[Music]
good evening TEDx Ottawa how many people
woke up happy this morning how many
people woke up healthy now how much of
that health and happiness would you
attribute to the place where you woke up
or the place where you worked your built
environment most people look at me
somewhat quizzically when I ask that
question and I’ll be blunt the
development system which includes things
like land-use planning infrastructure
environmental regulations and probably
most importantly Public Engagement it’s
actually stacked against the things that
we know contribute to health happiness
in a clean environment and the stats are
pretty easy pretty simple the Urban Land
Institute says that people that live in
mixed juice so it means any amenities
that you need are in your neighborhood
mixed juice walkable communities with
strong transit oriented links way less a
more active and have less chronic
diseases like diabetes and obesity and
they feel more socially connected with
their community and yet our system
forces us almost to do things that we
know makes no sense I’ll start with an
environmental example we take water we
chemically treat it a great energy
expense and cost we pipe it all over our
city to do what with it flush our
toilets wash our cars water our grass it
doesn’t make a lot of sense the system
makes it easy to build communities that
look like this the suburbs urban sprawl
where you need a car to even go get a
bag of milk where you’re separated from
your neighbors by great distances that
makes it almost impossible to build
neighborhoods that look like this
walkable where the streets are shared by
pedestrians cyclists and automobiles and
when you live like that your commute
looks like this you spend a lot of time
in your car I want you to spend as pay
to pay perfect Earths
pay careful attention to the HOV Lane
not only area in your car but you’re
alone and again the stats on this are
very simple there’s a direct correlation
between countries where they have a high
commuter or walking and biking commuter
ship and obesity and yet our system
funnels everything towards that now I
think the environmental and health
impacts of our built environment might
be relatively intuitive but what about
happiness well there are indicators that
can clearly tell you how happy someone
is like how many of their neighbors do
they know by first name and my beliefs
are pretty simple I believe that the
places that we live the places we work
and the places we play should have a
positive impact on our health on our
happiness and on our environment and I
believe the people that make those
places and that includes not only
developers but the politicians the
regulators the urban planners need to
build communities that actually build
community that make us care so why
aren’t we well in my opinion is pretty
simple develop the development system is
a process-oriented system not a goal or
an outcome oriented system so we end up
building what we’re allowed to build not
what we all know we should build but we
can’t change them all we got to do is
break a few rules and I might be good at
that sometimes now I was trained as an
engineer but I’ve spent my career as an
as an entrepreneur and almost all of my
businesses have been focused in the
environmental sector doing things like
cleaning up contaminated sites recycling
hazardous and dangerous dangerous wastes
bringing on renewable energy that
decreases our our dependence on fossil
fuels and most of those sites or many of
those sites were in urban areas and we
saw downtown highly lucrative
urban sites that were fenced off locked
off oftentimes for decades and it caused
us about ten years ago to say why don’t
we try our hand at
redevelopment now I will tell you I was
shocked when I went from being an
environmental cleanup contractor and
when you say that at a cocktail party
people say that’s fantastic to say I’m a
property developer and the negative
stigma that comes with that now might be
somewhat deserved because there was a
property developer that built this well
one of the first things that we did was
to set out to break that stigma we
wanted to prove that we could build
communities they would actually make the
environment better so we built Canada’s
first LEED Platinum building leads a
rating system that rates how sustainable
a building is with platinum being the
ultimate level not only did we build
Canada’s first LEED Platinum building we
build British Columbia’s Alberta’s
Ontario’s we actually had a hand in
building this theater which is LEED
Platinum but we quickly came to realize
that while we’re having a positive
impact on the environment we weren’t
necessarily changing people’s behaviors
when I saw one of our clients drive
their Hummer SUV into the parking lot of
our highly sustainable building I kind
of scratched my head and we started
looking for a better way and we found
something called the one planet
community framework one planet the name
speaks for itself we have to live like
we only have one planet and again
everyone looks at me with a quizzical
look and says but Jeff we do only have
one planet and I remind them that if we
all live like an American
we need five planets or a Canadian we
need four and all we’re doing is
stealing from our own grandchildren and
