Olympic Village reborn?
Frances Bula calls it “the strangest travel piece ever” - here in the New York Times. Judge for yourself.
Actually, it deals more with the neighbourhood around the Village than the site itself, so this might be a good time for a plug:
What began as an ambitious experiment in cutting-edge sustainability found itself caught up in economic strife and bitter politics. And yet, the Village remains what it set out to be: a leading-edge green neighbourhood that is recognized as one of the best of its kind in the world.
The SFU City Program is offering a unique on-site opportunity to learn how it was conceived, designed and built, taught by the senior professionals directly involved. The course also looks beyond the Village itself, to explore lessons learned about project feasibility for green neighbourhoods elsewhere.
The Village has been awarded LEED Neighborhood Platinum Certification — the highest achieved in North America so far – and by that standard is a success. But it’s still debated whether it was unwise to have required such a high standard of sustainable technology and design if the lesson to the development community is that it results in an ‘uneconomic’ project.
The two-and-a-half day course starts on March 31 to explore the sustainability aspects of the Village – on site and with the key professionals who did the work.
More here, including registration..
UPDATE: Another New York Times piece, this time on the economics and politics. Quote from Brent Toderian, City Planning Director:
… the development, intended as a green demonstration project, has “transformed city building in every aspect.” The Olympic Village site, a rare case in which the entire neighborhood has a LEED Platinum rating, features a net-zero building that produces as much as energy as it uses, sites for urban agriculture and a neighborhood energy utility that uses heat recovered from raw sewage to heat all the buildings in the development. And the area around the village is becoming a cultural and residential destination.
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