Welcome to the September issue of the CIT Information Resource!
Food
It's appropriate that "food" should be at the top of our posts this "harvest" issue. There's a growing "foodie" culture, at least a part of which is focused on "local" and "organic." We are beginning to realize that Big Food, like so many Big things, isn't always looking out for the best interests of communities. In what has almost become a regular column, George Penfold weighs in with timely insights on the realities of harvest: What does it mean when communities or regions say they want to be self-reliant as food producers? What are the challenges to this "motherhood" topic? George's questions should be asked of every region and community that announces its intention to be Canada's next "Provence" or "Tuscany."
Green Values Vancouver Island
What does it mean to a region when huge tracts of land are moving towards development? This is one the questions Tim Pringle addresses in his current article, an overview of one of the big conservation, real estate, and governance opportunities (and challenges) in BC: the question concerning the future of the highly attractive EN Land Grant lands on the east coast of Vancouver Island.
CIT Project Summary - the Lake Windermere Project
CIT is also about on-the-ground projects addressing issues that affect the day-to-day health and quality of life in BC communities. An overview of the past 12 months or so of CIT grants is provided, as well as a summary of the four-year Healthy Water, Healthy Communities – Lake Windermere project. As project coordinator Heather Leschied indicates, long time residents in the Lake Windermere region are starting to weigh the costs and benefits of amenity-related development, and "are seeing that this has long-term implications for the aquatic health of the system." Foundation project funding through the CIT program is helping to establish baseline scientific data that is then feeding into public education, as well as local and provincial government policy.
BC Land Summit coverage continues
We continue our coverage of one of the significant gatherings of land use practitioners in the province, the May 2009 BC Land Summit. In this issue we include an interview with social researcher Angus McAllister, whose work on "solving for similarity" is helping to shape some new and positive ways of building and re-building communities and neighbourhoods.
Gaining Ground Summit: Resilient Cities, October 20-22
Finally, we conclude this end of summer issue with a look ahead to the upcoming Gaining Ground Summit: Resilient Cities (GGRC09). We interview Gene Miller, the visionary behind the Gaining Ground Summit series on what GG is, and why it's important today. As an aside, it's important to note that while Resilient Cities may be about "cities," the lessons and methodologies apply equally to small communities: in the face of significant and common challenges (ie. climate change), we are all called on to be imaginative, informed, and ready to try new ways of working together, new ways of looking at our resources and our challenges. As Gene suggests, there is a "note of hope and optimism" sounded by the GGSummit series. Something most BC communities – and citizens – would likely enjoy hearing.
Stepping into Social Media at CIT
About half a year ago CIT stepped into the "social media" world with this blog. The CIT Information Resource is now taking some additional steps into other forms of social media. We've just set up a Facebook page, as well as Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube accounts. There's not much at any of these accounts – yet. We encourage you to share your words and images with us. Tag your posts with "#CIT" or "#CITinfoResource" (and, if you're at GGRC09, please tag everything with #GGRC09). That helps us share some of the many inspiring things that are happening, either directly through the CIT program or through the agency of our partners.
Why are we taking these steps? We're hoping that they'll become very useful tools for sharing the insights, knowledge, and experience of creating healthy, thriving neighbourhoods, communities, and regions. For example, most of us can't regularly travel from Vanderhoof or Castlegar or Cumberland to be at gatherings in Vancouver, Victoria – or Prince George. GGRC09 is going to be great. Many of us won't be able to make it due to financial, familial, or work constraints. With "on site" and "live" postings, however, as well as after-the-fact postings of blogs, photographs, and vidoes, we can tap into these events, share our observations and stories, and give these kinds of events a "longer tail" than a 2-3 day event usually has.
What can you do? Please check out and contribute to our social media resources. Leave comments on our blog posts. Send us links to project and event posts – pics, videos, blogs, tweets, etc. We'll be sharing stories about communities in transition, about people making a difference. Help us be more effective in what we do, so that we can be more effective in helping you. Join us online!
Use and share these resources
One of the hallmarks of the Real Estate Foundation's 22+ years is collaboration and sharing of resources. We actively encourage the reproduction of CIT Information Resource articles and materials for non-profit educational purposes. In return, we ask that you please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.
A recently published a report on BC’s food self-reliance shows that in spite of our large productive agricultural areas in the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan, BC is only 48% self-reliant in food. Our only food surplus in BC is in fruit. On the other hand, Canada continues to be a net exporter of agricultural and related food products to the tune of $6 Billion in 2007.
Given that Canada produces more agriculture and agri food value than we consume, what does "food security " mean in the discussion about local food?
I prefer the term food self-sufficiency to describe what we are trying to achieve. Food security is a term that has been traditionally used to deal with the issues of lack of food, hunger and starvation. That is not what most local food initiatives in BC or across Canada are about. They are focused more on increasing local/regional food self-reliance and expanding that part of the regional economy. By labeling this as food security, the fact that there are hungry people in our communities and around the world can be overlooked, and that would be an unfortunate outcome of the local food movement.
Food is Energy
The drive for local food seems to hinge on concerns about higher energy costs. But, higher energy costs don’t necessarily mean we won’t have food. We will still probably be able to get most of what we want, but higher energy costs mean we will have to pay more for it. The implicit assumption that increasing local/regional food supply is an insurance plan against higher costs needs a second look, especially in the Kootenay region.
