Community and boulevard gardens are a amazing ways for people to connect with nature while still enjoying the benefits of urban living. My fiancee and I started a boulevard garden outside our apartment last year, and it’s been very rewarding to watch things start to grow. Victoria is called the Garden City for a reason, and we should be leaning into that further by expanding the number of community and boulevard gardens in the city.

Transportation accounts for X% of emissions in our region, with the majority of those emissions coming from private vehicles. The policies listed in the Transportation section that would make it easier to walk, bike, or bus also help keep our air free from polluting fumes, our waterways safe from tire and brake dust runoff, and reduce the amount of energy we need to get around.

As a construction worker, it’s genuinely shocking how much cardboard gets thrown out on job sites. Cardboard is incredibly easy to recycle, there’s no reason for so much of it to end up in the landfill. We should mandate that all construction sites in Victoria provide cardboard recycling.

In my apprenticeship as an electrician, I spent a lot of time out in the Westshore, building suburban sprawl and witnessing the environmental devestation that comes from building out instead of up. Not only does this require destroying pristine forests, it also involves massive amounts of road paving, and locks in car dependency for generations. By housing more people in compact urban centers, close to jobs, services, and amenities, we massively reduce our emissions and overall environmental impact.

Our regulations around housing construction often force housing to be built short and wide, leading to less greenspace and more tree loss. Increasing flexibility to allow for more greenspace and greater tree retention would ensure that we get the housing we need while continuing to increase our tree canopy, provide more functional greenspace, and decreasing impermeable surfaces.