Showing posts with label local economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local economy. Show all posts

Thursday, September 17, 2020

The by-design, vertically integrated,
local and regional food economy. Part three

Part one and two recap : From securing the business of local and regional anchor institutions, entering into professional level supply contracts with these institutions; to taking advantage of import replacement and economic gardening opportunities; to offering pooled strategic marketing, legal and finance supports to craft producers, restaurants, and local farms and farmers’ markets, the strong basis of a vertically integrated local food economy ecosystem can be established. Then things get ambitious.
The skills, experience and knowledge to build the local food economy are present locally in abundance. A refocused City economic development arm has the ability, properly tasked, to work with current local food enterprises to create a public good far greater than the sum of the parts.
The crown atop the food economy ecosystem, the creation of a City-owned public market, anchoring catalyst of an ambitious vision of downtown renewal and regeneration requires talents not available here or in any but the largest cities in the country. Around the world, pubic markets are key municipal assets that, done right, punch above their weight economically, socially and culturally. This is where the local food economy can achieve real security by connecting consumers, at scale, with the local food economy ecosystem. To realize the vision of a Nanaimo City-owned public market catalyzing downtown urban renewal and regeneration the following are imperative :
  • The re-reinstatement immediately of the role of Chief Planner, a progressive proactive hire reporting directly to the City Manager, the CAO.
  • The creation by a skilled team of professionals, chosen through an RFP competitive process, a city-centre specific urban plan.
  • The creation as recommended by the Downtown Waterfront Initiative headed by former VIU VP Dave Witty of a Public Development Corporation.
There is now a much loved and respected community market, Island Roots. They’ve done especially well coping with the COVID-19 pandemic offering innovative ways to support local producers and their customers. They have a proposal in front of the City to expand at their present location, a large park outside the urban core. I’ve expressed my concerns that the market will struggle at this location, unable to benefit from the mix of activities around it and unable then to benefit others in a mutually supportive way. The proposed Island Roots Co-op Market at Beban Park
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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The by-design, vertically integrated,
local and regional food economy. Part two

Supper the other night —al fresco— at a new restaurant downtown. Every sprout, every salad green and root vegetable, even the ribeye steak sourced locally.
The farm-to-table movement is one element of the vertically integrated local and regional food economy I wrote about in part one.
The farm-to-table movement and many of the elements of a local food economy are in place now. Missing is an organizing authority to work with each element, to coordinate, to grow the mutually advantageous elements of the local food economy ecosystem.
This requires a rethinking of the role of the City’s economic development arm. A reversal of focus from searching far and wide for the large branch plant employer to nurturing and growing the resilient local economy. Craft producers — brewers, wineries, distillers; startups, farms, market gardens, restaurants, farmers' markets, specialties and related enterprises. With the foundational work described in part one done, local economic development would hold monthly public presentations on starting a business in the local food economy, connecting startups and established businesses with resources: legal, accounting, marketing, regulatory.
And one econ-dev function would be to invite submission of business ideas. Qualifying ideas would go into an intense incubation period, the outcome of which would be a completed business plan ready to present to lenders and investors. Alternative business models like co-ops and social enterprises should be stressed. And City economic development would be looking to partner with financial institutions especially Island-based credit unions to create innovative financing and investment tools.
I took just such an incubator at VIU years ago that resulted in a business my wife and I grew and sold in 2009. Joint federal funding was available for this incubator then and no doubt would be now.
A re-focused economic development arm would investigate local applications of concepts like import replacement and economic gardening (an entrepreneurial approach to economic development that seeks to grow the local economy from within). Economic gardening is being applied successfully on a large scale, growing already large enterprises larger. Local focus would be to identify smaller enterprises in need of financial or marketing, planning or legal assistance, to grow larger, each creating new employment.
Earlier post : On a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative local economy. 1 Next : up the chain to the downtown public market catalyzing renewal in the urban core. Part three.
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Friday, August 7, 2020

The by-design, vertically integrated,
local and regional food economy. Part one

"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.
This post, the first in a series on how Nanaimo can best emerge from the crises, the health crisis here now and the economic crisis to come, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, proposes a by-design, vertically integrated local and regional food economy.
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.
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Thursday, May 31, 2018

See what I mean about a public market?

