{"id":4468,"date":"2011-05-19T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T06:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4468"},"modified":"2011-05-19T23:45:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T06:45:00","slug":"what-i-said-about-victoria-bc-municipal-elections-in-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/05\/19\/what-i-said-about-victoria-bc-municipal-elections-in-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"What I said about Victoria BC municipal elections in 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article I’d like all candidates for the upcoming Victoria municipal election in November 2010 to read: Simplicity of Losing, Complexity of Winning<\/a> (September 2008 – link goes to Scribd). I wrote this for FOCUS Magazine<\/a> in the run-up to the 2008 municipal election. Oh, how prescient – yet also how optimistic – I was. I couldn’t imagine the magnitude of FUBAR we ended up with.<\/p>\n

Below, the full text of the article as it appeared in FOCUS:<\/p>\n

Simplicity of Losing, Complexity of Winning
\nby
\nYule Heibel<\/p>\n

This fall, we’re electing new local governments, and the people we elect in Victoria will shape our city’s development.\u00a0 We need to be talking about leadership, teamwork, and our collective attitudes toward winning, success and failure.<\/p>\n

If you read Victoria’s \u201calternative\u201d publications (for example, Sid Tafler’s Monday Magazine opinion pieces) or listen to some of the candidates emerging from Community Associations, you’ve probably noticed a rhetoric of heightened partisanship.\u00a0 In some ways, this is to be expected.\u00a0 After all, if you stand on a street corner and shout, \u201cSunshine!\u201d, no one will pay much attention.\u00a0 But shout \u201cFire!\u201d and everyone comes running \u2013 even if that \u201cfire\u201d is the sun shining up in the sky.\u00a0 Wolves, fires, bad news: they always get attention.\u00a0 And as surely as newspapers need attention to sell, candidates need attention to get elected.<\/p>\n

Incumbent politicians know this, too.\u00a0 At a recent Committee of the Whole meeting, Councillor Pam Madoff warned that the current Council has developed (pardon the pun) a reputation for being developer-friendly \u2013 as if this were a dirty and dangerous flaw.\u00a0 The message was that some councillors weren’t doing enough to protect Victoria from developer predation.\u00a0 Rifts on council \u2013 and possibly among staff itself \u2013 are becoming painfully obvious.<\/p>\n

It’s easy enough to repeat the meme of \u201cpro-development\u201d councillors rubber-stamping proposals.\u00a0 But how can you draw attention for positive discourse that strengthens respect, listening, teamwork?\u00a0 Local papers report on council meetings where development proposals fail to pass, and the stories are peppered with quotes from community association members who skewer the city for even considering these proposals.\u00a0 Their solution?\u00a0 Prevent proposals from ever reaching council in the first place.\u00a0 Declared candidate and Fairfield Community Association rep Wayne Hollohan, responding to a recent tabling of a proposal to develop the Crystal Court Motel site, stated, “I don’t know what policy exists that this [building] doesn’t violate.” (Times-Colonist, Aug.15\/08)\u00a0\u00a0 This is a language that brooks no conciliation or teamwork.\u00a0 \u201cViolation\u201d draws a curtain on conversation, for it suggests that some councillors collude to violate an undefended city.<\/p>\n

Cities should, however, be robust enough to venture forth unchaperoned.\u00a0 But what’s a city?\u00a0 We must address that question and figure out what we are as a city.\u00a0 I’ll reveal my hand by stating what to me is obvious: a) we are a Canadian city of significant size as well as this province’s capital city; and b) failure is not an option for cities today.<\/p>\n

Cities compete.\u00a0 This is why they must be robust.<\/p>\n

They have to compete regionally, nationally, and internationally.\u00a0 Victoria shouldn’t pull up the drawbridge or get out of the game, as cities are far too important to regional and national economies.\u00a0 They are productive hubs where large numbers of people of all ages, with complex needs and contributions, gather, live, and work.\u00a0 This also means that their built form must maximize resources and extract the best efficiencies in land use, so that ecological benefits consequently are a byproduct of density.<\/p>\n

Density in turn supports complexity.\u00a0 That’s what cities do best, and it’s how they contribute to the well-being of economies and ecologies.\u00a0 For cities, change (as a function of complexity) is a constant.\u00a0 If they’re smart, change means they develop; if they’re dumb, they stagnate and decay.<\/p>\n

