Nature knows best: How can we unify natural assets with Canada’s housing supply?

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Mary W Rowe Hi, everybody. It’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. Thanks for joining us. I’m just here looking at texts from all my colleagues and friends in Louisiana as they cope with Hurricane Francine. I cut my teeth … and a lot of my sort of growing awareness about what the role of natural assets has to be in protecting communities and how much of an issue this is. And so I’m so pleased that we’re hosting this … as I started to say, I cut my teeth being involved in the recovery after Katrina, Hurricane Katrina, and the levee failures in the Gulf Coast almost 20 years ago. So I am very appreciative of this topic and appreciative of all our colleagues who are, you know, leaning in to this topic, as critical as it is. So I appreciate, too, that I was just making a bit of a joke that CityTalk is being taken over by the West Coast today because all of our panelists, including Jonathan, who’s actually a newcomer to Toronto, they’re all “West Coasters”. So as always, I’m sure all the West Coasters who were just having their first cup of coffee are going to say, it’s about time we realized we’ve got to look west and learn about what’s really important. So I appreciate that. There’s a whole thing about how we … in the East of anything … We’re always a bit slower in the East, just saying. And so that works at almost all scales. And somebody said to me the other day, “it’s because of the way the earth rotates”, but who knows? But there is a thing about, if you look in cities, it’s often the east side that has more of a challenge. And here we are in a country where the West side is leading. So thank you, West Siders, for coming on and joining us first thing in the morning. And thank you for this topic and how topical it is. As I said, I happen to be in Toronto today, but I’m often in other places and CUI, it works across the country with partners, as you all know, and we have staff across the country. But this is the traditional territory of a number of first Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. And we’re going to hear more and more today about the relevance of Indigenous practice and Indigenous solutions-finding and the extent to which we continue to be confronted by the ways in which settler assumptions and settler processes subverted what was actually the right thing to do in the first place. And here we are going back and trying to actually undo and redo and live in a much more harmonious and collaborative way with nature. So as I say, I’m very appreciative of that. CUI is in the traditional territory covered by the Treaty 13, the Williams Treaty – sorry, Toronto is – but many, many parts of the country are unceded no treaties and what does that actually mean as we actually journey forth together? So let’s have that always as an undercurrent of the conversations we have here on CityTalk. I encourage people to come in to the chat and put questions up there and clarifications and those of you that have been coming to CityTalks were almost at, I think, 250 of them now. And some of you come to every one of them and some of you dip in and out, which is fabulous. And some of you watch them after the fact when we post them. But the chat is a really active learning channel. So if you haven’t ever signed in on the chat, sign into the chat and you’ll learn stuff and lots of conversation takes place there, as I say, lots of resources. We publish the chat, we publish the recording, and we always say that the conversation is never over. It’s just the beginning. So if I could ask my fellow panelists to come on and expose their screens and we’ll do the best we can with a little bit of shaky technology as we try to cover the country on this. But I want to just first off, congratulate my colleague Roy, who, you know, commissioned with us at CUI to do this report. And as I say, so timely as we every day open up another story about some significant weather event and the extent to which we have or haven’t been able to adjust to that and what are we doing to actually shore, literally shore ourselves up as the climate changes and as severe weather affects us in all these different ways. So can you just describe for us a little bit why the report was necessary and also … Actually when everybody … Could you introduce yourself when I ask you to and just tell us a little bit about where you’re coming in from, but also what your work is, who you work with and what your focus is. And then we’ll have a group conversation. And as I say, everybody can chime in and throw some ideas into the chat and we’ll have a good hour, sharp hour together. So, Roy, I’m going to start with you. Just give us the top line about why you did this. And also I appreciate people are checking in on the chat and telling us where they’re coming in from too. Go ahead Roy, over to you. Welcome to CityTalk.

Roy Brooke Thanks very much, Mary. My name is Roy Brooke. I’m the executive director of a not for profit called the Natural Assets Initiative. And just regarding this report, the “both/and” integrating natural assets into federal housing supply. I just want to be very clear that the real credit here is due to Carolyn Whitzman, who’s the lead author and an associate of the Canadian Urban institute and one of the country’s leading experts in the field.

Mary W Rowe I thought you were going to call her a national treasure … she’s on the call. Carolyn, we’re going to call you a national treasure. Just saying. 

Roy Brooke I thought that was her official title.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, that’s right. I think we’ll get it on a business card for her. But the thing is about Carolyn, which is why she was a great person to work with you on this, is to try to actually forge a conversation that it’s never only one thing. And I think that’s the point that you’re making in this report, Roy, is that we have to look at a holistic ecosystem approach to every challenge we’ve got. Carolyn is a housing specialist, but she also understands environment and she understands economy. And so hats off to Carolyn Whitzman. I’ll go back to you, Roy, to continue to summarize for us the report.