Transportation costs and the energy related concern about "food miles " can be misleading if looked at only on a distance basis. Yes, trucks do travel 3,500 km or more from California, but they carry 20 or more tonnes, about 6 kg of food per km travelled. Those trucks usually go back with other goods on board. If a local farmer travels 100 km from Grand Forks to the Castlegar farmers market, his or her truck – even using half as much fuel per km – would need to carry 300 kg of food product to use the same amount of energy for kg of food delivered as the truck from California. If the farmer goes back empty and consumers make a separate trip to go to the farmers market, the amount carried would have to be even greater.
Food is energy, and regardless of where it is grown, it will still take lots of energy to grow food in the future, if we rely on anything resembling current technologies. Our regional energy sources include hydro electricity, wood, and coal. None of these are easily adaptable to the oil based production systems we currently rely on. Converting to steam may be possible, but the GHGs (green house gas emissions) trade off isn't great unless much better steam technologies are developed. Going back to manual labour or horses is a romantic idea, but one that would be very unlikely to produce the amount of food needed to support regional demand.
The "Grain-Gap"
If we want to be more self-sufficient regionally, we need a clearer focus on what we need to be growing. Most images of local food initiatives show fresh fruit and vegetables. The average Canadian consumes about 45 kg of fresh, frozen, and processed fruits and vegetables annually. But the core component of the current Canadian diet is grain, both eaten directly (cereals, bread, etc) and processed through poultry and livestock for eggs, milk, and related products and meat.
The self-sufficiency report noted above estimates that the average person consumes approximately 80 kg of grain directly (mostly wheat), and another 395 kg of feed grain consumed indirectly in the form of meat, eggs, milk etc. For the approximately 170,000 folks who live in the Columbia Basin and Boundary regions, that means we would need about 80 thousand tonnes of grain, or at 2.5 tonnes per hectare yield, approximately 32,000 hectares of grain to be self sufficient. In 2006, we grew less than 4,000 ha including all grains, beans, flax, and canola – just over 12% of our theoretical demand, significantly less than overall provincial self-sufficiency of 14% in food grain and 43% in feed grain.
Why aren’t we producing more? Lack of land doesn’t seem to be the major issue. We have approximately 375,000 hectares in the ALR in the three Kootenay Regional Districts, and about half of that is in "farms " as defined by Census Canada.
Do the Math
The main issue is that we simply don't pay enough for food to make growing it pay.
In 2006 there were 1,394 census farms in the three Kootenay Regional Districts, with only 40 of those producing certified organic products. The average capital value (land, livestock, equipment) of farms ranged from $1,325,360 in RD East Kootenay to $746,165 in RD Kootenay Boundary, and $682,663 in RD Central Kootenay. Average farm receipts were $39,420, $59,801, and $53,388 respectively. After gross expenses, however, net income was $133, $1680, and $5422 respectively.
That math is pretty clear. From significant capital investment, the average farmer makes very little or loses money. We will have to pay a lot more for food even at current energy prices if there was any realistic opportunity to reach regional self-sufficiency based on the premise of regional farmers producing more. The diversified "family farm" local food model we seem to want, one that generally existed 40 years ago, was based on spending almost 20% of average household income on food. We now spend less than 10%.
A Complex Situation
There are lots of other issues to consider in trying to reach regional self-sufficiency. Who will our "farmers" be? Where will the farm labour come from? Where will the nutrients come from - not just oil based nitrogen, but phosphate and potash, the water to irrigate? And how do we rebuild regional storage, processing, and distribution systems, among others?
There is no question that local food awareness, direct farms sales, farmers markets, and community and private gardens all help farmers and regional self-sufficiency, but that focus is mainly on fruits and vegetables. The "grain gap," however, is huge. Unless we are willing to make some significant changes – such as changing our consumption patterns, shifting to a grass based meat production system and paying more for local food – regional food self-sufficiency is probably not a realistic expectation.
(This article was prepared as part of Tim's presentation to the Convening for Action Vancouver Island [CAVI] Learning Lunch series to start in Courtenay, BC on September 24, 2009. For more information about CAVI and the current Learning Lunches series, please click here...)
A strong argument can be made that the east coast of the mid-Vancouver Island region is one market for real estate development. According to research being done by the Real Estate Foundation, many factors indicate that this is indeed the case. In this context, all communities – from Cobble Hill to Campbell River – will continue to see a number of real estate development proposals at their front counters.
Given this demand, regional and local governments are in a relatively strong position with regard to development. They have the option of implementing more stringent assessment of the opportunity costs and benefits represented in these proposals. Over time, a more stringent assessment and approach to managing settlement change should enable communities to
realize more benefits than liabilities from the development that takes place.
Some persuasive data describe demographic change and real development activity in the mid-Island region. Among British Columbia’s eight development regions, the Vancouver Island Coast Region ranked 3rd in population growth (36%, or 1.8% annually) in the period 1986-2006. In comparison, the four regional districts comprising the mid-island region – east coast (Cowichan, Nanaimo, Comox and Srathcona) – expanded their populations by 49% or 2.49% per year. Of 10 regional districts in the development region, the Comox Valley Regional District ranked 3rd with 56% (2.8% annually) increase in population (Regional Economic Analysis, Vancouver Island Economic Alliance -2008). Of all BC development regions, only the Mainland Southwest matched the growth rate of the mid-Island.
