An Open Letter to the City of Ottawa

I recently wrote a letter to the author of a City of Ottawa white paper that I deemed encouraged development of the city's greenbelt - a ring of green space that dinstinguishes the "old city" from the terribly planned former suburban municipalities of the now amalgamated metropolis. Needless to say, it was not received well, and despite a carefully worded apology I provided following the initial letter, I got no feedback on the content of either letters. What follows is only the first letter I wrote, since it was quite long, but let me reiterate the general message of the second letter:

I don't presume to make an authoritative claim as to the cause (though I have my suspicions), but the city of Ottawa has been, and is, poorly planned from the standpoint of sustainable development. The city has encouraged low-density suburban sprawl, a continuation of the capital-attraction strategies of the old suburban muncipalities. This has led to a whole host of problems, such as budgetary deficits on the account of snow removal, inability to maintain the downtown core landscape, and considerable shortcomings in the maintenance and reproduction of the city's rental housing stock, to name only a meagre few.

Anyway, let me get right to the meat:

I am thoroughly unimpressed with your one-sided white paper that - though it presents the semblance of some balance - favours development of the greenbelt. Many of the arguments you presented in favour of developing the greenbelt are either factually inaccurate, or have another side to them which are not considered in the arguments against developing the greenbelt.

1. Destroying the greenbelt in whole or part will actually have a negative impact on air quality, since the current greenspace acts as giant sink for exhaust fumes, convertering carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. Hence, reducing a major absorption source of air pollution will undoubtedly result in its increase. This could easily transform Ottawa from a large city with excellent air quality to a much smaller (and less attractive) Toronto. Instead of biting the hand that feeds us, we should be working to improve this feature of our city's landscape. One suggestion to amplify the positive effect of the greenbelt on our city's environment would be to look into certain climate-sensitive trees or shrubs that absorb carbon dioxide with high efficiency and begin planting them in the 'unused' scrubland.

2. It is also highly dubious whether or not destroying the greenbelt will reduce vehicle trips and subsequently emissions. New residential development would mean that public transit to the downtown core would be more effective than from former municipalities such as Kanata or Nepean - providing that these future residents do not simply find employment outside of "acceptable" public transit commute zones (e.g.: that new residents in proposed zone "1" do not find employment in Orleans or Riverside South). Thus, while new residential development in the greenbelt areas would be more efficient than simply promoting urban sprawl in Stittsvile or South Nepean (as is currently happening) it is by no means "sustainable". Non-residential development (excepting some mixed zoning) again would do very little, unless the city were to propose some kind of highly complicated property tax credit rewarding residents who work near their homes.

So the whole 'environmental' argument for developing the greenbelt is a fabrication. Economically it might make sense, in the sense that with the city's current planning model, it will have to provide services increasingly further out in the hinterlands, thereby significantly raising budgetary costs, but there is nothing environmentally sustainable about destroying green space well within city bounds. This is something, as I'm sure you have discovered continually at planning conferences, that other cities are dying to have.

Your principle framing of the purpose of the greenbelt is also highly misleading. Its purpose was never primarily to preserve a rural identity - this was always the secondary function of the Gréber plan. Rather, its primary aim was to limit urban sprawl, to make the city beautiful, something we have failed in miserably in the subsequent decades. The rural identity was a corollary that never made its way into the minds of the people (and I grew up on the inside edge of the greenbelt in the 1980s and 90s) largely in part to the opposing message that the city and the local media have been striving towards: Ottawa as a 'big, serious, city'.

I am not an urban planner, a geographer, or an environmentalist, nor am I necessarily against limited, strategic and thoughtful development of certain parts of the greenbelt. But any plan that proposes this must be balanced with competent urban planning and a political will that encourages high density development in interior regions of the city and places much higher demands and restrictions on developers eager to make the biggest profit possible via suburban housing. Because of the past ineptitude of politicians and city officials, we have failed the spirit of the greenbelt. It is absolutely unfair to deal the death blow to the plan simply because we are unable and unwilling to take our city's future more seriously, because we feel it is expedient to pass the buck as past generations have done.

