The Nanaimo Way
Dan Appell: Sept. 19, 2013
In large part this little rant was inspired by a presentation given by Todd Latham titled “Rejuvenating our cities” and sponsored the “Inspire Nanaimo” group.
I love this city. After spending far too long a summer in Calgary, I’ve returned to realize that I love this city more than I thought I did. This new realization; this change of perspective has softened my view towards the ‘Nanaimo way‘ of doing things. Where before I found myself frustrated by this unique approach, these days; at least for now, I’m more bemused.
We’re all familiar with the ‘Nanaimo way‘ of doing things, so I won’t describe it with too much detail. We all know there is a ‘right way’ to do things, and there is a ‘wrong way’ to do things, and there is a way to do things to ensure that everything is ‘F-d up’ completely, and then there is the ‘Nanaimo way.’ The Nanaimo way can be best described as the willingness to do more, spend more time, more energy and more resources to ‘F-‘ things up completely. In short, we do way more then we need to do to ‘F-‘ things up completely.
My first real exposure to this process was with the development of our conference centre, and the latest example is the Colliery Park Dam fiasco. In between there was the Pacifica development, the Overall Community Plan, various neighbourhood plans, the boat basin, the Port shopping centre, Diana Krall Plaza, the Downtown Business Association arrangement, downtown parking policy, the conference centre hotel, and, well, the list is a long one. My interest is planning and development so my list focuses on that stuff. People who have other interests have equally long lists of other kinds of stuff.
I do realize that this description is flawed. I’m making it look like the participants are doing something intentional. They are not. They are all well meaning, hard working, good people trying to do good things. Its just that they are so thoroughly committed to a flawed process, and they are so grimly determined to seeing the process through to the bitter end, that it looks intentional. Even when it becomes clear to everyone that the result is going to be one massive screwup, the proponents will push harder just to get it over and done with. So, I suppose, they can move on to the next mess.
The sad thing is, we are all resigned to this. Proponents and opponents both seem to agree, ‘this is our way of doing things,’ and we are all too small and insignificant to do much about it. All my friends are telling me not to get my hopes up with this up-coming transportation master plan. Yes, I can already see that train going off the track. They tell me not to expect anything much from the South Downtown Development plan. Yes, its early days, but we all know this will all end with a massive bill to the taxpayer and an argument over where to put the parking lot for the multiplex. We sit around in our coffee shop in some fatalistic funk knowing that our feeble imaginations cannot begin to comprehend how completely ‘F-d up’ these noble initiatives will become.
But I do have hope. Its a tiny, sliver of golden hope, probably less than the dimension of a micron. I stubbornly cling to it. My friends think I’m crazy and my opponents think I’m an idiot . . . or is it the other way around? Doesn’t matter, I still have hope. I really do believe that we can change the way we do things so that we can get a better result.
The solution is as simple as it is radical. We must stop employing our planners and designers to go out and find solutions that are acceptable to a majority of people. First; these solutions don’t exist. If we think we have a solution that is acceptable to the majority of people, then we are wrong; its either not a solution or its not acceptable to the majority of people. Finding a consensus is an impossible task. We are paying people, to commit their lives to going out into their community to find a consensus that isn’t there, and it will never be there. The only consensus that can be found revolves around the status-quo. There is always too much risk associated with change to make change an acceptable option to a majority of people. If all we are doing is promoting the status-quo, then we are all agreeing to bury are heads in the sands of change. The planners and designers are doing their best job. It’s just that they are not doing the right job. Right now, the best they can do is find something that looks like a solution but isn’t, or recommend a real solution that nobody will accept.
We need to employ our designers and planners to finding the most efficient solutions. These are the solutions that employ, overall, the least amount of effort, the least amount of resources, and produce the best and greatest result. These solutions can be illustrated, quantified and promoted. That’s the job of professional planners and designers. They don’t have to find a solution that is acceptable, they just have to find the best solution for each and every problem. From there it is up to the leadership to build a consensus around these real and good solutions.