Roy Brooke I mean, I think you could synthesize this into a few big ideas. Does the country need houses and affordable houses? Yes, of course it does. But those houses, our housing stock is only livable, it’s only affordable, if it has a constant stream of services like flood risk reduction and storm water management. And what we know is that nature, natural assets, provide cost effective and reliable services. So I would say that one of the basic messages in this report is that we have to figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, we have to build homes, we have to build affordable homes, but we also, in the process, can’t destroy the very natural assets that make those homes livable, resilient, cost effective in a changing climate. So I think that’s point one. Point two is the feds are making a big reentry into the housing supply market, if I can call it that, in Canada. And so that provides us with an historic opportunity for them to really weave nature, integrate nature, and its preservation into the building of Canada’s homes. And so the report really finally concludes that in the big areas where the feds are playing, there’s very practical, very specific things that they can do to ensure that as we build homes, we’re also protecting the natural assets that will keep those homes livable. So if one of the big ones is ensuring that in any funding agreements that they are signing with the provinces, they are prioritizing the preservation of natural assets. So not merely defaulting to grey or engineered assets which may in the end be dead end assets in a changing climate, but instead seeing where, when, where and how natural assets can provide critical services, drinking water filtration, storm water management, flood risk reduction. They’re also cutting loose a wide range of federal lands on which homes can be built. And there too, I think there’s 1950s ways to build, or there’s ways to build that incorporate what we’ve learned about the importance of natural assets. The report obviously urges the latter. And it gives a bunch of really interesting examples from around the world about how this isn’t sort of merely “do gooding’” this leads to cost savings and really practical results. So in summary, we’re basically saying as we build houses, let’s protect nature, because that’s what we need if those houses are to be affordable and livable over their lifespan.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. I mean, this is like a … It’s kind of like a call to arms. You know, I just want to thank you for those of you that are responding to my plea that you go into the chat. All of you that have gone in and checked yourselves in and then only sent it to host and panelists, go back and send it to everyone. Sherry Hamlin, you came only in to host and panelists, not just singling you out, there are lots of you, Nadia, others … So go back on your chat function and toggle it to “everyone” so that everyone sees it. And the host and panelists are happy to see you here, but I’d like everyone to know. Back Roy to the sort of bigger picture here about – how have we managed to not pay attention to nature? I worry a little bit that we’re going to overcorrect and all of a sudden it’s housing, housing, housing, housing. And then we tend to go to the lowest common denominator and suddenly we’re just doing stuff … Do you have that anxiety, too? Do you lie in bed awake, worried about this?

Roy Brooke Well, I mean, I’m a good sleeper, so I can’t say I lay awake at night per se. But look, we saw this in the greenbelt.  We saw this kind of artificial debate where I think the argument was put out that either you can have houses or you can have nature, but you can’t have both. And it’s just not true. It’s just not accurate. Homes require the services from nature. However, as a society and historically, our actions sort of tend to say otherwise. When we look at nature, we tend to … we as a society, we as local governments tend to look at it narrowly as providing only green or recreational or social amenities. But the reality is that, say a wetland in addition to maybe providing recreational or social amenities by virtue of storing water, it can also aid in drinking water filtration, stormwater management, flood risk reduction, aquifer recharge. And we have a growing body of tools that allow us to bring that recognition into decision making. We now have well over 150 local governments that are starting to take action in a space that is now known as natural asset management …

Mary W Rowe You’ve pretty much created a domain. But you know, when I was just … I was reflecting, you know, 20 years ago when we were dealing with it on the Gulf Coast, it really wasn’t a domain then, you know, we had to kind of convince people – oh, there need to be multiple lines of defense. People didn’t even really know what a wetland was. So in 20 years, we have made some progress. You’ve codified it, and you created this notion that this is an asset that we can deploy in a sensible way.

Roy Brooke Yes, but we need to move quickly because at the same time we’re building houses fast, we’re losing wetlands fast. The federal money is getting blown out the door. And if we miss that opportunity, there will be billions of dollars spent in what will tend to be, what I could loosely call old school ways, which tend to ignore the role that nature can play.

Mary W Rowe Right, right, right. I hear you. You know, we also worked with the infrastructure bank earlier this summer on our report on what the actual infrastructure cost needs to be to accompany a new housing unit. It’s about 100,000 bucks. So you can’t just throw the housing unit up. You’ve got to recognize, as you suggest, all the other pieces that allow that house to become our home, to become functional. And now you’re saying, let’s not forget that we have all these other assets. Let me go to some of our colleagues across the country, Patience, I’m going to come to you next to give us your particular perspective. And again, you heard me do the call our around Indigenous practice and that is your world. And I’m sure you’ve had years and years of frustration trying to get people to pay attention. But it feels to me now, I mean, maybe you tell me, do you feel we’re turning a bit of a corner? And what is the particular perspective that you’re bringing to the work that you’re doing?

Patience Cox Well, first of all, I need to introduce myself. My name is Patience Cox. I’m a Jameson from the Upper Similkameen Indian Band, which is in southern B.C. … South Central B.C., For those of you not familiar. In terms of my background, I also  want to be really clear that I am not speaking on behalf of all Indigenous people in Canada or even any Indigenous people in Canada. I speak for myself only and my own experience. And so I just want to be really clear. There’s a lot of people in Canada and across the country that have a lot of experience in working in this field. And I absolutely wouldn’t suggest that that is me. I think from my point of view, the work that I’ve been doing is really about … NAI has started shifting and working with Indigenous communities and the whole territory. So it’s shifting the thinking from a straight urban, which is really important. There’s a real need there. There’s … Absolutely I’m not questioning that for one second. But as we move out of the urban, there’s a need to be looking at the whole of watersheds, the whole of territory in a holistic way. And as you are building, as you are developing, how can you do that in a way that is in in cooperation with the land? And that’s the kind of work that I that I am working with Roy on.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, and it’s a dilemma because, I mean, there’s a gazillion dilemmas, but part of it is also because municipal boundaries are fairly arbitrary. Right? And water doesn’t stop at the end of one municipality, right? That’s part of it. Yeah. Talk to me about that. I mean, how do we … I guess it just puts the onus on proponents, people trying to put forward projects that they’ve got to work with multiple jurisdictions. That’s all there is to it.

Patience Cox Yeah. And you have to start, I believe, that you have to start thinking of things in terms of yes, the holistic. So it isn’t just about water. It’s, you know, the land itself, the plants, like we get very worried when we’re mitigating risk, about the built environment. And sometimes we forget about the actual environment, you know, the non-built environment, the natural environment also has some risks. And part of the responsibility of us as human beings is to look at it from that point of view. How are the animals going to survive? How are our food sources going to survive? All of those kinds of things also need to be part of the conversation.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. And Roy, I’m going to come back to you in a second. I’m going to go to the others and get them in. But one of the questions I’ve got that Patience raises for me is how do we price these things? This is the dilemma is that, as you suggest, Patience, they look and they say, “well on our balance sheet, we have to protect these assets” because they have a monetary value. But you’re saying, “yes, but there are all these other assets” and know how do we move the financing of that?

