From Barbara Yaffe’s column, just posted on the Sun’s website – an interview with departing chief planner Brian Jackson.
Jackson believes the next city planner — still unchosen — may have to fight fire with fire and start doing battle with the naysayers online.
Jackson also questions the ethics of former planners who issue catcalls from the sidelines long after they have left the city’s employ. He won’t name names, but says: “There is an extraordinary interest from former planners in Vancouver, in continuing to comment on what’s going on in the city. It does not happen in any other city I’m familiar with. It crosses the line.”
Jackson says the level of scrutiny he has received is “unprecedented,” and points to two development issues that caused particular grief: the community plan for Grandview-Woodland, and proposals for a new tower adjacent to the downtown railway station on Cordova.
Given that we’ve been featuring the comments of past city planners this week on PriceTags – and the SFU City Program gave them a major platform (to which Jackson was invited) – does he nonetheless have a point? Many professions, notably architecture, discipline their members if they harshly critique their colleagues.
And no doubt, criticism from the sidelines does make life more difficult for those who have to balance many conflicting priorities, not to mention the constraints imposed by their political masters (not to mention the city managers). Information can be confidential; liability is an issue. And response to critics would imply decisions have already been made, even when the consultation is still underway.
So should that line not be crossed?
Seriously? Professional planners, who are retired and therefore free to speak their minds, should not comment when they think planning in the city, or in a particular area, has gone astray? We should not allow public comment by people who have spent their careers in planning, and are most intimate with how decisions are made, who influences who, and what they think works best for the city? The public is incapable of parsing their opinions and deciding who they agree with, and what they prefer?
Or do we just accept the advice of someone who is settling scores on his way out?
I get it that the architects’ professional association will discipline members who speak ill of another’s work. That’s called protecting the family’s business.
To be fair, Mr. Jackson never said retired planners shouldn’t be able to speak their minds. He just said it was annoying. But it is a strange thing to complain about for a person about to retire. It’s natural to speak up if you feel your career’s work is being undermined by your successors. I read this article and couldn’t help wondering if Mr. Jackson would keep his public mouth shut when the new planning chief makes a decision he disagrees with.
You can easily find recent critical commentaries by Peter Rees who retired after 29 years as the chief planner in London.
I don’t see the rational why some citizen should not be able to voice their opinion on the city under the pretext they are former urban planner, but we should consider this as an opinion with no more weight than another one (after all urban planner, as a profession, doesn’t shine by its tracking record)
However, I have noticed the debate on the future “urban planner chief” whose should have “vison, courage, leadership…blah…blah…”
They were describing in fact Baron Haussman!
Well, Haussman, did certainly great thing in Paris, but nowadays, Paris elect a city council, and vision, courage and leadership is expected from its lectected official not of some appointed civil servant (whic in fact most parisian ignore the name)
At the last city election, the then mayoral candidate Hidlago presented her vision of some urban renewval
Below is her vision for Place de la Bastille, presented on the campaign trail
http://s2.lemde.fr/image/2014/01/25/534×0/4354560_7_e2b3_vue-aerienne-de-la-place-de-la-bastille-selon_dc73939042cd9057dd6c3e8ac3d0c3c8.jpg
an urban renewval vison with no car, no surpirse!
planners are civil servant, asked to make reality the vision for which the citizen have voted for. They are not asked to have the “courage” to impose their own “Vision”
What about doing the same in Vancouver?
What is the Council’s vision for the Waterfront station precicnt?
What is the council’s vision for the Braadway COmmercial station prcinct?
The day the planners decide in a backroom what is good for the city should be over: Vancouver doesn’t need of a planner who has the “courage” to bring out his own “vision”
(eventually making a mockery of the consultation process).
Vancouver needs a council which provide an urban vison, display courage and leadership.
There is no reason it can’t do in urban matter: The current council has been able to provide a “vision” for the bike lane, and “courage” to enable it: Civil servants such as Jerry Dobrovny or Lon Laclaire and their team delivered the vision: they did good work (except for the buses, because Vision doesn’t care)…we just need people like it.
