Communities in Transition Information Resource: land use

Showing posts with label land use. Show all posts

Friday, September 17, 2010

Stewardship and Conservation Collaborations Deliver Performance

by Tim Pringle, Director of Special Programs, Real Estate Foundation of BC

editor's note:

Tim Pringle has been working with stewardship and conservation groups for over 20 years, through is work at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. This article draws observations from Tim's experiences, and focuses on those organizations and collaborations whose work influences policy makers and planning processes at the regional and local levels. As Tim says, "This critical work helps the public, governments, land owners and developers to appreciate the relationships among green infrastructure, ecological health and community well being."

Context

The wealth and well-being of communities is tied to the land and surrounding ecology. It should be no surprise that that 30% of the current statues (164 of 538 acts, not counting attached regulations and schedules) comprising BC Law substantially address these resources. This reality describes the commons values of BC residents in the lands of the province. Having credible stewardship and conservation expertise available to measure the condition of ecological and environmental values in the local government context as well as more widely, supports holistic approaches to planning for use and conservation of lands. This intelligence exposes the weaknesses of historic land use strategies, which tended to discount the value of natural capital.

Introduction: advocacy, but also expertise

The stewardship and conservation (S&C) sector in British Columbia is known for its strong roots in advocacy – the birthplace of Greenpeace, conservation in the Carmanah Valley, and the recent success of the Rainforest Solutions Project. This results of this work protects some of BC’s unique and ancient ecological systems. The sector also comprises another leading group of organizations that have proven their beneficial capacity to influence management of settlement change in the province. These S&C practitioners work in the local, regional and senior government contexts. Their research, mapping, public and professional education, as well as other services wisely support policy and planning to address ecological diversity concerns. In the last 20 years these organizations have become, in several regions, the primary source of expertise about regional and local ecological assets. What has supported this trend and what guidance about successful practices might be observed?

One reason the S&C sector’s expertise gains recognition is the commitment of conservancies and stewardship organizations to their values. As non-profit, usually charitable societies, their constitutions declare their primary values as does the history of their work. Their missions align with protection of public trust values concerning stewardship and conservation – subjects that often are on the minds of communities. There are a growing number of successful projects, among many. For instance, Darkwoods at Kootenay lake, the “largest single private conservation project in Canada” (see Kingfisher, Vol. 18), was realized by national heavy weight, the Nature Conservancy (BC) and regional collaborators working with an owner favouring conservation of bio-diversity.

A second defining characteristic of the sector’s expertise stems from the collaborations and networks that these organizations often build to carry out their work. Among the most influential regional groupings are organizations such as the South Okanagan Similkameen Conservation Program, the Grasslands Conservation Council of BC, the Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program, and provincially, the Land Trust Alliance of BC among others which provide educational, leadership, convening, and research services. These alliances can produce powerful results as evidenced by the role of the East Kootenay Conservation Program when it spearheaded the initiative that resulted in the Columbia Valley becoming the first community in Canada to adopt a “comprehensive conservation fund tax” (Dec. 2008). BC’s largest membership conservation organization, The Land Conservancy, collaborates widely and constantly pursues innovation. Currently TLC is exploring the use of numerous financial incentives to encourage community agriculture.

Successes built on a practice of forging regional collaborations

These commitments to mission and successful forging of multi-partner initiatives with innovative strategies make the regional collaborations unique. Their qualities have attracted a constellation of funders. Federal and provincial ministry programs, foundations based in BC and elsewhere, local governments and businesses have provided financial support. Very importantly, the funding has been accessible over a number of years, although the amounts rarely have been enough to keep up with the growing need. Over the years funders have conferred occasionally about the importance of the work carried out by the regional collaborations. The repeated funding commitments confirm that the funders have valued the services delivered.

These groupings focus on regional biodiversity and work with all relevant land practitioners to fulfill their mandates. The Real Estate Foundation has funded six S&C collaborations, some for several years, to support their development and services for regional communities. This long-term involvement has made clear a third key strength that they have. Like most of their colleagues in the S&C sector, the regional collaborations focus on outcomes. This is the performance-based bias and it can be a very effective fit in the local government context. .

In contrast, local government agencies carry out their operations with a “regulatory bias,” which stems in part from specific statutory responsibilities under the Local Government Act, Community Charter, and other laws. At the same time, local governments also see the advantages of employing performance-based approaches to deliver their mandates. With their attention on outcomes, the regionally-focused S&C collaborations can work effectively with local governments that may be seeking expertise to support planning fro management of ecological assets in the broader land use context.

Nonetheless, a number of local governments engage in performance-based, creative strategies to manage use and conservation of land. The City of Victoria accessed internal leadership to encourage the Dockside Green project and reach a planning and management process that served both the developer interests and those of the city. The City of Langford has taken a performance-based path with several development areas. The District of Maple Ridge engaged in a “Smart Growth on the Ground” planning charrette program to achieve a community-supported plan for redevelopment of the urban core. The plan contains a number of performance-based criteria.