Patience Cox How do we value  food? How do we value natural food? Yeah, how do we value the green space that … I talk about reciprocity a lot. And it’s that idea that, yes, what do we take from the land, but what do we give back? And I just want to say that that the Robin’s work in Braided Sweetgrass, the principle of it, you never take the first that you see, because then you’ll never take the last. And so part of the conversation needs to be how do we as humans take responsibility in a way that is actually looking after the land because the land is giving to us. So yeah. I’ll let you go to Roy, Sorry.

Mary W Rowe Patience, that’s fine. Can one of my colleagues put Braided Sweetgrass and Robin’s book into the chat so people can refer to it because it’s very … It makes this point perfectly as you’re suggesting. And the dilemma is, do we have the right tools, decision making tools, that allow these kinds of assets to appear on a balance sheet? I’m going to ask Jonathan that in a second. Jonathan, I’m giving you fair warning, that’s going to come to you. But before we go, Kim, talk to us. I know … I think you’re in Nanaimo, right?

Kim Fowler Yes. So I’m on traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw, Snaw-naw-as, and Qualicum First Nations. Good morning.

Mary W Rowe Good morning. And talk to us about your particular perspective on this topic and the way in which you’re trying to, you know, move the needle, whatever needle you’re trying to move.

Kim Fowler Yeah, I think one of the key things as a professional planner is that we must honor the land. Conventional crap development, I’m much more direct than Roy, that I wrote in my book on Dockside Green … Conventional craft development first comes out and denudes the land of anything of its value. Where were the trees, where were the waterways, where were the wetlands and then builds conventional crap toxic boxes. And in my book on Dockside Green, I actually say it’s like Dorothy the Wizard of Oz. You know, if she were to appear on this denuded landscape, she’d click her heels and want to go back home. You know, so, we need to when we start doing development, you save money, if all you care about is economics, you should be valuing natural assets. Because this report that’s just came out is one of many that says it values these natural assets. So where was the waterway? You don’t need to import topsoil after you have denuded it and then you know the sod is … you don’t build sod anymore, you know, in trees and all this stuff they have to bring in. Why don’t you leave it and start honoring the landscape and the vegetation and the topography to be able to do that. So in the regional district I’m in, in Nanaimo, we’ve done with natural assets and green Analytics, 280,000 hectares of our regional district has now a natural asset inventory, a condition and risk assessment, and we’ve used that to develop development perimeter is to protect the environmental protection, development perimeter, is in the land use regulations to protect aquifers and trees and wetlands and those valuable functions that natural assets provide. And so I think though, the development industry, the development process needs to start valuing natural assets because it saves money. As I said, it saves money, it values the land, it provides that economic balance. We’ve seen in Covid this this exodus from cities. Yes, it may be cheaper to go buy a house out there in the suburbs or further away, but it’s because of the intrinsic need that we have to be attached to or connected to nature. And I think that is forgotten in a lot of urban development and a need to be able to do that. And you need to incentivize the outcome you want. We used a bottom line development process to sell the dockside green lands and the developer said for the first time you rewarded the right thing. You rewarded us for doing the right thing instead of penalizing us. I’ve also done a triple bottom line and development tool for all developments that we did in the city of Port Coquitlam. That’s like almost two decades ago, those projects. So how do you … you change the process by using those tools that value those things and then incentivize and through the regulatory process, if you do the right thing, you get fast tracked automatically. If you give a piece of crap, the conventional crap development, you get stuck in the process. We have to turn … That’s turning the conventional process around and also valuing fees and charges to do the outcome you want, because currently it incentivizes sprawl, low density and sprawl, and it needs to be changed around to financial incentives. Those things need to be changed and can fairly easily … there are already models out there to change them around to incentivize protection of natural assets, protection and the green infrastructure.

Mary W Rowe We’re going to subtitle the session, “the end of crap development”. You heard it here first. You know, I think you just packed a whole lot of things into what you just said there, Kim because it’s an intervention … I always say that part of what we have to do is show people what’s possible. And a lot of the work that you just cited is showing other jurisdictions what’s possible. Do you know that expression, if we can’t actually … what is it? If it works in theory, it will work in practice or the other way around. If it works in practice, it could actually work in theory. So just to show tangible examples, we’re seeing this in the housing field generally, that there are communities taking some risks, trying to come up with quick solutions that are effective and not doing any damage. And then we, you know, then other folks can watch and copy. And I think that’s part of what your book, I hope, and I see they put into the chat (thanks gang) so people can have a look at some of these case studies to see it is possible. I want to come back, after we get Jonathan in, I do want to come back on – how do we overcome these obstacles? Because, you know, you can find a one off, you can find a couple of communities that will do it. But part of I think what Roy’s report with Caroline was trying to make clear is that we need some national leadership on this. And what would that look like? So, Jonathan, I’m going to come to you in terms of as a planner, but I also, as I say, I know you’re in Toronto, but I also know actually you were in Victoria, you’re a plant.

Jonathan Tinney I’m a plant, yes, they dropped me back into the big city. Yeah. I’m Jonathan Tinney. Yeah, I’m a principal with a consulting and planning and architecture firm called SvN … just down the street from you. But most of my career was spent in British Columbia in in consulting roles, doing a lot of work on design and implementation of new communities. I worked on the university community at SFU, which was quite groundbreaking at the time in terms of its approach to sort of integration of natural natural assets into the infrastructure plan there, although we didn’t call it that at the time. And then I spent some time on the other side of the fence, as the chief planner in Victoria, I actually see some former colleagues on on the call here, which is great to see. So yeah, what was your question, Mary?