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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

On a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative local economy : 4 : A downtown public market

In the first post of this series, former Toronto Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat says, "Mid-sized cities hold the key to economic growth and quality of life in Canada, and they’ve taken too long to realize it." And in the second an essay in Strong Towns considers what can local economies learn from the explosion of craft brewing in big and small cities. Also my Twitter thread where I do an informal survey of food and drink business within my Old City neighbourhood. The question arose: can a cluster of uses become a mutually supportive destination, a primary use?
And then an introduction to Jane Jacobs' book, Cities and the Wealth of Nations. All of which led to, not entirely unintentionally, a focus on a downtown Nanaimo City-owned Public Market. Starting from a piece in Guardian Cities on an ambitious city wide Barcelona plan to renovate its public markets, I asked followers to help me out: what markets have impressed you? What can we learn from them?
Here’s an attempt to compile : Pike Place, Seattle • The Forks / Johnston Terminal, Winnipeg • Granville Island • St Johns City Market • Rochester NY Public Market • All the Barcelona markets • St Lawrence Market, Toronto • Findlay Market, Cincinnati • Mexico City, Oaxaca • Mobile markets across the South of France.
I hope I got them all and thanks to everyone for the great contributions and comments. These comments from the London UK SE5 area, Visit Camberwell were standouts: "In some ways, car culture carries over into cycling culture with widespread advocacy of bakfiets (cargo bikes) as the ideal sustainable form of household shopping. Whereas imho the challenge is to restore a vibrant distributed local network of independent shops for hand-to-mouth food planning."

Around the world, pubic markets are key municipal assets that, done right, punch above their weight economically, socially and culturally. A Nanaimo Downtown Public Market should be a priority, the process of preparing a detailed business plan should be undertaken by our new Mayor and Council and Senior Staff without delay.
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Friday, May 25, 2018

On a self-reliant, resilient and
regenerative local economy : 3 :
What makes economic expansion happen?

Jane Jacobs was asked what she thought she’d be remembered for most. “If I were to be remembered as a really important thinker of the century, the most important thing I've contributed is my discussion of what makes economic expansion happen. This is something that has puzzled people always. I think I've figured out what it is.” Interview in Reason, 2001. City Views : Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism, and her legacy.
She goes on to say "Expansion and development are two different things. Development is differentiation of what already existed... Practically every new thing that happens is a differentiation of a previous thing… Expansion is an actual growth in size or volume of activity.” from interview excerpt on her Wikipedia page.
From her 1969 book The Economy of Cities and later in Cities and the Wealth of Nations and The Nature of Economies, Jacobs referred to a principle she called import replacement, that a city’s economic expansion grows from producing for local markets what is now imported, some of this production later becoming viable for export. A principle I’ve found difficult to apply to Nanaimo, a city whose economy is supported more by public sector payrolls than by the private sector's local creation of goods and services, and where much commerce is in effect privatized to remote corporate owned shopping centres, with many franchised businesses.
The earlier post on craft brewing’s growth examines what can be learned from its success by other local industries. Has the consolidation of industries into fewer and fewer, larger and larger corporations, created niche demands at the local level?
A large trend is right in front of us: food security, farm-to-table restaurants, farmers markets, local wines and spirits as well as craft beer… Its economic potential is considerable. What help does it need (or want) to go to the next level?  

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Wednesday, May 23, 2018

On a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative local economy: 2 : Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs

It’s well known that Jane Jacobs wrote a famous book that changed how we look at and think about cities. It’s not as well known that her books on economics were as influential. As she did in in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in her 1984 book Cities and the Wealth of Nations, she uncovered things that were hiding in plain sight that had been overlooked by “experts.” She again, showed us things that once seen, are impossible to un-see. If you have an interest in economies, macro or micro, pick up a copy and read along.
I’ll be rereading it specifically to better understand how a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative local economy takes hold and grows. Here’s Strong Towns’ Charles Marohn with a terrific overview and introduction to the book. Chapter 1 ; Fool's Paradise ...
"Cities and the Wealth of Nations skewers dogma in a relentless march towards one of Jane Jacobs' most important insights: cities, not nations, are the central organizing geography around which economies are structured..."

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On a self-reliant, resilient and
regenerative local economy. 1

 These recent Strong Towns posts take a thoughtful look at the rapid growth of craft beer businesses in large and small communities across North America, asking what can other local businesses learn from their success.

The author identifies how the consolidation of bigger and fewer corporate brewers left an unmet demand for a local craft industry, one that could interact directly with consumers with unique local offerings. Perhaps we can see other similar unmet demands once we start to look for them…  I did a rough survey of my Old City neighbourhood, listing the food and drink related businesses within very close proximity to each other. The majority, I found to be within a single block (Wesley to Selby, Fitzwilliam to Franklyn).
Here's what I found : Twitter thread : My small neighbourhood — Nanaimo's Old City Quarter — currently has ...
On a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative local economy: 2 : Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs
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Tuesday, May 22, 2018