the developing world to sustain our
unsustainable lifestyle now one planet
is essentially lead on steroids and the
big difference is it brings in
indicators around health happiness local
economy so now we tell people we’re
gonna build communities that not only
will make you happier and healthier but
actually improve the environment and
oftentimes they laugh at us we’re
getting used to it
and more often than not the people that
laugh the hardest are the very ones
responsible for the development system
so how does and and actually sorry the
one planet system we’ve claimed that we
call it social sustainability so
environmental sustainability is pretty
well defined the social side of it how
do you drive happiness how do you drive
better health from the built environment
social sustainability so the question is
how did we how do we use social
sustainability and the one planet system
to change the development system it’s
pretty simple we focus on the outcomes
let me tell you a story here in the
heart of the nation’s capital straddling
the border between Ontario and Quebec
Ottawa and Gabon right between the two
downtown cores of our cities sits 37
acres of beautiful waterfront lands they
have unobstructed views of all of our
national monuments Parliament Hill our
Supreme Court the galleries the museum’s
unobstructed views of sunrises in
sunsets John Seely beautiful right
what do you see do you see a fenced off
contaminated site that’s going to take
years to decontaminate with all of the
regulations straddling the border or do
you see as we did the outcome the
ability to build one of the world’s most
socially and environmentally sustainable
communities do you see all of the red
tape and regulation that comes with
trying to put a development in the
middle of the Ottawa River in Quebec and
in Ontario with all the cultural
implications of that or do you see an
opportunity to bring all of those
communities together to do something
truly world-class as we did now
the complexity they say can’t be
understated we sit half and Gatineau
half in Ottawa half in mist in the
province of Quebec the the French
founder the the founding problem French
province of Canada and half in Ontario
the founding English province in Canada
we have federal oversight and we sit in
the heart of Algonquin traditional
territory First Nations and I often say
to have a successful development here is
pretty simple all we have to do is to
get Canada’s three founding nations to
cooperate and collaborate
but we did it and how did we do it
well let me explain oh not only did we
do it
but we’ve been recognized
internationally for what we’ve done this
project won the best master plan from
the canadian planning institute went on
to win from the north american planning
institute and in Durban South Africa
last year the community won the best
master plan community on the planet so
how did we do it well we started by
getting curious when we looked at the
lands we wanted to know what communities
are involved in these lands what is it
that they’re looking to see out of the
lands and we’re now blessed with some
fantastic new friends I have some great
québécois friends that I have to
constantly apologize for my poor French
some fantastic Algonquin friends who
took us under their wings taught us
their language their culture explain to
us how things work and our curiosity
kept driving us to say how do we make
sure that when we build a community
everybody from our community feels like
they have a sense of place and most
importantly we do it in a way that will
drive happiness health and a clean
environment so we started engagement
lots of it literally hundreds of
engagements and one of the things that
we decided to do was we would we hosted
a major non-mandatory I want you to
think about how most property developers
would think about public engagements
kinda like dental surgery we hosted a
non mandatory public meeting at one of
the local museums we had a thousand
people show up and if we had a criticism
from that it was you didn’t show us what
you were gonna build we said well that’s
the purpose of the engagement we
actually want to know what you think we
should build
most public consultations around
development look something like this
they’re not a lot of fun I can tell you
ours look like this and the headline the
next day talked about enthusiasm around
the development and the outcome we had
was a social contract let me explain
what a social contract is social
contract is an agreement between us and
all of the communities we engage with to
do certain things we came up with eight
development principles we call them our
eight commanders and don’t remind me I
know there’s actually 10 commandments
but these are our eight commandments
they included things like building a
world-class sustainable community making
sure that Canada’s three founding
nations were represented not only
protecting but enhancing views and I
think most importantly opening up this
magnificent waterfront site to the
citizens of this region for the first
time in two hundred years and those
eight commandments guided us through
everything we did and allowed us to
start challenging the system overcoming
barriers and where did we start we
started with politicians we said very