Mary W Rowe Just to talk to us about what SvN’s perspective is, you know, you can talk about whatever you like, Jonathan, but I think you’re in professional practice.

Jonathan Tinney Yes.

Mary W Rowe You’re dealing with clients all the time.

Jonathan Tinney Yeah. And I think, you know.

Mary W Rowe Let’s talk about the challenge of getting them to do the right thing. Just saying.

Jonathan Tinney Well, well, we’re very fortunate at SvN, we have some great clients who actually push us from time to time. And I think, you know, in certain types of projects, thinking like this is relatively easy. I think, you know, Kim’s sort of touched on it really well in that, you know, when we’re looking at new communities, when we’re looking at new developments,  we’re starting to come to a place where we’re thinking about how we replace grey things with green things. And it’s relatively easy to figure out where the cost benefits are of that when you’re building something new because you can actually see, you know, by restoring a stream bed or by sort of maintaining a level of permeability within the community, you don’t have to build certain things. And so it’s a very easy exercise to … On the ledger to be able to say, well, we didn’t have to build that pipe. We didn’t have to build this and be able to see where those clear sort of benefits are. You know, the add on to that is the sort of the intangible benefits, right? In any community, we have to build not just infrastructure, but we also have to build parks. We have to build places for people. And so there’s a real amazing overlap between the preservation of and enhancement of natural assets and these creations of these sort of really lovely people spaces. So the idea of taking a creek bed, enhancing it so that not only does it do the kind of work you need for storm water management, but also does the kind of work that you need for providing nature to people in new developments, providing sense of place, all of those other kinds of things. It’s a really, really powerful sort of powerful opportunity. The challenge I think that we’re in, and it’s one that I think that Roy and his group are really looking at is – how do we do this in in existing developments, in infill, you know, you talked, Mary, about the boundaries where we stop at a municipal boundary and sort of how do we think about the value and putting a price tag on some of these assets and what they’re worth, in a way that allows us to make decisions between, you know, Victoria and Saanich or Toronto and Vaughn as things move across and how do we come to an alignment on what those assets are worth and how much we should be investing in them, when the political realities in those two locations might be different. And that’s really I think, that’s sort of the next step and one certainly that a lot of people on this call is really thinking about.

Mary W Rowe Yes. Yeah. I’m just taking a deep intake of breath. Let’s have everybody on the screen. Thanks, Wendy. I’d like to have everybody on and everybody open your mics so that we don’t have to say “your muted”. Just everybody, open your mics and let’s just have a collective chat. Do not spotlight me anymore, Wendy. Let’s have everybody on … Yes, thank you. So we can all have a chat about this. I couple of things on this. I love this. Some of the phrasing other than “crap development” which I’m in love with, but replacing grey with green, this idea that what our friends at ICLEI always talk about which is, no more single solving, always multi solving, which is what Jonathan just got to. And again, back to my experience on the Gulf Coast, we had to really push that you could invest in resilience and invest in livability. And I remember in New York, after Hurricane Sandy, you know, some of those initiatives – that was written right into the RFP, that you don’t just create a park anymore or you don’t just build a bridge, you know, you’ve got to have these kinds of things. I think that the dilemma we’ve got is the money is still so siloed, right? I am appreciative that there are people from Infrastructure Canada, sorry, Housing Infrastructure and Communities Canada, HICC, on the call today. Thank you for outing yourself and putting yourself into the chat. But they are navigating big honkin’ dollars with provinces and now directly with municipalities and they just want to get stuff … and they’ve got political masters that want to get stuff built. And I’m interested. What do you think the levers are that we’ve got across the country that would insist that we never are satisfied with a single investment alone, that only has one benefit, ever again? What are the levers? Thoughts? …

Kim Fowler Well, I’ve done triple bottom line assessment for land sales, for development applications, so using those tools and also using a full cost accounting, full life cycle analysis, that’s really part … and involving, when we talk about natural assets, we also need to include physical assets. And you would completely change the game if you did full cost accounting and full lifecycle analysis because the natural assets would finally be valued, because they save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in development when they’re included.

Mary W Rowe How do we … Your when you’re doing those triple bottom analysis which have existed for a while you said, and I appreciate that too, because I’ve been around as well. I know these things have been around for a while, but when you create that argumentation, in your experience, and I’m interested others, which order of government is the most responsive to it? In other words, who says, “Yep, I get it. That’s important”. And the other thing … the other little larger challenge I always feel we struggle with is that the impacts of these investments are longer than a typical political term. And so how do we take a tool, say this shows that in 17 years or in whatever it is … This is what it will cost you if you don’t do it. How do we get ourselves to an ethos that will do the right thing over the long term? Kim, in your experience, when you have these fabulous studies, who’s paying attention?

Kim Fowler The developers who are doing, as Jonathan said, the right thing. First off. But, as I said, the conventional development process incentivizes sprawl and single family dwellings, particularly flat fees … Development costs, charges, fees and that sort of thing. So being able to change the system that says actually “what is the outcome we want?” Instead of what’s coming in the front door, and as I said what we did with the triple bottom line assessment for all development applications, we said it does four things that developers ask for, at least three, remember three … I said, level playing field. Everyone gets …

Mary W Rowe Everybody gets.

Kim Fowler … Number two, you told us … you gave us your goalposts. You put in what you wanted upfront. So before you even buy a piece of land, we know what you want. Number three, you prioritize what you need. So if there’s a particular area or particular aspect of things, if you want green infrastructure, then you value it. And fourthly, the outcome, the valuation, actually incentivizes, like fast tracks the application and you don’t need to do policies and all the other stuff, the fluff that takes forever … those applications get next in line service because they score so high. You take it your board or your council and they go, “wow, it scored 88% on your triple bottom line checklist. I’m approving it. It’s scored 21%. What’s wrong? No, no, no, no. We want some changes”. And so I think that’s the biggest piece for doing the triple bottom line pieces.

