LOCAL DEMOCRACY ROUNDTABLES – 2024 – James Taylor Chair in Landscape
and Liveable Environments
PURPOSE OF THIS
INITIATIVE
To unpack the relationship between local democracy and four crucial
issues:
1. What is the role of local
democracy in the age of the internet.
2. To what extent does local
democracy have a role in guiding global capital flows.
3. To what extent is it within both the capability and the responsibility of local democracy to insure a secure and affordable life for its citizens/residents.
4. To what extent does local
democracy have a role in the sustainable growth of local economies.
EVENT CHOREOGRAPHY
There will be four public sessions, held at UBC Robson and
four charrette sessions with stakeholder panel, location TBA.
For each of four public sessions there will be:
1. A white paper written by project
staff.
2. Recorded panel session with invited
member qualified to speak on the issue - responding to the white paper
mentioned above.
3. Final report including all the
above plus recommendations written by staff.
4. Each session provides
choreography and partial script for inclusion in a future video series.
STAKEHOLDER PANEL
CHOREOGRAPHY
Intentions: Approving event choreography, reviewing and
revising outcomes – all achieved through use of a modified Charrette
methodology.
For each of the stakeholder charrette sessions there will
be:
1. A review of whitepaper and amendments to
same.
2. A facilitated conversation
about the impact of the previous public session.
2. Key amendments on the issue
and potential instructions for a new text entirely.
SUBJECT AREAS AND
MISSION STATEMENTS .
SESSION 1
Title: Local Democracy
and Housing Equity, Can They be Reconciled?
Traditionally local decision makers have controlled the nuts
and bolts of housing production, mostly because the local level is, by and
large, responsible for the public infrastructure that ties all of this housing
together (in the elaborate network we call "the city"). Recently much
conflict has arisen - globally - over how these responsibilities are to be
exercised. Policy has shifted dramatically in recent years, with many arguing
passionately that people cannot afford housing because of the inequitable way
that cities exercise these powers. If this is so how should these powers be
redistributed? To the interests of capital? To higher levels of government that
might be more demonstrably equipped to prevent this social dysfunction?
SESSION TWO
The "global village" and Local Democracy, Can They
be Reconciled.
Does the internet destroy or enhance local democracy. Does
democracy, as Jefferson and others proposed two centuries ago, require a
devolution of powers down as close to the local level as possible with public,
open exchange by legally equal citizens imagined as the crucible of civic
progress and stability? - all on the assumption that the local level is the
true home of the light of demos? How
much of this holds true now that we are all linked in a "global
village" by the internet? What, in the end, has changed with regards to
the collective decision-making power of local citizens with regards to modern
issues: global capital flows, the changing nature of work, the climate emergency?
SESSION THREE
Title: Is there such a
thing as equitable local scale economic development?
Ideally a city provides two things. 1. An affordable quality
of life and, 2. a job that pays for number 1 above. But, at least since the 80s, the ability of
the average wage earner to afford the cost of a quality life has been
compromised. Wages have stayed stubbornly flat while costs, and most
dramatically housing costs, have skyrocketed. Are these forces beyond the
control of local democracy? If the answer is no what would improvement look
like and how might it be accomplished. If, on the other hand, the answer is yes,
is local democracy a sham that can happily be ignored?
SESSION FOUR
TBA,
