SE a

Vancouver

Vision for ‘people’s city’

emerges at COPE meeting

Participants at a community directions
conference watched as members of a hous-
ing workshop stacked empty boxes, waiting
for the moment when gravity took over and
the cardboard edifice teetered and tumbled.

“That’s what happens when developers
take over city planning,” they were told in
one of several unique workshop reports at
the conclusion of the two-day event spon-

sored by the Committee of Progressive”

Electors.

Unique and unusual are the words to
describe the COPE Community Directions
conference which drew more than 200 par-
ticipants from dozens of civic groups May
25-26. “A process” was the term given by
recently elected COPE president Sadie
Kuehn concerning a meeting which pro-
duced no resolutions or specific plans of
action.

Instead, participants, who applauded an
inspirational talk by Toronto reform
alderman Jack Layton opening the confer-
ence, spent the business part of the meeting
getting to know each other and outlining
their vision ofa city. A vision that counters,
positively, that of the big-money crowd cur-
rently running many of Canada’s urban
centres.

Acknowledging that civic reformers hive
been labelled, “‘nattering nabobs of negati-
vism,” Layton stressed a program of what
might be termed urban environmentalism

~ to COPE members and community acti-
vists in the audience.

His vision of neighbourhood control
over planning, parks, the arts and other
facets of civic development won rounds of
applause from Vancouver progressives
seeking to found new alliances, in part for
this fall’s civic election, but also for the
longer term.

The Toronto city alderman, whose pro-
gressive slate captured a majority of council
seats in 1988, stressed three points he called
fundamental for a program of new vision

for cities: that the fate of the earth lies in the
cities of the world and their governments;
that “we must replace the vision of cities
based on the bottom line — the almighty
dollar — with a new vision ... based fun-
damentally on health in its deepest sense;”
and the necessity of community action.

Right now Toronto council progressives
are seeking to re-open a deal whereby the
city’s previous council virtually gave away
valuable rail lands on the waterfront to
giant realters like Marathon, Layton related
in noting the century-old history of collu-
sion between councils and corporations.

It underscores the fact that there are “two
visions” of a city, in which the monied class
does well while exploiting service-sector
workers earning low wages and facing hous-
ing crunches, noted. But, “we don’t have to
accept their vision, and we don’t have to
accept the consequences of their vision. We
can define a new vision for a new city,”
Layton insisted.

In presenting the alternate vision, Layton
quoted a document from a Toronto com-
munity organization urging readers to
“imagine a city where, instead of making
decisions based exclusively on economic
interests, all decisions, including those
about: development, are based on their
overall impact on the social and environ-
mental nature of the city.

“Imagine neighbourhoods where com-
munities know what industrial processes are
going on around them, where they can have
some say in what chemicals are used ....

“Imagine a city which provides a home
for all of its citizens, and which sees itself as
an agent of social change.” °

Right now, Layton warned, “cities are
the main source of damage to the environ-
ment.”

Cutting back dramatically on the use of
cars will help the urban environment, but
that must be accompanied by increasing the
effectiveness of public transportation, Lay-

ton suggested. “‘Don’t do it so the rich can
still afford to use a car while the poor get
crowded into inadequate urban transit.”

Citizens want to have control over their
city and progressive civic governments are
those that recognize this, he advised.

“We need reform and to do that we have
to make health, in its broadest, most fun-
damental sense, the basis,” of a civic reform
program, Layton asserted.

The conference’s air of unconventional-
ity was reflected in the structure of work-
shops, in which organizers rejected the issue
approach — housing, transit — in favour
of broad topics like urban growth, munici-
pal autonomy, urban environment and “the
inclusive city concept.”

The latter showed the concern that big-
business civic groups, such as Vancouver’s
ruling Non Partisan Association, are creat-
ing “executive cities” which exclude those of
more modest incomes.

“In the elitist vision of the city, there is a
premium placed on being exclusive. Exclu-

’ sivity means power, privilege, status. An

exclusive home or car, an exclusive jet-set
holiday, an exclusive restaurant — these set
you above the common herd,” read the

statement to the conference entitled, Vision -

of the City.

Workshops produced calls for local citi-
zens councils, vastly increased — and
free — public transit, a tax on land specula-
tion, rent controls, the preservation of
affordable secondary suites and related

’ issues. Environmental themes were strong,

reflected in emphases on recycling and
strong pollution controls.

