In Vancouver, Canada, a vibrant, modern city that has un-planned its way into a housing crisis, two respected university professors have unleashed a mind-boggling fireworks display of opinion, enlightenment and received-certainty in The Tyee, a respected British Columbia news and opinion blog.
The purpose of the article? To equip your average plodding citizen with tools to cut off aspiring but unqualified candidates at the knees with a barrage of probing questions. Not just one or two incisive questions, but many such questions, many many questions, all devilishly-to-impossibly-hard to answer (except, perhaps, to the distinguished pair of professors after a lifetime working the rich soil of city planning).
If only . . .
If only they weren’t so dense! With their prose, not their intelligence, which seems impeccable, at least as far as this average plodder can tell as he is galloped across two lifetimes of expertise on the subject of affordable housing, packed sentence after packed sentence replete with planning jargon.
I am now up to the eyeballs and beyond with questions that will probably overwhelm any candidate, just as they have overwhelmed me. However, armed with fierce weaponry I don’t really know how to use, I’ll probably avoid all candidates in the near future, just in case one of them returns my question with, “Exactly what did you mean by that?” Or even worse, “Yes indeed, that will be a problem. How do you feel we should proceed.”
I understand . . .
I understand completely the scholarly impetus to get the questions out in the public domain in time to head off at the pass some fathead know-nothing candidate. But, even with a little affordable housing knowledge under my belt, I’m not the cowboy to do the job.
I hope . . .
I hope that University of British Columbia professors Patrick Condon and Scot Hein might hook up with The Tyee in the future for more slower paced articles that will help me overcome my depression at the enormous, seemingly insurmountable workload, time and expense necessary to respond to the challenge of creating affordable housing in Vancouver. Salting in a few answers along with the questions might go a long way to easing my pain.
My overall reaction to demands of this article is undoubtedly an unintended consequence. The drumbeat of difficult questions has half-convinced me that since we are facing a human shelter crisis, ‘getting on with it’ which may actually trump neighbourhood sensitivities divined by endless studies and consultations in order to create the ultimate affordable project.
Most cities in the world, including Vancouver grew like topsy. Perhaps, in the face of crisis, there remains an occasional benefit to just doing it, and dealing with the unintended consequences later. But I’m more than happy to be convinced otherwise.
For a laundry list of tough questions that Vancouver, and indeed any major city, must apparently face in order to overcome a desperate affordable housing crisis, read more in THE TYEE: Hard Questions about Vancouver’s New Affordability Approach
