GEOG 346: Day 7

1. GEOG 346: Day 7 Demographic Change and Citizen Participation

2. Housekeeping Items • Tonight there’s a lecture at 7 on sea level rise and its implications for the 21st century in Building 356, Room 109 (the auditorium). Admission is free. • In the folder, you’ll find information on International Development Week, which leads off with the keynote, “Global Water, Local Water,” next Monday from 5:30 to 7 in the Theatre. • Remind me again who’s going to help out our guests on Thursday? • Outlines for projects are due on the 5th.

3. Demographic Change and its Significance • In 1971, the population of BC that was aged 65 to 90+ was 9.2% of the total. By the 2036, it is projected to be 23.9%, or nearly a quarter of the population. • This has all kinds of implications for how cities are designed, what kinds of housing needs to be in place, and what kinds of services will be needed. • It lends credence to Gil Peňalosa’s notion of the “8/80 city.”

4. Significance of Aging Population • In 1971, the population of BC that was aged 65 to 90+ was 9.2% of the total. By the 2036, it is projected to be 23.9%, or nearly a quarter of the population. • This has all kinds of implications for how cities are designed, what kinds of housing needs to be in place, and what kinds of services will be needed. • It lends credence to Gil Peňalosa’s notion of the “8/80 city.”

5. Changing Demographics and Urban & Regional Management Data Source: BC Stats

6. Changing Demographics and Urban & Regional Management While BC does not lead the pack, our elderly dependency ratio (EDR) is growing.

7. Changing Demographics and Urban & Regional Management

8. The Growth in Senior Population

9. Implications of Aging Population for Urban and Regional Management • What steps do municipalities, regions, and other agencies have to take to address the “senior tsunami”?

10. Re-positioning Age-Friendly Communities • Did everyone read this document, as requested? • Please do the readings, as the amount is not onerous. • This is a short, but very dense and useful report from the Canadian Urban Institute. • It offers a brief history of phases in urban planning: -- an early focus on public health; -- a move to separate incompatible land uses through zoning; -- along with zoning, an array of ideas for how best to construct cities to make them more functional and/or healthful (from extremely centralized to extremely decentralized, or something in between); -- the suburban phase, the best being represented by ‘new towns’ and the ‘superblock,’ and the worst by government-subsidized urban sprawl; -- the move towards re-urbanization, stimulated in part by Jane Jacobs.

11. Re-positioning Age-Friendly Communities • The document also compares 10 concepts of urban planning – with numerous overlapping principles – for instance, in relation to their applicable scale:

13. Re-positioning Age-Friendly Communities

14. Re-positioning Age-Friendly Communities

16. Changing Demographics and Urban & Regional Management The issue of an aging population also interacts with the growing multiculturalism of the population. Percentage of seniors speaking neither English or French.

17. Challenges of Multiculturalism

18. Challenges of Multiculturalism In many schools in Vancouver, ‘white’ students are in a minority, and close to half of students are not native English speakers.

19. Citizen Participation Eight rungs on the ladder of citizen participation • In the past, citizen participation was characterized by public hearings as a formality after the important decisions had already been made, with notice being an obscure ad in the newspaper (in English). • Such meetings were often conducted without translation, without childcare, without food or refreshments, and at times that were inconvenient for working people.

20. Citizen Participation As this picture of a charrette illus- trates, the growing number of seniors provides a pool of new volunteers for community initiatives/ exercises. • This has changed somewhat. I am passing around book called The Community Planning Handbook (e-version in Library) that has lots of great ideas. • Portland, Seattle, and Quebec City have experimented with neighbourhood planning with real power and resources being invested. • Patrick Condon is one of the foremost practitioners in Canada of the charrette – an intense design exercise, extending over several days, and involving a variety of stakeholders.

21. New Approaches to Citizen Participation • Another approach to participatory neighbourhood planning pioneered in Britain is called “Planning for Real”. It involves both residents and local schoolchildren in defining the area to be planned, then constructing a large 3-dimensional model of the neighbourhood and circulating it around the community. • Community members are invited to help create a vision through placing suggestion cards on the model for specific structures and activities, which are later prioritized into the categories of “now,” “soon,” or “later.” Professionals observe the process, but are not allowed to say anything. These sessions lead to subsequent working parties and feedback mechanisms through the circulation of a newsletter. A particular virtue of this approach is that it is completely community-driven.

22. New Approaches to Citizen Participation • Other approaches involve scenario-building – if we do this, this will result, or if we allow business-as-usual scenarios to unfold, this is what will happen…. This was employed in a community planning process called Envision Utah (see http://envisionutah.org/), and Metroquest is a particular software that has been developed for this purpose (see http://www.metroquest.com/). • At the micro scale, software has been developed to illustrate how local environments can be altered and transformed with tree planting, pedestrian enhancements, and the like. See http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/community/transformations/index.asp