Like it or not, climate activists are urbanism advocates now

Most of what I need day-to-day is within a 5 minute walk, everything I need day-to-day is within 15. My home shares 2 walls with my neighbours. I seldom drive, my heating bill is small. My carbon footprint is a fraction of yours.

Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash

"Canada’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions during most years, accounting for a quarter of the carbon we put into the atmosphere, is transportation… Heating of buildings—especially single-family homes—accounts for another 12%.” @DougSaunders

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#WalkableCity: How Downtown Can Save [Your City] One Step at a Time. A General Theory of Walkability. @JeffSpeckFAIC

 

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All of which is to say that it’s in land use — the tough decisions around and the urban design of land use — that municipal governments are uniquely positioned to make meaningful contributions to the reduction of harmful GHG emissions.

The climate activists currently on our city council may never be closer to the opportunity and the power to take historic and courageous actions.

Only municipal government can make the transformative changes in local transportation and neighbourhood design and intensification that create environmentally and economically sustainable 15 minute neighbourhoods.

Surely this clarifies the task for the climate activists now sitting at the decision making tables.

We can and should recycle, ban plastic bags of course but it has to be said by comparison those actions are drops in the proverbial bucket, little more than performative gestures.

We can’t beat the climate crisis without rethinking land use https://t.co/Pr76BWFVEw via @BrookingsInst

— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) July 16, 2021

So if we follow this line of thought—40% of GHG emissions are from transportation and building heating; and that jurisdiction + authority over these rests almost exclusively with municipal governments—what are the bold and courageous actions climate activists on council can take?

Well, thanks for asking! Creating less car-dependent and more compact neighbourhoods is a function, in part, of planning and urban design. Council climate activists need an ally in this area and should insist the city manager hire an experienced 21C chief planner, a proven change-maker.

This new chief planner should be empowered to revitalize the department and decentralize it into neighbourhood planning centres. From here genuine street-level conversations can be held with a broad inclusive range of Nanaimo citizens.

"I prioritize street-level engagement. I come to the people. My office is the neighbourhood, my work is done in constituents' localized spaces: homes churches businesses bus stops." @c1typlann3r @EmbeddedPlann @APA_Planning

We Cannot Plan From Our Desks https://t.co/EkRFdzjzJx

— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) February 27, 2021

A city plan process has to be a conversation in a meaningful way. Conversations are dangerous, they might lead in directions that the risk-and-innovation-averse status quo powers at the heart of our City Hall fear. That’s precisely why it’s important to have them.

The current city plan review (Reimagine Nanaimo) is top-down and based on the one-way communication of an online survey (city planning isn’t market research).

This is the opposite of the public conversation we need to be having and it now proceeds behind closed doors led by an anonymous in-house “team.”

This approach has been thoroughly discredited by just about every other city in the country and the plug should be pulled on this immediately and with urgency until a new director of planning and urban design is in place.

So… that’s the challenge and the opportunity. Are our climate activists up to the fight? That’s the question.

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