Deep Dive – Climate Change Series
This is the third article in a series that looks at the gap between climate rhetoric and reality in terms of what municipal governments say they are doing versus what they are actually accomplishing. The series compares and contrasts policies and outcomes in Halifax, Nova Scotia with its nearest comparable American neighbor, Portland, Maine.
If you’re wondering why care at all about these two cities, you may like to read a brief overview of the series.
Previously, Part 2 considered how culture can support or undermine credible attempts to reduce emissions. Here in Part 3, we look at the extent to which a municipality’s climate action plan can be little more than an exercise in virtue signaling. Part 4 illustrates the degree to which it’s possible to make a mockery of climate goals with the demolition of existing human-scale development.
The Three Key Objectives of a Credible Climate Action Plan
These days, most local governments have a “climate action plan.” One plan might talk about building retrofits or putting solar panels on municipal buildings. Another might call for the purchase of electric buses or EVs for the municipal fleet. Looking at these plans, however, we often see that politicians and municipal staff are doing little to change the status quo.
For reasons described in Part 1, municipal governments make a majority of decisions regarding what and where things get built.1 These decisions tie back to the over 60% of emissions produced by buildings and personal transportation. Rarely do climate action plans call for a fundamental change in development patterns, even though research has consistently shown that building at the human scale is better for the climate. You get fewer emissions compared to the usual mix of high rises and sprawling suburbs. Any credible climate action plan would take this into account and aim to end the expansion of urban sprawl—in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions.
The idea here is to cut emissions and create the kinds of places that many people have been saying they prefer for decades. A municipality that aims to reduce emissions would create well-designed human-scale neighborhoods that provide a variety of housing options and uses; places where walking or biking to daily needs is easy, safe, and enjoyable. This kind of development not only benefits our climate—it also provides many other advantages over urban sprawl.
None of this is abstract. I’ve described what actual change looks like in three articles that are not part of this series. What these articles are saying is that to help real estate developers break with the rule of perpetual urban sprawl, a municipality must realize four objectives.
In describing these four objectives I’m focusing on the how, as in “How does a municipality actually change its development patterns?” For this article, I want to focus on the “what,” as in “At a minimum, what should a climate action plan propose to do to meaningfully reduce emissions?” The “what” and the “how” are two sides of the same coin.
All things considered, a principal goal of a credible climate action plan would be to consistently build at the human scale to reduce emissions. To accomplish this goal, a municipality would want to pursue the three key measurable objectives listed below.
- Renovate rather than demolish existing human-scale development.
- End the practice of erecting high-rise buildings and instead accommodate higher densities with a building type known as a “courtyard” having considerably lower heights.
- End the practice of expanding auto-dependent development.
All three objectives reduce emissions. In the next four articles in this series (two of which look at the research on high-rises), I’ll be focusing on each of these objectives in turn. I’ll talk about the climate benefits, look at what the research says, and show you some significant differences in terms of development outcomes in Portland and Halifax.
Much of what Portland has done to date is impressive, but there are risks on the horizon that I’ll speak to. In Halifax, the gap between climate rhetoric and reality is massive.
Looking at the climate action plans for the two municipalities, you see that, just like the master plans, these climate action plans are the products of disparate cultures. Before assessing these plans, I’d like to summarize what I’ve said about culture in Part 2 because it helps explain why the two sets of plans look nothing alike.
Recap of Contrast Between Portland and Halifax
Portland is Halifax’s nearest comparable American neighbor. Both are historic maritime cities, with comparable metro populations of about a half million people. As recently as 2015, both places had aging populations and sluggish population growth rates. Given these similarities, you might think they’d share a lot in common. They don’t.
In Portland, citizens shape planning and development outcomes in ways that might be hard to imagine in Halifax. Maine has what political scientists refer to as a communitarian culture, rooted in the tradition of New England town meetings. Twenty-seven community organizations helped shape Portland’s most recent master plan. Eleven of these groups are neighborhood organizations that have their own board of directors, monthly meetings, and residents with strong viewpoints. Portland’s planners and municipal politicians worked collaboratively and openly with a lot of different people to create a community-based vision that guides development.