Consensus is not something to be found. It must be made. Norm Chomsky is right; consensus is created, it is built, it is “manufactured.” If we are trying to build a consensus around bull shit for solutions then we are putting too much effort into something that is going to “F-” things up. Even if its a lot of work at the beginning, and requires more effort up front; doing something because it is a real solution, because it will work, because it creates the greatest amount of efficiency is the only way this city can grow, adapt and prosper.
My sliver of golden hope, as small as it is, is that the we can change how we do things and ‘the Nanaimo way‘ can become the best way to get things done.
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
My name appears under the title because the system, recognizing that I am inputting in, puts it there. I will try to find out how to overcome this problem. In the meantime The article, in full and unedited by me, is the work of Dan Appell who has also previously graced this blog with his observations.
Ron Bolin
Well said Dan . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/rogerkemblesnr/curitiba/curitiba.html
. . . the twenty-first century has already given Nan a pass!
But Dan sooner or later you must put up or shut up. Name calling has limits although I concur with much of what you just wrote.
But all that does is make the over-paid, under qualified, untalented people at city hall curl up into a defensive ball.
Please put your ideas into easy to understand graphic form: you are very good at sketching.
Show us the city as how you see its healthy future. Give us hope.
A very daunting task you ask of me. In the past I have endeavoured to give examples of how this approach can be applied; I wanted to illustrate the ease of it. I suppose I will continue to do so as time and energy permits.
My thesis, I guess, is that we start by asking the most interesting questions. For example; ‘What is the most productive use for the Wellcox property?’ and then what is the most expedient way to achieve that productivity?’ Those are interesting questions and doubt I have a whole answer. Just a pretty good partial answer. From that partial answer a really good and more complete answer can be created by other contributions that add to the solution to the first two questions. Would be contributors who don’t address those first two questions ought just be ignored.
I know there are some weakness in my thesis. It revolves around the inability to grasp the true nature of efficiency. One can start by asking the wrong questions. For example; We learned that there is a risk associated with the dams on the Chase River. In response some of our weaker minded leadership decided to resolve the issue with expediency by asking the question; “What is the most efficient way to remove those dams?” Those dams represent a priceless historic, social, and cultural asset. The right question is, “What is the most efficient way to maintain those dams and mitigate the risk?” Only a fool would destroy a priceless asset to avoid the cost of mitigating risk (especially a risk as small as the one associated with those dams).
The transportation plan illustrates the usefulness of asking the right questions. For over 80 years we’ve tried to resolve the wrong questions concerning transportation; “How do we build a city that better accommodates motor vehicles?” (Remember we had a very large consensus address that question). Instead we should have been asking, “What is the most efficient mode of transportation and how do we design a city that encourages its use?” Now we have a much more difficult question to answer; “How do we convert a city designed for cars to one that is designed for the more efficient forms of transportation?” Any solutions that address this last question are relevant and useful, any other discussion or decisions to do with transportation planning are simply irrelevant and useless. Can you imagine the kinds of solutions that will be delivered if we went out seeking a consensus on the mode of transportation we should be supporting? I can guarantee they will not be real solutions.
My hope is to put our leadership and those that support them into a mindful framework that could actually solve some of the problems associated with living in this city. At the moment its a very slim sliver of hope. Its not much, but its all I have to give.
How do you plan a future for a city that has been going in the wrong direction for decades?
How do you plan to conquer the two forces that drive it ; the developers & the public sector unions?
What use of the Welcox land? it matters not until we decide upon a long range plan that considers those that actually live here!
Nanaimo’s greatest asset are the people that actually live here , not those we wish to bring here!!
Nanaimo needs to include all it’s residents in it’s decisions not just the ones that fund elections.
FWIW ; the Colliery Dam fiasco is a striiking example of how those that run this city.
The dammed decision is plauged with legalities that are designed to promote building ( as is VIHA) and real estate considerations to name but two.
At no time has the city put forward an arguement to protect the dams for it’s residents..
The consensus to create a car oriented city was achieved through hard work and determination. It was not a found consensus. A similar effort is required to create a different kind of city. I do believe that a different kind of city would be better for its citizens, new arrivals and visitors.