…and the last thing Vancouver needs is a civil servant tweeting his own personal opinion for the city…
I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem when individuals voice their concerns, but when they do so en masse in a letter signed by the whole group, its a bit like a lynch mob out to get you.
i.e. See letter here:
https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/an-open-letter-to-city-council-on-the-future-of-our-downtown-waterfront/
Of course it’s up to staff to consider or not the relative opinions raised, but these come from experts in the field, so there is more pressure to value their weight than other pseudo-authorities.
(i.e. as opposed to, on transportation matters, the “Light Rail Committee” or “Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission” – 2 self-appointed groups with misleading names suggesting governmental authority).
The underlying question is – how can you effect change or evolution when the retired players in the background are “bullying” you to maintain the status quo or their, perhaps, dated thinking?
Mr. Jackson laments an age old problem where by public sector workers who once worked for the public interest become private sector workers gaming the system while pretending to work for the public good. They are not working for the public good, they are working for themselves.The motivations are many from nimby consulting to legacy building to profiteering, and none of it is in the public interest.
Also referred to as free speech. That is not OK anymore ? Every person has an opinion, some more valid than others. As long as they don’t pretend to speak for an organization, I think any person ought to be able to speak their mind, even offend people. The right to offend needs to be respected the same as the right to not listen, or selectively listen.
Many ex-city officials probaly have a very good understanding of what is doable and what is not – or what was well done and what was not as they know the skeletons in the closet – and their view often very valuable as they do not have to fear backlash from an overly politicized council trying to get re-elected as tehir pension is secure, unlike perhaps a newly minted 35 year old city planner that can be fired, and as such has to be more careful what she/he says !
jolson, I know one of these ex-planners and his wife personally, and your conjecture — more accurately, projecting — of what you think their motives are is insulting. They are completely devoted to their work and live by their principles. They don’t own a car and use transit exclusively, even with a young family.
The ex-planning directors have had extensive international work based on their 40-year collective reputations for fostering unique planning achievements in Vancouver light years ahead of any other city in the Metro, and most North American cities of its size and age. You would think with the issues we face today (affordability, land planning, environment …) you would welcome their experienced voices.
You really don’t know what you are talking about.
So Jackson will not be awarded any honorary memberships. Gone are the days when elders were to be respected as wise. The young turks are now the bosses.
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/CITIES/CITIES.html
The management-level planners are commonly exempt from union membership and work exclusively under a contract with the city that employs them. People who criticize their $140,000+ salaries perhaps do not understand what the term “magaging” really means with respect to overseeing the work of hundreds of people, answering to council at any time day or night, negotiating hard with developers every day, trying to keep up with the sheer volume of project applications and policy intiatives, and attending several public meetings a week, many of them heated. Their contract usually bars them from commenting on the terms of the contract and on personnel, but certainly not from constructively criticizing the direction the city seems to be taking on key developments and policy.
I am reminded of federal scientists who were gagged by the Conservatives until last week. Some of them were fired for speaking out, and others waited until retirement before opening up. David Hughes, a now-retired geoscientist who spent 30+ years with the Geological Survey and Earth Sciences Canada, started publishing extremely detailed, informed and evidence-based analyses of the oil and gas supplies and production in the US and Canada and published several reports that call into question the rosy picture painted by industry and government. He started noticing patterns with the stats years back while still employed, but knew he couldn’t widely broadcast his findings until he retired.
Our ex-planners have every right to draw attention to the direction current planners and decision-makers are taking if they feel it’s wrong. Planning a city is a public function and is fair game to critics, including ex-planners, as long as it is professional. If the city attemts to gag ex-planners through their contract to the extent they can’t say anything for 50 or whatever years after they leave the city, then that contract ain’t worth signing with an administration that could, under a simiilar attitude, attempt to impose anything. The city and the public would do well to listen and heed their advice. In speaking up they are putting any future professional relationship with the city on the line, but that risk may be worth it if they can effectively influence wrong-headed directions like allowing something as imposing and inappropriate as the Origami Tower to proceed.
MB; Well then we shall have to conclude that poor Mr. Jackson has succumbed to the principled voices of the righteous if your argument is to be taken seriously.
Ever heard the phrase ‘arm-chair planning?” That’s what they’re doing when they retire. It’s comfy, safe chair. No accountability. And from it it, you can through all sorts of things, like a slimy tennis ball for the dog to fetch.