You can read the white paper in question at the following link where you can, as a resident of the Ottawa area, or simply as an interested advocate of responsible, environmentally sustainable urban planning, contact the author and the city's representative on the issue.
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/beyond_2020/papers/greenbelt_white_paper/index_en.html

Yeah MMP - No, You Don't Know Me

Well, as usual, this post is coming much too late. But, better late than never, and at least I can use this moment to make a foolish prediction before the votes are tabulated. MMP will not pass in Ontario tonight, but I, ever the optimist, think it will garner between 51 and 55% of the vote, probably on the lower end of that range. The reasons for this are diffuse: anti-MMP media coverage in the urban local media, and a poorly timed and planned public awareness campaign on one hand, and a sense of real excitement by all marginalized groups (left and ultra-right) in Ontario that this is a chance to make a real change on the other. I still haven't decided whether or not MMP will gain a simple majority in each riding - I have my doubts about some of the rural ridings in Ontario, since, unlike with STV in BC in 2005, outlying ridings aren't likely to benefit with MMP. Probably it will fail on both super majority requirements, though will get closer than most pundits are predicting.

Anyway, I want to use this time to clear up two major issues that have been flying around about MMP, which, as of yet, I haven't heard anyone explain adequately. The first regards the increase or decrease in accountability with the new system, the second is about the 'democratic' nature of open-list PR.

First, MMP does not produce more 'accountability', a loaded word if I ever heard one. The current FPTP system blends two distinct political identities into a singly vote - namely, the individual or 'personal' candidate identity, and the party identity. It is extremely unclear in most cases to any analyst or politician just what we are voting for when we go to the polls. Many people know extremely little about their individual candidate's biography or accomplishments and instead rely on cues from their party affiliation. Some people disdain party politics altogether and vote solely on the candidate's merit. Still more know a little bit of both and in many cases face an internal struggle of what identity to vote for - person or party. Such was the case in the 2004 federal election where many extremely popular candidates were thrown out because of their Liberal party affiliation.

What MMP does produce is the distinction and integrity of the votes cast (a form of accountability I suppose) so that we can single out each aspect of a given candidate's identity and engage in a more nuanced and complex selection process. This is why many proponents rightfully claim it is a more 'democratic' system, since the electoral process pays much closer attention to our personal preferences as political subjects. Actually, I kind of lied. MMP, as a mixed system, does not truly separate our preferences into two distinct camps. Instead, it keeps the muddled camp of personal candidate and party, and then adds a third camp for just the party affiliation. A much better system, though Utopian and impracticable given the historical evolution of the party system in Canada, would be to disallow party affiliations for individual candidates at the local level, and maintain provincial (or federal) parties. In any event, MMP in its proposed form is clearly better at capturing the diversity of people's political preferences than FPTP, and goes some 0f the way (though not far) in resolving Charles Lindblom's classic dilemma (see The Market System).

The second point regards the selection process of the party list system. Proponents of MMP somewhat erroneously claim that the new electoral system will immediately bring more diversity in candidates (i.e.: women, visible minorities). This is false, since the proposal of the Citizen's Assembly, to the best of my knowledge (though I haven't checked officially), does not clearly stipulate how nominations to the list will occur, only that the list must be made public some time before the election. Now, most reasonable analysts note that the process is likely to be the same as the current party nomination process, which isn't very democratic. There is one slight difference however that could make a big impact: the public scrutiny function.

Currently, party nominations occur completely behind closed doors, and when the official procedures are followed, a select minority of the party elite get to be part of the selection process. When a candidate is finally revealed to the public, in most cases, we have no knowledge of the wrangling that happened behind the scenes - the public is presented with a single candidate, take them or leave them. Because this process happens in diffuse ridings, most electors do not pay attention to other non-high profile candidates in other ridings. Since the homogeneity that one so often finds within a party's candidates is primarily decentralized and local, with no direct mechanism for concerned citizens in Toronto to raise eyebrows at the candidate selected in Kenora, it makes fingering a party's racism and sexism extremely difficult.

The list system forces the party to put its cards, so to speak, on the table in terms of what it stands for. Since everyone in the province will eventually vote for the candidate list, there is more 'accountability' to voters to justify why the composition of that list is the way it is. There is also a direct interest for provincial and national media to scrutinize the party lists, since it becomes a provincial issue. Rarely do media institutions beyond the local or urban criticize the nominee process, except in a general way that leads party leaders to blush, say 'oops', and move on with their rejection of diversity. To be clear, there is nothing in the electoral system that guarantees this process becomes more accountable. This is a cultural issue as much as it is geographic one. But I would argue that the format of this electoral system makes it easier to force parties to respond substantively to these issues. The empirics from other countries, for the most part, support this argument as well.

So, a futile post perhaps (though not as intellectual excercize), but at least it will be ready the next time we have to vote for electoral reform. In the meantime, cast your vote in the spectacle we call democracy, and hold on for your life for the next four years. The likely outcome on both the ballot and electoral reform are not likely to bode well for anyone that I would like to be reading this post.