Mary W Rowe Kim, you did that in Nanaimo. Where did you do that?

Kim Fowler I did it in Port Coquitlam. And we’ve … We have a sustainable site design checklist in the regional district of Nanaimo now.

Mary W Rowe And the populations of Port Coquitlam and in the region. Just tell me how big?

Kim Fowler Port Coquitlam is probably getting close to about 100,000. That’s a guess, someone might correct me. And then the regional district of Nanaimo is about 167,000.

Mary W Rowe I want people to listen to this because I think that the … when we look at where innovation is possible, it is often possible in a mid-sized city or region like the ones that Kim has just described, which really is a challenge to all of you living in mid-sized cities to get moving and get these pilots going. And then those of us who are in the larger cities, we will gradually find our way to do it, too. But I really appreciate the tolerance for risk and for innovation is often …  there is often more nimbleness in those midsize environments. So Kim, thank you for suggesting that. And then the idea, though, is that you’re also able to, I was going to say tame, which isn’t fair, but you’re able to rally your partners in the development industry because of the reasons you’ve just identified. They go to the front of the line. They know … everybody’s playing by the same rules. There’s a level playing field. They have some certainty and they get bonused by actually doing it. So it’s really interesting way to do it. Anybody have thoughts about this or of how you actually … Go ahead, Kim. Go ahead.

Kim Fowler One other well, other really good example we did in the city of Port Coquitlam, first green roof regulation in Canada. So we beat the city of Toronto, love Toronto but … But as I said, we were able to do that through landscape standards, natural assets … And ironically, the first application we got would have been the second largest green roof in North America, Cisco Foods. And because though we worked with SFU, Simon Fraser University, with their green roofing, we had six meter beat standards. And if you do a landscape standard, you can do a variance, a development variance permit. So we didn’t get this massive, you know, 12 acre roof. We got a green roof over the admin building, but they met or beat the six standards for which we established with SFU. So we got the jobs, we got the green site, we got, you know, the property tax and, you know, all of those aspects. So that’s another great example, I hope that helps.

Jonathan Tinney I love what Kim’s saying here, you know, in a lot of our conversations and my conversations with our municipal clients, we talk a lot about – make what you want easy. We spend a lot of time, we spend a lot of time as planners, you know, if we want something better, we’ll create another set of guidelines or we’ll add an extra step into the process We need to start to reset our thinking in terms of the municipalities, to think about how we actually smooth the pathway for the things that we want. I think I would even go one step further, certainly within my experience, you know, you need to make those things easy. In some municipalities, you need to work really hard to stop making it hard. I won’t say in which municipality, but we’ve had projects where we’ve tried to incorporate into new communities, you know, a structured wetland, you know, beyond just the standard bathtub storm water management pond. But the idea of a structured wetland to manage storm water management provided all of the technical data that said that this would handle the storm water in the same way that a normal system would. Staff said, “that’s great. We love that you’re doing that. But can you also put in an overflow pipe in the event that it fails?” And so now we’ve doubled the cost of infrastructure in order to try to do the right thing. And I think that happens more often … You know what Kim’s talking about is amazing. I would say in my experience, that’s you know, it’s a preciously small number. I think there’s a lot of places, a lot of municipalities that are looking at this very … they’re not thinking about it at all. And then there’s others that are actually actively making it hard. And I would put the onus back on the development community as well. They need to, you know, they need to be thinking hard about actually doing the right thing as opposed to just trying to do the quick and easy thing. And so, you know, there is that partnership.

Mary W Rowe The dilemma is that the development community is not a monolithic thing. It’s highly, highly regional and highly influenced by particular market conditions and all that kind of stuff. A number of things that you folks have raised in the chat, as usual, is blowing up. Thank you, chat. One of the questions is about regional governance. How do we actually get this kind of holistic thinking? I’m wondering, Patience, have you got … I know that you’ve been, true to your name, you’ve been patiently pursuing this, but are there models of small governance? Do you know what I mean? Because people are saying on the chat, look, we’ve eliminated regional government, now there’s nine of us fighting with each other. Thoughts on that about have you been able to see how to move that collaborative kind of instinct together?

Patience Cox You asked about levers of government and levers that you can use against government and Indigenous land and Indigenous folk are one of those levers. But here’s your challenge … First of all, if you do not approach Indigenous communities with respect, if you come to the Indigenous community and say we have a solution and we want you to join us, hopefully most of those Indigenous communities are going to show you the hand and should show you the hand. The reality is, is if you want the Indigenous community to help you actually leverage this, then you need to come in at the beginning before you’ve made your plans, before you’ve laid it all out, before you’ve decided what the perfect solution is … Sit down with them, be prepared. It’s going to take time to build relationships. Once you have built that relationship with respect, now you have a partner who is actually going to bring you to the table and you now have leverage. And so the reality is, is that’s the future. We have ways of knowledge that are so ingrained in us. And yes, many you know, I mean it is what it is, but the reality is bringing Indigenous communities into the picture in a meaningful way that. That’s the part that just frustrates the heck out of us, is this idea that, you know, we’ve got a token Indigenous person or we’ve gone and we sent a letter to the Chief and council and they never responded, so we’re just going to carry on, you know, that kind of stuff. It just infuriates people. And then they, you know, show you the hand. And to use Kim’s directness, maybe one finger of the hand might be part of that. But the reality is, is that Indigenous people are just frustrated in many cases, in many communities. Now, every community is different as well. So you find something with one community and then you expect that you’re going to run that playbook again a second time. Again, you’re going to see the hand. Yeah, every community is different. We have different values and different priorities. And so that’s the other piece of all of this. So are we a lever? Absolutely. And in fact, we’re getting pretty insistent about being part of this conversation. And we have a right to be. And the next step now is sometimes that’s going to slow down the process. But as Kim said, if you incentivize, where is the indigenous community in this application, and that gets moved up to the front of the line.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. You jump the cue …

Patience Cox So anyway.