The Canadian story is different. Back in 1970, Halifax was rather prominently described as being a “governmentally organized town” that sat in a province where “economic process is completely riddled with political intervention.” Their “top-down” decision-making was considered a product of an “authoritarian, bureaucratic, not very productive” way of doing business. All these observations are as relevant today as they were when made over fifty years ago. Halifax, for example, does not have a single neighborhood organization of the sort that exists in Portland. There is, in Halifax, a cultural milieu in which many residents are resigned to accept government decisions for good or ill.
As I’ve described previously, development in Portland and Halifax looks nothing like one another. Portland has a strong identity that’s rooted in the city’s historic architecture. Much of the recent development in town has made Portland a better version of itself. As a result, the city has become a victim of its own success. It draws people from Boston, NYC, and California who have decent salaries. They can afford to pay more, which has pushed up housing prices. Although the population growth rate has been modest (e.g., 0.6% in 2023), housing affordability is an issue. On the whole, both these newer arrivals and long-term Mainers consider quality of life and innovation to be key economic drivers.
Halifax aspires to be something that it currently is not. In planning and development circles, you find a widespread embrace of “strategic growth.” It’s a euphemism for government-engineered mass immigration and the replacement of the historic city with something that looks more like Dubai. It’s what many Nova Scotians want. In 2024, voters reelected the same government that had previously announced its intent to double the province’s population from 1 to 2 million people by 2060.
The government has been successful in bringing large numbers of international immigrants to Nova Scotia, with most coming from India and China. The province’s “payroll rebate” scheme is one of many ways in which this happens. Nova Scotia’s political leaders have doubled down on these plans in the face of declining per capita GDP and a degradation of quality of life. This top-down reshaping of society would not go over well in Maine, but it is culturally acceptable and normalized in Canada.
Comparing Portland and Halifax’s Climate Action Plans Side by Side
With these differences in mind, let’s briefly look at the two climate action plans to understand the degree to which they focus on the three key objectives that are central to emissions reduction. For each objective, I’ll answer two questions:
- Assuming the objective is even a part of the climate action plan, is it described in a way that is consistent with both the master plan and its execution in terms of development?
- Is the objective addressed with sufficient thoroughness so that the reader understands what’s being proposed and why?
Before looking at these objectives, I’d like to make a few general observations about the two plans.
Portland created its climate action plan, One Climate Future, in collaboration with the adjacent municipality of South Portland. Reading Portland’s master plan and One Climate Future together, you find the two are complementary to one another. In a sense, One Climate Future is a detailed implementation plan for parts (but not all) of their master plan.
Like the master plan, One Climate Future is well-researched, clearly written, thorough, and presents 68 separate “climate actions.” Two to four pages of analysis support each action, clarifying where things stand today, and what they plan to do in some detail.
Like the master plan, One Climate Future emphasizes the importance of the enduring “character” of Portland and quality of life. Images in the plan, such as those shown below, reinforce the idea that human-scale architecture defines this “character”.
Halifax’s climate action plan, HalifACT, is a less substantial document ladened with performative language. Notably, HalifACT does not refer at all to Halifax’s master plan, for which “strategic growth” is the overriding concern. This term appears twenty-six times in the master plan, yet HalifACT doesn’t acknowledge the existence of this overriding goal that shapes development. HalifACT says nothing about the ongoing process of demolishing most of the historic city and building tall in the name of this “strategic growth.” This is a disconnect that largely strips HalifACT of credibility.
