Executive Director's Notes: Resilient Cities, the Foundation, and Learning from China

by Karin Kirkpatrick

The Real Estate Foundation is involved in a wide range of projects and activities, all of them related to land use. In these notes I will talk a little about why we are involved with the leadership work being done through the Gaining Ground summits, my reflections from my recent time in China, and the positive work being done through an initiative funded in part by the Foundation.

The Real Estate Foundation and Resilient Cities

Between 1981 and 2001, Greater Vancouver experienced population growth of nearly 60%. If similar rates of growth continue, we will see a doubling of population in the next 40 years. This presents all of us living here with significant challenges. Vancouver is known for its vibrancy and quality of life. How do we sustain these in the face of the kinds of changes that are projected? We think that the Resilient Cities conference, the 6th in the Gaining Ground Summit series, speaks to this challenge.

As a theme, "Resilient Cities" is timely and appropriate for this year's Gaining Ground summit, the first here in Vancouver. The key elements of the conference align with the goals and values of the Real Estate Foundation:

• innovation in sustainability governance and best current practices for managing sustainable urban systems;
• capturing opportunities in the green economy;
• strategies for building widespread sustainability collaborations that engage the community level.

The Foundation has been a leader in supporting projects with a focus on better, more sustainable land uses and practices. Resilient Cities is, in many ways, an excellent example of where our experiences with project partners over more than 20 years has brought us as an innovative granting organization. It represents important, cutting edge ideas and practices that are being used to make communities more sustainable, more resilient.

Because of the word "real estate" in our name, and perhaps also because we do much good work in communities on housing issues, the Foundation is sometimes seen as being primarily concerned with housing. But that misses our primary focus: a concern over that place where the built environment meets the natural environment, and the delicate balance between settlement and nature that is required for our communities to thrive. We're involved in this year's Resilient Cities conference because it speaks to that focus.

UBC Design Centre for Sustainability
An example of how the Real Estate Foundation works with innovative organizations to meet society's growing need for better land use and development practices is the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC. It is, to put it simply, a widely recognized academic leader in applying sustainability concepts to the development of land, cities, and community. An example of how this can be applied to our communities is the recent City of North Vancouver 100 Sustainability Vision, which I'll describe later.

We are fortunate at the Real Estate Foundation to be able to make different "investment" decisions than many public and private funders. Innovative projects often require long-term investment in order to reach the level of maturity at which they flourish and give the kind of ROI our communities need. In some cases, the Foundation Governors have chosen to make these kinds of investments. This is the case of with the multi-year, multi-project Sustainability by Design initiative at the Design Centre for Sustainability.

The project's operating principle is that sustainable solutions, applied at the scale of the neighbourhood, if widely replicated, may be the crucial ingredient for a sustainable region. This fits closely to the overall purpose of the Real Estate Foundation.

The Design Centre helps partner communities provide context to their planning and design process by framing sustainability collaboratively. They work with communities to identify or review: an overarching, long-term sustainability vision; guiding principles; general goals and more specific objectives in each issue or theme area (for example, transportation, energy, water, climate change, etc); associated indicators and targets; and, finally, implementable strategies and actions. These are then expressed in relevant policy and planning documents, such as the community's Official Community Plan.

Through a charrette process, the Design Centre engages a wide diversity of community members, municipal staff, professionals, and representatives from public, private, and not-for-profit organizations in the planning and design-process—from developing the community-specific sustainability framework to selecting appropriate indicators and targets and developing the concept plan.

The return on investment? As I mentioned, the City of North Vancouver's 100 Sustainability Vision is one of the ROI. The City is one of the first municipalities in BC to investigate the feasibility of meeting the province's GHG emission target established by the 2007 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act (80% GHG emission reduction from 2007 levels by 2050). The 100-Year Sustainability Vision illustrates how an 80% GHG reduction target may be met, and explores how the City will move towards net zero GHG emission by 2107, its 200th birthday. This project recently won the UBCM's Community Excellence Award. That's an ROI for us at the Foundation to be proud of!

