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William Whyte originally hypothesized that the presence of people in a public space would attract more people. Contemporary planners now refer to "sticky streets" as places where pedestrians are compelled to linger and enjoy vibrant public life. We test the hypothesis that adding users to a public space will attract more people using an experimental design with confederates to add pedestrian movement and staying activity in a residential street for 45 randomly selected hours. We observed staying behavior by gender with and without our intervention. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women. We find that women's right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals, even in safe spaces and during daylight hours. Our findings suggest that Whyte's claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site.

We advance the idea of using percent billing changes as a simple measure of price escalation. This simple yet underused metric may help evaluate rate structure design in public utilities. We illustrate how price escalation may generate useful insight for utility managers by analyzing rate structures from water utilities in British Columbia, Canada. We observe that increasing block rates may send weaker relative price signals to users than a simple constant unit charge, and that low volume users tend to receive the strongest relative price signals. Measuring price escalation may also allow one to quantify the distortions generated by fixed charges. We conclude that analysts may find it useful to include measures of price escalation in their portfolio of metrics to evaluate rate structures in energy and water utilities.

Applied Science, Faculty of ; Non UBC ; Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of ; Unreviewed ; Faculty ; Other

The BC Municipal Water Survey 2016 presents an overview of local water use, pricing, and metering coverage in the province of British Columbia. In the summer and autumn of 2015, we contacted local governments to ask them basic questions about water use in their jurisdiction. Our survey was designed to provide continuity with the Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey, previously administered by Environment Canada, but discontinued. We obtained responses from 45 local governments, which correspond to 66% of the population in the province but only 32% of the local governments. Nevertheless, the response rate is comparable to the last Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey released by Environment Canada in 2011 with data from 2009. We find that total water use in liters per capita per day (lpcd) continues to fall, with total water use dropping 25% to 460 lpcd, and residential water use falling 17% to 291 lpcd from 2009. If our survey results accurately estimate water use trends, the Province would be on track to meet its ambitious target to improve water efficiency by 33% by 2020. We find a metering coverage rate of 26% percent of water connections in the province. Among single family connections, we find a metering rate of 17%, while 10% of multifamily homes are individually metered. Notably, our metering coverage rate for single family connections is lower than the 40% that Environment Canada reported in 2011. Despite the low metering coverage rates, we find that an important number of municipalities are transitioning to universal metering, or have semi-mandatory metering programs that are gradually bringing water meters into communities throughout the province. We expect metering coverage rates to rise. On average, local governments in BC charge residents $394 a year for water services. Two thirds of the municipal governments in our survey still use a flat fee rate structure. The average flat fee in the province for a typical residential connection is $381. Only one third of municipal governments charge fees based on volumes of water consumed. Of these, most use a constant unit charge, rather than an increasing block rate. Assuming that an average resident consumes 25 m3 per year, residents with volumetric rate structures pay on average $418 per year. Finally, we observe that the rate charged by municipalities is highly variable throughout the province ranging between $135 to $782. Lastly, we inquired about water conservation programs implemented by local governments. The most common water conservation measure is educational campaigns (80%), mandatory restrictions (73%), and an active leak-detection program (58%). On the other extreme, only one municipality reported having a residential water reuse program; two reported having seasonal water pricing; and two had ICI water reuse programs. Our results present the most up to date analysis of local water use in British Columbia. Nevertheless, there remain major gaps in the data. Therefore we call for improved collaboration among municipal planners, researchers and government officials in order to compile a comprehensive data set on municipal water use, pricing and metering coverage in the province of British Columbia. The data has been made publicly available for use by researchers and interested stakeholders. The data may be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/XD0YVZ ; Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of ; Applied Science, Faculty of ; Unreviewed ; Faculty ; Graduate

We assess the additional forest cover protected by 13 rural communities located in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, as a result of the economic incentives received through the country's national program of payments for biodiversity conservation. We use spatially explicit data at the intra-community level to define a credible counterfactual of conservation outcomes.We use covariate-matching specifications associated with spatially explicit variables and difference-in-difference estimators to determine the treatment effect. We estimate that the additional conservation represents between 12 and 14.7 percent of forest area enrolled in the program in comparison to control areas. Despite this high degree of additionality, we also observe lack of compliance in some plots participating in the PES program. This lack of compliance casts doubt on the ability of payments alone to guarantee long-term additionality in context of high deforestation rates, even with an augmented program budget or extension of participation to communities not yet enrolled.

The PLOS ONE Collection "Measuring forest conservation effectiveness" brings together a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of tropical forest conservation policies and programs with the goal of measuring conservation success and associated co-benefits. This overview piece describes the geographic and methodological scope of these studies, as well as the policy instruments covered in the Collection as of June 2016. Focusing on forest cover change, we systematically compare the conservation effects estimated by the studies and discuss them in the light of previous findings in the literature. Nine studies estimated that annual conservation impacts on forest cover were below one percent, with two exceptions in Mexico and Indonesia. Differences in effect sizes are not only driven by the choice of conservation measures. One key lesson from the studies is the need to move beyond the current scientific focus of estimating average effects of undifferentiated conservation programs. The specific elements of the program design and the implementation context are equally important factors for understanding the effectiveness of conservation programs. Particularly critical will be a better understanding of the causal mechanisms through which conservation programs have impacts. To achieve this understanding we need advances in both theory and methods.

An important part of conservation practice is the empirical evaluation of program and policy impacts. Understanding why conservation programs succeed or fail is essential for designing cost-effective initiatives and for improving the livelihoods of natural resource users. The evidence we seek can be generated with modern impact evaluation designs. Such designs measure causal effects of specific interventions by comparing outcomes with the interventions to outcomes in credible counterfactual scenarios. Good designs also identify the conditions under which the causal effect arises. Despite a critical need for empirical evidence, conservation science has been slow to adopt these impact evaluation designs. We identify reasons for the slow rate of adoption, and provide suggestions for mainstreaming impact evaluation in nature conservation.

On March 3rd, 2016, over fifty water specialists from local government, industry, and academia from across B.C. met at the University of British Columbia for the one-day workshop Local Drought Preparedness in B.C. The goal of the workshop was twofold: ›› To allow local governments and water specialists to share lessons following the 2015 drought. ›› To identify opportunities for collaboration in building drought preparedness. ; Applied Science, Faculty of ; Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of ; Land and Food Systems, Faculty of ; Science, Faculty of ; Other UBC ; Non UBC ; Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for ; Unreviewed ; Faculty