‘Sprawl meter’ for Metro Vancouver

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METRO VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It’s like the doomsday clock or the debt clock, but this one measures urban sprawl.

The sprawl meter measures how much greenspace Metro Vancouver is losing every day, right down to the second. It shows we are losing eight square feet per second.

“It’s mostly land in the eastern part of the Lower Mainland right now,” explains UBC Professor Patrick Condon, who is one of the speakers today at the Vancouver Urban Forum at the Playhouse Theatre.

“If people are closer to transit and closer to the services they need every day, their dependence on the car is much reduced,” he adds.

Today’s conference is making an argument in favour of urban density.

“One of the things that the conference hopes to point out is that density doesn’t mean towers. Density can mean changing a single family home into a duplex,” says Condon.

It’s expected that Metro Vancouver will lose about 200,000 square feet (about two hectares) of greenspace during the 7.5 hour conference.

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