simply we have a contract to build a
world-class community that means
different your bureaucracies are set up
to enforce the same all of the rules you
need to allow your bureaucrats to ask
themselves is this the right thing to do
and if it is how do we do it and we got
the city of Gatineau the City of Ottawa
the National Capital Commission and the
first nations together in the same room
to talk about this I don’t think that’s
ever happened before in this region and
what was the outcome mayor of Ottawa
says he’s gonna roll out the red carpet
not red tape the mayor of Gatineau
says this is a must not miss opportunity
the national
leader of our First Nations talks about
unprecedented dialogue between US and
the First Nations and that allowed us to
really start breaking some rules we were
able to go to the bureaucrats and
challenge them to say again world class
means different just because we keep
doing the same thing over and over again
doesn’t make it right we do not believe
we’re doing the right thing for people’s
health for people’s happiness and for
the environment so let me give you a few
examples and there’s a lot of them I got
to keep them relatively short there’s
500 provincial bridges in our region all
of them are heavily trafficked commuter
bridges we the one that runs through our
site to show to your bridge is probably
the least pedestrian friendly crossing
in the area anybody that’s walked across
that bridge or ridden across it it’s a
it’s a terror show the sidewalk doesn’t
even follow the whole side of the street
on one side but by engaging with traffic
engineers of all people what was the
outcome we took something that currently
looks like this a four-lane highway and
we now have agreement to make it look
like this this will be the most
pedestrian friendly crossing in our
region and what’s important is we’re
able to do it in a way that is not gonna
impact the amount of cars that can get
across the bridge through redesign
leading with pedestrian friendly leading
with cycling friendly we were able to do
something that we were told was
impossible we didn’t think it was really
that big a deal but we wanted to take
things that look like this and turn them
into streets that look like this where
pedestrians cyclists and cars are all
together and if you’re on your feet you
rule the roost and the cyclists will
line through and if you’re in a car
you’re welcome but you’re a third class
citizen making your way through
we were told we couldn’t do it city
bylaws do not allow that well we broke
that rule we did it by saying maybe we
just own the streets in perpetuity and
we’ll prove that you
can maintain them and manage them and
set a model for what should happen next
to make walkable pedestrian friendly
friendly streets another barrier we
broke one of the ones I’m most proud of
is the Quebec construction industry is
very difficult to work and if you’re a
First Nations worker it’s even more so
because oftentimes you spend time
working on the reserve you could be a
carpenter for twenty years on the
reserve but because it’s federal land
none of your experience is recognized in
the province so we started three years
ago saying we want to see First Nations
workers on our site we were told the way
the union’s work the way the vast saying
is work it can’t happen well we broke
that rule too we worked with the
regulator’s and here’s the first crew
well here’s the first crew on our site
doing the site decontamination 70
percent Algonquin workers truly
unbelievable
not only we got construction work with
the First Nations we called the site ZB
which is Algonquin for River and one of
the things I love about that is when I
say the site is called the ZB people say
why ZB I said because it’s the Algonquin
word for River they say why Algonquin I
said because this is their territory
they’re our hosts so another barrier
broken another one that we’re really
proud of is we are building our regions
and one of the few in North America Zero
Carbon district energy system what that
means is all of the heating cooling and
electrification on our site will be zero
carbon
most developments hook on to the natural
gas pipeline connect to what is a pretty
dirty grid and that’s all they do and we
continue our carbon dependency now you
might know utilities in this part of the
world are pretty heavily regulated when
we first met with the local hydro
distribution company and we said we want
to run our own utility they made it
pretty clear if you do that we are going
to war
while I’m happy to say if we go to war
there no my partner
there are a 50/50 partner in our first
zero-carbon district energy system in
the region so we can do better it’s
clear we can do better and all of us
have a responsibility in my opinion to
challenge the system and demand that we
want places that we know the data is
evidence we know improve health
happiness and our environment in 10
years time when I’m sitting on a
waterfront patio looking at Parliament
Hill or watching the sunset in the
world’s most sustainable community I’ll
know that not only did we break a few
barriers maybe even a few rules to make
it happen but we set a model for how it
can be done
meat which thank you now see you happy
[Applause]
good evening TEDx Ottawa how many people
