Cities Plus

citiesPLUS (or cities Planning for Long-term Urban Sustainability) developed the 100 year sustainability plan for Vancouver Canada in a project that involved 500 experts and participants from 30 cities across Canada. This 2-year long exercise, culminated in Team Canada being awarded the Grand Prix at the international Sustainable Urban Systems Desi... gn competition in Tokyo June 2003. Since the win, the cities PLUS legacies continue to live on through a number of activities and initiatives coordinated by the original partners: IGU Sustainability Initiative Moves Forward from citiesPLUS to "Bridging to the Future" The International Gas Union (IGU) has initiated the next phase of their groundbreaking Sustainable Urban Systems Design (SUSD) initiative by awarding an important contract to The Sheltair Group to begin a project called "Bridging to the Future." Bridging to the Future will develop long-term plans called pathways for five urban areas from around the globe. The pathway for each city will integrate urban and energy planning in the context of different scenarios for energy costs. A desirable pathway will use natural gas and other fossil fuels as a bridge to renewable energy and sustainable urban systems. Pathways define the steps and directions to achieve a resilient energy infrastructure. They provide a route to safer, healthier urban systems to achieve a resilient energy infrastructure. They provide a route to safer, healthier urban systems over the next 40 years. In the first stage of the project, The Sheltair Group is adapting their tools for modeling and visualizing energy plans to make use of emerging energy technologies and to produce indicators and benchmarks to be used internationally. Sheltair is leading this first phase and will engage a range of participants from the Greater Vancouver Regional District, Canadian energy utilities, and the IGU. Subsequent stages of the project will be collaborative engagements with international teams from diverse locations. The final result will be a suite of ...Read More