06.490 --> 00:29:08.357
of steering team was looking for.
551
00:29:09.260 --> 00:29:11.180
Biodiversity wetlands that we were avoiding,
552
00:29:11.180 --> 00:29:14.660
different types of wetlands in different areas,
553
00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:17.190
riparian areas and so on.
554
00:29:17.190 --> 00:29:20.560
Mostly direct measurements, fairly simple modeling,
555
00:29:20.560 --> 00:29:22.930
I might add in this case, there's a lot.
556
00:29:22.930 --> 00:29:24.380
And then impervious areas.
557
00:29:24.380 --> 00:29:29.380
And we've done other studies that with Bill Miller,
558
00:29:29.430 --> 00:29:30.400
and others, where we've
559
00:29:30.400 --> 00:29:33.130
actually linked water balance models.
560
00:29:33.130 --> 00:29:38.130
We didn't really do the total water balance model.
561
00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:41.410
We used some other models looking at phosphorus
562
00:29:41.410 --> 00:29:43.226
and total suspended solids
563
00:29:43.226 --> 00:29:46.360
that these different treatments were taking aim.
564
00:29:46.360 --> 00:29:47.567
Ended up, after we looked at that,
565
00:29:47.567 --> 00:29:50.263
and came up with the preferred version.
566
00:29:54.398 --> 00:29:57.840
And it has its set of performance measures.
567
00:29:57.840 --> 00:29:59.470
And it seems to work pretty well
568
00:29:59.470 --> 00:30:02.800
and it we'll form the basis for an actual regulated plan.
569
00:30:02.800 --> 00:30:07.800
So, in closing, I would say that as Jack noted yesterday,
570
00:30:10.620 --> 00:30:13.700
we have an urgent problem here.
571
00:30:13.700 --> 00:30:16.970
And I'm involved in practice.
572
00:30:16.970 --> 00:30:19.253
I like to see things that are actually,
573
00:30:20.260 --> 00:30:23.950
that influence real plans and actually maybe even get built
574
00:30:23.950 --> 00:30:28.790
or not built, undevelopment, as was said yesterday.
575
00:30:28.790 --> 00:30:30.100
How do we go about that?
576
00:30:30.100 --> 00:30:32.210
How do we engage the...
577
00:30:34.060 --> 00:30:36.900
engage those who need to be in the conversation.
578
00:30:36.900 --> 00:30:41.440
And I think that these new tools allow us to do that
579
00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:42.740
with an efficiency...
580
00:30:45.846 --> 00:30:49.080
that is unprecedented really.
581
00:30:49.080 --> 00:30:50.230
So thank you very much.