Dockside Green is one of the world’s leading edge sustainable developments. Located on a 15-acre remediated brownfield site, the 1.3 million square feet of mixed residential, office, retail and commercial space has been selected by the Clinton Climate Initiative as a world class model “Climate Positive Development”. Dockside Green is a LEED for Neighbourhood Development Platinum development and one of the first communities to achieve this designation. Each building of the development is also targeting LEED for New Construction Platinum level. The community is designed as a holistic, closed-loop system with on-site sewage treatment, treated and reused greywater, living ecosystems and habitat, community amenities and sustainable spaces to live, work and play.

An SSG member working for Windmill Developments was involved in the vision and design stages of the project to provide sustainability expertise through:

• Facilitating integrated design sessions.

• Convening stakeholder engagement sessions and managing community input.

• Facilitating the development of the concept, vision, feasibility study, and planning for the Victoria Sustainability Centre (located at Dockside).

• Contributing sustainable design strategies to the concept development.

 

SSG was later hired to develop Sustainable Residential Tenant and Sustainable Commercial Tenant guides; resources that empower residents and commercial owners/tenants to optimise the performance of their spaces and to focus on sustainable living and livelihoods.

Approaching this project as a world first, we merged effective practices, new technologies and innovative thinking to exceed all sustainable development standards and create a holistic, model sustainable community specific to the area’s context. We worked with Windmill to bridge the gap between the technical design and the behaviour of end users by going beyond a simplistic treatment of sustainability and using a triple bottom line lens that includes social and economic justice. Employing a triple bottom line approach, we created comprehensive, user-friendly guides that cover everything from waste management and water conservation to purchasing and travel choices.