Acting Local: Municipal Government Responses to Climate Change

In addition to development-permit powers, what can local government do to meet ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction targets? This course will use a “climate change” lens to review a broad range of existing local-government bylaws. For instance, do siting regulations prevent the positioning of a building to take maximum advantage of solar exposure? Is there still a bylaw on the books requiring the clearing of vegetation from vacant lots? Are there too many incentives in the zoning bylaw to demolish and replace existing buildings instead of adaptively re-using them?

The course will also explore new types of bylaw provisions — describing their scope and potential application to energy or water conservation as well as greenhouse-gas reduction; providing core bylaw wording; identifying typical bylaw drafting and enforcement issues; and providing links to existing local government bylaws. It will also explore what other jurisdictions such as the provincial government are doing, so that local government resources can focus on areas where they are uniquely positioned to achieve results.

This is a pre-conference course to the PIBC 2010 annual conference. Registration for this course is separate from conference registration. To register for this course, visit here . For information on the PIBC annual conference, see http://www.pibc.bc.ca/conference/index.php .