Featured Guest
You’ll find this guest among our growing roll of Urban Champions.
Elora Wilkinson
Project Manager, Cogswell District Project, Halifax Regional Municipality
Cynthia Dorrington
President, Vale & Associates
Andy Fillmore
Member of Parliament for Halifax
5 Key
Takeaways
A roundup of the most compelling ideas, themes and quotes from this candid conversation
1. COVID can and should have a lasting impact on urban planning
In the realm of urban planning, there will be no ‘normal’ to revert to once COVID subsides. COVID can and should have a lasting impact on the way urban planners think about their work and how they engage in public consultation. Most significantly, COVID has forced urban planners and city builders across Canada to pause and take this opportunity to bring previously undervalued issues to the forefront of public debates.
2. Black Lives Matter presents an opportunity for self-reflection
The movement that began in the United States with the tragic death of a man named George Floyd has presented Canadians with an opportunity to reflect on our own history. For many Haligonians this has meant revisiting the history of ‘Africville,’ a community of Black Canadians that existed on the outskirts of the City of Halifax from the early 1800s until the 1960s, when the City condemned the area and evicted the residents from their homes. The legacy of Africville remains a stain on the City of Halifax and urban planners have an obligation to learn from this history.
3. We need to become more comfortable with uncertainty
Urban planners do not hold all the answers. In the last 100 days we have seen incredible innovation within Canadian cities, and urban planners, practitioners, and other leaders are bound to make mistakes. Cities need to have the confidence to pursue new ideas, the strength to admit when they have made a mistake and remember that city-building is a learning process. This is particularly true during COVID, when urban practitioners often have less access to information, less time to deliver projects, and reduced capacity to engage with communities.
4. The goal should be to build community partnerships
Community engagement is too often viewed as a checked box on the journey to delivering a new project. This approach to community engagement does not facilitate real and honest discussions with residents. Instead, urban planners should work towards building long-term partnerships within their communities. We must remember that the voices of those historically left out of these discussions are often those who are most impacted by the decisions we make.
5. Change will be a long, uphill battle
If urban planners wish to build strong partnerships within racialized and other equity-seeking communities, then they must be willing to genuinely and authentically listen to their concerns and priorities. No relationship can exist without trust and there will be many years of work ahead for those who seek to rebuild the trust that has been broken by our past actions. Urban planners need to remember the stories that they have been told over the past 100 days and apply the lessons that they have learned throughout their careers.
Additional Reading & Resources
The Story of Africville, Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Africville: The Black community bulldozed by the city of Halifax, Historica Canada – Africville Video
Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax, Ted Rutland, University of Toronto Press
Full Panel
Transcript
Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software. Manual editing was undertaken in an effort to improve readability and clarity. Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to events@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.
Full Audience
Chatroom Transcript
Note to reader: Chat comments have been edited for ease of readability. The text has not been edited for spelling or grammar. For questions or concerns, please contact events@canurb.org with “Chat Comments” in the subject lin
From Canadian Urban Institute: You can find transcripts and recordings of today’s and all our webinars at https://canurb.org/citytalk
00:20:31 Canadian Urban Institute: Folks, please change your chat settings to “all panelists and attendees” so everyone can see your comments.
00:20:52 Canadian Urban Institute: You can find transcripts and recordings of today’s and all our webinars at https://www.canurb.org/citytalk
00:21:33 Canadian Urban Institute: Keep the conversation going #covid100 @canurb
00:21:56 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: Please check out covid100.ca for more details on today’s cross-country panels.
00:22:44 Ryan St-Jean: thank you
00:24:35 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: Today’s panel:
Kourosh Rad – https://twitter.com/RadUrbanist
Cynthia Dorrington – https://twitter.com/cyndorr
Andy Fillmore – https://twitter.com/AndyFillmoreHFX
Elora Wilkinson – https://twitter.com/elorawilk
00:36:38 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: A reminder to please change your chat settings to “all panelists and attendees” so everyone can see your comments.
00:36:56 zahra Williams: Thanks for the reminder !
