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?

 

Mission Statement

 

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,