Planners of Vancouver: Novae Res Urbis report

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As Vancouver’s chief planner, Brian Jackson, leaves his post at the end of this week, four of his predecessors made frank comments last week while evaluating city hall’s planning climate over the last three years. Although they rarely mentioned his name or his position, Ray Spaxman, Ann McAfee, Larry Beasley and Brent Toderian made it clear that Jackson’s successor must be able to do things differently.
While they talked at length about the need to improve the process of public engagement, the city’s former directors of planning also said the relationship with city council has to change. But they also had strong words about now-departed city manager Penny Ballem for controlling staff and stifl ing independence, and some expressed optimism that things could improve not only with the right head planner, but also a new city manager. Moderator Gordon Price, who described the SFU event as “past planners discussing the city’s future,” said there needs to be a discussion on what kind of “culture of planning” the city
The former head planners all agreed that their new successor needs to work once again with his or her staff as a team and also be involved with the region on planning. Th ey also talked about the political climate and the now corporate structure at city hall.

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A GOOD LISTENER AND LEADER
But above all, they said, the new chief planner must be able to listen to the public and not be afraid to speak out and be truthful.
“I don’t know if we’re all ready to write some kind of manifesto to send to city council about the chief planner,” said Beasley, who was co-director of planning from 1994 to 2006. “But I do believe that the ability of the planner to be able to speak her or his mind honestly, directly is important. I actually think it’s more important out in the community as well as at council.”
Toderian (director of planning from 2006 to 2012) said he had worked in a climate where disagreeing with the leadership had been discouraged. “Th at doesn’t stop you from saying the right thing, you still say it, you still do it, you still act on principle and you do your job,” he said. “And you’re never so afraid to keep your job that you don’t do your job.”
McAfee (co-director with Beasley) said the person who is hired must first listen and then lead. “I certainly think the new planner needs to learn about Vancouver and some of the directions … and listen particularly to the community, who is very knowledgeable, and then lead in some of the new directions that will try and make sure that Vancouver remains one of the most livable and sustainable cities in the world,” she said.
Beasley called for “a person who inspires, a person who goes out and fights for that planning. A person who establishes that it’s necessary, not wait for some politician to tell you they want it. “I want a planner in this town who has a vision for this place, who has a vision for great cities, who knows what good cities are about, who knows when it doesn’t work and will push that forward and inspire all those planners in that organization that he or she leads to do the best possible work they can do.”
Spaxman (director of planning from 1973 to ’89) indicated that council will have to sort through a number of attributes to find a new planning leader. “Th ey have an opportunity now to do something very profound and that is, bring a planner in who is a planner,” he said. “How do you pick a leader? A leader has to have a combination of human skills, leadership skills, communications skills and the ability to handle a council, which is tricky business, but it is changing. “I think federal, provincial, regional, city political systems are changing. People have had enough. Th ey’re feeling it. I think the last election proves there’s a wind of change and we can catch that wind.”

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PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Beasley, who said Vancouver has not had proactive planning in the last few years, called for a renewed commitment to public engagement in planning in Vancouver. “We have to let the city be the result of that public engagement, not just a little bit of window dressing on the side, which I think it has become,” he said, add that what works is collaboration and partnership with residents. “But what I think doesn’t work is when you go out and talk to people and they all develop a plan and then it goes back to city hall and city hall says no, it’s not good enough and we’ll just do what we want to. “Then people feel upset, angry. They feel abused.”
He also said the chief planner needs to be a good communicator. “It frightens me when I’m invited as an old has-been codger from the past over to a neighbourhood because no one in the planning department or the director of planning will come and talk to them,” he said. “No one will tell them how the process might work. No one will listen to them, and then you have processes where everything happens and no one is around and then the planners decide to do something else.”

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THE REGION
Both Toderian and Spaxman talked about the new head planner also having a regional role and needs to deal with bigger political realities. “But a lot of the city-making and the region-making that seems to be done right now is being done by provincial ministers, it seems, or by the premier,” Toderian said. “When you look at impacts of issues like the transit referendum or decisions being made right now about the future of the ALR that are fundamentally aff ecting the nature and future of our region, not just our city  “I think it’s a legit question to ask about whether we still care about strong, smart planning in this region, whether it’s still part of our identity. I’m quite nervous about that.”
Spaxman agreed. “And that’s because the primary impact on this city is going to come at a much higher level than the city’s concerns,” he said. “And if we don’t get in harmony with the Metro planning organization, and if they don’t get themselves organized, too, we shall be facing disasters from globalization, economic, environmental and social changes that are far bigger than homelessness or converting the residential areas.”

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THE CORPORATE CLIMATE
The panel discussed the fact that the city is also now looking for a new city manager, and commented on how former manager Ballem may have affected planning.
Spaxman said that while she may have been hired as a strong manager to help the city out of financial difficulties at the Olympic Village, “she waved her fingers at everybody because she was the only one who knew anything.” He said he had been at meetings where “Brent would be told to shut up because it wasn’t council’s policy. So what that did was denigrate the whole of the staff .”
Toderian, the only one of the four to have been fired, agreed “that city manager was the real author of an entirely different culture at city hall. “And it was the city manager that created a culture of don’t disagree, or else you will pay the price, keep your head down, there’s only one smart person in the room and it’s not you. “And there is an opportunity now for this Vision council, that’s been in place for quite a while, to realize that staff really are on their side and nobody’s trying to keep them from being the political leaders they want to be, but we’re a team. Staff and council are a team.”
McAfee said the “really interesting council priorities” had been led by planning department or co-managed with other departments. “Today those exciting projects — I call them fun projects — are being managed out of the city manager’s offi ce — housing, housing projects, the greenest city initiative, a lot of the intergovernment relations,” she said. “So there is a question about what the planning department has left on its plate that council’s interested in.” She also observed that the director of planning had been renamed the general manager of planning and development.
“Now this is quite different from what Larry and I were,” she said. “We weren’t a general manager. General manager means you sit at the corporate management table. “I’m concerned about the general manager having time taken away from planning.” She also said development had been handled by other departments at city hall. (Planning and development were brought together in the last few years partly to provide a one-stop service to builders, developers and others seeking permits.)

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ROLE OF CHIEF PLANNER
Toderian and Beasley talked about how dynamic the role of chief planner should be. “Many city halls out there want their planners to be quiet, want their planners to go along with the political will, to play the game of credit and blame, instead of being politically independent,” Toderian said.” And I think our Vancouver city hall has to ask themselves that question now, what kind of planner do we want?”
He also aimed directly at Jackson for his complaints over comments by former planners. “We have to crush this narrative that’s been started recently that ex-planners should shut up,” he said, adding that he had “tremendous respect for the work that the people before me had done.
“The past planners are critical of some of the things the new planners are doing. And our current chief planner, at least for another week, has said this is a real problem. “So this narrative that the past planners should shut up, I’ve got a real concern about. I appreciate that past generations still cared so much about this city that they are still highly engaged and got upset about things that moved too far away from principles or what have you.”
Beasley argued that the planning that a city does “is determined in large measure by the audacity and aggressiveness and the intelligence of the planners who do the planning. “When you are a planning leader who says things that are compelling, when you are a planning leader who says things that people believe in, when you are a planning leader who listens carefully so your voice is the voice of a bunch of people you’ve heard from, you become a very compelling force in a democratic political process,” he said. “And that’s what I feel we need to get back to and that’s what I feel we’ve lost and we haven’t seen that in recent times. “I’m not blaming anyone, I just haven’t seen it.”
 

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