Learning from China

Over the past few years I've had the pleasure and privilege of travelling to China as part of my previous teaching work through UBC. I recently got home from spending 10 days there in Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai. These 10 days, in these rapidly changing cities, brought home to me the value of what I see the Foundation supporting: the need to take an integrated approach to community planning, to consider transportation, food security, energy consumption, water supply, livability, parks, and healthy lifestyles all as important elements in our quality of life. It helped me appreciate even more the purpose and importance of the Resilient Cities conference that many of you will be participating in over the next several days. It also helped me appreciate even more deeply the work of the many organizations and projects – like the work being done by the Design Centre for Sustainability, for example – that we support through the Foundation.

I visited the Shanghai Urban Planning Center. It was rather amazing, in light of what we are doing in Vancouver, to see their focus on designing interesting (and big!) buildings catering to a rapidly emerging car culture. My personal experience was a little unsettling: sidewalks that abruptly end in the middle of going somewhere; not being able to cross the simplest of streets without the fear of being run down. Roads are getting wider and more abundant – while walking routes are being blocked or not considered. All of it contrary to what we are seeing as elements in more sustainable cities, particularly as it is being exemplified by our local brand, sometimes referred to as "Vancouverism."

And the irony for me is the visual quality of a place like Shanghai. The architecture in this city is some of the most interesting I have seen in the world. However, much of the beauty of building design is concentrated at the very top, where it is invisible because of the ever-present smog in Chinese cities today. The use of coal for heating, the rapidly increasing use of cars (SUVs are popular), over-farming causing dust storms – the reasons for poor air quality and visibility are endless, and the need for an integrated approach and long term vision of sustainable growth is imperative. Looking around, I could see so many examples of how dramatically and how quickly our environment can be negatively effected by our human development and settlement choices.

Happy to be home!
Each time I travel, I learn. I see things done well; and I see things done not so well. Regardless of where I am, however, there's no place like home. I recognize how lucky I am to live where I do. As I step into my second year with the Real Estate Foundation of BC I am also grateful that I get to work with so many interesting and innovative people and organizations, all whom are striving in their different ways to find that balance between settlement and nature that brings quality of life to our neighbourhoods and communities.

about the author:
Karin Kirkpatrick is the Executive Director of the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Prior to her appointment to that position by the Foundation's Board of Governors in November 1, 2008 she was Director, Centre for CEO Leadership at the Sauder School of Business at the University of BC.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009
We strongly encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Related article

• The Resilient Cities Interviews 2: Tim Pringle talks to hanspetermeyer about GGRC09 (communitytransition.blogspot.com)
• The Resilient Cities Interviews 3: Jack Minard of the Comox Valley Land Trust talks about GGRC09 (communitytransition.blogspot.com)

CURRENT CIT PROJECT OVERVIEW: Smart Growth on the Ground in Prince George

by hans peter meyer with files from SmartGrowth BC

The CIT program at the Real Estate Foundation of BC is a response on the part of the Foundation's Governors to land use related issues that primarily effect non-metropolitan in nature. Established as a signature program of the Foundation, CIT works with a wide range of project and funding partners in communities across BC to help them plan for and make transitions.

A recently completed project in the City of Prince George relates to supporting sustainable land uses and planning for climate change. Sustainable land use planning and practices have been ongoing themes at the Real Estate Foundation through most of it's 20+ years.


Smart Growth on the Ground in Prince George

Project Proponents: Smart Growth on the Ground, the City of Prince George

Project Partners: BC Heritage Branch, BC Hydro Powersmart, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Green Streets Canada, Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Canada, Northern Development Initiative Trust, Prince George Community Foundation, Ramada Prince George, Transport Canada,Vancity, and the Real Estate Foundation of BC.

Smart Growth on the Ground (SGOG)
SGOG is a unique partnership program formed by Smart Growth BC, the Real Estate Institute of British Columbia, and the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC. It was designed to help BC communities create more sustainable neighbourhood plans using community-specific solutions. Prince George joins Maple Ridge, Squamish, and Greater Oliver as the fourth partner community to set a new standard for community planning and establish leadership among the municipalities of BC.


Project Overview
The recent Gaining Ground: Resilient Cities (GGRC09) event in Vancouver was a showcase of challenges facing communities and of innovative responses to these challenges. In the case of Cam Brewer's presentation on the outcomes of a recent Smart Growth on the Ground (SGOG) project in the City of Prince George, it was an opportunity to show how one CIT project is helping this northerly BC city take strong steps towards neighbourhood resilience and sustainability, in the process helping the City meet its targets for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) reduction.