Obviously this rate of growth far exceeds the net of births and deaths, which actually is negative. In the Comox Valley, for example, 30% of individuals reported in the 2006 Census lived at a BC address outside of the Valley (Courtenay CMA), or in a different province or country in 2001. Only 375 immigrants came to the Valley in the 2001 to 2006 period. Thus, nearly all mobile individuals came from another place in BC (including Vancouver Island) or Canada. During the census interval, roughly half of the migrants and immigrants replaced individuals leaving the Valley; the other half provided net growth.
Since the late-1980s, large scale real estate developments have become increasingly common in the mid-Island region. According to the BC Stats “Major Projects Inventory” (values of $15 million or more), there now are 35 projects – including a residential component – which are proposed (19), under way (12), or on hold (4) in the mid-Island region. These include infill, brown-field, and green-field sites. One or two are "complete communities" (that is, they include all types of land use as well as ecological conservation provisions). Several are mixed use developments where residential uses occur with commercial, retail, and institutional. Several are residential only and may include a recreation focus such as a spa or golf course.
Most of these proposals emphasize and capitalize on the natural amenities of the mid-Island region. The familiar real estate promotions citing access to beaches, waterfront, wildlife, nature, etc expect price premiums based on proximity to waterscapes and other natural features. In addition to these amenities, because of the historic EN Land Grant, the mid-Island region offers large tracts of privately owned land that investors hope to have rezoned. Some development proposals present watershed locations and site allocations to diverse land uses that make them very difficult to evaluate.
Local and regional governments are acutely aware of the pressures arising from real estate development demand in their jurisdictions and throughout the mid-island region.
The list of challenges is legendary including:
managing supply and usage of potable water,
handling rainwater, grey/black water and the attendant ecological concerns,
adopting design with nature strategies and technologies,
inclusion of attainable housing in the inventory of new residential development,
location of developments (infill, brown-field, green-field),
evaluating land uses, conservation uses, transportation services, and design footprint, etc. to manage green house gas emissions.
Fortunately for the Comox Valley, the regional district and municipalities are preparing well to manage the persistent, large-scale settlement change. The Regional Growth Strategy and Regional Conservation Strategy are 2 of several regional planning processes that will declare values and priorities. Beyond the adoption of the plans lie the challenges of joint-perspective on settlement change and strategic joint-management.
These challenges go beyond the bounds of the Comox Valley. Indeed, they face all communities on Vancouver Island's east coast that are living the legacy of the EN Land Grant of the 1800s. Stepping back to look at the really big picture, the question for communities from Cobble Hill to Campbell River remains: How do they deal with the legacy of this historic context? How do they align their efforts to ensure the right development in the right place in the right time? Market pressures are significant, but at this time, and given our increasing understanding of the costs and benefits of changing land uses, local and regional government is well-placed to be more directive and positive in it's approach to development proposals than it has ever been in the past.
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TIM PRINGLE is Director of Special Programs at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Prior to assuming his current position, Tim was for 20 years the Executive Director of the Foundation.
Over the past 12 months the Governors at the Real Estate Foundation of BC have granted $165,000 for 7 Communities in Transition projects in non-metropolitan communities in BC.
The CIT Program at the Real Estate Foundation was launched because Governors believed a different kind of approach was needed to build capacities in BC communities. CIT has a mission to support "values based" planning processes that balance social, environmental, economic, and governance concerns to address regional and local land use and conservation issues in non-metropolitan areas of BC.
CIT has identified three key goals to assist in carrying out its mission: (1) help communities plan for transition; (2) encourage and support partnerships and collaboration; and, (3) share achievements, expertise and implementation strategies.
Grants made in the past 12 months reflect the diversity of approaches taken by BC communities, as well as the diversity of need. As CIT moves more fully into engaging social media like (including this blog, but also Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, podcasting, and Twitter - you can search for us as "CITinfoResource" in all of these venues), we hope to be even more effective in sharing the learning that results from CIT projects and partners.
List of CIT grants, July 2008 – Aug 2009
$20,000 - City of Kimberley to conduct housing needs assessment research.
$10,000 - Municipality of North Cowichan to undertake a community character assessment study.
$24,000 - Similkameen Valley Planning Society to conduct multiple futures scenario analysis as part of a strategic planning exercise for the Valley.
$22,000 - District of Barriere in support of a community park development master plan.
$40,000 - Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning, University of BC for development of three-dimensional landscape scenarios for projected climate change impacts in Kimberley, as part of the Columbia Basin Climate Change Visioning project. Take a look at our CITinfoResource review of this project.
$16,000 - Wildsight to support a fourth year of water quality testing and analysis as part of the Healthy Water, Healthy Communities - Lake Windermere Project. Reviewed in this posting of CITinfoResource.
$35,000 - Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen on behalf of the South Okanagan Similkameen Conservation Program to create tools, share resources, and provide environmental planning expertise to the municipalities of Penticton, Summerland, Oliver, Osoyoos, and Keremeos.
For more information about CIT, or to apply for a grant, please contact CIT staff at info@communitytransition.org or go to our website at www.communitytransition.org.
The Lake Windermere area in BC's Rocky Mountains is, like so many regions with picturesque communities and rich natural amenities, the target for "amenity migration" growth and development. Although this trend has slowed in the past year due to changes in financial and real estate markets, over at least the past decade the region and the lake have experienced significant changes due to this dynamic.