Some of those positions are familiar in
reform circles, but the manner of presenta-
tion was different. One workshop reported
how participants formed a “human sculp-
ture” to express concerns about control and
empowerment. The report on growth used
the boxes to demonstrate how a neighbour-
hood working with an experienced planner

ALD JACK LAYTON ... cities today

hostile to environment.

could rescue environmentally sensitive
development from the jaws of unregulated,
profit-oriented construction.

COPE parks commissioner Pat Wilson
and environmentalist Arnie Thomlinson of
the United Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union — co-ordinators of COPE’s task
force on environment — urged civic acti- |
vists to get involved in the six working
groups which will get together in late June
and give a report at a September confer-
ence.

“Today, we’ve been learning and strateg-
izing on how we’ll regain the power”
usurped by big business in the city, COPE
alderman Libby Davies told the partici-
pants in a closing speech.

The conference was “not a conclusion,
but a beginning of a process, a dialogue to
bring strength back to the people of Van-
couver,” she said.

If there’s one thing that unites the
majority of Vancouver citizens today, it’s
concern and worry over the rapid pace of
development and the kind of city Van-
couver is becoming. It’s increasingly
apparent to concerned citizens that the
Non Partisan Association and the devel-
opers, both foreign and domestic, have
only one aim and that is to turn Van-
couver in an exclusive city for the
wealthy — and the rest of us be damned.

The feeling is growing that the develop-
ers are getting it all their own way, that
decisions about the direction the city will
take are being made in corporate board-
rooms and that our NPA-dominated city
council has just become a rubber stamp
for the developers. These citizens have
learned from their own experience. They
are particularly incensed by NPA actions
or inactions over the following:

@ When tenants pleaded with city
council to stop developers from demolish-
ing perfectly good affordable housing to
make way for expensive housing (with the
consequent eviction of tenants), the NPA
refused.

@ When homeowners asked our NPA-
dominated city council to do something to
stop developers from tearing up existing
housing, trees and lawns in well estab-
lished neighbourhoods to make way for
the construction of big, ugly, garish

“Vancouver specials” — buildings that
do not blend in any way into the
neighbourhoods — the NPA did nothing.

@ When citizen delegations demanded
city council compel Li Ka-shing (the Hong
Kong billionaire who was given the Expo
86 lands for practically nothing) to build a
substantial amount of social, affordable

housing on these lands, the NPA refused
and settled for a few crumbs.

@ When citizen delegations demanded
that city council compel the CPR to
include a substantial amount of social,
affordable housing in its huge Coal Har-
bour ‘development, the NPA again
refused.

Then there is the failure of the NPA to
deal responsibly with the illegal suite issue.
The huge number of illegal suites in the
city indicates the extent of the need for

A look at the NPA’s sorry housing record

affordable housing. The official figure is
28,000; the actual figure could be as high
as 40,000.

NPA policy has been: (a) to take neigh-
bourhood votes on the issue, which only
divides neighbours and neighbourhoods
and solves nothing; (b) compel basement
suites to meet standards that neither the

‘Harry

Rankin

landlords nor tenants can afford, therefore
reducing affordable suites still more; (c)
rezoning neighbourhoods from RSI to
RSIS which allows duplexes to be built
that are really illegal suites in disguise.
On top of all this, the NPA has done
nothing to provide affordable housing.
Mayor Gordon Campbell’s scheme, VLC
Properties — in which $50 million worth
of city land was turned over to a private
developer to build affordable housing —
has turned out to be a flop. The promise
was that by the end of 1990 some 1,200 to

2,000 units would be completed. Now it
turns out that only 50 will be completed
and these will be at much higher rents than
those projected.

It’s no wonder that disillusionment with
the NPA is today widespread among
voters. It’s no wonder also that the NPA is
beginning to develop strains and cracks
within its own ranks. Its staunch suppor-
ter, Carole Taylor, the so-called ‘“inde-
pendent” who was in charge of the NPA’s
illegal suite policy, is throwing in the
sponge. She sees the handwriting on the
wall. NPA alderman Jonathan Baker is
becoming more and more disenchanted
with the NPA and often votes against it on
council. The NPA is beginning to feel the
heat of public resentment.

In sharp contrast, the popularity of the
Committee of Progressive Electors, which
has» worked with and supported citizen
groups on these issues, is growing. Citizens
have learned that COPE backs up its
words with action.

The possibilities for progressive change
in the November civic elections are good.
The challenge facing COPE and all those
who want a change at city hall is build up
the kind of alliances around a progressive
program that will ensure that next
November the NPA is replaced with
aldermen who really speak for and fight
for citizen needs.

2 « Pacific Tribune, June 4, 1990

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