Posts from — November 2011

Response to the City of Vancouver’s invitation to imagine a new future for the Georgia Viaducts and East False Creek Flats has generated an overwhelming response, with more than 100 responses from 13 countries.

Now it’s the public’s turn to vote on their favourite proposal — including the “do nothing” option — before the city unveils the winners picked by a panel of eminent judges. The “people’s choice” award and the judges’ verdict will be revealed Dec. 1.

Although 60 percent of the competitors are local and 75 percent from Metro Vancouver, others weighed from as far afield as Hong Kong, Mexico and Slovenia.

According to planning director Brent Toderian, “submissions range from the beautification of the viaducts, to their re-use as open space or other uses, or their partial or complete removal and replacement.

“The visions range from the practical and pragmatic, to the futuristic and whimsical. Submitters appeared to be inspired by everything from water and nature, to our urban past and current housing challenges, to volcanoes, horses, corn-dogs, and knitting yarn!”

Remember, voting closes in one week: please cast your ballot and invite your friends to do the same.

With all-candidates’ meetings over and five days of door-knocking remaining before Saturday’s election decision, I realize there were three questions I expected but seldom encountered at all candidates’ meetings. I participated in about six meetings, I think — it’s all a blur — from small community centre affairs to the large transportation forum chaired by Gordon Price last week.

But I heard little about:

1. The crisis for renters

Although half the city rents, few meetings had the intensity we experienced in 2008 with “renovictions” soaring and vacancy rates near zero. The situation for renters has not improved, but the very significant launch of  a new rental housing coalition got little coverage last week. Only Vision Vancouver is making specific commitments to help renters and has generated significant new rental housing construction since the last election.

2. The crisis in the global economy

Although Greece’s economy imploded since nominations closed and Italy has gone to the brink, the economy almost never arose. Meetings generally stayed close to local issues like zoning and housing prices. (Many discussions centred on the impact, if any, of mysterious “foreign” investors.)

But Vision’s platform does lay out specific proposals to support job creation and innovation in Vancouver. I spoke hopefully, in an early-campaign news release, of “economic recovery,” a prospect that seems to be fading in light of the latest news.

3. Climate change and global warming

Perhaps because support and engagement around the Greenest City Action Plan is so broad, there were few arguments about the need to work harder to make Vancouver green.  But the decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline means that the push to export bitumen from Metro Port Vancouver will intensify. Vision is the only party with a comprehensive environmental program and convened a special council meeting last year to shine a light on growing oil exports from our port.

Without a strong Vision team at all three levels — council, school and parks — Mayor Gregor Robertson will be hard-pressed to deliver on these commitments, despite their obvious importance.

Did “common sense” put Toronto in near-terminal decline? That’s the disturbing conclusion of veteran Toronto urban affairs writer John Lorinc, who traces Toronto’s crumbling transit infrastructure and fractured politics to Mike Harris’ Common Sense Revolution of the 1990s.

With Suzanne Anton’s NPA crew offering voters a Vancouver version of Harris’ “common sense” platform in the Nov. 19 election, Lorinc’s deep analysis of “How Toronto Lost Its Groove and Why the Rest of Canada Shouldn’t Gloat,” published in the latest issue of The Walrus, makes for unsettling reading.

Harris’ first blow came in 1995, according to Lorinc, with a botched amalgamation of a dozen cities into the Greater Toronto Authority, a “smaller government” scheme that left the region with 25 mayors, 244 municipal officials and a destructive competition among larger municipalities for economic development and senior government funding.

The second hit came in 1997 when Harris “relieved” municipalities of education funding obligations but handed them the cost of public transit and housing. (Although Lorinc holds up Metro Vancouver’s governance system as a model, it arguably has many of the same deficiencies.)

Of course, Vancouver is not the GTA and a Vancouver election is not the same as an Ontario election. But the “common sense” philosophy is a direct link between Harris, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and the NPA platform. All in all, it’s a cautionary tale.