One of the immediate effects of amenity migration is the development of vacation and secondary homes. A number of organizations came together in 2005 to start what has become the Healthy Water, Healthy Communities – Lake Windermere Project (LWP). Their motivation was the effect that secondary home development was having on on water quality and quantity in the Upper Columbia River, a river which provides water to 15 million downstream users. Lake Windermere had recently experienced a collapse in the burbot (Lota lota) fishery. Because burbot are a top predator, the health of their population is a good indication of the health of the ecosystem as a whole.
With the help of Wildsight, an environmental non-governmental organization (eNGO) based , and through the financial support of CIT, the LWP addresses protection and enhancement of the quality of Lake Windermere. Inter-agency cooperation, scientific water quality monitoring, and public education and engagement are the methodology used.
“It is very much a community based project,” says Wildsight Program Manager Heather Leschied. "The lack of water resource management on and around Lake Windermere has become a concern for area residents and second homeowners. People are seeing that this has long-term implications for the aquatic health of the system."
Results of the Lake-Use Survey indicate widespread public concern about the sustainability of this important water source. Respondents expressed a need for information on maintaining septic systems, as well as concerns about boat traffic congestion, aquatic plant growth, shoreline and upland development, water conservation, and water quality. "The Lake Windermere Project delivers scientifically sound information," says Leschied. "Using this information we then put together education programs and action-based stewardship efforts. They're all part of a community effort to help sustain this economically and environmentally crucial lake."
Wildsight's approach to building community capacity through the project includes supporting the "Lake Windermere Ambassadors." These are a group of committed citizens representing business, government, recreation, second homeowners, local residents (including youth), and LWP. The Ambassadors serve two roles: one, as a long-term advisory committee; two, as a short-term fundraising committee. The committee’s mandate is the protection of the lake in perpetuity. They will direct future water quality monitoring based on the findings of the LWP, and encourage the implementation of policies and guidelines of the forthcoming Lake Windermere Management Plan, and recently implemented Lake Windermere Shoreline Management Guidelines for Fish and Wildlife. "As the project enters it’s final year, Wildsight will be handing it back to the community under the direction of the Lake Windermere Ambassadors," says Lescheid.
Like all Communities in Transition projects, the Lake Windermere Project is a partnership initiative. In the Lake Windermere case, this partnership is comprised of government agencies, First Nations, local organizations, and citizens that has been, as Heather Leschied puts it, "building community value, respect, and understanding of Lake Windermere since 2005."
Footnotes:
The Board of Governors of the Real Estate Foundation awarded $16,000 to support a fourth year of water quality testing and analysis as part of the Healthy Water, Healthy Communities - Lake Windermere Project.
The Gaining Ground Summit series lands in Vancouver this October 20-22, 2009. I interviewed one of the visionaries behind this exciting and inspiring confab this summer. An audio version of this interview is published in two parts here (part 1) and here (part 2).
For anyone using Twitter and interested in this conference, please follow @ReslientCities. Please also tag all posts related to the conference as #GGRC09. A lively feed of pre-conference information has already started! The conference can also be found on Facebook by searching "Gaining Ground Summit."
hpm: Gene, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and how long you've been involved in the Gaining Ground Summit series?
GM: Sure. I come from New York City, but I've lived and worked in Victoria since the very early 70s. For the last four years I've been involved in organizing the Gaining Ground Sustainability Conferences. Our sixth conference, what we're calling Resilient Cities, is coming up in October 20-22, 2009. Three have been held in Victoria previously and two in Calgary. This one will be in Vancouver.
h: What exactly is Gaining Ground?
G: Gaining Ground is the accidental name for the conference series. It was meant to sound notes of hope and optimism in terms of the sustainability agenda as we defined it.
I have pretty much all of my life, certainly all of my professional life, been involved in orchestrating public conversations of one sort or another starting in 1970 in Victoria with the creation of the Open Space Arts & Culture Centre, and in 1975 with Monday Magazine. So I feel that the conferences are very much in line with those earlier efforts to conceive and orchestrate public conversations on important themes.
h: So how did you become involved in the sustainability conversation? From what I see and hear, you've become a pretty important person in Victoria, but also in Western Canada in this conversation. How did that happen?
G: Oh, that’s generous. I have always had an interest in architecture, urban planning, and urban design. I put those interests to work principally as a development planner in the Victoria area and wound up getting involved professionally in the early days of Loretto Bay, David Butterfield’s big sustainable resort development down in Baja California, in Mexico.
I spent about two years working with David then returned to other aspects of my career back in Victoria. But I had built a pretty large network by that time, of people who were passionately interested in and involved in sustainable development and some of its related fields. It was a pretty logical jump for me to seize the opportunity to create a conference series that would bring together all community elements to discuss sustainability and move the sustainability program ahead.
h: When you first started, when you first got involved with Gaining Ground, how would you characterize that conversation, compared to now? What has changed in the time that you have been involved with it?
G: A great deal in a very short time. When I conceived the conferences as I say, a little less than but certainly no more than four years ago, sustainability was a marginal interest. It was a marginal concern driven largely by people who were perceived by the main stream to be tree huggers and hysterics and apocolyptarians who harboured concerns about impacts [sic] on the environment. And in 4 short years – which I think shows amazing and promising take-up – sustainability, as people say these days, has moved mainstream. That seems to me to be a remarkably short time frame and obviously a very promising indicator.
h: You talked earlier about wanting to "sound notes of hope and optimism." Has your intention or message changed in the years that you have been involved in this? I was at Gaining Ground last year in May in Victoria and it was my first exposure to what you've been doing. I came away with this incredible sense that people are doing amazing things out there to address a whole lot of concerns and that’s not part of – well, most of what I hear about climate change is fear stuff – but I came out of Gaining Ground '08 feeling excited and positive. Can you talk a bit about that?