Cam Brewer is the Executive Director of SmartGrowth BC, the organization that, in partnership with the Real Estate Institute of BC (REIBC) and the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC, delivers Smart Growth on the Ground (SGOG) projects around the province. In 2008 the Governors of the Real Estate Foundation approved two substantial grants to SGOG projects in Prince George: $65,000 to Smart Growth BC for research, education, and stakeholder consultation associated with SGOG in Prince George; $90,000 to REIBC for real estate economic analysis and stakeholder convening activities of SGOG in Prince George.

The news that Brewer delivered to the 600 participants of GGRC09 was that Prince George City Council had recently unanimously approved the SGOG Concept Plan. In his words, Council is advancing a "bold new vision for downtown Prince George."

Created by the community, the SGOG Concept Plan outlines a compelling image of what downtown Prince George will be in 2035. It is a downtown with housing options, a vibrant public realm, bike lanes, and a permanent Farmer’s Market. Smart Growth BC sees Council's adoption of this vision as placing the City in a leadership role with regard to renewable energy and is support for all members of the community.

Central to the Concept Plan is a prominent green space with water feature that connect downtown to the Fraser River. Councillor Dave Wilbur was struck by the “grand, insightful vision” that identifies the rivers as core to the concept. "If we had that slip away, let the rivers just run by and not be identified, I think we would've missed a big opportunity," he said. "But [SGOG] didn't. You made it core to your concept plan and I appreciate that."

In his presentation to Council, Dan Milburn, the Manager of Long-Range Planning remarked on the collaborative nature in which this plan was created. “Throughout this process the partners have worked diligently to raise the necessary funds for this project, organize an extensive community consultation program, coordinate numerous researchers, and facilitate the creation of what I like to think of as a community plan for the downtown. For it truly was a community effort producing a community vision.”

The Concept Plan is the result of a year-long public engagement process that involved participation of over 500 citizens. Through five public workshops participants set priorities, targts and discussed ideas for invigorating downtown. During a four-day, multi-stakeholder design event (a "charrette”) held May 12-15, 2009 over 40 people collaborated to create the vision. The charrette team included Mayor Dan Rogers, Councillors, City staff, community participants, researchers, and designers. Councillor Stolz, a member of the team, attested that “the people involved sweated blood and tears” to produce this vision.

The Concept Plan was approved along with a recommendation to amend the Official Community Plan to “align the downtown vision, objectives and policies with the key concepts articulated in the Downtown Prince George Smart Growth on the Ground Concept Plan.” This will entrench the vision in policy and will guide implementation projects.

Project Rationale
"Smart Growth BC receives applications for projects from many BC communities," says SmartGrowth's Shana Johnstone. "We chose Prince George for the SGOG project for a number of reasons. Of particular note for us was that we are interested in working on climate change at a neighbourhood planning and development level. The City of Prince George was very keen on this, and were early signatories of the Climate Change Charter.

"We also chose Prince George because it is part of our mission at SmartGrowth BC to develop a suite of tools and applications for a variety of communities and situations across BC. As a 'northern community,' and as a community with a particular set of challenges when it comes to things like climate change, a resource transition economy, and a hub for other northern destinations, the City's proposal was a good fit."


Click on these links for more information about:

• SGOG in Prince George
  
• Smart Growth on the Ground
• SmartGrowth BC
  

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009.
We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the authors of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Related articles

• The Resilient Cities Interviews 2 (audio): Tim Pringle talks about Resilient Cities /GGRC09 (communitytransition.blogspot.com)

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

Editorial preface

We invite you to propose your own "guest column" with CITinfoResource. Currently we are hosting a discussion about food and sustainability.

Food production, access to affordable and arable land for food production – these are only part of a successful strategy for community sustainability. In our last CITinfoResource post we featured a guest column by George Penfold, BC's Community Economic Development Regional Innovation Chair at Selkirk College. There is currently great passion for local food self-sufficiency. George posed some sobering questions about our willingness, even our capacity, to seriously live out this passion. He suggested that there are significant choices facing us as consumers of food-stuffs and as local decision-makers if we are serious about developing locally self-reliant food systems.

