In Vancouver we are building the 2010 Winter Olympics Athlete's Village to exceptional levels of sustainability. After the games three quarters of the the 1,000+ residential dwellings will be sold at market rates while approximately 250 will become non-market housing for seniors and low income singles and families. This is intended to be a demonstration of the best urban planning, architectural, and engineering practices in the world today and act as the model for future local high-density development. The larger Southeast False Creek neighbourhood, of which the Olympic Village is the first phase, will include an elementary school, a streetcar line, parks, day cares, commercial, retail, office space, at least one grocery store, a community centre, a marina for non-motorized boats and kayaks, and a mixture of subsidized and market housing for 10,000 to 15,000 people, all built to very high levels of environmental sustainability (minimum LEED Silver equivalence).

The 16 building, 1.4 million square foot, single phase Olympic Village is being built to the LEED Gold standard while the Community Centre is being built to LEED Platinum. The building that will become seniors' housing is going to attempt to reach the Net-Zero standard, which represents annual energy, water, and carbon neutrality. All of the buildings will feature green roofs, passive solar design, beyond-code insulation and glazing, and low/no VOC paint and carpets. Rain water will be retained in cisterns to be used for irrigation of the green roofs and landscaping. The buildings will be heated and cooled using an in-slab hydronic system connected to a hybrid district heating/cooling system powered by high-efficiency natural gas boilers and heat exchange system that will use both ground-source heat pipes and an innovative heat exchange system tied into the sewer pipes to recover their latent heat. Electricity comes from local hydroelectric dams. A streetcar will run through the neighbourhood and connect it to two nearby rapid transit stations. All parking is underground and well below average in its parking to dwelling ratio.

As an interesting final note, after the Olympics the buyers of the Village’s apartments and rowhouses will be given the names and nationalities of the athletes who stayed in their homes while competing. I think that’s a nice touch.