HalifACT fails to acknowledge that Nova Scotia’s Department of Immigration and Population Growth even exists.2 There is no mention that the government plans to double the population, so there’s no consideration for the environmental consequences. In contrast, Portland’s One Climate Future factors takes into account realistic population growth figures that are a fraction of what’s found in Nova Scotia.3
As for the “actions” in the Halifax plan, there are considerably fewer relative to the Portland plan, and many are vaguely worded. The plan splits up its 46 actions into short thematic lists. Each list is accompanied by a brief discussion which lacks the thoroughness found throughout the Portland plan.
Images used throughout HalifACT are drawings made by a talented Halifax illustrator named Emma Fitzgerald. She’s locally known for her depictions of historic architecture of the sort that is that is quickly disappearing. Whereas photographs used in the Portland plan accurately represent the state of affairs in that city, the same cannot be said of the Fitzgerald illustrations. In no way do they reflect the realities in terms of widespread demolition, high-rise development, and expanding auto dependency.
With this overview in mind, let’s look at the three key objectives.
Objective #1: End the practice of expanding auto-dependent development.
Portland’s One Climate Future notes that transportation accounts for 30% of emissions. Although this figure is below the national average, they believe it’s a figure worthy of attention. To this end, Portland’s climate action plan has a section titled “Mode Shift and Land Use” in which you find seven actions that collectively aim to end the expansion of auto-dependency.
I’m going to focus on just one of those actions. It’s titled, “Land Use for a Smaller Carbon Footprint,” and it calls for creating “compact neighborhoods with a diversity of housing, jobs, and services nearby make vehicle trips shorter, and walking and biking between destinations easier.” Per the plan, this move towards a smaller carbon footprint happens via a multi-phase project called ReCode.
I’ll talk more about ReCode later in this series and consider some associated risks. Here, I just need to say three things. First, the project took time to complete. Work began in 2017 and wrapped up in late 2024. Second, ReCode completely overhauled Portland’s zoning ordinance and produced plain language land use regulations that the public can easily understand. Third, the new ordinance effectively put an end to single-use zoning because it promotes a mixture of uses and housing types near one another.
All this is to say that Portland’s climate action plan credibly addresses the objective of ending the practice of expanding auto dependency. And, with Recode, significant effort and innovative thinking have produced regulatory reform that will, ideally, benefit Portlanders.
How does Halifax compare? Well, consider this.
Portland’s One Climate Future dedicates 24 pages to land use and getting people out of cars. It refers to walking (24 times), biking (40 times), bikes (9 times), pedestrians (19 times), compact (13 times), and walkable (8 times).
HalifACT doesn’t have so much as one page that speaks to ending the expansion of auto dependency. And all those terms listed above? None of them appear in their plan. Nor does the plan say anything about land use reform’s relevance to reducing emissions.
There’s a single action in the plan that reads, “Integrate climate into land use planning policies and processes.” The plan notes that this “action should be initiated within 2-3 years.” A brief, generic paragraph follows which begins by saying, “Land use planning plays a critical role in designing and building communities that are prepared and adapted to climate change…”
Many words are used to say very little.
This lack of direction has implications for emissions because, as I’ll show in Part 7, suburban Halifax’s reach is expanding steadily in the present day, eating into forests and pristine coastal land.
Objective 2: Renovate rather than demolish existing human-scale development
Portland’s One Climate Future points out that the amount of waste produced in the United States by building demolition and construction is enormous. Of the 550 million tons of waste created each year, the plan notes that 90% comes from tearing down buildings.4 To reduce Portland’s contribution, One Climate Future calls for detailed planning to systematically dismantle and reuse building elements rather than outright demolish structures.
While this is a positive step, the plan is somewhat out of sync with Portland’s master plan because it says nothing about preserving existing human-scale development. The master plan tells us that “The greenest building is the one that already exists.” It clarifies the relevance of preserving older buildings to emissions reduction. One Climate Future falls short in that it does not build upon the master plan. At the same time, Portland does not practice wide-scale building demolition as is seen in Halifax.