Roy Brooke So can we just back up a second area on a point that was raised a couple of minutes ago, if you don’t mind. We talked a bit about pilots and innovations and things of that sort and sure all of that is important. But there is … Everybody on this call lives in a community which, as a starting point, this week of this month, could begin a process of saying what natural assets do I even have in my jurisdiction? What condition are they in? What risks do they face? What services do they provide? And there’s even … and so that process is, generally speaking, called inventorying. And there’s even a national standard for that process, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong with that as a starting point and that as an evidence base. And so I would say, are there barriers? Yes, of course there’s barriers. Do we need to overcome them? Absolutely. Some of that is a long term play. But let’s not wait and do nothing until we can do everything. There’s practical things that every local government in this country can do now. And really, what’s the good argument for not understanding what natural assets you rely on?

Mary W Rowe Roy, is there a tool or Is there a natural assets mapping tool that you’ve developed or someone else has developed? Or are we calling on one to be developed? Maybe somebody will put one in the chat. But do have the instrumentation to do this?

Roy Brooke It’s all done. Well, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that … For the inventory process there is a, I think a fairly well defined process. There’s a national standard now from the CSA group W218, which anybody can use now … To Patience’s is point. Does this fully interweave First Nations knowledge, worldviews, perspectives? I would argue in most cases, no. That is and I want to be very humble and understated when I talk about the work that we’re doing with First Nations because we’re really at the very beginning. But we are starting to work with a small number of First Nations to see how we can kind of interweave basically traditional ecological knowledge and Western science. And it will only … it won’t be successful because I say it’s successful. It’ll be successful if First Nations think it’s successful. So that is a part of this journey. But, you know, yes, there are tools. There’s even a national standard. And it’s a really good starting point  … will it solve all of your problems of, you know, the fact that our societies are organized differently from nature. No, it’s not going to do that for you. But it is a great starting point. And, you know, if you’re not doing this stuff and you don’t have a good idea of the assets that you provide – back to kind of Kim’s bluntness, I mean, the chances are you’re probably … In a lot of developing cases, bringing in the bulldozers, scraping away every green object off the face of the earth, and then saying, “okay, folks, what services should we build back” when some of the things that you’ve just scraped off the face of the earth, were probably providing the storm water management, flood risk reduction services that you are now paying to build back by an engineered asset.

Mary W Rowe Right. Our staff are putting a bunch of links and I appreciate Roy’s challenge that each of us could leave today and just do a little homework and try to determine, well, what are we sitting on? What are we facing? And I’m interested about Jonathan, have you got a comment about how to introduce this instrumentation into the bidding process, into actually doing work. What are your colleagues in the field doing?

Jonathan Tinney I think I think that’s the primary challenge next. I think Roy’s absolutely right, there are frameworks by which you can inventory what you have. I think it’s really about now, you know, we talk about how these assets get piecemealed across municipal boundaries. Let’s talk next about how they get piecemealed from development site to development site. And so  I think the next step is to figure out some of those mechanisms the same way we have now for hard infrastructure. You know we have development charges, we have things that allow for the fair spreading of costs across different sites, cost sharing mechanisms and structures of that sort. We need to think about the next phase of those, where we’re actually weaving the conception around natural assets and the work that they do goes into those structures. So again, we’re just… We’re treating these things as if they were infrastructure. And as soon as we do that, as soon as we provide dollars and cents to them, they all of a sudden become part of the development proforma, they become part of the process. And we can continue to move that forward. Because I don’t think any municipality is going to be able to take care of and grow and rehabilitate the entirety of their natural asset framework throughout the community there. Well at the same time as they develop it. And I think this is, you know, it’s a really key point here is, you know, the binary thinking we had in the 1950s where you have development and you have nature and one comes at the cost of the other. That is what we really need to push through because, I agree with Roy, we need housing, but we also need to maintain the natural environment. So it is absolutely imperative that we figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Mary W Rowe There you go … on that happy note, you know, I guess one of the questions I have too, back to what Patience was mentioning around respect with Indigenous communities, that the land back movement may in fact mean that Indigenous communities are the proponents. And one of the examples, Roy, in your report is the Jericho lands, which is being … the whole initiative is being led by Indigenous communities. And so I am interested about how we maybe need to amplify more of that so that you don’t actually go to them with the project, you actually make the land available, then they’ll develop their own project, right? And do we need to be doing that on a more ambitious scale that we … I mean, if you look at the federal program, public lands for housing … Could they release lands to various proponents to develop these projects? Rather than having it so tightly controlled.

Kim Fowler You know, and it’s not either/or.

Mary W Rowe It’s not either/or … Right.

Kim Fowler And also that’s what I said about sustainability. It’s not or or or … we’re not a bunch of seals, we’re slightly more intelligent, you know, hopefully to be able to do this work. And First Nations have that ethos already. We have to learn it back. And so … but as I said, understanding, if you integrate those pieces, it’s really going to value those natural assets and the other pieces within it. And you end up with a better development. And Dockside Green, it was designed … 80% less water demand than conventional crap and then we reused 80% of the water onsite. So there is an onsite private utility that managed the wastewater, brought it almost up to Canadian drinking water standards and developers are quaffing it at the opening, just exceeded for salinity … That was reused to create a green waterway which increased the value of the property that was right on the front of the waterway and reused the green roofs for the purple pipe infrastructure and the grey water toilets. We didn’t get permission from health to use them in the washing machines. But you know, so there’s a site … It’s also designed for 100 year storm that that it will take it from the top and take it through all those levels and then out the other side. So that design achieved that and it was the only place in Victoria for a decade and a half that treated its own sewage, treated sewage, period. And then we reused it, you know, so it’s being able to do that. And its own district heat and hot water system, which I having lived there for nine years, it was … I paid $20 a month for heat and hot water for a two bedroom plus den condo. So comparison would at least be 120 on convention.

