Climate change and housing production in Ottawa, Canada: the business case for change

Abstract

This paper’s unique contribution is a dialectical approach to housing and climate change looking specifically at the case study of the City of Ottawa, Canada. The housing industry must mitigate and prepare for a changing climate in the form of increasing severity of heat waves, flooding and ice storms. Risks to Ottawa’s housing industry due to climate change include stricter regulation, producer liability, disrupted production, interrupted supply chains and changing consumer preferences. The paper makes the business case for change to an industry and regulatory regimes that are over-invested in traditional assumptions and economies and underinvested in innovation. It then investigates some barriers to change and the different perceptions of the problem between the housing industry and the state, arguing that action to reduce and protect communities from climate change has been slow, disjointed and incremental. The authors finally offer solutions.

Keywords:

• Urban sustainability
• housing development industry
• climate change
• suburban development policy

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The authors thank Dr. Jill Wigle, Carleton University Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, for suggesting the Producer and Regulator categories.

2 At the time of writing this paper, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec have carbon pricing programs in place and the federal government is negotiating agreements on carbon pricing with the other provincial governments (see Canada, 2017).

3 See NRCan’s Urban Archetypes project: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/efficiency/communities-infrastructure/research/4531, which details GHG production and energy consumption of Ottawa’s various development forms.

4 Research that measures impacts of changing climate on the built environment and construction processes does not seem to exist as the phenomenon is so new, so we can only extrapolate from the broader literature about the distinct impacts of climate change compared to conventional measures of ‘normal’ environmental deterioration on structures (Pope, 2015).

5 In some older parts of Ottawa, sanitary and storm water sewer systems are combined.

6 A brown-out reduces a power line’s voltage; a black-out interrupts power.

7 Increased fluctuations in winter freeze-thaw events, and increased erosion due to more variable flows will stress the structural stability of dams (OME, 2014, p. 42).

8 See City of Ottawa (2014a). Resilience usually refers to the ability of an individual city or region to endure environmental shocks while maintaining living standards.

9 The Ottawa case is unique because it clearly demarcated Greenbelt separates urban from suburban (i.e. low-density, single-use) development.