woke up happy this morning how many
people woke up healthy now how much of
that health and happiness would you
attribute to the place where you woke up
or the place where you worked your built
environment most people look at me
somewhat quizzically when I ask that
question and I’ll be blunt the
development system which includes things
like land-use planning infrastructure
environmental regulations and probably
most importantly Public Engagement it’s
actually stacked against the things that
we know contribute to health happiness
in a clean environment and the stats are
pretty easy pretty simple the Urban Land
Institute says that people that live in
mixed juice so it means any amenities
that you need are in your neighborhood
mixed juice walkable communities with
strong transit oriented links way less a
more active and have less chronic
diseases like diabetes and obesity and
they feel more socially connected with
their community and yet our system
forces us almost to do things that we
know makes no sense I’ll start with an
environmental example we take water we
chemically treat it a great energy
expense and cost we pipe it all over our
city to do what with it flush our
toilets wash our cars water our grass it
doesn’t make a lot of sense the system
makes it easy to build communities that
look like this the suburbs urban sprawl
where you need a car to even go get a
bag of milk where you’re separated from
your neighbors by great distances that
makes it almost impossible to build
neighborhoods that look like this
walkable where the streets are shared by
pedestrians cyclists and automobiles and
when you live like that your commute
looks like this you spend a lot of time
in your car I want you to spend as pay
to pay perfect Earths
pay careful attention to the HOV Lane
not only area in your car but you’re
alone and again the stats on this are
very simple there’s a direct correlation
between countries where they have a high
commuter or walking and biking commuter
ship and obesity and yet our system
funnels everything towards that now I
think the environmental and health
impacts of our built environment might
be relatively intuitive but what about
happiness well there are indicators that
can clearly tell you how happy someone
is like how many of their neighbors do
they know by first name and my beliefs
are pretty simple I believe that the
places that we live the places we work
and the places we play should have a
positive impact on our health on our
happiness and on our environment and I
believe the people that make those
places and that includes not only
developers but the politicians the
regulators the urban planners need to
build communities that actually build
community that make us care so why
aren’t we well in my opinion is pretty
simple develop the development system is
a process-oriented system not a goal or
an outcome oriented system so we end up
building what we’re allowed to build not
what we all know we should build but we
can’t change them all we got to do is
break a few rules and I might be good at
that sometimes now I was trained as an
engineer but I’ve spent my career as an
as an entrepreneur and almost all of my
businesses have been focused in the
environmental sector doing things like
cleaning up contaminated sites recycling
hazardous and dangerous dangerous wastes
bringing on renewable energy that
decreases our our dependence on fossil
fuels and most of those sites or many of
those sites were in urban areas and we
saw downtown highly lucrative
urban sites that were fenced off locked
off oftentimes for decades and it caused
us about ten years ago to say why don’t
we try our hand at
redevelopment now I will tell you I was
shocked when I went from being an
environmental cleanup contractor and
when you say that at a cocktail party
people say that’s fantastic to say I’m a
property developer and the negative
stigma that comes with that now might be
somewhat deserved because there was a
property developer that built this well
one of the first things that we did was
to set out to break that stigma we
wanted to prove that we could build
communities they would actually make the
environment better so we built Canada’s
first LEED Platinum building leads a
rating system that rates how sustainable
a building is with platinum being the
ultimate level not only did we build
Canada’s first LEED Platinum building we
build British Columbia’s Alberta’s
Ontario’s we actually had a hand in
building this theater which is LEED
Platinum but we quickly came to realize
that while we’re having a positive
impact on the environment we weren’t
necessarily changing people’s behaviors
when I saw one of our clients drive
their Hummer SUV into the parking lot of
our highly sustainable building I kind
of scratched my head and we started
looking for a better way and we found
something called the one planet
community framework one planet the name
speaks for itself we have to live like
we only have one planet and again
everyone looks at me with a quizzical
look and says but Jeff we do only have
one planet and I remind them that if we
all live like an American
we need five planets or a Canadian we
need four and all we’re doing is
stealing from our own grandchildren and
the developing world to sustain our
