While Vision Vancouver accuses the NPA of being influenced by Big Oil and the NPA accuses Vision of being influenced by Big Union, both are accused by the other parties of being influenced by Big Real Estate. COPE meanwhile has been accused of being influenced by Big Radicals and the Cedar Party, well...muscle cars? It’s unclear just who the Greens are guilty of being influenced by, but guessing from the populist rhetoric about development I’d wager to say that it’s Big Community. Big angry communities pissed off about development.
But who, in a less sensationalized sense, truly influences and inspires those who are running for a seat in City Hall? Which authors, urbanists, architects, activists or academics have wiggled into their hearts and minds and inspired them to create the platforms, policies, strategies or bylaws that they do? Can one even be inspired to make a bylaw? I suppose Mayor Robertson recently championing a change to bylaws that has allowed the craft beer industry to thrive in Vancouver was inspired by something; A trip to Portland probably.
In any event, over the past few weeks I’ve set myself a goal of tying to find out who, besides these afore mentioned usual suspects, influences and inspires our local politicians. There have been some surprising answers along the way.
I began this exercise a few weeks back when I wrote this first of three posts. In the time since then I’ve attended numerous debates and meet the candidates events and just straight up started asking them.
If you're in a hurry because you want to go vote, jump over to the 4th page for my condensed analysis of their answers.
Turns out that yes, these people are genuinely interested in cities, not just politics in the city, but the design, function, potential and the lived experience of people in cities. Here are a few of the responses I was able to gather.
Geoff Meggs shared with me a few different people whose ideas have been on his mind lately, but he mentioned late Vancouver City Councilor Jim Green first. Jim, in Meggs’ opinion, “combined a huge commitment to social justice with a practical attitude about how to build the city” It was interesting then that he went on to cite Charles Montgomery, Mike Davis and Saskia Sassen as three others who have been on his mind (and I’ll give Geoff credit here – his answers were the most unexpected and exciting. I give Mayor Robertson credit too for pulling out an more obscure one too, later.)
“We tend to look at regional scales as getting to be a pretty large scale perspective but she [Saskia Sassen] looks at the global scale and tries to understand how the global economy functions with cities. Charles Montogomery, Happy City is another one. I Really appreciate the way Montgomery thinks and writes about city design and how that related to the social experience of the city. Mike Davis, ecology of fear, is another stimulating book that looks at some of the same things. ” – Councilor Geoff Meggs on urban thinkers whose recent work has resonated with him.
In class the other day we actually got into a pretty serious discussion about Mike Davis, whose writing has been criticized for being sensationalistic and negative in its portrayal of lower income communities. Based on my (albeit fairly limited) reading of his stuff I have to agree. Having read a bunch of John Friedmann and Leonie Sandercock’s stuff at about the same time I found Davis’ ideas incredibly pessimistic in comparison, but mind you Friedmann is somewhat unabashed about being a utopian urban theorist. Davis’ portrayal of slums is something that particularly rubs me the wrong way, working in the DTES for the past 5 years, a place also categorized by certain others as a slum but a place with incredible passion, creativity, a will to organize and stand up for itself despite being filled with diversity and adversity. But the way he talks about a historical awareness of radical leftist movements in cities is kind of inspiring; Perhaps akin to some of the recent ideas of David Harvey (Rebel Cities) – who I might add nobody cited as an influencer or inspirer. Charles Montgomery I’ll comment on a bit later as Rob McDowell from the NPA cited him as being foremost on his mind in regards to urban thinkers.
Who loves Jane Jacobs?
Apparently everybody.
Related Content: Jane Jacobs. Gentrifier.
At the Mayoral debate hosted by CBC and SFU Urban Studies (way too) early Thursday morning Meena Wong threw down the Jane Jacobs card when I had a chance to ask her, Gregor Robertson and Kirk LaPointe about who has influenced the way that they think about cities in general and Vancouver in particular. She had poll position I might add. Jacobs’ son Ned of course lives in Vancouver and is a vocal critic of Vision Vancouver and the recent decisions made or processes engaged in by the City under Vision’s leadership. This was something not lost on me as Mayor Robertson agreed with Wong that Jane Jacobs’ was someone whose ideas he too appreciated. Kirk LaPointe too agreed that Jane Jacobs was worth noting.
