Course:IGS585/OK2019WT2/SpeakerRyanDonn
Ryan Donn - Council of the City of Kelowna
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Name of Reflection AuthorThis is a reflection on the presentation by the guest speaker. Name of Commenting AuthorThis is a reflection the reflection of the author above. |
The following table are the pairings for commenting on each other's reflections. These pairings are unique for each reflection.
| Nicole Bamber | Aditya Shingvi Chandrakanth | Maria Correia | Madeline Donald | Stephenie Hendricks |
| Jeffery Nishima-Miller | Ariele Parker | Ian Turner | Amarpreet Kaur | Nadia Mahmoudi |
Ariele Parker
Reflective Thinking. I highly enjoyed the talk from City councillor Ryan Donn. I chuckled to myself after he mentioned he had been a musician in his “past life” as I instantly thought as he began speaking that he had a natural ease in front of a crowd that was very entertaining and engaging. I learn well by actively listening, taking notes and asking follow up questions which was exactly the style of class that was facilitated. I told my supervisor after class that to date, this lecture topped the list of most interesting and relevant to my future career aspirations. I believe the reason why it was so interesting relies upon the delivery of the information from Ryan as well as the content itself. It was all relatable and relevant to me having lived in the City of Kelowna for the past 14 years and having a background in local business.
Analysis. There were various aspects of the discussion that I would like to comment on but we only have so much space for our reflections. I think what was the most interesting take-away from the discussion was the topic of land ownership, development and usage guidelines. This topic is of specific interest to me because I have personally witnessed Kelowna going through substantial growing pains over the past 14 years as we try to transition from a small town to a larger city. What sticks out in my mind is the land near the Grand 10 movie theatre. About 8 years ago this was a cattle feedlot and now it is a hops growing field. I believe this is because the land is zoned as ALR. This is a unique problem Kelowna faces in trying to urbanize areas but also somewhat endearing that there are pockets of farmland scattered throughout the city. In terms of sustainability I am sure there are lots of interesting challenges that this zoning creates and I would like to delve further into it with Ryan if time permits in upcoming classes.
Making Connections. As I reiterate in each reflection, I am Canadian citizen and grew up in Alberta till the age of 16 then moved to British Columbia. I strongly identify as a Western Canadian and I make connections to the course material through this lens. Furthermore, I have a bachelor’s degree in business management from UBC Okanagan and nine years working in the marketing industry prior to starting my masters. Based on both my cultural roots in Western Canada and my professional experience in marketing, I tend to think about how sustainability can relate to marketing, communications and specifically tourism in terms of my above given example. As Kelowna continues to grow is there the opportunity for agri-tourism to grow as well? With so much agricultural land zoned in and around the city I would love to hear more about what ideas and plans the city has to grow agri-tourism and sustainable tourism as I believe it is an interesting area of sustainability that can bring some profit to the region which can then hopefully be used to increase infrastructure for other sustainability related initiatives around the city.
Aditya Shingvi:
I agree that the manner of actually communicating information is more important than being able to simply collect or interpret it. I agree with you that Ryan is good presenter which I think is an important attribute for a City Councilor. One's educational qualifications and background are by no means a guarantee of the ability to get a job done and from the interactions that we had with him I think being a Councilor means always having to learn and face unique problems. As it is climate change is a complicated problem, and the city seems to already have a lot on its plate so I think its quite understandable that Sustainability is not a top priority at the moment atleast.
Ian Turner
While listening to Ryan Donn talk, I was particularly struck by his statement that no municipal politician is even willing to run for office on a platform of sustainability and the environment. When I asked why that is, he responded because it's an issue of electability - that politicians don't want to waste their time with a sustainability platform because the majority of people who vote in municipal elections place little value on issues of sustainability. He also went on to say that the younger progressive vote that does care about issues of sustainability does not show up to vote in municipal elections, but, if they did, those they support would overwhelmingly win. This made me start thinking about a wider question of what actually is the function of a democratically elected individual?