unsustainable lifestyle now one planet
is essentially lead on steroids and the
big difference is it brings in
indicators around health happiness local
economy so now we tell people we’re
gonna build communities that not only
will make you happier and healthier but
actually improve the environment and
oftentimes they laugh at us we’re
getting used to it
and more often than not the people that
laugh the hardest are the very ones
responsible for the development system
so how does and and actually sorry the
one planet system we’ve claimed that we
call it social sustainability so
environmental sustainability is pretty
well defined the social side of it how
do you drive happiness how do you drive
better health from the built environment
social sustainability so the question is
how did we how do we use social
sustainability and the one planet system
to change the development system it’s
pretty simple we focus on the outcomes
let me tell you a story here in the
heart of the nation’s capital straddling
the border between Ontario and Quebec
Ottawa and Gabon right between the two
downtown cores of our cities sits 37
acres of beautiful waterfront lands they
have unobstructed views of all of our
national monuments Parliament Hill our
Supreme Court the galleries the museum’s
unobstructed views of sunrises in
sunsets John Seely beautiful right
what do you see do you see a fenced off
contaminated site that’s going to take
years to decontaminate with all of the
regulations straddling the border or do
you see as we did the outcome the
ability to build one of the world’s most
socially and environmentally sustainable
communities do you see all of the red
tape and regulation that comes with
trying to put a development in the
middle of the Ottawa River in Quebec and
in Ontario with all the cultural
implications of that or do you see an
opportunity to bring all of those
communities together to do something
truly world-class as we did now
the complexity they say can’t be
understated we sit half and Gatineau
half in Ottawa half in mist in the
province of Quebec the the French
founder the the founding problem French
province of Canada and half in Ontario
the founding English province in Canada
we have federal oversight and we sit in
the heart of Algonquin traditional
territory First Nations and I often say
to have a successful development here is
pretty simple all we have to do is to
get Canada’s three founding nations to
cooperate and collaborate
but we did it and how did we do it
well let me explain oh not only did we
do it
but we’ve been recognized
internationally for what we’ve done this
project won the best master plan from
the canadian planning institute went on
to win from the north american planning
institute and in Durban South Africa
last year the community won the best
master plan community on the planet so
how did we do it well we started by
getting curious when we looked at the
lands we wanted to know what communities
are involved in these lands what is it
that they’re looking to see out of the
lands and we’re now blessed with some
fantastic new friends I have some great
québécois friends that I have to
constantly apologize for my poor French
some fantastic Algonquin friends who
took us under their wings taught us
their language their culture explain to
us how things work and our curiosity
kept driving us to say how do we make
sure that when we build a community
everybody from our community feels like
they have a sense of place and most
importantly we do it in a way that will
drive happiness health and a clean
environment so we started engagement
lots of it literally hundreds of
engagements and one of the things that
we decided to do was we would we hosted
a major non-mandatory I want you to
think about how most property developers
would think about public engagements
kinda like dental surgery we hosted a
non mandatory public meeting at one of
the local museums we had a thousand
people show up and if we had a criticism
from that it was you didn’t show us what
you were gonna build we said well that’s
the purpose of the engagement we
actually want to know what you think we
should build
most public consultations around
development look something like this
they’re not a lot of fun I can tell you
ours look like this and the headline the
next day talked about enthusiasm around
the development and the outcome we had
was a social contract let me explain
what a social contract is social
contract is an agreement between us and
all of the communities we engage with to
do certain things we came up with eight
development principles we call them our
eight commanders and don’t remind me I
know there’s actually 10 commandments
but these are our eight commandments
they included things like building a
world-class sustainable community making
sure that Canada’s three founding
nations were represented not only
protecting but enhancing views and I
think most importantly opening up this
magnificent waterfront site to the
citizens of this region for the first
time in two hundred years and those
eight commandments guided us through
everything we did and allowed us to
start challenging the system overcoming
barriers and where did we start we
started with politicians we said very