G: I think that as little as four or five years ago, but certainly going back before then, people were sounding notes of warning and notes of alarm and were seen to largely to be coming from the protest end of things. But I believe there was always and undercurrent of people who were professionally engaged or deeply engaged in productive activity either in science or scientific and technical innovation, design, urban planning, and community capacity building, and a whole bunch of other fields or areas of social endeavor. And I think what has happened is that those people have taken on more and more responsibility for articulating and spreading the ideas and the practices of sustainability.
h: The conferences in the past have happened in Victoria. This last, at some point you moved one to Calgary and now you are having this one has moved to Vancouver. Why moving the feast?
G: Well, I think it’s possible for a conference-like event to outstay it’s welcome. I didn't want to see that happen. So I take a subjective measure of the energy of an event from one year to the next, and I felt that three conferences were enough in Victoria, and two conferences which we completed in Calgary this year was enough. Each of those conferences on its own terms, and in significantly different terms from each other, have been highly successful. I think the Calgary job is done. The Victoria job is done. I sensed that there was an enormous opportunity to convene the very active and very diverse community involved in sustainability practice and promotion in Vancouver.
h: So talk to me a little bit about what the name of this conference, “Resilient Cities,” is that correct? And why Vancouver?
G: The Vancouver conference has a number of themes, one of which is green economic development. This is not the the only theme of the conference, but it is a major theme. I think there’s a line of connection between the public as consumption society and the consumption footprint, and the consumption footprint is what has driven us and the systems of nature to such a state of duress. It’s my belief that all of North America needs a model, probably many models, and it certainly needs a classroom. One of the ideas of this conference is that Vancouver, for a number of years now, has made a name for itself internationally with a branded style of urban planning and urban design which is called Vancouverism, or known as Vancouverism. I felt that of all the places I knew, Vancouver was on the verge of a transformation to a green sustainable city and that sustainability represented Vancouver’s next bounce in that arc that began with its reputation for distinctive urban design and urban planning.
So it seemed to me that Vancouver was a logical place to focus the sustainability conversation. All of my initial inquiries and conversations with people made it clear that everybody felt the time was right for a major event, to bring all parties and all interests into one room so they could engage with each other.
It’s been a fundamental belief of mine for all of the conferences that sustainability isn’t simply the province of sustainability practitioners, or people with narrow or specific expertise, or folks in the academic environment, or in political leadership. I’ve always believed that sustainability, by definition, represented a kind of a whole system transformation or a whole society – or in this case a whole city transformation. So it was very much in my mind, particularly for the Vancouver conference, to work off a model that was used successfully for our previous conferences. To bring all interests together and to assume that out of that might come some very powerful synergies, new partnerships and new collaborations, engaging all interests.
The other thing is that I think that there are upper limits, particularly in this economic climate, to the resources that a city, at a leadership level, can bring to the sustainability agenda, or any other. With the Vancouver conference, even more than with the others, we're going to make sure that community level interests are full participants in the conference. I think that out of that can come a city governance/community collaboration or partnership that doubles Vancouver (or any city's) ability to make sustainability progress.
h: Well that’s an ambitious vision.
G: Yes it is. But, sustainability has not only moved mainstream, but in the course of moving mainstream has engaged community interest at a tremendous level. While there are different interests or contiguities that may have their own take on, and own definition of, what sustainability means, it’s all good and it’s all in aid of a good. So, I don’t feel much of a need to differentiate or distinguish, but simply to make sure that these parties and players have an opportunity to interact and to move towards what will be an organic outcome.
h: What kind of response have you had in Vancouver to the idea of the conference?
G: It's been stupendous. Something that we tried on a kind of a practice basis at the last Calgary conference we have been much more ambitious with for the Vancouver conference. So far we've had amazing success. What we've done is to identify a variety of organizations in all fields who endeavor to be conference partners. And you know, conference partnership is a simple relationship, a simple exchange of free registration and an opportunity to promote organizational interests at the conference in return for an active promotional, conference promotional effort. And the partnership program is working stunningly well. The partners that we have attracted, almost fifty in number [by July 2009], represent professional organizations, municipalities, a regional endeavor, authorities, regional and city authorities of all various kinds, NGO’s, community associations and organizations, several universities and learning institutions. So it’s been an extraordinarily successful initiative, and I think a very timely one.
There is an appetite to make a thing like this successful and to try to be part of something that makes a significant difference. And the timing it appears could not be better because Vancouver this fall will unveil its ten year sustainability plan, as well as it's green economic development strategy. I hope and believe those will be in a significantly finished stage to allow the conference to be the place where the wraps are taken off these two protocols. In any case, the conference will certainly be showcasing them.
h: Very cool. Very cool. So if people want to follow up on this stuff or they want to register for the conference the website is www.gaininggroundsummit.com. Is that right?
G: Absolutely, and I would add to my previous thoughts that I don’t know whether... I mean a conference is just a conference. It’s, as I say, a two and a half, or with the shoulder events, a three and a half day event or conversation. I think the networking is going to be extraordinary, and if our luck holds and if the trends continue, we will in fact have six hundred or more people at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre. They'll be here not just from the mainland, the Lower Mainland, but from Vancouver Island, points east in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. If a conference can be a tipping point, then I hope that Gaining Ground Resilient Cities is that tipping point, and allows Vancouver to make significant progress in its effort to become a green city and to more fully develop it’s green economic development strategy.