Mary W Rowe You know, again,  I always feel at CUI with CityTalk, we’re all in essence having the same conversation every week. Like it’s a different domain. We might be talking about it here and now. We’re always talking about this dilemma, the Hazel McCallion dilemma, which is that in Canada, here’s how it works: the federal government has all the money, the provinces have all the power, and the municipal governments have all the problems. And I’m adding a fourth … But local communities have all the solutions. And so we’re left with – if you had to pick, where is the most effective intervention point for us to have a much higher adoption of natural assets and management and using them in the catalytic way that we can? Where would you start? A lot of you were talking about on the ground here are examples of things that are working here. And I think it’s important. These are proof points. Does anybody have the appetite to talk at all about what a province or the federal government should be doing to incentivize this?

Kim Fowler Your infrastructure funding has to value green infrastructure or you don’t get it.

Mary W Rowe Make it conditional, tick. Okay. So you go to the front of the line in municipal approvals, but you also go to the front of the line for any federal assistance … Okay. Any other any other suggestions? Yes, Roy.

Roy Brooke I think the conditionalities are primordial and I don’t think it’s just do gooding. It’s about fiscal responsibility so that you are backing service, you are backing natural assets which are going to provide you cost effective, reliable services in a changing climate as opposed to only thinking narrowly about rigid engineered assets. Finally, you need them both, but you have to actually bring it into the funding context. I think you have to look at the federal lands that will be interspersed under their housing policy. I also think that the feds and the province together, finally need to exhibit far greater leadership on this issue of watershed fragmentation. It is true in every watershed in this country that you’ll have one aquifer, let’s say, but you’ll have ten different local governments all drawing from it, each with different timeframes, horizons, data sets. We have to get over that. Or finally, we’ll make good progress on this and this work will stall out. I think a really important thing that the provinces can do – every local government act in this country or its equivalent, is basically silent on the idea of whether local governments, when they manage assets, are also managing natural assets and when they deliver services, whether they’re delivering services from nature. And that has to be clarified or people just tend to sit on their hands. We did quite an extensive barriers report, which I can stick into the chat, and you know, finally it came down to a couple of things that are going to stall out this work. One is the watershed fragmentation with everyone pulling in a different direction. And two, it’s the silence of provincial legislation governing local governments because, you know, we have a dominant worldview that says nature is property. And if you combine that with an act that is silent, people are going to tend towards inertia. Those are big barriers the feds, the provinces could do something about. None of that stops anyone on this call today from working with their local government to get some of the basics. We have to come at it from several lenses.

Mary W Rowe  I think this might be the first CityTalk with someone who said “primordial”. Just saying. You know, I appreciate the bigness of this and the sense of imperative that people are feeling, but I’m continuing to sort of see if we can zero in on what would the priority be. Patience, do you have a thought on that? I mean, what would you be telling people to go after? What is the most important achievement … how can we move this forward, do you think?

Patience Cox  I think from a … Like again, it’s back to getting everybody at the table at the very beginning.

Mary W Rowe At the local level?

Patience Cox At all the levels. Remember that that the local chief and council for the Indigenous community has to know all the federal laws, all the provincial laws, all of them the municipal laws, and they have their own community to run. And so those kinds of things … you need to get people to the table at the very beginning. Then you can leverage. Because when you have those base supports and the people talking to begin with and being respectful to begin with – at the regional level, at the bigger level, because again, if you start into these silos, yes, you know, they have value. But the reality is this is I think what Roy said is really important and that’s part of the work we’ve been doing with again, the Indigenous communities themselves, is that they want their maps to show a watershed. They’re not interested in this little reserve piece. They want to know what the bigger piece is. That’s the biggest challenge, is actually getting access to that information. And so part of the mapping is actually just getting the public information and then we go and ground truth it, because actually that public information isn’t actually accurate … And so we’ve

Patience Cox got to start with the information. It’s start with the data. You’ve got to have that first.

Mary W Rowe That is coming out in the chat as well. People are saying, do we have the granular data? So I think that might be another intervention. Do we need to be advocating for disaggregating and getting reliable data? Jonathan, do you have a particular thought on this? Yeah, go ahead.

Jonathan Tinney I do. I’m a big fan of trying to align new thinking within existing processes. And I find if you’re working with bureaucrats, they tend to respond well if you’re telling them that this feels a lot like a process they already understand. And when I think about the different jurisdictions across the country, I think about where are we thinking about primarily … Largely this is dealing at the land use level where we think about land use in a sort of watershed scale. In Ontario, we’re talking about the conservation authorities. In B.C. to  a greater or lesser extent, we’re talking about regional districts. And so is there … are there changes that can be done at those scales, that allow for the sort of investment in thinking and guidance that specifically sort of runs this? I think, you know, overlaying the First Nations conversation on that and territorial lands, especially in non-treaty locations, is really important as well. Maybe a bit more complicated, but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. And then I think more at the municipal level, it’s about aligning these existing .. We already have existing processes for funding and approving infrastructure. If we think of this as infrastructure, then it’s not that huge a leap to jump and think about incorporating these assets into those structures in a way that allows for cost sharing across the federal and provincial levels. You’re absolutely right. They have the money – typically for infrastructure they’re providing that money through major projects which are approved through an EAA or other type of business case. And so clear rules within those business case development and those environmental assessments that specifically take into account some of these structures. All of a sudden then the money starts to flow to the right projects. 

