Last Saturday, the Planning Institute of B.C. made Darlene Marzari an honorary member of the Institute. In my rather fuzzy photo below, she’s there with Ken Cameron, previously the Strategic Planner for, as Ken insists, the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
Darlene was first a city councillor (or alderman, as they were called then) as part of the transformative TEAM councils beginning in 1972. She then became an NDP MLA in 1986 and, eventually, Minister of Municipal Affairs from 1993-96.
But there’s so much more to her story, some of which she conveyed in her remarks posted below, along with forceful remarks about what is needed now.
Darlene was first a city councillor (or alderman, as they were called then) as part of the transformative TEAM councils beginning in 1972. She then became an NDP MLA in 1986 and, eventually, Minister of Municipal Affairs from 1993-96.
But there’s so much more to her story, some of which she conveyed in her remarks posted below, along with forceful remarks about what is needed now.
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Thank you so much to the association. I thank you triply not just because of the honour you have granted me, but the time you have given me to think about what I really did over the last 50 years and a microphone to talk about it! I believe truly you are giving me this for what I DIDN’T do. And while I take about 15 minutes to thank my mentors friends and family, and go into a rousing rant for a plan for the city of Vancouver and call for people-centred planning and a strengthening of planning values that include and democratize and integrate community in all planning, I do want YOU to have time for sober second thought about whether the award is really warranted. I have to make a full disclosure here.
- I am not a planner. I’ m a social worker who trained in community development. I worked with communities to use their strengths to push government for services they needed. Margaret Mitchell and Nora Curry were my mentors who worked in the late 60’s with tenants in public housing and later in Strathcona. Both are thrilled since this award is a validation of their belief in community planning. They send their best regards to everyone but couldn’t come tonight.
- I didn’t do the social planning job I got when Maurice Egan hired me as a social planner in 1968. That job was to rationalize social services and incidentally to relocate hundreds of Strathcona families to elsewhere in the region since their houses were about to be demolished by Urban Renewal.
- In part due to the work I DID do (along with an army of others), 15 planners in Vancouver were fired and the Urban Renewal Plan was cancelled, a freeway never got completed and a community remained standing.
- The fact that I was NOT a planner and made trouble for planners propelled me into 18 years of political and community service.
I was NOT exactly a role model for top down planning: Didn’t do the job … played poorly with colleagues … was called on the carpet to Mr. Sutton Brown’s office (the omnipotent City Manager) and thanks to my boss … did not get fired. Twice.
No I don’t have a planning degree but I’ve travelled the road with the best and learned a huge amount.
Tony Benn, the British parliamentarian, said there are signposts and weather vanes. Weather vanes whirl around looking for which way the wind is blowing and adapt. Signposts show you the way based on good evidence and professional and personal values. This does not just apply to politicians. Marguerite Ford and May Brown (right) are both here tonight and both are still walking the walk of planning with people.
We served on the TEAM council that hired Ray Spaxman, who championed and integrated neighbourhood planning into the very fabric of the development process of what has come to be called Vancouverism. Hilda Symonds directed the City Planning Commission and sparked the Goals for Vancouver process which reached out to tens of thousands of people twice in the ’70’s for their ideas and priorities … without computers! Joyce Catliffe who followed her lead is also here tonight at the table we have dubbed the Broads of Variance or the Bowen Mafia.
This table holds the corporate memory of Vancouver planning for the last 40 years: Trish French, Rhonda Howard, Jackie Forbes-Roberts, Joyce Catliffe, May Brown, Marguerite Ford. You all remember Gerard Ferry (here tonight), chief planner at the GVRD, followed later by the indefatigable Ken Cameron. And of course, their predecessor Harry Lash, who constructed the public component of the first Livable Region Program in the ’70’s. It involved thousands of citizens in the first stages of taking planning to people at the regional level. Harry created the iconic public- planner-politician triangle of communication and interaction that built public interests into the plan. “You must take it on faith that (our attempts) teach no other lesson than this: people and the way they interact with one another, make all the difference”. (From Planning in a Human Way, page 86) All of these people, politicians and planners, were signposts for me as a politician.
Perhaps I may redeem my rep somewhat by saying the managed growth legislation my ministry brought in in 1996 legalized regional planning after it was outlawed by the socreds in the ‘80s … and the planning money that flowed from that just MAY have been used to hire planners to construct the twenty year planning forecasts and the inter and intra-regional agreements that were mandated.
Now that you know who my friends are and something about my redemptive legislation you may think more kindly about the award you’ve granted.
Being older means you can see patterns and trends. My husband used to quote Hegel: “The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering … when philosophy paints its grey on grey”. He said stuff like that! The meaning of an era can only be known when it is about to pass. We cannot go back, we cannot rejuvenate, we must move on but we have new knowledge. We move on knowing and hopefully learning from that knowledge. The owl knows.
I arrived in Vancouver 50 years ago when the Chinatown residential community was threatened by towers of social housing and a major freeway. Both were averted through community action. You’ve all heard the story. Shirley Chan and my partner in crime Mike Harcourt were part of the rescue team. Fifty years later, the commercial area of Chinatown is about to be (that lovely word) “facaded”, with towers for the wealthy growing out of its historic inner courtyards, and a six-lane road through Strathcona. On this one we’ve come full circle and it’s time to step off the merry-go-round with an owlish understanding about things changing and remaining the same!