Portland tracks the amount of demolition as a percentage of overall development activity. And it makes this information available to the public. The chart below comes from a report titled Trends in Portland’s Historic Districts. If you look at the bit in yellow, you see that, unlike Halifax, demolition is a small percentage of overall development activity relative to renovation and new construction. I’ll talk more about this in Part 4, which looks at demolition in the two municipalities.
As for Halifax, their climate action plan has nothing to say about building demolition even as entire blocks of quality human-scale development are leveled each year. As you’ll also see in Part 4, it’s no exaggeration to say that Halifax makes a mockery of climate goals with its longstanding practice of pursuing demolition over preservation and renovation.
Objective 3: End high-rise construction
Neither Portland nor Halifax have climate action plans that recognize the fact that all research to date has consistently shown high-rise development to produce worst-case climate outcomes relative to the human-scale environment. This said the two climate action plans exist in very different contexts concerning high-rise construction.
As recently as July 2024, Halifax had more high-rises under construction per capita than any other city in either the United States or Canada. At the time the figures were compiled, Halifax had 33 high-rises under construction. Portland had zero, and there’s good reason for this.
Portland’s master plan emphasizes design excellence and architectural compatibility with its historic human-scale environment. It’s understood in Portland that the cohesive nature of development and the sense of place it produces provide significant economic benefits. As described in Part 2, the community vision expressed in the master plan does not refer to a high-rise future. With this in mind, One Climate Future is silent about a problem that Portland has, to date, not created.
There are risks on the horizon in Portland with the completion of ReCode that I’ll address later in the series. Ideally, Portland will consider the research and recognize that most times, high-rise densities can be accommodated on the same site with “courtyard” buildings. You see this building type in cities like Barcelona and Hamburg. I’ll talk more about this in Part 6 when looking at the research that shows us how high-rise densities can be accommodated with considerably fewer stories using courtyard-type buildings.
As mentioned earlier, Halifax’s master plan calls for much of the historic urban core to be leveled and replaced by mid- and high-rise buildings. In response to population pressures brought on by mass immigration, the municipality has subsequently rezoned additional sections of the city for 20 and 30-story towers. In Part 5 we’ll take a look at this development and the claims Halifax makes about its “net zero” future in light of what all research says to the contrary.
Looking Ahead
No amount of virtue signaling in Nova Scotia via its climate action plan can obscure reality. You cannot demolish your historic city, aim to double your population, embark on a high-rise building spree, steadily expand the reach of auto-dependency, and then call yourself a green, climate-friendly place to live.
Community expectations of a sort that do not exist in Halifax contribute to a greater degree of transparency and professionalism in Portland. Residents consider the historic nature of the buildings and neighborhoods as defining characteristics of their city.
Many Portlanders have higher expectations compared to Halifax. They can get angry and vocal when things go sideways. The climate rhetoric and virtue signaling that’s routine in Nova Scotia would not work in Maine. As a result, the tone of Portland’s master plan and climate action plans are grounded and in relative alignment with the development that’s taking place.
As I’ve said, there are risks in Portland. To date, however, the city’s actions are in line with a municipality that is serious about reducing climate emissions. As you will see in the rest of this series, the same cannot said of Halifax.
Up Next: Part 4 compares the development practices of Halifax and Portland to illustrate how it’s possible to make a mockery of climate goals with the widespread demolition of existing human-scale development. Previously: Part 2 looked at how culture shapes climate rhetoric and reality.
- State and federal governments make development-related decisions as well, but for most of us, municipal councils have approved most of the buildings we see on any given day. ↩︎
- In the wake of some backlash against mass immigration in Canada, leading to Trudeau’s political demise, the phrase “Population Growth” no longer appears in the department’s current name but did when HalifACT started. ↩︎
- Portland’s master plan considers low, medium, and high growth scenarios. Their climate action plan uses the medium growth scenario, which produces a growth rate about of 0.7% per year. ↩︎
- One Climate Future used figures from the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) that are no longer available under the Trump administration. ↩︎