simply we have a contract to build a
world-class community that means
different your bureaucracies are set up
to enforce the same all of the rules you
need to allow your bureaucrats to ask
themselves is this the right thing to do
and if it is how do we do it and we got
the city of Gatineau the City of Ottawa
the National Capital Commission and the
first nations together in the same room
to talk about this I don’t think that’s
ever happened before in this region and
what was the outcome mayor of Ottawa
says he’s gonna roll out the red carpet
not red tape the mayor of Gatineau
says this is a must not miss opportunity
the national
leader of our First Nations talks about
unprecedented dialogue between US and
the First Nations and that allowed us to
really start breaking some rules we were
able to go to the bureaucrats and
challenge them to say again world class
means different just because we keep
doing the same thing over and over again
doesn’t make it right we do not believe
we’re doing the right thing for people’s
health for people’s happiness and for
the environment so let me give you a few
examples and there’s a lot of them I got
to keep them relatively short there’s
500 provincial bridges in our region all
of them are heavily trafficked commuter
bridges we the one that runs through our
site to show to your bridge is probably
the least pedestrian friendly crossing
in the area anybody that’s walked across
that bridge or ridden across it it’s a
it’s a terror show the sidewalk doesn’t
even follow the whole side of the street
on one side but by engaging with traffic
engineers of all people what was the
outcome we took something that currently
looks like this a four-lane highway and
we now have agreement to make it look
like this this will be the most
pedestrian friendly crossing in our
region and what’s important is we’re
able to do it in a way that is not gonna
impact the amount of cars that can get
across the bridge through redesign
leading with pedestrian friendly leading
with cycling friendly we were able to do
something that we were told was
impossible we didn’t think it was really
that big a deal but we wanted to take
things that look like this and turn them
into streets that look like this where
pedestrians cyclists and cars are all
together and if you’re on your feet you
rule the roost and the cyclists will
line through and if you’re in a car
you’re welcome but you’re a third class
citizen making your way through
we were told we couldn’t do it city
bylaws do not allow that well we broke
that rule we did it by saying maybe we
just own the streets in perpetuity and
we’ll prove that you
can maintain them and manage them and
set a model for what should happen next
to make walkable pedestrian friendly
friendly streets another barrier we
broke one of the ones I’m most proud of
is the Quebec construction industry is
very difficult to work and if you’re a
First Nations worker it’s even more so
because oftentimes you spend time
working on the reserve you could be a
carpenter for twenty years on the
reserve but because it’s federal land
none of your experience is recognized in
the province so we started three years
ago saying we want to see First Nations
workers on our site we were told the way
the union’s work the way the vast saying
is work it can’t happen well we broke
that rule too we worked with the
regulator’s and here’s the first crew
well here’s the first crew on our site
doing the site decontamination 70
percent Algonquin workers truly
unbelievable
not only we got construction work with
the First Nations we called the site ZB
which is Algonquin for River and one of
the things I love about that is when I
say the site is called the ZB people say
why ZB I said because it’s the Algonquin
word for River they say why Algonquin I
said because this is their territory
they’re our hosts so another barrier
broken another one that we’re really
proud of is we are building our regions
and one of the few in North America Zero
Carbon district energy system what that
means is all of the heating cooling and
electrification on our site will be zero
carbon
most developments hook on to the natural
gas pipeline connect to what is a pretty
dirty grid and that’s all they do and we
continue our carbon dependency now you
might know utilities in this part of the
world are pretty heavily regulated when
we first met with the local hydro
distribution company and we said we want
to run our own utility they made it
pretty clear if you do that we are going
to war
while I’m happy to say if we go to war
there no my partner
there are a 50/50 partner in our first
zero-carbon district energy system in
the region so we can do better it’s
clear we can do better and all of us
have a responsibility in my opinion to
challenge the system and demand that we
want places that we know the data is
evidence we know improve health
happiness and our environment in 10
years time when I’m sitting on a
waterfront patio looking at Parliament
Hill or watching the sunset in the
world’s most sustainable community I’ll
know that not only did we break a few
barriers maybe even a few rules to make
it happen but we set a model for how it
can be done
meat which thank you now see you happy
[Applause]
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