Inevitably, any performance-based negotiation will differ considerably from what has been the usual development review process. Risk increases because the number of actors tends to be greater; outcomes have to be mutually defined; all parties need to access expertise to support their case in the negotiations. And, some subject matter may be unfamiliar to one or more of the actors involved.

Rewards increase as well. The Province of BC has espoused a “green cities” agenda, including the "Climate Change Action Charter" which requires local governments to commit to plans to reduce the carbon footprint of operations. In response to these and other indicators, cities and towns want to accommodate green buildings – including LEED certified; they value “design with nature” strategies and local/urban agriculture projects now capture their attention.

A growing appetite for local government - S&C partnerships

Increasingly, local governments in particular welcome joint ventures where S&C organizations may be cooperating agents to help carry out research, provide public and professional education, and work on new or revised policy concerning protection of the ecology. The regional collaborations in particular have considerable ability to enable and support performance-based strategies in the local government context of managing development and conservation of land. Certainly this is a trend that merits support.

There are several examples of effective joint-venture strategies employed by regional stewardship and conservation partnerships. The South Okanagan Similkameen Conservation Program, which has 50 partners, is a collaborator with six local governments to enhance planning services concerning the regions ecological values. Three of the government partners contribute to the funding that provides a shared “environmental” planner and supports a roundtable for implementation of performance-based strategies.

In the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, the Comox Valley Land Trust (CVLT) and its partners in the sustainability Centre have researched and published the report Nature Without Borders. The quality of the research supporting the report’s recommendations has enabled the CVLT to act in an expert capacity in the Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) process. Presently, the local governments in the Valley are pursing a joint implementation strategy concerning the RGS. The CVT is a collaborator in this process as well.

As a final example, Wildsight based in the East Kootenay region (reported in Kingfisher Vol. 19), offers a five-year success story in the “Healthy Lake Windermere” Project. This venture includes science and development of methodology to support community stewardship of this important recreation lake in the Columbia Valley. Other regions now use the Lake Windermere model to engage stewardship practices concerning lakes providing key ecological and recreational values.

These critical partnerships demonstrate the need for collaboration between local governments, use of performance-based approaches in planning for management of the built environment and protection of the natural areas with their ecological goods and service. They provide an effective fit with local and regional government needs in the context of community and regional planning.

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©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2010. We 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.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Tim Pringle talks about Crown land and rural community interface issues (pt 2)

In June 2010 the town of Smithers, BC hosted a conference on Crown land and rural community interface issues. Tim Pringle attended the conference on behalf of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, as part of the Foundation's ongoing work with rural communities in BC. Tim talks with hanspetermeyer about the conference, the highlights, and the issues.

This is part of a series of podcasts on rural community issues sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of BC through its Communities in Transition program. For more information visit the Foundation's website at REFBC.com.
©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2010. We 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.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Anna Milner talks about planning in the South Okanagan-Similkameen region

Anna Milner is an environmental planner contracted through the South Okanagan-Similkameen Conservation Program (SOSCP) to provide planning services to small communities in the region. A unique partnership agreement between local governments, facilitated by SOSCP, and funded in part by a grant from the Real Estate Foundation of BC enables Anna to do planning work and "capacity building" in communities facing significant land use challenges. Without this partnership approach these communities would be unable to do imporant environmental and developmental assessment work in one of Canada's most sensitive ecosystems.

For more information about SOSCP visit www.soscp.org. CITinfoResource recently interviewed SOSCP coordinator Bryn White here. CITinfoResource also features Bryn's overview of Anna's project here.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2010. We 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.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Tim Pringle talks about the Interface 2010 conference in Smithers, BC

Tim Pringle is Director of Special Programs at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. He talks to CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer about the upcoming June 16-18, 2010 Planning for the Crown-Settlement Interface Lands conference in Smithers, BC.

Tim's focus in this conversation is on hedonic pricing of lands and real estate in rural communities. He emphasizes the importance of communities understanding their values and values-based planning as part of the strategy to deal with Crown-Settlement interface issues.

CITinfoResource is an initiative of the Real Estate Foundation of BC with a purpose of supporting and stimulating the conversation about land use, development, and conservation in non-metro BC communities. For more information visit our blog at CITinfoResource.com.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2010. We 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.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Bryn White talks about the South Okanagan-Similkameen Conservation Partnership

Bryn White is the coordinator of the South Okanagan-Similkameen Conservation Partnership, an innovative coalition of regionally based organizations. SOSCP membes share a common interest in sustainable development and conservation of land. The partnership format provides a mechanism for diverse interests to come together, learn from each other, and develop complementary approaches to land use related challenges in the South Okanagan-Similkameen region.

CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer talks to Bryn about SOSCP's capacity building work amongst local government and non-governmental organizations in the region. This is the first in a series of conversations between CITinfoResource and land use/conservation focussed non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This interview was recorded on January 7, 2010.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

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.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The Resilient Cities Interviews 2 (audio): Tim Pringle talks to hanspetermeyer about GGRC09

In October 2009 the 6th in the Gaining Ground Summit series attracted 600 people to Vancouver to learn, talk about, and build connections around the them of "Resilient Cities." Communities in Transition Information Resource editor hanspetermeyer talks to Tim Pringle of the Real Estate Foundation of BC about his impressions of the GGRC09 event.

Communities in Transition Information Resource will be conducting and posting a series of interviews over the coming year looking at the impact of GGRC09. These will be posted as audio, video, and transcripts whenever possible.

©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 author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

CIT PROJECT SUMMARY: Healthy Water, Healthy Communities – Lake Windermere Project (2005-2009)

CIT Staff Report

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.

In 2005 Wildsight was honoured with the Gold Award for Conservation in by the Canadian Environmental Awards panel.

©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.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

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.

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©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.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Who Owns the Future of the Kootenays?

by George Penfold

The Kootenay region has been undergoing a significant transformation over the last decade. The primary focus for economic development has been on resort and residential development, focussed on the outdoor activities available in beautiful mountain, lake and river resources we have here. Places like Revelstoke, Golden,Fernie, Kimberley, Radium, Invermere, and Rossland are well down this path, and new development is proposed for the Nelson area. The province supports this type of development with its own BC Resort Strategy and Action Plan.

One of the consequences in the Kootenay region has been a significant increase in construction activity. Between 2001 and 2008, for example, construction related employment increased from 3,600 in 2001 to 9,200 in 2007, with a drop to 8,000 in 2008. Over the past decade, resort and recreation related residential development and construction have become a major new economic driver in this region.

But what has this resort and recreation focus for residential development – what folks in the research community call amenity migration – meant at the community level?

Studies from around the world are consistent in identifying some common issues related to amenity migration such as:

increasing property values and housing price;
displacement of both local people and parts of the local economy;
social and economic change resulting from the pattern of non-resident ownership.

As part of my work as the Regional Chair in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College I was recently involved in a study of housing affordability for the Columbia Basin and Boundary regions. research findings at posted online here, at Selkirk College . the housing data we gathered we found that non-resident ownership – that is, property titles held by people whose mailing address was outside region – increased from 21.8% to 29.9% of all titles from 2001 to 2008. On residential property titles only, non resident ownership in 2008 ranged from 13% for single family dwelling properties to 14% on acreage properties to 66% in strata titles, especially in the ski resort and Windermere Lake areas.

In some of the higher amenity rich areas, non-resident ownership was much higher – 60% in the Radium Windermere area, over 40% in the Boundary, Slocan/Arrow Lakes and Kaslo regions, and over 33% in the Valemount and Elk Valley areas. Although these areas saw development over this period, they saw little population growth. In some cases, despite development and construction activity, communities experienced decline in permanent residents.

Non-resident ownership of undeveloped land is even higher. In the Columbia Basin Trust and Boundary regions in 2008 there were 12,544 titles assessed as vacant residential and 7,186 titles assessed as vacant acreage lots 2 acres or larger. Non resident ownership of these titles was approximately 50% across the region and 60% in the 6 higher amenity areas noted above.

What does all that mean for communities and planning? There are far more questions than answers. For example, what does it mean to have 50% to 60% of the residential development potential owned by people who don’t live in the region? I suspect it means opportunities for development of housing on those lands that focuses on the needs of the regional housing market and communities is very limited. I also assume that most of those owners have not taken the time to get involved in local planning processes, and may have very different ideas about the future of their properties than the community, so there will be lots of future challenges managing development applications.

Beyond the short term benefits of the construction phase, if the growth trend in non-resident ownership continues, what will the future of these areas look like? How does non-resident ownership result in an economic base, jobs, and in a functioning volunteer sector that provides some basic services such as fire protection? And 15 years down the road, with an aging population, who will be interested in owning these properties, especially the fractional ownership strata titles for example?

The recent economic downturn has added another set of questions to the value of amenity migration based development. The fragility of this economic development strategy has become quickly and dramatically very apparent: residential building permits virtually disappeared in the resort areas in the first 3 months of this year. What will construction related employment figures look for 2009? How will the permanent resident population deal with inflated property taxes now that the boom of recent years appears to have busted, at least in the short term?

The biggest question for me, however, has to do with the vision for the future of these communities. Has that future of this part of BC already been “sold” to those folks in Alberta, the lower mainland, and other parts of BC who own such a big piece of this region, but who do not play a part in the year-round lived experience of these communities?

– 30 –

About the author:

GEORGE PENFOLD is Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC and Adjunct Professor at theSchool of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. InReal Estate Foundation contributed $100,000 to the RIC endowment fund at Selkirk College as part of its support for sustainable community planning and informed development in the greater Kootenay region.

©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 author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

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