When thinking about what the function of an elected individual is, I think the first question that needs to be asked is are they effectively public servants, employed by the public and therefore beholden to the opinions of the public, or are they a ruling class, meant to govern over the public with no public accountability? Though recent events south of the border may in fact support the latter of these two answers, I do not think that is the true answer, but does provide a topical and poignant contrast. Rather, as the word "democracy" suggests, I believe an elected individual is in fact beholden to their constituents. In my opinion, however, this definition of the function of an elected official contradicts the statements made by Ryan that sustainability is not a focus because those who vote don't care about sustainability and those that don't vote do - assuming those that do and do not vote are equal in the public and are all constituents of the elected official, Ryan's answer seems to suggest that elected officials are in fact only beholden to those constituents that voted for them, rather than all of their constituents regardless of political leanings. How then do we reconcile this difference? Sure you could say things like "City council doesn't know sustainability is an issue with a large portion of their constituents (students, for example) because students don't vote", yet Ryan clearly dispelled that notion when he said the younger vote cares about sustainability, and if they showed up to vote their candidates would win. Clearly then there is a larger problem at hand. Are young people just not engaged in politics at all? If the most recent federal election is an indicator, then it seems like young people are more involved in politics than seemingly ever. In addition, parties running on sustainability platforms are performing better than ever at both the federal level (The Green Party of Canada received 6.5% of the vote in the 2019 Federal election, up 3.07%) and provincial level (the BC Greens received 16.83% of the vote in the 2017 BC provincial election, up 8.7%) . Perhaps then one of the real reasons young people don't vote in municipal elections is because nobody is running on a platform that resonates with them (in addition to other issues - for example, a lack of clarity, including by myself, about what the necessary eligibility criteria are for voting in a municipal election). This then just seems like a feedback loop - young people don't vote in municipal elections because nobody runs on a platform that resonates with them, but politicians don't run on those platforms because young people don't vote. Breaking this feedback loop should, however, be easy if we revisit what, in my opinion, the function of a democratically elected individual is: to represent the opinions not just of themselves (contrary to another comment Ryan made at one point, but I digress), not just of those constituents who voted for them, but to all of their constituents, including those who didn't vote. Councilors seemingly know that a large portion of their constituents care about sustainability, and choose not to address it. This then seemingly represents a breakdown of the fundamental function of a democracy.
(Of course everything I've written here is independent of differences in political ideology, which also plays a significant role, as we've previously discussed. However, this is already quite long, so perhaps someone else could comment on that instead).
Maria Correia
Ian, thanks very much for your thoughtful reflection. I too was intrigued by the Ryan Donn's comments about electability and sustainability. My reaction to his comments, however, was somewhat different from yours. I think we must distinguish between electability platforms and accountability to the public. Because public officials run on a certain platform (which as Ryan pointed out is the reality of being elected) doesn't mean that they do not respond to the concerns raised by the public. Trump is a case in point. What he says to the public to get elected (claims to work for the common people) and his actions (reductions in social spending, tax cuts for the wealthy etc.) are quite different. In fact, Ryan indicated that in the course of his work, climate change comes up in social media commentary, and protests (but not in letters to newspaper editors). This leads me to believe that when it comes to the actual work after the election, he does indeed need to be accountable to the public and respond to issues being raised. My takeaway was that young people need to be responsible and work to make public officials respond to their concerns - be that at the polls or through other means.
Nicole Bamber
First of all I would like to commend Council Member Ryan Donn for his honesty and transparency in class with us this week. Unlike many politicians, he presented what came across as unbiased facts or opinions, and he did not try to sugar-coat anything, or attempt to present a one-sided view of issues addressed by the Kelowna City Council. However, some of the statements he made regarding City Council’s priorities seemed contradictory to me. When I asked if Council had any groups or initiatives working on sustainability, he said that not a single councillor included sustainability in their platform. This was in contrast with his belief that combatting climate change is one of the largest issues facing the city. His reasoning for this apparent inconsistency is that sustainability is not an electable issue, since most of the voting citizens do not prioritize it. He also mentioned that only a small number of students (who traditionally care more about issues like sustainability) actually came out to vote in the city election. However, if none of the councillors put sustainability issues on their platform, the lack of voter turnout by those who do care about sustainability is rather a moot point. Not to say that students shouldn’t vote, but it may be more important to work with the Council we have available to us. There are several activist groups who are currently trying to get the city to declare a climate emergency. After a recent protest, Mayor Colin Basran was quoted as saying that he could declare a climate emergency, but that would be only words and he would rather perform actions. In principle, this is an honourable statement, however he has never given any indication of what these actions are. This, in combination with the fact that none of the councillors included sustainability in their platforms, makes me doubt that the city has taken, or is planning to take, significant actions to address the climate emergency. My hypothesis is that they do not want to declare a climate emergency because then they would have to align their actions with their words and actually take significant action against climate change. Since sustainability is not an electable issue, it is likely not a popular issue to tackle once elected. In Kelowna, there are groups of people who very strongly believe that the Council should take strong action against climate change, and there are others who believe the opposite. If it is City Council’s job to serve the citizens of Kelowna, how should they act when, regardless of which course of action they choose, they will be acting against the desires of a large group of citizens? As I always do in my reflections, I have come back to the issue of communicating across different beliefs on climate change. If it was possible to create a common ground between the two different sides of the issue, that may influence the appropriate actions for City Council to take.
