The elimination of Nanaimo's Urban Containment Boundary : 2 : Revisionist view

In my last post I look back at the review process that led up to 2008 Official Community Plan. This post offers, in part, a revisionist view of the role played by two central figures in the City of Nanaimo administration during this time, City Manager Ted Swabey and Director of Planning Andrew Tucker. From my current vantage point my impressions are clearer and I come to some conclusions.

Andrew Tucker had only been with the City since 2004. During his early years here I now realize he was a proactive chief planner. He conducted this OCP review process and was the public face on discussions about the since-demolished Maffeo Sutton Park arena and foundry buildings and on his watch the award winning Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines was completed.

As part of the 10 Year OCP Review, Swabey and Tucker agreed to attend a Friends of Plan Nanaimo sponsored Q+A meeting which was likely to be contentious. When I had an opportunity to ask a question I said, “Good for you guys for doing this... My question is this: If Council agrees to eliminate the Urban Containment Boundary, to allow these developments across the city’s southern green-fields, will that not be a disincentive to develop lands currently within the Urban Containment Boundary?”

Planner Tucker’s response, “That’s the most compelling argument against eliminating the Urban Containment Boundary."

At public hearing, the last chance for the public to address Council on the OCP, I repeated Planner Tucker’s answer, adding it to the list of arguments against the elimination of the UCB on the record from Smart Growth BC and others. As expected Council approved the OCP eliminating the Urban Containment Boundary. The result of the process was a forgone conclusion, a highly manipulative process that is clear to me now was ideological in nature.

In 1993 my family arrived here from North Vancouver. Only days later a long time family friend introduced us to then-Mayor Joy Leach at the Civic Arena Canada Day festivities.

A quick sketch of Nanaimo civic history: after decades of Mayor Frank Ney’s real estate development frenzy his grip was finally broken in 1990 by Leach and her group and she was elected on the promise to bring community planning into what was essentially unregulated sprawl. Her Council created Nanaimo’s first Official Community Plan, Imagine Nanaimo, among its guiding principles "Manage Urban Growth."

It becomes clear that the competing forces in community building, here in Nanaimo at any rate, are forces of economic opportunity as perceived by the private sector and the creation of shared public good, amenities, land use, mobility etc. And the ongoing tension: which leads and which follows?

To be clear: Cities are not businesses but should be “run informed by business principles, just not run with business values…" https://t.co/rtFoPzMF9B

— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) February 15, 2019

This cynical process, the OCP Review, added to the widespread feeling of Nanaimo-ites of a distrust of what goes on in our City Hall behind closed doors. A few years ago Nanaimo was startled to learn that there was a proposal to lease a portion of a downtown waterfront park to a commercial developer. On my morning walk thru this park, when I saw people studying the sign, I'd ask them what they thought. Comments consistently included "I don't trust them." For good reason.

After this process Andrew Tucker wasn’t the public figure leading important conversations he had been and it was and continues to be my impression he was under, in effect, a gag order. What I’m convinced was a calculated ideological shift was complete in 2013 when City Manager Swabey “phased out” the position of Director of Planning. We have now, tellingly in my view, a Director of Development.

The ideological shift that was the dismantling of the previous planNanaimo and elimination of the Urban Containment Boundary was successful and is entrenched in our City Hall to this day. It successfully shifted Nanaimo from a city that plans, back to a city that develops. My revisionist view is much kinder to Andrew Tucker than I was then.

And here comes Sandstone…

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