I asked what is essential to creating this new kind of city. The answer, after much study and exploration on the subject, boiled down to an elegant solution. Its a commitment to efficiency. The real solutions to productive meaningful change increase overall efficiency. If you’re a designer or planner and you are not proposing solutions that allow the city to become more efficient, then you are making it harder for people to live here, you’re obstructing the desire to move here and you are reducing the desire to come here for a visit. In short your role as a planner or designer is to be an asshole.
When we insist that their job is something other then coming up with the best solutions to particular problems, we are making assholes of these people. We are diminishing the ability of these people to do constructive work. In a sense, it is our fault that these people have done such a shitty job with regard to the Colliery Dams (as an example). We’ve insisted they be assholes, and then we get mad when they do what assholes do.
Dan I do not feel comfortable with your repetitive use of the word “efficient. It is seldom, if ever, used in urban planning.
I can see an efficient kitchen appliance. I can see an efficient airplane engine: any simple utility that describes uni-functions.
Planning, especially urban planning is a multivalent pursuit rationalizing conflicting issues some of which may not be resolved: the aim is to reduce the conflict. “Efficient” hardly describes such complexity!
Take the premier’s announcement yesterday to replace the Massey tunnel with a bridge: now that’s a multivalent issue defying “efficiency“: more sprawl south of the Fraser; ignoring the issue of a failing US infrastructure (Skagit River Bridge), impeding truck south delivery our produce!
Questions come to mind: obviously unwise use of borrowed money, but also such issues as the recent twinning of the Port Mann bridge: also the Golden Ears bridge. Both of these bridges address an issue more relevant to the 1950’s than the beginning of the twenty-first century: the financing model, toll revenues, is already falling short.
I am sure a commuter from South Delta whizzing to work is very “efficient” but hardly so for a multivalent society that relies on so much more!
No doubt the Premier’s road-bound backroom financiers will laud her “efficiency” while more prescient observers see her marooned in a decades old dependence on votes from the road builders: an inefficient” error made years ago by, then premier Glenn Clarke, who decreed the Parkway to relieve downtown Terminal traffic noise pollution and disruption. That, now, time tested “efficiency” has exacerbated, as I experience, from my window every day!) the issues and certainly did not appease downtown Nanaimo traffic.
We have just gone thru a Nanaimo Regional Transit discussion of which many public participants have become so accustomed to auto-use they may well concur at an exciting public meeting and then rush to their parked vehicles to catch their favourite television program at home.
The American poet satirically wrote, “The buses headed to Scranton travel in pairs.” Well, so do the buses headed to Woodgrove and such scheduling may convenient for transit planners, traveling to work in their autos using up expensive road space and parking, obviously are too time pressed to plan buses for the convenience of the general public.
To illustrate a perfect example of multivalent planning: remember Plan Nanaimo’s concept of self contained urban villages to redirect the northern sprawl! Now that’s planning excellence!
But the very “inefficient” FCN, god know how, twisted a viable planning concept into no conference centre that we are very “inefficiently” lumbered with now!
And I fear, given a 1950’s mind set, council is hell bound for a multiplex on Wellcox: anything to “efficiently” placate the masses: may the well being of the city take the hind most!
Thank you so much for your comments. This level of critic, this quality of critic is what I have been looking for. This dialog is exactly the medicine I need.
I would argue that most urban planners tend to view “efficiency” as a secondary by-product, if they don’t ignore the word all-together. The word “elegance” or the phrase “elegant solution” would more likely be within their lexicon. Although those terms might be more ambiguous, they may be more appropriate (I don’t know).
My view is that one can apply measures to the “efficient solution” that one can’t apply to the “elegant solution.” One can be a little more rational, or “hard-nosed” when it comes to finding the efficient solution (although, in my experience, the most efficient solution tends to also be the most elegant one).
One other reason efficiency is seldom used with the context of urban planning is that modern urban planning has been devoted so completely to developing cities for cars. I think all who have studied in the field agree, cars are, by far, the most inefficient form of transportation invented to date. One cannot argue for efficiency when promoting the use cars. If one agrees with the consensus to have “sprawl” cities devoted to travel by cars, then the issue of efficiency has be completely off the table.
The consensus is that we must choose between having a bridge or a tunnel to connect Delta with Richmond. There was never a discussion about reducing the amount of car traffic between these two places. I am certain an argument for efficiency never took place in those discussions. That is what is missing in the urban planning process.