Jeff Nishima-Miller
I also appreciated Ryan Donns unbiased facts and opinions, it was a refreshing change (or at least it challenged my sometimes pessimistic view of politicians). I found it very interesting to hear his own opinions of local politics, and the inner workings of council, etc.
I am interested in the activist groups currently trying to get the city to declare a climate emergency (following the lead of Vancouver). I wonder if this would be an effective strategy in implementing change. Regardless, I think timing in doing so will be very important in gathering public support, especially those who are not yet convinced. From what I can see online, this debate and pressure came in the middle of winter, when most of Kelowna’s climate related threats are negligible. If pressure was applied to the mayor during the late spring (i.e. flood season) or summer (fire season), especially during a dramatic year (i.e. 2017 or 2018), maybe these calls for action will have some more substance. This is not to say climate change is not a threat which exists all year… but people have short memories, and it can be hard to imagine ‘how will climate change actually affect me?’
Jeff Nishima-Miller
Our class visit from Ryan Donn was a great reminder of the strengths and weaknesses of mass media and public communication. Ryan’s comments regarding news platforms’ circulation of negative content (as it gets more ‘clicks’) resonated with me, because even though I find the news to be a downer, I still habitually read it every morning. Given this, it is not surprising that there a lot of pessimism generated towards politicians when the news only highlights negatives and wrong doings. I would love to see a Canadian based news station dedicated to generating some ‘good news’.
I also found Ryan’s comments about his social media use very interesting. I haven’t used social media for years now, but Ryan appears to use his to generate some ‘good news’, but also gives his followers an authentic look into local politics. Although Ryan’s use of social media is a refreshing change from the Trump-esc social media presence and the popular news, social media generally appears to generate a lot of negative content, contributing to the same pessimism. Furthermore, it seems to provide (to me at least) an outlet for people to then share their negativity and complain. Given this, I was surprised Ryan takes the time to respond to everyone’s comments, even the negative.
Now time to address the moment when everyone in the room gasped… When Ryan mentioned that no-one is willing to run on a platform of environment and sustainability. While I was disappointed and surprised to hear this, it could also be a good opportunity for future candidates. Running on a platform focusing on environment and sustainability could be a great avenue for a city council candidate to reach younger generations, getting them to vote in local elections by running on a platform which resonates with them.
Building on my reflection from last week, it becomes obvious that a shift is needed to get younger people involved and excited about local politics. For example, hearing about the Transportation Master Plan, and the need for public engagement in creating this plan solidified this. It should be noted, however, that the City Hall meeting was scheduled at 13:30 which limits the involvement of young/working age people, as these are working hours. Relating this back to our conversation with Ryan, this leaves people in an awkward position, where there are structural restrictions limiting their involvement. As a result, people are left getting information from mass media (news/social media), which severely limits the scope of information provided.
After attending the City Hall meeting, I was left questioning the potential for attendance to these meetings to inform people/answer their questions. If the meeting were made more accessible could this help prevent some of the pessimism being generated by mass media towards local politics/politicians? As information becomes more and more accessible, there appears to be a juxtaposition, where the quantity of information is increasing while the quality is diminishing. I am left wondering how we can achieve a balance, where people still have the quantity of information which they desire, while also giving people accessibility to quality information?
