Larry’s Plan to Bring Our Voices Back to City Hall

Vancouver’s former co-director of planning Larry Beasley spoke about ‘kickstarting citizenship’ in a talk to the Dunbar Neighbourhood Cafe on April 28. At front, Cafe organizer Carmen Smith and Beasley confer before the meeting.

By Carol Volkart

There’s no doubt that governments have stopped listening to residents, says Vancouver’s former co-director of planning. But Larry Beasley says that only means it’s time to get busy reversing things.

“We’re now in a time that reminds me of the ‘70s when citizens have to stand up and say, ‘For God’s sake, you need to listen to us,’” Beasley told the Dunbar Neighbourhood Café on April 28.

Since his era, when community planners were out talking to people every day except Christmas and Boxing Day, he’s seen their jobs virtually disappear. Community forums are gone, public hearings have been largely eliminated, and city reports are so hard to read that Beasley said one of the city’s top journalists told him she couldn’t get through a major one because it put her to sleep. Meanwhile, he said, council’s attention has shifted away from citizens to special interest groups and certain issues.

His solution for change: “effective, activated citizenship.”

“My first message to everyone these days is it’s not going to happen unless you make it happen,” said Beasley, a member of the Order of Canada who has consulted internationally and written books on his urban planning ideas.

Above all, he’s confident about the collective power of citizens. What he learned as a young community planner, he said, “is No. 1, when you do get a group of citizens together, they can almost broker anything. And that’s because, No. 2, people are really smart. . . . You can sit down with any person in any station in life and you can figure out how to do something.”

With the Oct. 17 civic election on the horizon, it’s time for citizens to use that power to elect representatives who’ll listen to them, he said. It will take collaboration, tenacity and effort, but “once you start to have some energy, it’ll take you where it needs to take you.”

He has a plan. And he’s so passionate about it that between now and the election, 78-year-old Beasley is offering to go out and speak to any group wanting to hear his pitch.

His idea starts with individual citizens – people acknowledging they’re concerned and deciding they can no longer be complacent. These people will form neighbourhood groups, bringing in other like-minded residents. Groups then figure out their main concerns, which will vary by community, and draw up a short list of what they will advocate for.

They’ll link up with other like-minded groups around the city, and begin to “intervene in a very natural way,” said Beasley. “It’s just called old-fashioned democracy. Because there are still elections. People do still want to get elected and when all else fails, they need voters.”

Ahead of the election, the groups will ask candidates and parties about their  positions. “And then both individually, and more importantly  as a group, and more importantly as a coalition of groups, you begin to zero in on the decision-makers you’d like to have in local government.”

If information about candidates’ positions is made available before election day, as one audience member suggested, Beasley agreed it would help voters make informed choices at the ballot box.

What his plan doesn’t involve, Beasley stressed, is joining a political party, taking on uncomfortable duties, or burning out by devoting too much time to the cause, which should only take about 15 minutes a day. Instead of a pain, he sees it as a route to meeting interesting, talented neighbours; a chance to work at something you’re passionate about, and above all, a chance to have fun. “You’re going to laugh; you’re going to kill yourself laughing at the mistakes you make.”

Is there really any point in trying? Beasley said he often hears from people who are discouraged because they’ve spoken out, signed petitions and been ignored. “But I truly believe, and I’ve lived this through many years, that if you are just tenacious and stay at it, the message starts to get through.”

And when people say it’s hopeless, a done deal because of everything that’s already been approved, “one thing I will say is cities take a long time to happen.”  A new council can change things.  “I was even in a situation where we withdrew approvals because we had gone the wrong way. Cities are slow to change, and you can fix that.”

Beasley’s theme that residents’ voices are being dismissed clearly rang a bell. One audience member described herself as a 78-year-old widow who’s lived in her Mackenzie Heights house for 53 years “and I feel like politically I’m getting shovelled aside. I’m not supposed to have a car, I’m not supposed to live in a house where I brought up both of my children and I feel like I’m being ignored.”

Noting that she and her neighbours “are really pissed off about the looming buildings that are now springing up beside us with no allowance for parking,” she said she hopes there will be a group that summarizes every political aspirant’s positions “so that we have a Coles Notes on all the candidates.”

Another audience member raised the idea of a ward system, saying that under the current at-large system, “really, we’re not represented by anybody. . . .If you want officials who will represent you, it has to come from people in your back yard working for you.”

Beasley said that’s something he’s been hearing a lot lately. In the past, when government was engaging with people at a local level through neighbourhood planning, “I actually didn’t think the ward system was needed because we were doing it ad hoc,” he said. He’s also been wary of ward systems because he’s worked in some that were “really broken,” with councillors becoming extremely territorial.

But he’s changed his mind. “I will tell you that in the past I was perfectly comfortable with the at-large system. I’m not anymore.”

However, he’d propose a mixed system including some ward and some at-large councillors “so you get both sides of the coin” and reduce the problem of territoriality.

When another audience member asked why councillors don’t listen, Beasley said he thinks it’s because “a lot of people just went quiet. A lot of people had become complacent.” And councillors would say that they are listening, “but they are listening to the voices that they hear, the voices that are the advocates.”

Beasley said many of the city’s ambitious plans are based on good principles – for example, higher density around transit as required in the Broadway Plan is a good idea – but there has been no regard for what that means on the ground. “You have to go into every neighbourhood and talk to hundreds and hundreds of people. They didn’t seem to learn that there were people sitting in modest income market affordable housing that were going to be displaced because no one paid attention to that.”

One audience member said he thinks decision-makers have decided the democratic process is too expensive, so it can be cut. “But in fact that’s the cost of having a democratic process. If they cut that, there are serious consequences.”

Beasley said he too has heard people say it would be cheaper not to have to go through so many hoops, “but the other side of the coin is maybe more malicious. It is, ‘If I don’t have many forums, I can justify I didn’t hear [opposition] and I did what I wanted to.’ And unfortunately I know some politicians like that.”

When an audience member raised the issue of the length, difficulty and tedium of public hearings, Beasley said that wasn’t such a problem when there was proper neighbourhood planning. Under that system, they were an “insurance policy,” the last chance for people to get a word in and to make minor changes. “But if they went on for more than two hours, we had made a mistake because what we should be doing is having those conversations months ahead of time.”

There’s no doubt that long, complex public hearings are “hell” for all involved, he said, but they shouldn’t be phased out, as the Official Development Plan has largely done. “Public hearings are absolutely essential. Anyone who’s told you we should get rid of public hearings under any circumstance, I would ask you to think if that’s in your interest.”

Beasley said Dunbar is ahead of the game when it comes to forming the kind of group he’s recommending because residents are already connecting through the Neighbourhood Café and the Dunbar Residents’ Association Newsletter.

So when one member of the audience asked during question and answer period: “Are people here interested in forming a group to do just what you’re saying?” there was a murmur of assent.

To which Beasley added: “Don’t leave the room without getting phone numbers!”

(Those interested in getting involved in a Dunbar group can email cvolkart@telus.net or carmengemmer2@gmail.com)