"We need to view cities as the complex, adaptive systems they are—and when we do, we gain insight into how to address today's pressing challenges.” recent Strong Towns Tweet.
“Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity, like the life sciences… The variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are interrelated into an organic whole.” Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Ch22 The Kind of Problem a City Is.
Local and regional food security has been on a lot of people's minds the last few years. And all the more so the last few months. We can emerge from the COVID-19 crisis with a secure local and regional food economy ecosystem.
This chart from the 2016 Nanaimo Census Profile offers a snapshot of the local economy. We're a population centre, a transportation hub and we're the urban centre most important to our region. As in other small regional cities, the large payrolls are public sector (about 20% of the labour force are employed in the health, education and related sectors) and retail related services employ more people than any of the other sectors (almost 30%).
These are family-supporting incomes and we're fortunate to have them. They shouldn't however make us complacent about growing and strengthening our local economy, about the creation of local value. Many cities across North America are looking at import-replacement principles as a way to grow and make more resilient their local economies.
The supply and distribution of locally grown and produced food can only be as secure as it is fully integrated into the local mainstream economy. Creating family-supporting jobs at every point in the
new economic sector. Here’s how, in these incremental steps, we can do
that.
By Design. Building on current strengths, and with an understanding of how cities are made up of complex, interconnected systems, the City of Nanaimo's economic development arm can begin to design the vertically integrated local and regional food ecosystem. This is incremental development within an ambitious plan that builds on the strengths of each proceeding element. The growing and producing of local and regional foods is the place to start.
Import replacement. We’re fortunate to have a strong base from which to grow and develop a secure local and regional food economy. Farmers’ Markets, community gardens, Vancouver Island University and others have acquired a key knowledge base in the growing and production of food and also in distribution, marketing and administration.
In To Combat Widespread Job Loss, Stay Local and Look to Import Replacement, journalist Valerie Vande Panne describes innovative ways some cities have successfully re-localized their economies. Some of these examples could serve us well here in Nanaimo as a way forward.
"In Cleveland, Evergreen Cooperatives has brought home multiple businesses and millions of dollars through enterprises including Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Green City Growers. In the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, Wellspring Cooperative meets local food needs through their Wellspring Harvest Greenhouse."Partnering with local anchor institutions, as detailed in the above nextcity.org article, beginning with surveying current purchases of the hospital, the K-12 school system, the university and others, to identify import replacement opportunities offers a solid foundation on which to begin to build a resilient and regenerative local and regional food economy.
More to come : the craft producers, re-localized finance and investment, business incubators and start-up supports and a City-owned public market catalyzing downtown urban renewal.Nothing happens in the city one-off. Everything’s connected to everything else. Design the urban environment for synergies that create social good or disconnected decay will be the inevitable result.
— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) August 5, 2020
Schumacher Centre for a New Economics : https://centerforneweconomics.org/
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