00:37:27 Ryan St-Jean: car jacking a Tesla might become a thing, but self-driving would allow for removal of red-lights
00:37:58 Ryan St-Jean: I meant a driver-free Tesla
00:39:39 Ryan St-Jean: Montreal-Maine Hyperloop
00:41:07 zahra Williams: How do we reconcile with a city that apparently can mobilize quickly to “open” and “adapt” spaces in response to a pandemic. Yet, we can’t seem to identify and address issues of urban inequity that systemically impact BBIPOCs in Halifax?
00:41:55 Ryan St-Jean: use the suburb next doors that’s incorporated differently for some reason
00:43:15 Ryan St-Jean: AGMs are banned in some places
00:43:42 Canadian Urban Institute: yes!!!
00:46:27 Ryan St-Jean: FordFest vs 36Chambers
00:47:44 Canadian Urban Institute: be prepared to take risks to take action, but listen, collect data and then adjust. Be prepared to accept mistakes
00:49:11 Ryan St-Jean: TVO.org
00:51:10 J. Scott: is this it https://www.tvo.org/video/urban-design-is-not-neutral ?
00:51:23 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: https://utorontopress.com/ca/displacing-blackness-2
00:51:55 TJ Maguire: https://www.tvo.org/video/urban-design-is-not-neutral
00:52:08 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: Please also take a moment to read “A Call to Courage”, written by CUI Senior Fellow Jay Pitter: https://canurb.org/citytalk-news/a-call-to-courage-an-open-letter-to-canadian-urbanists/
00:57:48 Ryan St-Jean: All the hockey players want to be Senators
00:58:12 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: If you haven’t already, please check out our previous CityTalk session on confronting anti-Black racism in urban planning: https://canurb.org/citytalk-news/how-do-we-respond-to-anti-black-racism-in-urbanist-practices-and-conversations/
00:58:23 Gary Offenberger: Great point Elora. What COVID has really brought to light — as we all drop in from all over — is that engagement benefits from remote inclusion. In-person engagement is important, but it does exclude people (disabled, working people with kids, people who don’t have easy access to transportation, etc.). You miss hearing key voices. Municipalities shouldn’t rely on in-person “town hall” meetings going forward. They should always include remote meetings.
00:58:31 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: And stay tuned for part two of that discussion, coming up this Tuesday, June 23 @ 11:30 EDT.
01:02:47 Canadian Urban Institute: Reminding attendees to please change your chat settings to “all panelists and attendees” so everyone can see your comments.
01:03:09 Yanling Lin: Andy, where can we find information on the project that you just mentioned later when the information can be shared publicly?
01:04:12 Canadian Urban Institute: Keep the conversation going #covid100 @canurb
01:04:19 Ryan St-Jean: I told my friend to call Ruckify for a sponsorship, but he might owe them 2k in carpet replacement
01:04:34 Ryan St-Jean: depends on how relaxed the board is about it
01:05:11 J. Scott: You can make submissions on what you want to see in our recovery to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the CANADIAN RESPONSE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC up until 11:59 pm EDT tonight https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/INDU/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=10819646.
01:05:35 Ryan St-Jean: can I just tweet the parliamentary assistant?
01:06:23 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: We’ve compiled 100 Actions pulled from our CityTalk series – check them out on https://covid100.ca
01:07:22 Ryan St-Jean: WinWin homesharing owes me 2k, I sense a collaboration
01:07:57 Canadian Urban Institute: You can find transcripts and recordings of today’s and all our webinars at https://www.canurb.org/citytalk
01:08:44 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: Please help CUI improve its CityTalk programming with a short survey – https://bit.ly/2UXXsFS
01:10:52 Emily Wall, CUI Staff: To contact Andy Fillmore: ANDY.FILLMORE@PARL.GC.CA
01:11:54 Ryan St-Jean: used barrels are great for planters
01:12:06 Ryan St-Jean: galvanized steel panels are great too
01:13:22 Sean Gadon: Great panel! Thank you for everyone for your commitment to change that both the pandemic and the brutal death of George Floyd has forced us collectively to confront.
01:16:37 Dante Samson: Thank you for the awesome panel!
01:16:44 J. Scott: Thank you everyone!