As a voter, I have to ask how comfortable our municipal leaders are in addressing urban growth and creative development.\u00a0 How familiar are they with the work of Jane Jacobs, who argued against centralized planning and in favour of organic growth as well as “webby” or networked economies that deal flexibly with import replacements and growth?\u00a0 Or the work of Alan Broadbent, who writes about the need to fund Canadian cities properly and to give them the tools that allow them to run with greater autonomy and independence?\u00a0 Or Richard Florida or Ed Glaeser, who make the case for creative economies?\u00a0 Consider, for example, that your purchase of gadgets like iPods validates not the metals and plastic in the device, but the design — its embodied creative, intellectual value.\u00a0 What this means is that the “creative class” or “knowledge workers” who create that value are more important than the raw resources that went into the product.\u00a0 These knowledge workers live in cities, including Victoria, as our growing technology sector proves.<\/p>\n

As a voter, I want to know what sort of competencies our elected municipal leaders demonstrate with regard to understanding regional\u00a0 economic contexts; understanding information and knowledge economies; understanding the potential of the creative classes, green urban development, and the need for density?\u00a0 How many are stuck in yesterday’s thinking, which says that density is equal to “slum” or “blight”?<\/p>\n

During a meeting between mayoralty candidate Dean Fortin and the Downtown Residents Association, Councillor Fortin declared that each additional storey on a building raises the crime rate and social problems.\u00a0 When pressed, it turned out that his opinion was based on reading just two University of Toronto reports about an out-of-date public housing project \u2013 hardly the stuff of contemporary urbanism!\u00a0 Councillor Fortin then volunteered Councillor Sonya Chandler’s opinion that high-rises are not a workable urban form because Peak Oil means that elevators will grind to a halt.\u00a0 This rather fanciful, and hardly realistic, view of urbanism just isn’t helpful.\u00a0 A more creative, versus fear-mongering, approach would foresee elevators running on alternative energy sources, generated by the high-rises themselves.<\/p>\n

One wonders: have some of our municipal leaders missed the message that densely built-up cities are in fact far \u201cgreener\u201d and better for residents than low-density development?<\/p>\n

It seems that the provincial government “gets it,” as shown by Bill 27 (see my August 2008 article), which explicitly asks cities to encourage density and compact growth.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in BC there’s always the danger that if “they” get it, then “we” have to oppose it, because partisan politics rule.\u00a0 But the fact is that at the local government level, partisan politics are simply stupid, and not smart at all: if you want to run a city, grow up and leave partisanship at home.<\/p>\n

And yet, consider our culture.\u00a0 Victoria has always attracted eccentrics.\u00a0 Whether they’re newcomers or homegrown entities, the city has attracted its fair share.\u00a0 That’s a good thing if you believe that eccentricities contribute to a city’s vibrancy, and that our ability to attract them speaks volumes about Victoria’s potential.<\/p>\n

But, and this is a huge but: Victoria fails to nurture respect for team-players.\u00a0 Look into our history and note how many creatives ended up leaving Victoria because the climate here wasn’t supportive.\u00a0 If someone wants to build a winning team, he or she will likely run a gauntlet of gainsayers who find reasons to nitpick the Great Idea until it lies in tatters on the ground.\u00a0 The cheering section for failure in this town is huge, and that needs to change.<\/p>\n

What’s wrong with winning, anyway?<\/p>\n

Well, winning usually means increased complexity and change.\u00a0 It’s that simple.\u00a0 Losing, on the other hand, means simplification, stasis, stagnation.\u00a0 Obviously, my support goes to complexity and change, which is why I would ask those who want to win in our next election whether they’re certain our city won’t lose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I wrote about “Victoria fail[ing] to nurture respect for team-players,” and that people who want to build a winning team have to “run a gauntlet of gainsayers who find reasons to nitpick the Great Idea until it lies in tatters on the ground” because “the cheering section for failure in this town is huge,” still stands. I was referring to the difficulties encountered by change-makers, not to Old Boys or to partisan politicos – those guys always seem to “work together,” albeit not for change, but for the status quo. Then I wrote, “and that needs to change”; three years on I doubt it will.<\/p>\n

This is Part 2; read Part 1 about my foray into the archives here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

DNA quadruplex formed by telomere repeats<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another article I wrote in the run-up to Victoria BC’s 2008 municipal election is worth re-reading as we head into the 2011 election season. The team we elected in 2008 really bombed. Will 2011 signal a change for the better?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1114,96,1002,1418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-politics","category-social_critique","category-victoria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4478,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions\/4478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}