The following article by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland adds another challenge – and opportunity – by suggesting some of what urban areas – even small urban areas, including the many small cities and towns of BC's non-metro regions – can do to support existing local food production. We hope encourage you, both as readers of CITinfoResource and as consumers of food-stuffs, to chime in with your own experiences of supporting or working with the food systems in your communities.

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland

Food and agriculture have finally caught the attention of the planning and other professions – perhaps for the first time in modern history. At least that's what the 2009 summer issue of Plan Canada (Vol 49: No. 2) suggests.

This is a good thing. It shows that, as a profession, we are in a receptive mode, constantly learning how to balance the tools we have right now with the need to develop new ways to think about problems and their solutions. For example, urban agriculture and the protection of farmland are priority issues; but other opportunities and approaches are beginning to present themselves, and we must be quick to add them to the "food planning toolbox."

A comprehensive approach
The strategies for creating sustainable food systems in a city must take a comprehensive approach and consider the full range of elements of a food system – not just the current favourites like urban agriculture (eg: community gardens). Improving the food system has values beyond the production of food. We suggest that such improvement begins to give food the power to be an economic driver, a potent community building agent, and a key opportunity to decrease energy demands.

In order to capture these benefits, sustainability in food and agriculture must be approached with a systems perspective. This includes: addressing food processing, packaging, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, restaurants, procurement, education, culture, and food security. Easily 75% of the economic value and climate emissions associated with food come after its agricultural production. If we, as planners, fail to invest as much of our time looking at these other aspects of the food system as we spend on local food production and farmers markets, then we miss the biggest opportunity of all.

Agricultural Urbanism
A movement called Agricultural Urbanism is emerging based on planning cities and neighbourhoods around sustainable food systems. At it's outset, 10 principles have been identified for this movement:

1. Address the whole food system – Promote the greatest range possible of the elements of the food system in community planning and design;
2. Foreground the food experience – Make food visible and enhance the experience of the greatest possible range of the food system in the city;
3. Build the local and regional food economy – Build this food economy through land use planning, education, economic development, and cultural enhancement and celebration;
4. Provide access to food – Provide access for all everywhere, including food stores, restaurants, food banks and others;
5. Promote education on food – Embed food education in every aspect of urban life, both formally in the school system, and informally through wherever people access food;
6. Integrate sustainable food into institutions – Integration into all levels of government policy, programs, and institutional mandates;
7. Address food for other species – Incorporate urban habitat into all food production areas wherever possible to maintain a healthy ecosystem;
8. Waste no food – Support and develop the infrastructure and organizations to recover food that might be unnecessarily wasted from wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, and others and channel this food both to the poor and to composting and nutrient recovery programs;
9. Organize for food – Develop strong partnerships, stewardship groups, collaboration, and overall social capital to support a sustainable urban and regional food system;
10. Develop sustainable infrastructure amongst food systems – Develop innovative energy, water, wastewater, and solid waste management infrastructure and systems integrated with urban food systems.

When considered in the context of a food system, these 10 principles have many applications, with elements spread across an entire region. However, a concept is emerging in urban planning around creating special places in cities that are dedicated to sustainable food – food hubs and precincts.

Food hubs and precincts are a tangible way to address multiple food system elements and improve food system sustainability in a community. Increasingly, local governments and members of the development community are seeing great potential in food hubs and precincts. This is driving planners and designers to create new methods and techniques to implement food-inclusive or food-focused visions of vibrant cities – in a context where food has become an uninvited guest in city building practice.

What are food hubs and precincts?
Food hubs and precincts are centrally-located facilities that bring together the full spectrum of land uses and programs to support sustainable urban and regional food systems. These have largely been part of the urban fabric in cities and larger metropolitan areas. However, this concept may be appropriately scaled for the neighbourhood and/or town size. For instance, in any food hub or precinct, storage and processing space would need to be built to meet the needs and demands of the local agriculture, resident, and food industry needs. The fundamental characteristics of a food precinct include:

• Commercial storage and processing facilities for local farm products;
• A centralized distribution hub where multiple farmers may combine and distribute their goods. Among other benefits, this enables wholesale purchasers to obtain the quality and quantity of local foods necessary for restaurant operations and institutional procurement;
• A permanent farmers' market where retail and direct marketing of locally farmed products may be sold;
• Office space for non-profit organizations and small businesses associated with the local food and agriculture program of the precinct;
• Visible community kitchens, labs, and community education areas for facilitating seminars on how to grow, process, prepare, and maximize fresh, healthy local food experiences;
• Café and/or restaurants that have locally sourced menus and provide a social environment for people to gather and enjoy delicious foods, generating community vibrance;
• Community event areas that provide space for celebrations and special event around food and agriculture;
• Authentic architectural and landscape character where buildings, public realm, and landscape visibly demonstrate elements of each community associated with the precinct uses;
• Residential features in areas where a neighborhood food precinct has been built into new development;
• Food recovery and waste collection.

Benefits of food hubs/precincts
Food precincts are a central element of complete, resilient, and vibrant communities. Through establishing the necessary infrastructure and programs the food precinct/hub enables communities to connect not only to purchasing and experiencing local food, but also to learning how to grow, preserve, and prepare foods. Benefits of the food precinct and hub include:

• Re-centre food in our lives through increasing active participation in the food system;
• Contribute to a more resilient food economy through strengthening city-to-farm and farm-to-city linkages;
• Serve as a resource centre for a wide range of community activities that develop and reinforce the role that local food plays in every aspect of our city life and culture;
• Increasing capacity in essential food and agriculture infrastructure, such as processing and sales capacity to the small to medium farm economy;
• Centralized distribution point(s) that enable purchasing by wholesalers, grocery stores, and restaurants from multiple farms and producers;
• Community, professional, and academic learning opportunities around food and sustainability; and
• A conscious planning and design approach to sustainable food cities.

Launching the New City Market, A Food Hub for Vancouver
In some cities, like Montreal and Halifax for example, food hubs and precincts are an important characteristic of the city fabric. In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, food hubs and precincts are just emerging as part of the urban scene. The Stop in Toronto is a new facility that provides a permanent home for farmers' markets and offers a full suite of education opportunities around growing and preparing foods for people of all ages and backgrounds. While city markets have historically been part of Vancouver and present day examples such as Granville Island offer much in the way of learning what works, a new vision for a food hub is emerging and generating a lot of excitement. Building on successful Canadian models like the Stop in Toronto, community champions are gearing-up for an all-in effort to vision, plan, and establish the New City Market, a food hub for Vancouver.


About the authors:
Janine de la Salle is Director of Food Systems Planning with HB Lanarc Consultants Ltd. in Vancouver/Nanaimo. Janine recently developed a plan for an urban-farm park and a guide that will connect local farmers to schools.

Mark Holland is a Principal with HBLanarc. He is a LEED™-accredited planner who holds professional degrees in both Landscape Architecture and Community and Regional Planning. He recently authored and delivered the "Resilient Cities Manifesto" at the October 2009 Gaining Ground: Resilient Cities summit.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009
We strongly encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Related articles

• Thoughts on Regional Food Security & Self-Reliance by George Penfold (communitytrantion.blogspot.com) 
• Chef RonaldSt-Pierre talks about food sustainability   
• Agricultural Economist Gary Rolston talks about food sustainability
  
• Mark Holland talks about sustainability 1  
• Mark Holland talks about sustainability 2 (cv2050.com)
  
• Mark Holland talks about sustainability 3
  

Gaining Ground: in Conversation with Gene Miller

by hans peter meyer

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.”

h: Very cool.

G: Absolutely.

– 30 –


©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website for non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Related articles by

• Sustainability: The State of the Conversation Today, Part II (development-issues.blogspot.com)
• BC Land Summit: Preparing for Thrivability ~ In Conversation with Mark Holland (communitytransition.blogspot.com)

BC Land Summit: Solving for Similarities – New Ways of Imagining Communities: in Conversation with Angus McAllister

by hans peter meyer

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.

– 30 –


©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website for non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Related articles

• BC Land Summit: Preparing for Thrivability ~ In Conversation with Mark Holland (communitytransition.blogspot.com)
• BC Land Summit: In Conversation with Tim Pringle
• BC Land Summit: In Conversation with Brenda Southam
• BC Land Summit: In Conversation with Sheila Harrington