Regional Planning Strategies Review
Island Coastal Ventures is committed to engaging with municipal agencies throughout the Comox Valley to create a new, rigorous, yet transparent standard for sustainable development within the region. Ensuring compliance with the intent of the region’s future growth and sustainability strategies is one of Longlands’ principle development objectives, and constituted the second step in the project’s integrated design approach.
There are currently four regional strategies being prepared within the Comox Valley Regional District, with respective focuses on water, sewer, sustainability and regional growth.
Krikey Media, a communications firm based in Courtenay, BC was retained by Island Coastal Ventures to complete a detailed review of two draft regional planning strategies - the Comox Valley Regional Growth Strategy (CVRGS) and the Comox Valley Sustainability Strategy (CVSS) - which are slated for completion in 2010. The completion of this assessment ensured that Island Coastal Ventures was fully conversant with the intents and details of these two key strategies, and that the guiding principles, sustainability goals, and design concepts employed on the Longlands Project were in accord with the strategies’ proposed targets, policies, and standards.
The regional strategies assessment included selective reviews of the CVRD’s background report Understanding Our Choices and the draft CVSS document, as well as attendance at five public information sessions held during 2008 and 2009 pertaining to these strategies. The CVRGS and CVSS documents are largely complementary in their functions of establishing regional goals and proposing targets. The CVRGS provides the background context for the present time period, and makes broad suggestions for the future, while the CVSS sets firm targets based on the contributions of various volunteer working groups and the expertise of planning consultants. Together, they provide a strong foundation for creating regional policies for sustainable growth and development.
The CVRGS and CVSS strategy documents were analysed and cross-referenced for their relevance to green building and land development, with the intention of:
- Providing a complete set of sustainable development guidelines against which to measure principles and goals of the Longlands project;
- Identifying opportunities for the inclusion of sustainability measures into the Longlands project from the perspective of a stand-alone initiative; and
- Creating recommendations on how Longlands could become a model project in terms of proactive community consultation, sustainable community planning and design, green building standards, and a host of applicable triple-bottom line objectives for the Comox Valley in particular, and Vancouver Island as a whole.
The results of this assessment were instrumental in guiding conversations and design decision making that was part of the Site Adaptive Planning and Design process.