Nicole Bamber
Jeff,
I agree with your comments about social media as a place for people to share negativity. This is shockingly true for news stories involving environmental or other sensitive topics. People feel like they can hide behind their keyboard and write truly horrible things online, when most of these people would at least be civil in person, if not actually engage in a meaningful conversation. Like the internal debate I had about the usefulness of memes as a form of communication, I am again struck by the question of whether social media provides more harm or benefit. However, social media is generally a good way to reach young people, who presumably are the ones voting for a more environment-focused platform (in general of course, there are many exceptions). In this way, social media could help to overcome some of the barriers you mentioned to student/young professionals in getting involved in city politics. So overall I would say social media is likely an overall beneficial platform, but I wish there was a better way of holding people accountable for the things they say online.
Madeline Donald
What a performer! While a performance is not the first thing I hope for in a conversation, I am grateful for Ryan's visit to our classroom, and, in turn, for our visit to the city council meeting this past Monday. One point Ryan made numerous times stuck with me, that many people see political agents as inherently bad actors. From my own anecdotal perspective I agree with him. In the linguistic map of my head, "politician" sits more comfortably with the derogatory term, "nimrod", than with "social justice warrior", though I would defend the stance that, for politicians, both definitions of both words intermittently apply. My negative bias to the word and the people who fill the sociological niche remains, despite having chastised my partner for just that negative implication. 'Talking about politicians with disdain,' I'm sure I said, 'only perpetuates the problem. Unless you wish to live in an anarchy we have to allow the possibility for politicians to do good and mean well for more than their pockets and egos.'
I do not understand this tendency to think negatively about politicians and I would like to be able to change my own orientation towards the people who (potentially) hold bureaucratic decision-making power. In fact I think it is probably something we must do if positive change is to be made. The most effective way to go about this seems to be to engage in the way we are doing now: speaking face to face with politicians, questioning their processes and motivations, and trying to understand the positions from which decisions are made. Unfortunately, the most effective is seldom convenient. Most will not show up somewhere they are mandated to be, somewhere they are effectively being rewarded for being, and be provided with the opportunity to speak face-to-face with a local politician. Most would have to go out of their way to change a bias toward negativity, and, I would venture to guess that most won't.
One of my many aunts works as a communications coach. She has a standard line for her clients: "I will be surprised and delighted if..." The intention of this line is to strike through pessimism and open up space for, well, surprise and delight in the event that something happens that is to the client's liking. My aforementioned politically pessimistic partner joined out class in attendance at the city council meeting. Our mutual surprise and delight was almost palpable after hearing the mayor state that not everyone has to like the changes made in moving the city in the direction of sustainable because they must be made. The night before I had been waxing poetic about what I unfortunately termed a "sustainablocracy", because I believe that direction-of-sustainability decisions will have to be made or they will be made for us in a rather less pleasant fashion. It was a delight to hear that, to some extent, the mayor agrees.
Amarpreet Kaur
"In fact I think it is probably something we must do if positive change is to be made.", I totally agree with your thought, Madeline. If we want a change in society. firstly it's we who have to change our-self. Additionally, our more interaction and participation with political agents will help us to have knowledge about how they make decisions on different matters. Perhaps, all of this is only possible if everyone in-person takes an initiative to come forward, express their views and make counter questions on different subjects to politicians. Such engagements not only increases the public and political transparency but also presents them with the layout to the kind of development and improvement that public wants in future system.
Maria Correia
This module with Ryan Donn and the subsequent meeting at City Hall has perhaps been the most impactful one thus far. I took an early interest in politics in my 20s, joining a national political party, and even though my career took me in a different direction, I have always taken a keen interest in politics but have had limited interaction with politicians. It was therefore fascinating for me to get an insider’s account of the world of local politics. A few specific reflections follow.
On elections, I was not surprised that sustainability (and climate change) is not an electable issue. It only validated my own informal observations of public opinion in the Kelowna area, which is neither particularly informed nor concerned (or if people are concerned, it is not enough to actually do anything about it). However, I got some insights into what it takes to put sustainability and climate change on the City Council agenda – both during the election period and after. I concluded that influencing politics takes time and effort (not merely writing a few letters and emails to politicians and candidates). Among other things, it requires establishing coalitions that can pressure candidates and council and/or creating alliances with the power brokers and opinion makers in this city. Ryan Donn’s comment about needing to convince his other council members when he wanted to get something done, was a case in point.
