Video of first event Feb 12 in the Local Democracy and Urban Sustainability series now on line.

 Here

Please put your reactions and comments about this issue here.

 Please put your reactions and comments about this issue here (below). Anyone can comment however long you care to. We will eventually compile. With your name is best for our purposes but anonomys is ok if you prefer it.

Patrick. 

Article link submittted by Bette Murphy.

https://biv.com/article/2023/11/elizabeth-murphy-bc-ndp-housing-bills-need-be-withdrawn

Forum Tickets available now.

Click here to secure tickets for Feb 12 panel

Sadly, now sold out. Livestream available (in infinite numbers of course} below.  7 pm Monday PST

 Live stream link is now up for Monday 7 pm pst Forum: "Is local democracy the reason housing costs too much?" https://nexuswebcast.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Play/cf112a56ca7d446a9fff19b85ee453ee1d

Feb 12 panel session, Introductory comments

Introductory comments. Local Democracy and Sustainable Cities; Can They be Reconciled?

For Feb 12, 7 pm. Robson Square.  

Welcome and thank you all for making this first in our UBC SALA James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments “community think tank” a success.

In this series we hope to productively contribute to public debates with regard to local citizen control over their shared geography – a civic process better known as “local democracy.” Tonight, we start with what is clearly the number one local issue for this region: safe and attainable housing. 

In our city and other cities like it a pressing concern has emerged — local democracy, once considered a cornerstone of citizen control over the health safety and welfare of their city, is now accused of contributing to the soaring housing prices that plague our communities.

The province has intervened, - passing a host of new bills which collectively remove from cities the power to plan for new housing, citing the need for a more unregulated approach.

This shift is significant, as housing covers a staggering 80 percent of all city land. With traditional local authority over city development dramatically eroded, citizens now have little direct control on a city’s most crucial mission – safe and suitable housing for people of all ages and incomes.

The rationale behind this intervention is a subject of debate. Was removing city authority over housing a necessary measure to make housing more affordable? or does it signal an unmerited distrust in the ability of local citizens to make the kinds of decisions that benefit the broader citizenry?

If distrust is the motivation, it stems from the belief that local citizens, through democratic processes, may hinder social equity by voting to restrict new housing supply within city limits, and that by that action housing is made more and more expensive.

But is this true?

The case of Vancouver provides a unique test case for this theory. Since the 1970s, leaders in this city have authorized housing policy changes that led to a tripling of housing units within city limits. No other North American centre city has come close to matching this feat. The residential towers downtown are emblematic of this achievement. Less well known is that already built out neighbourhoods have incorporated more than half of this new density.

And yet Vancouver grapples with housing prices that, when measured against average incomes, stand as the highest in North America and the third highest globally.

This fact begs a simple question: if increasing the housing supply within city limits is supposed to lower prices, Vancouver should have North America’s cheapest housing. Instead it has north America’s most expensive.

Why?

We hope that this public session can help us answer this important question. By addressing this issue in Vancouver, inarguably one of the most extreme examples of what is a global housing problem, we hope to shed light on practical solutions - solutions that do not depend on what may be false conclusions about this problem - solutions that are applicable to other cities and nations facing similar, but less extreme versions of this region’s horrible problem.

Spring Events

 

Does Local Democracy Even Matter?