So I’m hoping that not only community, government, and academic interests are there; I'm hoping that a lot of business interests also make a point of coming to the conference. I think we are on the verge of something big here. The speakers, as you know from visiting the website, are – well, it’s a feast. It’s just a feast. I know of two books that will be coming out of the conference and we also just heard from the video producers of the End of Suburbia that featured Richard Heinberg and James Kunstler. They are coming to the conference to make a video of it, because they are preparing a new video documentary called “Resilient Cities.”
Angus McAllister is the principal at McAllister Opinion Research. He was a presenter, with Michael Gordon (City of Vancouver) and Mark Holland (HB Lanarc Consultants), at the BC Land Summit in Whistler, May 2009. The title of their presentation, Urban Subcultures & Precincts: A New Theory of Urban Vitality & Authenticity, formed the basis for our conversation later in June. My conversation with Angus McAllister continues our coverage of the 2009 BC Land Summit, a gathering of approximately 800 land use practitioners from across BC and North America. Subsequent postings will continue to explore how this event is helping to shape and inform the conversation about land use, development, and conservation in BC.
hpm: I recently interviewed Mark Holland about his impressions of the May 2009 BC Land Summit. He said that one of his highlights was your presentation at the panel on Urban Vitality & Authenticity. Would you tell me a little about yourself and the background to this presentation at Whistler in May?
AM: I have a public opinion research company, McAllister Opinion Research. I was part of that panel because of work we've been doing on what I'll call "solving for difference," and how it relates to community planning and development. But before I had my own firm, I worked as a VP with Environics International and Angus Reid. One of my research programs over the years has involved tracking Canadian attitudes and values about the environment. Our database goes back 20 years. So that's a really large data set on what most Canadians think of in terms of sustainability and the environment.
When looking at a data set of this size you get to see patterns, you see peoples' values in a broad sense. We starting realizing things about how people's sense of identity and sense of place were connected. We start to see that cultural values shape how Canadians relate to the land, to their community, to the environment.
Most market research looks for differences. Clients are trying to define differences in taste, style and consumer preference. These define market niches and allow them to match their products and services to specific consumer segments. They will define 30 types of spaghetti sauce, or 30 styles of jeans to sell to 30 types of people. Marketers will argue that the greatest common good is served by identifying and serving differences among people.
Solving for difference is great for consumer products, but solving for similarity is what we should be doing in a terms of a lived setting, a community. In looking at politics and social issues, I am more interested in commonalities, the things that cut across target markets and niches. We don't have to wear each other's jeans or eat each other's spaghetti sauce, but if we want to live in the same community and share the planet, then looking to what we have in common may be more useful.
If you build neighbourhoods based on solving for difference, for example, you end up with gated communities where everybody is – from a values viewpoint – the same: they eat the same spaghetti sauce, wear the same kinds of jeans, drink the same coffee, drives the same cars, etc.... You create gated communities, ghettos if you will, with young people here, old people there, working people here, and so on.
I started talking to people like Mark Holland and Michael Gordon. I wanted to "solve for similarity" not difference. Out of our conversations we realized that activity was really what meditates sense of place. It's not just that we like water; it's what we do with it – fishing or boating or drinking or whatever it is. The values around activity often bridge cultural and demographical differences.
h: So give me an example.
A: Here's one: Listening to music, Johnny Cash for example. You'll find urban progressives who like Johnny Cash, and rural conservatives who might like Johnny Cash. Politically and geographically different people, but you'll find them coming together to listen to Johnny Cash, or to go the movie about his life. Fishing is another example. Many different types of people like fishing. They might have completely different values and background from each other. My favourite teacher and the smartest guy I ever worked for – Dale Blackburn – loved fishing, and as far as I know, he still does. He was a man of faith and pretty conservative. I cannot see him ever voting NDP. He is quite different from my brother, with his so-called Western European "liberal" values – and social democratic ways. Aside from his wedding day, I am not sure if my brother has ever been in a church. Yet, they both are fanatics about fishing. They both know what a good fishing rod is. They both know where the good steelhead fishing holes are. So they would connect through common a knowledge and activity.
Other examples are cooking, or even bowling. Robert Putnam did some great work on this specifically using the example of bowling.
h: Okay, I get Robert Putman and his Bowling Alone thesis.
A: What we're doing with "solving for similarity" connects to Putnam. His thesis is basically, "In America we used do things together!" If we developed land use and development policies built around his thinking we'd create situations where Americans would find themselves all bowling together, in bowling leagues – whether they were Republicans and Democrats, whether they were runny spaghetti sauce eaters or chunky sauce eaters. And, because we're all bowling together, sharing this activity that we all appreciate, the door is opened for dialogue, getting to know each other beyond our spaghetti sauce preferences.
From a community design perspective, we need to design communities around shared activities. Shared activity use needs to be a core design consideration. Mark Holland's work on cultural precincts relates to this idea very strongly: identifying the kinds of activities that bring people together, building on that.
h: I can see an example in stewardship work. People who get involved to save an area from development or change might initially come together for very different reasons. Some might be concerned about the threat to their favourite fishing stream. Others might be concerned about water quality, or saving a streamside trail, or neighourhood forest. Then they connect around their common interest in the stream, and their reasons for wanting to save the stream are secondary. Does that fit what you're saying?
