Q: Two decades in, how has UniverCity matched up to your original vision?

Two decades in, I think UniverCity has exceeded the expectations of everyone originally involved. It is more of a community–more a benefit to the university–and a more credible model of sustainability than anyone could have imagined in the late 1990s. But we also have raised our level of ambition, just as the world has come to recognize that we all must do a great deal more to improve our development standards and reduce our collective environmental footprint if we hope to pass a healthy and sustainable planet along to our children.

Q: Was including sustainability and livability pillars in your approach to community building revolutionary two decades ago? What else about the project was revolutionary at the time? What still is?

I think livability has always been a goal of community building; it’s just that we have made such interesting and different mistakes over the centuries. So that’s been evolutionary, and our standard of livability has benefited by that evolution–by the knowledge and understanding we now have about what makes a successful, efficient, functional and livable urban community. But sustainability!? That’s been a revolution, for sure. Twenty years ago, no-one was even thinking about a Living Building, like our Childcare Centre, which has a net-zero environmental footprint that generates more power and captures and recycles more water than its inhabitants use. The centre was built of non-toxic materials sourced within 500 kilometres and will be certified as the first Living Building in Western Canada. That’s revolutionary – and I hope others follow the example.