On the Kelowna City Council meeting, I very much appreciated being able to attend an actual working session of the council. At the last election, I had hoped for new more progressive candidates to be voted in and was disappointed and disillusioned when only one new candidate made it through. However, from the meeting proceedings, I was generally impressed with the level of knowledge and seemingly commitment of council members. On the transport study, which was the most interesting agenda item for me, I had the sense, hopefully correctly, that the council is generally concerned about sustainability as it relates to transport. I was particularly happy to hear the Mayor say that the council should be prepared to make some bold choices on sustainable options even if it means going against the views of the public. This sounded promising.
As for how this module will affect me and my work: first, attending the City Council meeting gave me the impetus to become more involved in local politics – or at least to be less of a passive observer. The fact that public meetings and officials like Ryan Donn are so accessible is an incentive. And second, I was reminded of the importance of working through influential stakeholders to get things done. As my work (and research) now involves working with indigenous groups on sustainability, this was an important reminder.
Ian Turner
I think you pretty well hit the nail on the head with regards to the needs to form alliances between groups with similar interests in order to present a unified message of change in politics. However, after the city council meeting, I'm still left wondering how much of a factor money is in this equation. I'm not sure the extent to which financial lobbying takes place at the municipal level, but I would be shocked if it was completely uninvolved. When I consider some of the smaller movements around the city, such as Kelowna Climate Save, Extinction Rebellion, etc. I know that these movements have invested significant time into getting an audience with the city council, and have all separately advocated for declarations of a climate emergency by the city, which has fallen on deaf ears despite a unified message. These groups, even if combined would never have the same financial resources as even a single developer looking to start a project in the city, which, if a factor, would just make the challenge even more insurmountable given the lack of knowledge and care around sustainability issues in the city you've identified.
Aditya Shingvi
This week we had the opportunity to meet City Councilor Ryan Donn who represents yet another level of the government- The City, which is also the one that makes the decisions that directly affects the residents it governs. I really appreciate how John and Nahid have been able bring speakers from different forms of governments with different roles, responsibilities and authority giving us a unique insight on what actually goes into decision making.
What I found really intriguing in this discussion was how the majority of the city's revenues come in the form of property taxes which in a way can be interpreted as "more development equal more collection in taxes". You would think that the city council would be actually pro-development as it not only relates to an increased financial spending capacity but would also create more jobs, help address the housing shortage etc. In reality everything goes to a vote and public hearings are held and people who may have vested interests and may try to "influence" the decision so that it goes in their way. Most policy decisions are majorly influenced from groups that have a keen interest in the topic and not from the general public. Also the decision makers may not necessarily have a background or experience working in the area which makes me want to question the basis of the entire exercise.
John mentioned a new economic concept where the residents of the city where better off by a tiny amount each if a hill development is denied. This idea is something that I found really abstract. As long as the local ecosystem is not disturbed and the building are built in a "responsible" manner I dont see any reason why you would deny it. Also why would you only charge developers to fund public parks? Are other local business not equally responsible? The way I like to think of it is that there must be incentives to build say, 5 "green, affordable houses" for every proposed hill side development. I would like to conclude with specifically mention some question that the instructors raised that resonated with me " How to view climate change - As a bigger global threat or something that is a more local?" and " How to foresee challenges and how knowledge can influence policy?"
Ariele Parker
Aditya, I really appreciate your comment "more development equals more collection in taxes." From my understanding the City of Kelowna is very pro development and sometimes to the detriment of sustainability in the environment, waste removal etc. I also understand your comment regarding the hill top developments. Some of these properties will likely pay quite high taxes which will directly benefit the city. From a local level sustainability appears quite low on the list based on comments from both the City of Kelowna as well as the Regional District of the Central Okanagan. Likely outside of emergency crisis relief policy will have to come from the province and federal government to get motivate Kelowna to become more sustainable in its decision making around developments and infrastructure.
Amarpreet Kaur
Last week’s talk by city councilor Ryan Donn and the visit to city hall was a great learning experience for me. I perceived a good and clear insight of how these local authorities function. I thoroughly enjoyed both the sessions, but the thing that surprised me the most was his views that, environment and sustainability are the issues of electability.