Jane Jacobs was of course immortalized for her courageous stand against Robert Moses and modern, rational scientific planners, of the day. Moses famously quipped that sometimes "...when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax". His goal of building expressways and other thoroughfares through New York's older neighbourhoods was contingent on "slum clearances" of lower income communities. Jacobs organized her Greenwich Village neighbourhood and wrote the now canonical Death and Life of Great American Cities, an all out battle cry against the type of planning and development championed by the likes of Robert Moses. Jacobs argued that the merits of older, quaint, diverse neighbours had been unfairly characterized by the developers and planners of the day like Moses, and the rest is history.
In Vancouver a similar scene played out in my neighbourhood of Strathcona, in the latter half of the 1960s as Vancouver's mayor and council were set to put a freeway system similar to Seattle's through the heart of the city. The Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association rose up in defience of Tom Terrific Campbell, NPA Mayor at the time and against his Moses-esqu urban renewal plans. Which made it all the more ironic that Strathcona found itself embroiled once again in a battle with the City over the past year about how the Viaducts, the only remaining remnant of that freeway plan, should be taken down.
Fittingly, Green Party Candidate for City Council Pete Fry (Yes, Hedy Fry’s son) who is the Past Chair of the Strathcona Residents Association and Green Party Parks Board Candidate Mike Weibe also cited Jane Jacobs as someone whose ideas they look to as “the greenest building is the one that’s already built”. Fry and Wiebe emphasized this when discussing the rate of demolition of heritage homes and smaller single family housing in Vancouver. The human-scale development of low and mid-rise housing also being something they want to see more of. The fact that Fry has engaged UBC’s Patrick Condon for the past year or so to provide a second opinion on the built form chapter of the DTES Local Area Plan, inviting him to speak at a community forum when Fry was Chair of the SRA, further supports their purported allegiance to Jacobs’ ideas - at least insofar as they relate to the retention of the existing character of Strathcona (and other communities) in the face of higher density taller forms of development. Fry even noted past City of Vancouver City Planner Ray Spaxman as summing up “Vancouverism” (that tower pedestal driven urban form and flexible ad hoc value capture process that has now been exported around the world) as the ‘Bastard Child of Jane Jacobs and Le Corbusier’. Both Weibe and Fry also mentioned Charles Montgomery’s Happy City. Which brings me to NPA City Council Candidate Rob McDowell, a hell of a nice guy who appears to be living proof of Montgomery’s ideas.
Rob was featured in a Globe and Mail Article about Montgomery’s work. Turns out his experience living in a highrise tower was alienating and not too fun. Once Rob sold that unit and moved down to the townhouses below, where there was a courtyard and people playing volleyball and neighbours were just generally more engaged, his lived experience in Yaletown dramatically improved. He absolutely agrees that there’s a connection between urban design and built form and the emotional, social response of people in their communities. I bet many of the people living in SROs in the DTES would agree.
But let’s get back to the answers our Mayoral Candidates provided us at the CBC SFU Urban Studies debate.
Scholars of urban studies or urban planning were probably not all too surprised to hear Kirk LaPointe cite Richard Florida as someone whose ideas have influenced or inspired him when thinking about cities, and Vancouver in particular. My friends over at the Vancouver Economic Commission drank the Richard Florida Kool-Aid at least 6 of 7 years ago and if you ask me it’s partly why Vancouver’s tech and startup community has been booming in this past half decade. VEC is always on the hunt for space, for angel investors, for partnerships that can aid in the growth of this sector, and they should be proud of their work in this regard. This isn’t a bad thing, those are great jobs, but I’ve been critical of too much focus on high-tech and not enough on brick and mortar businesses, the range of SMEs that employ the vast majority of Vancouverites for the past few years. I’ve also been critical of the role they see tech playing in the context of the DTES local economy, but I’ll save that for another time. It’s worth noting that although Florida gets tomatoes thrown at him as a high priest of gentrification (metaphorical tomatoes) he has also come out calling for a higher minimum wage to ensure livability in cities like Vancouver.