I agree that urban planning is complicated. But I maintain that the process is far more complicated than it needs to be. Its that overly complicated process that makes planning less inclusive than it should be. The complications are not related to the process of planning so much as they are related to the process of creating a consensus. What I am arguing for is a separation of those two tasks.
If you are a planner and you are only arguing for efficiency, then your arguments can only be overcome by someone arguing for a plan that is even more efficient. Or more likely, someone will argue for an idea that if included in your plan will improve the outcome. In other words a good idea can come from anywhere and a plan that is an argument for efficiency can easily fold those good ideas into itself. A plan that is based on opinion or consensus, can’t do anything with a good idea. In fact plans that are based on opinion or consensus tend to shun almost all ideas, especially good ones.
I do not believe that the term ‘efficiency’ need only be applied to uni-functional “appliances.”
If efficiency is viewed as a measure of production minus consumption minus waste then any system, no matter how complex, can be analysed. True, efficiency is easier to measure in simple systems, but a system as complex as a city or a portion of a city can still be measured (its just that the spreadsheet will have to be larger).
The weakness of my idea is that there are some aspects of urban planning that are judgemental. For example, to proceed on a course of action regarding the Chase River dams requires the ability to determine the historical and cultural value of those dams. The reservoirs ‘produce’ a degree of satisfaction that is not measurable. They represent an asset we cannot put a price on. However, sound judgement would likely lead us to conclude that retaining the dams while mitigating against the risk of dam collapse would be the best approach. Destroying a priceless artifact to mitigate a very small risk is just plain foolish.
As for the Wellcox property the most interesting question is, “what is the most productive use for this land?” I certainly don’t have a complete answer to that, but I’m just as sure as you are that it is not a parking lot for a multiplex. I have some ideas posted on my Facebook page. These are open ideas. If someone comes along with better ideas or ideas that improve my own plans, it won’t be hard to concede space for them. However, if you just have an opinion, I can’t do much with that. Whether or not you like my ideas isn’t very helpful. At this point,whether or not you think these ideas are “doable,” (given the circumstances) isn’t very helpful. What would help are better ideas, and by better, I mean, more efficient. Argue for more production, less consumption and less waste and I can do something with that. I can make improvements. Argue for anything other then that, and I have no way to tell whether your ideas are a fix or just another complaint.
One of the arguments for ineffective planning is that planning require a “vision.” I don’t believe a vision is required to create a good city. There are some really great cities out there that developed on a ad hoc basis. If we maintain a simple criteria for development we can gradually make the city a better place to live in. And by “better,” I mean easier. A city that is relatively more efficient is easier to live in. Its easier to earn a living, easier to get rich, easier to move around, easier get the services you need, easier to pay the taxes, and its easier for everybody; rich or poor, car or no car. A city that is easier to live in, is a successful city.
As for this city, as I said before, I have a very small golden grain of hope. My recommendations have, so far, fallen on deaf ears. I’m beginning to think that the idea is so radical that a consensus is impossible to form around it. Still, just because an idea can’t achieve a constituency doesn’t make it wrong. I still have a very small golden grain of hope only because I know I’m right. ;)
As for me the litmus test will be Wellcox.
Will they continue to abuse the city, egging on their crony realtor speculators to run amuck, or will we see a glimmer of civic enlightenment?
Must I remind city hall we are at the beginning of a new century . . .
Listen carefully to what Gerald says about the influence of art towards the end . . .
not helpful
It’s not working anymore! Time for a renewal and rebirth! No art classes in schools any more. We need some new Medici!” Celente.
Wow, “not helpful eh!”
And you’re the guy that sketches Giacometti of lunch.
Let me know when your Efficiency party elects Ironman mayor . . . and keep your eye on what they do with Wellcox: cage fighting and dog shows in a multiplex! Is that efficient enough for you!
The romantics want the multiplex for it’s hockey team potential.
The Welcox land will come at a premium.
Seaspan want the incinerator , Seaspan own the right of way to Welcox! who will blink first?
Surely you planners ought to be looking around the world & see the failing mid & small size towns & cities before suggesting any remedies!
Europe have many examples of failures as the rural areas see their populations wither.