The planner’s job is to help shape change with respect for culture and history and people. Planning in this instance shifted from a post war European model to a North American appreciation of the inner city core not to mention the newly recognized political power of the ethnic inner-city community. Even the federal government was at the planning table – CMHC, secretary of state … They were all there planning with the other levels of government and the residents. It was the feds that took the initiative and insisted on community involvement. Times have changed.
Today, west-side neighborhoods are being demolished and reshaped by international capital parking, hedging, and pushing prices to levels very few locals can ever afford. Our greenest city has watched a quarter of Dunbar go to the dump but to ask for planning expertise to develop the research, to look to the future, to mitigate the impact of the market forces, to advocate for a community that feels empty or covered in construction dust is to whistle into the wind. The first example, Strathcona, celebrated a major shift in planning practice; the second, Dunbar and the west side celebrates no planning at all. In fact, an aversion to planning.
What about a plan for the city, my friends? Bartholomew wrote one in 1928. The TEAM council worked on Local Area planning and a Downtown Core Plan and stitched them into a framework in the ’90s to feed into the Livable Region Strategic Plan. But since then there has not been an official plan for the city. Even the touted six-lane road that will replace the viaducts doesn’t have an overall context for the city or for the region. The expensive subway to UBC which we will undoubtedly get now doesn’t go to UBC. And if it IS built, the region’s needs might be ignored.
We do have huge planning issues in our town, but no plan. Piecemeal initiatives around specific developments but no plan. 138 acres of developable land at Jericho and not a word from the city about what it could look like. Did I say that we have no city plan yet? My email address is marzari at shaw dot ca. Please send me a note if you have thoughts on this matter. I will be discreet and only share them with people (some in this room) who want to invite you to a city lecture series about land use and planning issue.
So forgive me. I’ve been playing with you suggesting I don’t deserve the award. It is now in my hand and it is mine! My experience of learning from the past lets me know that we cannot recreate it, but in the last few weeks I have been part of three events that brought together developers, media, design professionals, students, planners, and community groups under the auspices of SCARP, SFU City Conversations and the City Planning Commission. They talked about the role of the new planner at the city…. oh sorry – the General Manager of Planning and Development Services. There is hope we may actually work towards a city plan. Have I mentioned that there is no city plan?
The last time a group like this came together and stayed to discuss issues in the city that was changing, a new political party was formed called TEAM. Who knows what might happen this time around if people who cared started talking to each other about land use planning, social planning and the importance of planning to a 21st century city undergoing massive change.
Planners can be and should be leaders, educators, researchers and truth tellers. They are central to the business of civic and regional governance. We have to follow Harry Lash’s lead with people, politicians and planners working towards a livable city and a liveable region that knows how to manage its growth. Brent Toderian said last week. “Don’t be so afraid of losing your job that you can’t do your job.” Larry Beasley recommended “planning audacity” assuming the new planner should be a planner, not a manager.
Change happens, we move on with new knowledge, but professional values remain true and responsibility to speak with one voice is what forges professional legitimacy. But you all know that. That’s what a professional institute is about and why you are here to support it.
So … social worker, planner…. It is about using our voice to serve the public, to work with communities for a better place and to speak truth to power. I ask with gratitude as a proud and new member of the BC Institute of Planners
Let’s continue to be a sign post!
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This is the first in an occasional series called “The Legacy” – the achievements and careers of those who shaped the city and region we have inherited.
Wow, what stirring, generous and encouraging words from a true hero of Vancouver!
For interested millenials, seeking to complete the history in addition to the ‘rosy’ part above (and for what happened -outside- of Vancouver), you’ll find that Marzari also presided over the most reckless downloading to BC municipalities (especially with enviro protection), many of which had immense areas of sensitive landscapes and suddenly no resources to manage the regulatory sphere, while the NDP gov’t kept the taxes collected. Yes, the early 90s had notable increases in environmental protection in remote, Crown-owned resource lands (e.g. Forestry & Mining codes), and a big push to expand provincial parkland, suburb and rural areas were abandoned. BC enviro officers – particularly for riparian matters – were strangled (some required to review and monitor land-use activities covering millions of hectares), forcing loc gov’ts who were told that “you can manage all you want, you just have to pay for it yourself.” Islands Trust severely impacted. Support for flood protection vanished, and many more sectors. Do your homework, there’s a reason it was called the Lost Decade.
Provincial roads and highways were ‘declassified’ so that small communities with many kms were on the hook for maintenance, and major infrastructure deficits set in. It wasn’t just costs that were downloaded, the 1990s prov gov’t systematically identified hundreds of areas of ‘risk mgmt’ and downloaded liability to communities. Insurance costs skyrocketed. Former revenue sharing (unconditional grants) was denied, and vanished in 1995, only to be gradually restored starting in 2002. The 90s also saw the massive ‘de-institutionalizing’ of mental health care, immense savings which were instantly pocketed by the NDP gov’t and the human effects of which are devasting lives and communities to this day.
Oh, those were the days!
You have a great sense of timing, sir.