A: Exactly. An environmental organization that I've worked with realized that hunters supported them. It was surprising to them: 75% of hunters in British Columbia are against the trophy grizzly hunt. This led some inside the organization to consider that, well, "We should connect more with these people around hunting." So they got their fire arms permits and took their hunting license training courses and they're hunting. They discovered that there's an ethic around hunting that you can connect on, make connections between environmental stewardship and conservation and people who hunt.
h: So how does this connect to issues facing small towns where the big focus on land development happens to be outside of town. In the Comox Valley or in parts of the Okanagan the proposed new developments don't seem to lend themselves to the kinds of "cultural precinct" ideas that you and Mark Holland are talking about. Most of what I'm seeing is about creating places where they all like one kind of spaghetti sauce, not places where people mix in activities.
A: It's interesting. Intrawest is one of the biggest resort developers. They've said that the moment you have a development where all the same people start moving in – it's all BMWs and sheepskin coats for example – well, it looses its vitality. You get a very comical situation. It's like what seems to happen in Whistler or Tofino: All these people in their sheepskin coats wandering around looking for some real people – "Are there any real fisherman around here?" And the answer is, "Well, no, because they can't afford to live here." But there'll be a fake fishing boat because that's what used to be real, authentic about the place.
h: At some level as a tourist I might want authenticity, but do I want to buy into a residential development that is "authentic?" What does the market want?
A: I would say the market doesn't know what it wants until it sees it. But if you create communities that are authentic – that have a real mix of interests and people – then you will sell, and you will sell like you never sold before. You'll draw in more business. You'll create a center of activity and interest. You'll create the conditions for a cultural precinct. It's like a kitchen – at any party people go to the kitchen. Christopher Alexander talks about this in his Pattern Language. Do you know this book?
h: I've held it in my hands. That's as close I've gotten to "knowing" it.
A: It's good. If you open the part on kitchens, he asks, "Why do people at parties go to the kitchen? Why is the kitchen always the center of activity? Why are dining rooms always empty?"
People want to go to the kitchen. Why's that? Because real things happen there. We create. We produce in the kitchen. It's authentic.
If we look at a neighbourhood, then the example of a "kitchen" would be a bakery. People love bakeries and they don't even know why. They just go there because real stuff happens in a bakery. There's production happening – that's one of Alexander's things, "production" – and its a type of activity and there's a kind of ethics and knowledge, and it all makes it a "real" place, a place that feels authentic. And then, if you sell your baked goods, if you had a store which just sold baked goods and you had a bakery that baked and sold – well we'd know which would do better, which would draw more people: it would be the bakery which sold baked goods. Why? Because it feels more authentic. Something is happening; it's not just about selling. There's activity and there's a sense of a core set of values that we can all relate to – and there's the smell of the bread, and its tied to doing and work and productivity.
h: So you said that Intrawest has got this figured out.
A: Well they haven't got it figured out, but they know that if you only have one type of person, then your project is stale. I was at meeting 2-3 years ago when UBC was trying to develop some of its lands, and this VP from Intrawest he was arguing with UBC's vision. We'd done research on this as well. The people that were moving into these developments would say the same thing, they would say, "Well, we want a bake shop. We want some sort of activity, something like a bake retail store. Like non-useful stores." They also said that "we don’t want all the same. We don’t only want to see professors here." These are the professors saying this. "We don’t want that pompous Professor Emeritus Labcoat and his trophy grad student wife living next door. We want some normal, everyday odd ball. I want a mangy dog. I want that odd guy, we don’t really know where he comes from but he’ll teach piano really well and tells great stories."
h: So why do we get the developments we get?
A: Because people bought into the marketing. Basically, marketing based on difference and it becomes – it’s easier to do, it's just been easier to do, and to buy.
h: I find this interesting: We buy the places that are all "smooth sauce"and we travel because we are looking for "chunky," for "authentic" real places where production and activity happens.
A: Do you travel?
h: Well... a little.
A: When we travel, we look for chunky sauce.
h: I think there’s an irony here.
A: We look for chunky sauce. We choose to buy into neighbourhoods where it's all smooth sauce. We travel looking for chunky.
h: We want to live with all the smooth sauce people, and we want the chunky sauce when we travel. We don’t want to run into the smooth sauce people when we are travelling.
A: Well, we don’t want them in our compartment. Let’s say, we don’t want the chunky people, too close to us, but we are drawn to neighborhoods with vitality, with a mix of "smooth" and "chunky," to use that metaphor. Sure, there can be a certain type of uniformity of people living there. But what draws other people in is activity. So what allows you to go to a great Italian neighborhood is that there is food there and great Italian restaurants. It's the activity, not so much the people, that draws us. In this case, the food.
h: Right and so then rubbing shoulders with the other type of people because we both like the same activity. I get to hang with someone just immigrated from Italy or India or Mexico because I like the food.
A: Yes, exactly.
h: We don’t consciously want our neighborhoods to be "diverse," a mix of smooth and chunky, but we do want activity and by having that activity we will have diversity.
A: Yes. Let's put it this way: We are drawn to diversity. The most interesting cultures are mixing zones. Montreal is so fascinating because it’s a huge mixing zone of anglophone and allophone and francophone cultures. Mixing zones draw us. They are very interesting.
