Strategic Plan - Official Community Plan - Neighbourhood Plan- Transportation Plan - Communications Plan
The list is endless, but do they really mean anything??
I watched as the information was collected from a few hundred members of the public which was the basis for the 'Strategic Plan' which is used more to endorse a decision from city hall as it is used to guide the process in the first place. This plan is so wide open, you can find justification in it for nearly any type of tax and spend scheme the brain trust at city hall can concoct.
The Official Community Plan and the Neighbourhood Plan (neither of which do I pretend to be a student of) seem to be for the most part 'suggestions' as to how the city should look as it gets built out over the years. A recent conflict between the two over a piece of property on the southend of Victoria Rd. should provide some interesting fodder for discussion going forward. Seems one trumps the other?
We now have a very ambitious Transportation Master Plan, which is relying on, and aiming for the day when Nanaimo streets will be filled with pedestrians or cyclists with hardly a car to be seen as our public transit system provides the same convenience and reliability of the family car, making it obsolete. To my untrained mind, Nanaimo is likely a million or so people short of being able to make this level of public transit available.
How Many People Do We Really Want? What Is the RIGHT Size?? Anyone Know?
We don't want to increase our boundaries as the additional cost that would require of existing taxpayers to provide water, sewer and roads would be prohibitive. So, the solution is to cram as many houses as possible onto the vacant land currently within the city borders. Depending on who you talk to it would seem that subdividing and building more and more vinyl villages is the economic driver Nanaimo can't do without. The only flaw in this plan would be the fact the true cost of development is never recovered through our DCC's the way they are currently constructed. Why don't they properly reflect the real cost of development? City hall panders to the developers and construction folk in town and offers up DCCs which don't reflect true costs at all. The result? Taxpayers get sucked into what is basically a ponzi scheme where we subsidize developers/builders profits and the end cost someone has to pay for their new home. Is that a sound formula for long term sustainability?
Linley Valley Contradiction - Parks before People
City Council recently decided to purchase 220 acres in the Linley Valley for $8 million, Part of the rationale being put forward by council to support this decision is all the money it will save taxpayers by not having to build a road and provide servicing to these parcels of land. Really?? Then why are we spending $$??????? to punch through a road at the other end to service some 32 lots that used to belong to the school district?
We are told that this will also stretch out our water supply by not putting all this extra demand on our supply. Yet, a few months ago council agreed to supply water to the massive Foothills development in Lantzville. The only thing consistent with city council's arguments is the fact they are inconsistent.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
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Planning does have a value, but if you don't understand that value, you tend to always give planning way too much importance or way too little importance.
ReplyDeleteThe only value planning has is to argue for adding efficiency to any system. A city planner has only one purpose; to argue for adding efficiency to any urban system. If you think planners do more than that then you'll want to pay them more. So planners will argue that they do a lot more then argue for efficiency, and some of them do, but the only thing they do as planners that has social value is this argue for efficiency.
For the most part our plans don't do what we need them to do. For example; Our land use document the Official Community Plan doesn't do anything. Its garbage from cover to cover. The most generous description of the OCP is that it is a misappropriation of the language of planning to achieve a political expedient. And the political expedient was to find some way to justify the efforts of the planning committee involved in its production.
Part of the reason why we need such an extensive "Strategic Plan," why the "Transportation Plan" took so long and was so expensive, and why our subsequent "Neighbourhood Plans" are just window dressing for the deluded is because our OCP isn't worth the paper its written on.
We need to start from scratch if we are ever to get a real OCP, but our transportation plan is pretty good. It needs work. I think it is fair to say that its about half done. Part of the reason this plan is weak is because it based the land use component on the OCP. Once we get a real land use plan then we can immediately upgrade our transportation plan.
Another reason our plan is so weak, is the transit component is simply misdirected. We have to stop setting unrealistic goals for transit. Its not a service that can be designed for the convenience of everybody, but it must deliver an efficient service to those who do use it. A system design to deliver efficient service would look a lot different then the system we have now, and it would look a lot different than the service proposed by this plan.
There are other aspects of this plan that need refinement, but for the most part these are smaller more specific projects.
Unfortunately, because this transportation plan was approved, the effort to improve it has been effectively stymied. This will have unfortunate consequences as it means we will stumble into 21st century urban development on a crutch, addicted to cars we will waste valuable time, energy and the environment driving around in circles, just like before we had a plan.
Say it ain’t so, George.
ReplyDeleteMonday night Coun. Anderson rolled out the city’s Transportation Master Plan for the next 25-years. And as its chair told the rest of us it’s time to get out of our cars and walk, bicycle or use transit more.
It was odd the first-term elected official laid down the law to everyone else, especially because he did not seem to take his own plan to heart.
He grinned, and for the first time did not object to the audience's interrupting applause, as he announced it was Bike to Work Week and all of us should be doing it.
When asked at the end of the meeting which councillors had indeed cycled to their job, it was disconcerting to see both Anderson and the mayor chucking and avoiding answering the question like the announcements were just some big joke.
Looks like this administration would rather give orders and have the rest of us follow like puppies or sheep. Much like the proposed Governance Plan which wants to limit the public’s participation at council meetings - and those pesky questions from taxpayers.
The new city motto is becoming - Do as we say, not what we do.