As resource consumption has become an increasing concern over the past decade, there has been ample research dedicated to “green” residential development. Green building advocates and policy makers have pushed for greater technological efficiencies in buildings in order to reduce buildings’ consumption levels of vital resources like water and electricity. However, David Hendrickson of Simon Fraser University at the Centre for Sustainable Community Development found that rather than concentrating on equipping buildings with energy efficient technologies, we should be examining our living arrangements, daily behaviors and common living practices. Only by focusing on how we consume, not just how much we consume, will we be able to take meaningful steps to living more sustainably.

In his report Green Buildings, Green Consumption: Do “Green” Residential Developments Reduce Post-Occupancy Consumption Levels? published in January 2010, Hendrickson points out that while transforming the way our buildings consume energy produces gains in efficiencies, these gains are being undermined by an overall increase in people’s consumption levels. Hendrickson compared household behavior, quality of life, and living practices in typical housing, green buildings, and cohousing developments across the Lower Mainland in order to understand how to collectively leverage and maximize resource consumption. The study revealed that people in cohousing developments in North Vancouver, Burnaby, and UBC Endowment Lands consume resources in the most environmentally responsible manner.

Residents of cohousing developments are continuously proving that they can live more sustainably than can be achieved through any new technologies. Once cohousing residents develop a degree of trust, they are able to organize the strata in such a way that maximizes the utility of every resource by sharing things like lawnmowers and laundry facilities. Quayside Village in North Vancouver is one example of a cohousing strata council that is making more sustainable decisions about its day-to-day building operations by being more sophisticated, engaged and organized when it comes to its building processes.  Quayside Village has reached a 75-90% recovery of solid waste, 4 times higher than the national average, by treating waste as a resource rather than something to be thrown away. Cohousing developments prove that the key to reducing absolute waste consumption lays in our ability to organize our households better, and Quayside Village is one such example right here in our own backyard.

Hendrickson envisions Vancouver as a place that can support more cohousing developments, modeled after the success of Quayside Village. While cohousing has been on the rise in Vancouver since its first introduction in the city in the 1980s, Hendrickson believes that Vancouver should be modeling Denmark which has over 200 cohousing developments. Even though the cohousing lifestyle may only be relevant to 5% of Vancouver residents, Hendrickson urges all Vancouverites heed their example and integrate more environmentally responsible practices into our daily lives.  

In 2007 the Real Estate Foundation approved a $15,000 grant to The Centre for Sustainable Community Development at Simon Fraser University under the Foundation’s mandate to support research. The Foundation recognizes the important contribution that Hendrickson’s research makes to Canada’s dialogue regarding policy, in an attempt to find practical solutions to decreasing per capita carbon emissions.

Click to read David Hendrickson's full report: Green Buildings, Green Consumption: Do "Green" Residential Developments Reduce Post-Occupancy Consumption Levels?

Story by Elysha Ames