When Things Slow Down: Opportunities for Sustainability

by hans peter meyer


The rates of growth and development in many BC communities have had a huge impact on ecosystem health - and community sustainability. Between 1991 and 2002, for example, “60% of previously unmodified sensitive ecosystem lands” and 97% of second growth forests and seasonally flooded agricultural fields “were either lost, fragmented, or reduced” in the Comox Valley. The current slowdown in the housing market (housing starts across BC are expected to fall as much as 45% from 2006 and 2007 highs) will see a short term reduction of pressures on the land base. But as a number of land use practitioners suggest, the current slowdown should be a busy time for anyone with an interest in protecting and enhancing existing ecosystems.


This slowdown is not a “transient phenomenon,” says Harry Harker. Currently administrator for the Town of High River, Harker was General Manager of Planning with the Regional District of Comox-Strathcona during the boom/bust years of the 1990s. “Sooner or later we’re going to come out of this,” he says, “We got caught the last time...and [weren’t] prepared for the growth that hit.” Local government needs to act now “to actually get some of that ‘forward planning’ in place so that when the market turns we’re prepared to move ahead in a positive fashion.”


“The research we've done tells us that rural communities located in beautiful, natural places, close to open space, with a small town character, will have a long term demand,” says Carole Stark of the Chinook Institute. Small BC communities with significant natural and aesthetic amenities are driven by cyclical tourism and amenity-migration related construction-based economies. While growth may slow, it doesn’t go away for communities in the Kootenays, Vancouver Island, or the Okanagan. While the forecasted drop in unit sales for the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board is steep for 2008, it is only a drop to 2001 levels, roughly equivalent to the level of the strong markets of the mid-90s. Average house prices are forecasted (forecast) to drop to 2004 levels, still 100% higher than average prices in the 1990s. The findings of the Chinook Institute’s research on sustainability reflect what the BC Real Estate Association sees from a market perspective: community quality of life is a driver of healthy housing and development activity. Ironically, the better community stewards get at protecting and enhancing key environmental and social qualities, the greater the demand on the land base that sustains these “key qualities.”


For many local governments, reduced revenues means belt-tightening. For others, this is a good time to invest in long term planning and infrastructure – good things from a “sustainability” perspective. The development industry generally works with long term interests in mind. Without the urgency of numerous proposals and immediate threats to ecosystems, both local government and conservation and stewardship (C&S) sectors should be adopting a similar long term perspective. Indeed, as BC developer John O’Donnell argues, “One of the things municipalities could do in this downturn is to come up with a provincial standard on their sustainability initiatives." As the community sector with the most expertise on local ecosystems, C&S organizations have an important role to play in advancing sustainability policies and practices. This will help businesses who want the “green” market advantage.


Community-driven sustainability approaches are taking shape in the Kootenays and in the Comox Valley. Using science-based data generated under the auspices of the Columbia Basin Trust, the Chinook Institute has been involved in “scenario planning” with several BC communities. In the Comox Valley concurrent strategic planning exercises are unfolding related to sustainability, growth management, and conservation. City of Courtenay administrator Sandy Gray notes that the current slowdown allows staff to be more “focussed” on these exercises. It also allows them to be more engaged with the C&S sector organizations who provide some of the scientific expertise and “local knowledge” so critical to long term success in these processes.


The guiding question for Carole Stark is: “What would you need as a community to have robust strategies for the future?” George Penfold believes that in order to adequately answer that question, it’s critical that communities use this time to do some “serious analysis” about the “impact of proposed developments” and regional “vulnerabilities.” Penfold is Regional Innovation Chair in Community Economic Development at Selkirk College. He says that factoring in “significant structural changes - climate change, and energy pricing in particular” will allow community dialogue to go far beyond short-term costs and benefits. The result is an answer to Stark’s question that not only clarifies community values, it produces policies and practices with long term sustainability consequences.


The slowdown allows other levels of community dialogue to take place that should not be underestimated. With less desk work, Harker tells his staff, “Put your feet on the dirt and talk to landowners... Find those very small places where you can start to talk with people about the future of the community.” The bottom line, whether it’s achieved through a sustainability strategy, scenario planning, or a series of informal conversations, is that a community determine a shared vision of what the future looks like. Harker reminds staff, elected officials, and citizens that, “We need to be thinking: What do we want the town to look like and feel like the next time that surge of growth hits us? We need to be prepared.”


As respected community members, C&S sector leaders have an important role in shaping the dialogue around the complex balancing of economic, ecological, and social practices that leads to sustainability. Developers and business leaders need to learn new ways of doing business, but so do local governments, as well as community leaders in all sectors. Dialogue is taking place in the Comox Valley, in part led by the Regional Conservation Strategy. The South Okanagan Similkameen Conservation Partnership (SOSCP) is facilitating dialogue amongst land use practitioners in that region. On Vancouver Island, Convening for Action VI is effectively building relationships through education. As Victoria developer Gene Miller says, these “community conversations” can’t happen during the urgency of the up-cycle, when everyone, particularly developers, is scrambling just to stay in the game. Like George Penfold, Miller emphasizes that the place to start the community conversation is with a study of the costs and benefits of growth. “Whatever conclusion a community gets to... this is where things get very ecological.”


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Sources:

Comox Valley Land Trust, (Lynda Fyfe) sensitive ecosystem mapping (www.cvlandtrust.org)

BC Real Estate Association, Fall 2008 Housing Forecast (www.bcrea.bc.ca/economics/HousingForecast.pdf)

Building Links, April 23, 2008 Vol. 16, No. 16 (www.buildinglinks.ca)

Invest Comox Valley, Census Highlights (http://www.investcomoxvalley.com/investmentservices/populationgrowth.htm)


©hanspetermeyer.ca / 2009


[Expanded versions of this article are published in The Kingfisher, Winter 2009 and Development Issues - Land, Community, Sustainability. This article was published through the support of the Real Estate Foundation of BC.]