On a self-reliant, resilient and
regenerative local economy. Introduction

It's not a shortage of housing. It's a shortage of cities. If we define a city as a human settlement with its own self-reliant, resilient and regenerative economy, there’s very few of them. In Canada, maybe six? Nanaimo, where I live, does not qualify as a city by this definition. How do we become a city by this definition? Currently the largest payrolls here are public sector. Family-supporting paychecks that are welcome and appreciated. Fact is, though, the prosperity that backstops these payrolls is not for the most part produced here. It’s produced elsewhere, mostly in BC’s mega-city Vancouver.
There was a bumper sticker a few years ago in Alberta,
“Please God let there be another oil boom. I promise not to piss it all away this time.”
Nanaimo should resist the temptation to become complacent and start now to plant the seeds of a self-reliant, resilient and regenerative economy. Here’s former Toronto Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat writing in Maclean’s: Toronto’s unaffordable. Why can’t Halifax or Saskatoon take advantage? https://www.macleans.ca/economy/torontos-unaffordable-why-cant-halifax-or-saskatoon-take-advantage/
"Take downtown Toronto: it encompasses just 17 of the city’s 613 square kilometres, yet is home to 275,000 people, and is growing four times faster than the city as a whole. Over 75 per cent of these people walk, cycle or take transit to their jobs, which generate 53 per cent of the city’s export-based GDP. There is both an economic and a quality-of-life value to having people in close proximity.”
Your future is downtown, Nanaimo.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2018

This would bring some life to downtown Nanaimo's Diana Krall Plaza

When closed, it just looks like a big container. But when it opens up, it turns into a full-out restaurant....
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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The proposed Island Roots
Co-op Market at Beban Park



A public market might be the single best investment the City of Nanaimo could make right now. Public markets are key pieces of the community-building puzzle. Take a random group of people and compile a list of their favourite travel and vacation highlights. The list will include public markets and span the world: Mexico, France, Spain, San Francisco, Canadian markets like St. John New Brunswick's City Market and everybody's favourite: Vancouver's Granville Island Market.
There is currently a proposal in front of Council for a public market: the Island Roots Market Co-op. The co-op currently operates weekly farmers' markets and have done a great deal of work developing their plan. Few (too few) public markets are built today and it's essential for Nanaimo that this project succeeds. Nanaimo can't afford another failed market. Locals will recall the long, painful death of the one on Newcastle Channel near the Departure Bay ferry terminal.
Like any introductory plan, Island Roots' stresses the positive and the aspirational; the best case scenarios. Questions arise from its costs and revenues estimates (the to-be-secured mortgage and a very ambitious fund raising goal, for instance) but those aren't my concern here. My concern is the proposed location.
Markets need as many people as possible within a walkable catchment area and need to be interconnected to as many other uses as possible to mutual benefit. A market (especially a public market) needs to be accessible to as many, and as diverse, citizen groups as possible.

The proposed location is in a large park that also houses an ice rink, swimming pool, the summer Vancouver Island Exhibition and other recreational uses. As is evident in the illustration the area is bounded on 3 sides by busy 4-lane arterials, the Island Highway, the Northfield connector and Bowen Road. The neighbourhood is primarily car dealerships, light industrial, self-storage sheds etc. What residential there is, is very low density. An imperfect measure, the Walk Score gives the area a 60, almost all tasks require a car. The neighbourhood, unfortunately, can expect to be even less walkable as visitors to the market arriving, by necessity, by private car, will add to the traffic volumes. There is virtually no transit connectivity here. The RDN Transit's Trip Planner shows that it could take someone from the south end who can't get to the market by car an hour to get even within a 20 minute walk. A public market shouldn't further disadvantage low-income folks.
The markets I mentioned in my first paragraph all share critically important connectivity and interconnectedness for mutual benefit. They are neighbourhood gathering places and benefit from the foot traffic generated by nearby shops and offices and in turn benefit those enterprises with the foot traffic the market generates. There are no adjoining shops or offices at this site. It's a serious drawback that, along with the poor access and low population catchment area, diminishes the chances of this market succeeding.
If my concerns are as valid as I think they are, they'll surface again when lease agreements are negotiated with the anchor commercial vendors. Enterprises like the butcher, specialty cheese shop, fish store know how important the immediate catchment area is and how important the clustering with other businesses for mutual benefit. If they share these concerns, they won't see viable business opportunity here. Their involvement is central and key to the success of the market.
In my view this is another expression of the 1970's shopping mall development model that Nanaimo still clings to.  The only area of Nanaimo that has both the necessary compact, diverse commercial and residential pockets and is accessible to everyone is downtown.
The Island Roots proposal scores well on many of the Project for Public Spaces' Ten Qualities of Successful Public Markets but poorly on location and connections. Nanaimo needs this project to succeed. If it struggles due to the concerns I've expressed, or any other reason which could be addressed now, it could be a very long time before we get another chance to establish a public market.
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