Environment and sustainability have always been an ignored issue in developing countries, like in my country INDIA, the political authorities don’t really care about the impacts of urbanization on the environment. All they care about is there vote bank or to somehow reach active ruling positions. Experiencing such similar situation here was a little eye-opener for me, what surprised me more was the educated youth who understands the benefits of sustainable environment, does not even show-up to cast their vote and later they blame the local government for nor exercising and implementing sustainable mode of development. On a personal note I think , it’s not only the duty of local authorities to be aware of sustainable development but it is also an individual's responsibility to make them aware of all the possible ways to attain sustainable environment.
Another area that interests me is their research to develop transportation system. Communication facilities has always been a backbone for a nation and upgrading to a smart commuting system for a city is an intellectual and tedious task. I was really impressed with the survey they conducted, by considering the residents from all age groups and what they really opine about different transportation problems. As the result, local authorities have decided to make some strong moves in future in order to tackle the transportation problem. Additionally, their 2019 Transportation Citizen Survey also claims that the commuting problem is the second most talked about issue, that has to be resolved. May be in future the local authorities show up with smart strategic plan that resolves both the issues, transportation and achieving sustainability within the common sphere.
Madeline Donald
Amarpreet writes about her surprise, both that politicians here in Canada are ignoring the environment and sustainability for the sake of votes, and that younger folks, who perhaps have a better understanding of the various environment and sustainability challenges that we have created, are not making that clear at the ballot box. This is something I have heard before, both in Canada and in the Netherlands, from new immigrants. Many "developed countries" paint themselves a nice rosy picture for the international stage. In Canada the picture is green, mountainous, and maybe contains a moose. In the Netherlands people of all gendered and sexually oriented stripes hold hands and eat stroopwafels in fields of well-irrigated tulips. People newly arrived to these places expect the positivity with which they are portrayed from afar, supported by environmentally friendly and socially progressive decision makers. These expectations are often met with pipelines and bigotry.
Amarpreet and Ryan Donn are right. All actors in the community have a responsibility to become aware of and push for all the possible ways to move toward sustainable relations with the environment that supports us, through varying levels of political engagement. Voting is just the beginning.
Stephenie Hendricks
I appreciate that Kelowna city councilor Ryan Donn took time out of his day to come and share his experience of being a City Councilperson with us. He was more candid than I expected a city councilperson to be. His story of being a citizen complaining about things transitioning to becoming a citizen who can help make decisions was inspiring. I had done a little research on him before he came to speak with us and knew beforehand that he had been a musician and currently is very involved in event production around the Okanagan. But seeing him “work the room” in person was impressive.
I couldn’t help but come away feeling a little disappointed – not in Donn, but rather in the situation of governance here. It seems to me on key issues, that Todd Cashin tossed responsibility from the Regional District to the City of Kelowna, as with water, for example. Then, unless I misheard Donn, it seems as if he was deflecting responsibility for water over to the Provincial authorities.
Things seem a bit disjointed and unorganized. It seems as though the residents are at the mercy of a system that favors corporate interests. Donn pointing out that the high rises down town are not under the authority of the City and therefore do not have to have sidewalks and other amenities that the City might require was sobering. Donn described the Okanagan as the “Wild West,” at one point and that really resonated for me. The sense I get here that there is no single governing body looking out for the overarching planning of the region. I was also struck by how derisive Donn’s reaction to the topic of “sustainability” is.
He said that basically people didn’t care about sustainability- again, I am not sure if I heard him correctly. When I asked about how the Council gets their information out, I felt his response was pretty disparaging, as though he has given up on trying to communicate with constituents. He seems rather bitter about that. Between the Regional District and the City, it seems there is little strategic infrastructure to communicate with residents.
I suppose that many working for the city might feel that they get more done and have an easier time with their jobs without residents knowing what is going on. With citizens in the dark about the governance, it is easy to say “they don’t care.” But it is also difficult to understand how the citizens of Kelowna can care if they don’t know what is happening.
With so many online platforms like Survey Monkey, Zoom, email, and such I don’t see why there can’t be dedicated communications people to help with outreach and engagement. There seems to be a disconnect in communication between the governance and the residents of Kelowna.
Nadia
Stephenie,
About your first point, as I have mentioned in my previous reflection, I agree with you. There does not seem a clear, well-defined boundary in the responsibilities in different organizations and as a result, in case the things go wrong, there is no specific person to blame. The ambiguous way of the distribution of tasks among different levels of organizations and having a changing boundary, in my perspective, is the way of not having things done correctly.
