The city as ‘humanity’s supreme achievement,’ our country as the supreme arbiter of growth our country
Bob Ransford
Sun
Over the last couple of weeks, I watched the debate over EcoDensity in Vancouver play out at a city-sponsored public hearing.
Two different speakers made a particular impression on me. One inspired me and reminded me that people do care about things that happen outside the walls of their home and they are prepared to contribute in a positive way to building community. The other left me with an awful feeling bordering on hopeless despair.
I spend a lot of time in my line of work listening to people express their fears and concerns about the change that inevitably comes with urban growth. Most public meetings about development in the city only attract the complainers and those trying to stop progress.
Those who feel that their backyard is threatened seem to get motivated enough to put down the TV remote and get off the couch.
Few, however, are willing to miss their weekly sitcom or reality TV thriller and come out to a public meeting to contribute constructively or to offer positive support for well-planned growth.
The current debate in Vancouver about EcoDensity has been a little different. The idea of adopting compact settlement patterns and ecological performance as determinants in planning for new growth in the city has elevated the issue of urban development to a level we haven’t seen in this city for many years.
Peter Oberlander, the 86-year-old Harvard-educated planner who started UBC’s graduate school of community and regional planning more than 50 years ago, kicked off the public hearing with a thoughtful presentation about the history of the city as an idea and an ideal that has shaped civilization.
His appearance was a reminder of the power of public participation in community building.
For it was in the same city council chamber about 40 years ago that Oberlander resigned as chairman of the city’s citizen-led Planning Commission in protest of a council decision. His resignation and the public protests that it spawned back then eventually led to the council of the day reversing their decision to run a massive freeway system through Vancouver‘s downtown core.
That decision has shaped the livable city we enjoy today. Thanks to the lack of a huge disruptive freeway system running through the downtown, unlike most other North American cities, people can actually find it enjoyable to work, play and live in our inner city.
Oberlander lauded the EcoDensity initiative, dismissing fears about continued urban growth, reminding everyone that “the city is humanity’s supreme achievement.”
He said more compact settlement patterns are inevitable in the evolution of a city, especially when we are committed to preserving agricultural land and other valuable open space.
Not everyone appearing at the public meeting was as positive about the future of our city as Oberlander.
A number of speakers expressed the typical NIMBY concerns, their tone echoing the familiar refrain “my life is just fine, the drawbridge is now raised, my neighbourhood doesn’t need to change, I don’t care where my kids are going to live”.
But it was Vancouver resident Dan Murray, with his radical ideas about requesting that the federal and provincial governments conduct an environmental impact assessment around urban population growth that really made me wonder about how selfish many urban dwellers have become. The drawbridge mentality of those who think that we can resist the global flow of population and somehow sustain our lifestyle speaks volumes about how the concept of community has little currency in our fast-paced materialistic urban world.
Murray went so far as to suggest that the city should be lobbying the federal government to drastically curtail immigration numbers so that Metro Vancouver could say no to further growth.
He didn’t explain how his kids and everyone else’s kids might be able to afford to live in a city where no new housing would be built.
He didn’t answer what would happen to our quality of life if we had a massive labour shortage with our rapidly aging population.
Perhaps he and the others who espouse the idea of halting growth in its tracks really don’t care what impact that might have on future generations. After all, they are happy in their own backyards.
Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. E-mail: [email protected]
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