But this doesn’t mean it has to be the old fruit cake versus homogenization dichotomy. The question is, how homogenized or mixed do we want it? Our research is telling us that Canadians don’t want their communities or neighbourhoods too homogenized.
h: OK. But the situation – it’s almost like an after-the-fact in terms of development. What I mean is, we buy into a bunch of market ideas based on "solving for difference," that people of similar values, incomes, backgrounds, etc will find it more comfortable to live in the same neighbourhood. Then, after-the-fact, we go looking for that which is a little uncomfortable. After we buy what we "think" we want, then we go looking for ways to change it.
A: Yes.
h: But isn't a developer who tries to do the non-homogenized approach is going to have a hard time selling it? Homogeneity relates to an idea of "safety" that obsesses North Americans in particular I think. Especially since 9-11, there's a sense that, if I’m a smooth sauce person and everyone around me is smooth sauce then I am safe.
A: I think that’s really true. So what you can do though, if you're a developer, is to build communities around activity. You can still have a block of smooth sauce – or it's equivalent in terms of price, style etc – or expensive anchovy sauce. You can have blocks like that, but if you design activity as sort of a central component of your development, if you organize the development around activity, that allows you to draw in the mix without having people feel threatened and like they need a gate.
h: The example I see of this is developments organized around golf. Not being a golfer, I've never seen it as an activity that mixes people – the smooth, the chunky, and the anchovy.
A: I would say that, for example, if every new development on Vancouver Island were oriented around golf as an activity, that might not be so good. But in terms of a neighborhood, it does afford opportunities for mixing.
h: If I think about it like Robert Putnam, then it doesn't matter what the activity is, so long as people are doing it together. He was looking at studies in Italy that linked economic vibrance to community participation in choral societies. People who sang together, he says, are more trusting of each other, more willing to take risks together.
A: Yes.
h: I've experienced that. Years after reading Putnam I started singing in choirs and ended up rubbing shoulders with a people of different ages, different ways of looking at the world. Lots of them I would have not otherwise had conversations with, but all of a sudden we're singing together, helping each other out, having meaningful conversations. Most recently – in the past 3 years or so – I've been taking ballroom and latin dance classes. Now I’m part of this dance community and we do lots of things together – and often our only real initial point of contact was our love of dance. I mean, politically, we're sometimes very differently aligned. Yet some of these people are among my closest friends now.
A: Exactly.
h: We’re incredibly diverse, you know.
A: So about communities: It's not values, it’s activity. It’s activity, it’s what we do together. We focus too much on values and consumer preferences. That’s solving for a difference.
If you're developing housing, a neighbourhood for example, then maybe the question is: What activities can we share? And golf is one of those activities that a lot of people are sharing, even though most of the developments around golf aren't very diverse.
h: It's true. Even years ago, when my anti-golf bias was pretty entrenched, I'd be surprised at the who was golfing. Young guys I was logging with. They were golfers. And then there’s guys I was tree planting with. They were golfers. One of my sons, he's a golfer. And he doesn't fit any golfer stereotype that I had. And I realized that, wow, I had this idea of what golf is, but there are a bunch of people playing golf who really don't fit my stereotype, that the golf course is much more diverse than I thought.
A: It’s true. My Uncle Gary, who is a commercial fisherman, he loves golf. He’s crazy about it. And then there are the politically very conservative guys I used to work with in Toronto. They loved golf too.
h: Which emphasizes your point that we get together through activities and some kind of "mixed" non-homogenous, more authentic social life happens.
A: It's important to point out – again – that this is not about values. Values are the difference. If you wear your values – if you had to wear a "value suit" of your values on your clothing every day, we'd never talk to each other. We just know, right off the bat, that we obviously couldn't have a conversation.
h: And we might not play golf together either.
A: Exactly, but if you wear your golf suit everywhere, people will talk to you. They'll connect with you because they see you like golf. That’s a core observation.
h: This is helping me get a handle on something that goes way back to my first years of sociology. I think it was Durkheim, and his ideas about organic and mechanical solidarity. Maybe it was just the words. But he described traditional or "mixed" community as "mechanical" solidarity, and modern community, where we tend to create more homogeneous social groups, as being "organic." I always thought that "mechanical" or "mixed" was how community really worked. That a "mechanical" community was where I wanted to live – it was, in fact, where I was living. In this little community on Vancouver Island. Where I still live. I just had this problem with his terminology, because for me "organic" meant better, more authentic.
A: Yes.
h: And in my experience growing up in a small town – you grew up in Nanaimo and maybe it was a little bit different – but in Black Creek, I grew up knowing so many different kinds of people. I got to deal with a lot of different people.
And it’s still, even though the Comox Valley's gotten bigger, it’s still pretty easy to run into the banker, the mayor, the teacher, the construction guy at the same social functions, and end up having conversations. As well as the guy planting trees and the woman baking bread.
A: Yes. And if you are involved in shared activities – golf, choir, dancing, or fishing for steelhead – then you may really connect with them. Which bring us back to solving for similarity. And using the idea of shared activity as a way to create new neighbourhoods or developments that people actually want to live in – not just sleep in. Which is what Mark is talking about when he talks about "cultural precincts." The kinds of places in a community where the smooth-sauce-people and the chunky-sauce-people – and even the anchovy-sauce-people – do stuff together. Get to know each other. Go bowling in their Hawaiian shirts and listen to Johnny Cash together...and then maybe the Ramones.
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