About your second point, you heard him right; he mentioned that people are not so much into sustainability, but the result of the transportation survey in my view shows otherwise. however, I believe that people are willing to act sustainably as long as it does not hurt their lifestyle (just like what Greg mentioned in the first session.)
Stephenie, in my view, there must be a balance point to the extent of the involvement of the citizens in decision makings. There is not always benefit in asking people what to do. In my view, why my vote as a student who has studied urban planning for about six years and have worked in the related ministry in my country for three years and has visited more than ten great cities around the world, would be equal to the vote of a random old uneducated guy who has lived his whole life in the same region? Please correct me if you believe that I am wrong. I am entirely open to continue this discussion.
To illustrate more, Stephenie, one of the problems that we are studying in our lessons, there is a high level of individualism in this country and this city, city planners are willing to address this problem, some measures must be taken that may harm some people but the major proportion of people would benefit from it in the long term. The problem is that despite the fact that individualism is not something good and the sociologists and planners know that for a healthy community people will need more meaningful social interactions significantly since residents in here never have experienced such way of life, would highly resist against this improvement and they would never peacefully agree with this improvements. So do we need to take these measures to create a more healthy community or wait for the people one day to vote for it?
Nadia Mahmoudi
It was perfect that we had Ryan in our class in this session. It was very informative. During this discussion, many things became clearer to me. The city of Kelowna is in charge of so many ongoing projects. One of them that is highly relevant to my focus is development plans.
Ryan did not provide me with an answer about long term plans in Kelowna. I expect that each city has a 40 or 50 years longterm plan, 15 to 20 years medium-term plan and a 2 to 5 years short term plan. Usually having social engagements happen in the short term plans, which are related to low cost and small plans with short term impacts, the results of which is evident within a short time; however, as much as I am concerned, long term plans which accompanies considerable investments, and are there to address more profound problems of the city, like community planning or land use planning most of the times are enacted and get done by the studies of experts and the people who have actually conducted years of studies on this subject. In my perspective, as all the individuals do not know about the importance and the impacts of some specific actions are not eligible for expressing their opinion about the long term plans in the city. It is not like since we have interactions with our city, we know it the best and we should be the one who decides for it.
To make my idea clearer, I can bring this example. I go to a doctor and after running some tests, the doctor claims that "you are sick," and then he asks, "do you want pills or you prefer a surgery. Since it is your body, you get to decide on that." Just like our body, the city is an alive organism that has different parts, so many different groups of people are living there with different roles and according to Saskia Sassen, it is a Frontier where different religions, races, jobs, and cultures meet. Only experts can solve deep-rooted problems in it.
Another point that was mentioned in the city hall was the lighting project, l which many other of our peers pointed out. In my way of thinking, there are so many sustainability precautions are there for lighting other that using LED lights. Of course, LEDs are very ecologically friendly, convenient, and cost-effective, but there should also be some plans and studies about the plants getting affected by the lights and their life cycle. I heard that there were discussions about the color of the lights (that should not be harmful to the eyes (both humans and animals) and the night sky, but the vegetation in my opinion was something that was missing in the discussions.
All in all, I think that both Ryan's talk in our class and the city hall session were both very informative and in some regards, eye-opening. I liked how the mayor was handling the council and how everyone were prepared like every member of the committee was familiar with all the projects.
Stephenie Hendricks
I agree with you, Nadia, that Ryan Donn’s presentation in class was very informative. I was sorry I could not attend the City Council meeting, and look forward to hearing the recording of it when it is posted.
I also agree that those involved in running things seem too busy to get a handle on long term planning. The “Imagine” report seemed heavy on graphics, and vague and confusing on specifics.
I understand that experts are needed to consult, but I didn’t see any process where these experts are also helping to build capacity within the governance to have “in house” experts.
Perhaps that is happening and it just isn’t apparent.
I think back to when Donn first visited our class, describing Kelowna as the “wild, wild west,” and it seems as if there is something of an ad hoc, every-individual-for-themselves culture that is reflected in the helter skelter development running rampant through the City and the region. The migrations to Kelowna from the prairies and Vancouver seem like a modern day gold rush for developers, with governance ill equipped to handle it with an eye toward protecting the quality of life for residents (ironically).