LaPointe’s answer is not unexpected because it points to a focus on economic growth, in my opinion. I might have been more shocked if he cited good ol’ Logan and Molotch but Florida’s ideas about cities, innovation and the modern workforce (a workforce of culture consumers and place makers) is not at all out of the narrative that the NPA has put forward this election. Why are we scared about Kinder Morgan? It’s going to create jobs right? Florida is also someone that many would probably not have been surprised to hear Robertson cite too, but my SFU Urban Studies cohort felt pretty much across the board that Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida, despite being thought provoking and influential in public discoures, were both yawners. Pretty obvious choices, maybe even populist choices.
But Jan Gehl!!
Who the hell is that?
Jan Gehl is a highly respected, internationally renowned Danish Architect and urban designer whose focus is on pedestrian friendly (let’s say “active transportation friendly”) urban design and use of public spaces. His book Public Spaces, Public Life explores how Copenhagen has been steadily transformed over the past few decades to become an increasingly livable city powered by active transportation and active use of public spaces.
Here’s a nice little video his firm Gehl Architects did.
Gehl has studied how people move through and utilize or behave in public spaces for decades. He’s big on the idea “activity centres” and spaces between buildings. One of his principle ideas is that within a distance of 20 minutes any resident of a city should be able to make their daily needs, live, work, play etc. Here in Vancouver Vision has set a goal of promoting “walkable neighbourhoods” and has given priority to pedestrians. When we see street closures on Robson for giant bean bags or a public coral reef lounge area, when we see VIVA Vancouver funds or Neighbourhood Small Grants (Vancouver Foundation) going into micro-activiations of communities (like the now heavily anticipated Alley-Oke event that happens yearly in my neighbourhood of Strathcona) I think we’re seeing Jan Gehl’s ideas translating into policy and funding directives in Vancouver. From both the City and important partner funders like the Vancouver Foundation or Real Estate Foundation. Robertson’s answer of Jan Gehl seemed telling of how he sees the city, especially in light of all the funding that has gone into activating public spaces and into active transportation.
Here’s some relatively recent work Gehl Architects did for the City of Seattle if you read over it you’ll probably notice that a lot of the same principles can be found in City of Vancouver documents around the Transportation 2040 Plan and the Engaged City Task Force. Both initiatives under Mayor Robertson.
So, how do we summarize? And let’s agree that this is not an exhaustive examination of the party platforms while comparing them to great urban thinkers or current authors or academics. This is an exercise to get us thinking by hearing about what they themselves say they’re thinking about. Jane Jacobs, Charles Montgomery, Mike Davis, Saskia Sassen, Richard Florida, Jim Green, Jan Gehl. They could be influenced by far worse thinkers.
Here’s a super rudimentary snapshot summary that I feel relates to the party platforms if not at least the party rhetoric over the past few months.
Jane Jacobs, Charles Montgomery – concerned about the nature of development, siding with community organizers in Grandview-Woodland, Strathcona Marpole et al. tapping in to populist outrage about towers and affordability and gentrification and related issues (COPE, Green Party, NPA respondents - Pete Fry, Mike Wiebe, Rob McDowell, Meena Wong)
Richard Florida – The city as a centre of commerce and innovation. Educated and affluent workforce. Culturally rich and diverse city with plenty of amenities. Economy over environment? (Kirk LaPointe - although I'm still sure Robertson could've similarly noted Florida)
Saskia Sassen, Mike Davis, Charles Montgomery – Where cities are going, how cities are developing, class tensions, safety, fear, hope and happiness, social capital (creation or erosion of in relation to urban development and design) and cities in a global context. (Geoff Meggs, Vision Vancouver)
Jan Gehl – Healthy and animated public spaces, active transportation and pedestrian friendly cities. The importance of urban design and the relationship between the built environment and social activity in communities. (Gregor Robertson, Vision Vancouver)
If you have another analysis please share a comment below. Now that you know who influences these people GET OUT AND VOTE!