The goal of the 1998 Charrette Process provided the Vancouver city council, staff, consultants and the larger community with different design options for the Southeast False Creek site, each of which represents a clear vision of what a community built in conformance with the projected policies would be like.

Objectives include:

• Test the efficacy of those aspects of the proposed policy statement and the performance targets that would be manifest in urban design before an attempt is made to apply them.
• Create a setting in which leading British Columbia designers can exchange ideas and viewpoints with outside experts in the field of sustainable design.
• Establish new, more sustainable, urban typologies to guide the planning and design of this site. These typologies would then be used as prototypes for other sites.
• Illuminate the connection between sustainability and livability.
• Make sustainability functions of the site both transparent and didactic so the SEFC (Southeast False Creek) can serve its residents as well as educate the world.

Green Buildings: Incorporating sustainable design and construction practices through environmentally sound facility templates used in all new construction and rebuilds. These practices incorporate:

• Implementing efficient water and energy systems
• Using the least toxic building materials
• Recycling demolition debris, diverting thousands of tons of materials from landfills
• Making use of daylight whenever possible
• Managing storm water to enhance surrounding habitats
• Reducing site development area (e.g., total gross square footage) to concentrate and limit total paving and other site disturbances
• Installing over 50 acres of reflective roofing
• Publishing an Eco Toolkit reference book, providing it to KP capital project team members and more than 50 architects and design alliance partners

One of the most exciting and promising developments that is fostering sustainable design is the increasing use of the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which evaluates the environmental performance of buildings and sites.¹⁵ A subset of its criteria appropriate to water-sensitive design includes strategies such as minimizing parking spaces, reducing impervious surfaces, installing multiple source stormwater treatment technology such as bioretention swales,¹⁶ building green eco-roofs and rain gardens,¹⁷ and developing on-site water reuse systems.

15. LEED Green Building Rating System, Version 2.1, http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEEDdocs/LEED_RS_v2-1.pdf.
16. Bioinfiltration swales are berms, small dams, or depressions created by excavation placed in channels intended to filter the first half-inch of storm water runoff from impervious surfaces through a grass or vegetative root zone.
17. Rain gardens absorb stormwater from roofs, thus reducing its flow off site.

The development that satisfies sustainable ideals would be co-housing in a mixed-use complex with high density and a compact footprint on a brownfield site with indigenous wildflowers growing out back: close to a subway station, built with recycled materials, full of sunlight and natural ventilation, using recycled rainwater, equipped with a geothermal heating system and waterless urinals and composting toilets, cleaned by janitors making a living wage and using nontoxic cleaning fluids, with prominent stairwells to promote activity and gathering spaces for people to socialize, while still being handicapped-accessible. Architecture schools are going to have to add some more courses to the curriculum. [added to assist search: sustainable design ]