Mary W Rowe Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the practicality of what you’re suggesting as somebody working in the field. You know, what I’m hearing from you guys again and again is this has to operate at all scales. So you need that kind of common table, whether you’re working in a hyper local community or you’re working in a region or you’re working in the province or God forbid, you’re working federally. We’ve got to have all these diverse voices , and so it’s all scales. It’s a good fractal experience. The other thing is this notion of alignment, what you just got at Jonathan, sometimes we make it too difficult. Sometimes we can align because we have some kind of related challenge and we can make them, you know, you can see that in Alberta. I’m looking for Alberta, the Alberta folks who are listening to just chime in and say they are working in a province where alignment sometimes is more difficult between the federal, provincial and local governments, but we can find it. And then this broader definition of infrastructure, we know that governments around the world are investing in infrastructure. It’s a battle for us to win, to convince people that infrastructure is more than just cement. So how do we actually have that conversation and try to embrace that? Last thing I’m noticing, Councilor Storey is asking for examples, please, for rural communities, smaller communities. Nice to see you, Councilor. We’re glad you’re on. Please consult the chat gang if you have particular solutions. We got asked this about rural too. So I think we need very specific strategies depending on the jurisdiction that you’re working in and the particular challenges if it’s an agricultural community or anything. 30s to everybody, not even … 10s to everybody. Last comment as we go forward. 10s to you Kim …

Kim Fowler Mandate asset management plans that include …  And whether it’s hard or soft for funding. We’re hundreds of billions of dollars behind in replacing infrastructure. We can’t afford to do the current way we’re doing it and it’ll stop wagging budgets, wild ass guessing, if you don’t have an asset management plan, you’re just wagging. And we have $0.08 …  We only get $0.08 on the tax dollar and we own 60% of the infrastructure. Natural assets will save us hundreds of millions of dollars. And First Nations will show us how.

Mary W Rowe Now we’ve got “wild ass” in the vocabulary. 10s to you Jonathan, then Patience and then Roy … 10s.

Jonathan Tinney  Yeah, I think I added it all Mary, I think it’s good.

Mary W Rowe You can’t top wild ass, I bet. Patience …

Patience Cox It’s about data … getting the data out of the hands of the local communities and the local organizations. They need those maps. They need those data’s. They can’t make decisions without it. And getting that data into one place is hugely problematic.

Mary W Rowe Yep. Got it. Roy, last word to you.

Roy Brooke  I’m trying to work in the word primordial again, but I can’t figure out how. So like … Just riffing on Patience’s this point, I would say about data, if you’re at a local government level or community, get started on the inventories. It’s not rocket science. It gives you a decent starting place. It speaks to Patience’s this point about data. It can be done at different scales. If you’re with the feds, for God’s sake, read the report, please, and see …

Mary W Rowe Everybody read the report, not just the feds.

Roy Brooke And just see what can be done with regard to the funding programs and with respect to federal land disbursements and indeed on your own federal land.

Mary W Rowe Do what we all can do to value our natural assets. Kim, Roy, Patience, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us at CityTalk and we’ll see you next week or two weeks from now on the next topic. And remember, we save the chat and we save this discussion. Thanks very much gang for being part of CityTalk and raising and elevating these issues. I hope everybody goes and reads the reports and all of the links in the chat. Thanks everybody!

Nina Albert Well, thanks so much. I don’t know if I can talk as quickly as you do, Mary. So, everybody can take a breath a little bit about listening to me. But I do have a lot of different perspectives, when I came into this role … I see Sujata here, who has a metro map behind her from San Francisco. I used to work, doing what we call joint development or transit-oriented development for the Washington Metro Region Transit Authority. So I have that as background. I, I have also worked as a real estate developer. But most recently I worked for the federal government, and so I have met the Canadian counterparts who run the federal real estate portfolio, or the, you know, Canadian real estate portfolio. And so that’s what I did in the District of Columbia. Or sorry, for the country, I was located here in Washington, D.C. And so coming into this role now, I have the transit perspective and how to recover and the concerns about transit as well as the importance of transit. There’s some new trends emerging, in how people are using transit. So that’s something that I bring to the table. But I think most importantly is the background that I have in terms of the federal impact, and their return to work, sorry, return to office policies. And now sitting in the role that I’m in, the question … Those impacts … How it impacts the private sector’s own telework policies quite frankly, because the private sector has a huge, you know, inner interface – the two cultures of the federal workplace and the private workplace, you know, kind of feed off of each other here. And so as a result, downtown DC is 87% commercial office, which is a huge concentration of office. We see that in other parts of the city that are much more mixed use, where there’s a mix of residential, office, retail, and entertainment that those submarkets have rebounded. They’re much more resilient. And it’s the huge concentration of office in our downtown that, you know, is just really deadening the downtown. And, we are … like in Washington, D.C., already, our tourism and hospitality business is back. The entertainment industry is back. Restaurants actually are … We have net new restaurants opening in Washington. You know, the hotels are back. So we see where the strength of the economy is. We actually just from most economic indicators, things like GDP, new business starts, employment growth, population growth … DC is doing well. But where there is significant challenge is in occupancy downtown and the commercial tax base that that produces. And what we’re anticipating over the next five years is, you know, a significant decline in office assessed values and how that will hit our, frankly, the city’s bottom line, more so than the overall economy. And so we are putting together our plans to reposition, just like you would think, a portfolio, you know, reposition these office assets, to accommodate much more mix of uses. And so we already have an office to housing conversion incentive program that we’ve published and are taking applications on, but we’re getting more aggressive than that. And we are now trying to incentivize office to what I call anything, anything that is productive. If you want to go office to trophy office, where we see demand, continued demand, for trophy office space. If you want to do office to hotel, or office to something else that you might come up with, we will entertain all of that and incentivize that conversion because we don’t see any near- or long-term demand for particularly, class B and C space downtown DC. We need to take it off-market, and start bringing back vibrancy so we can have a mixed-use neighborhood in downtown DC, just like our mixed-use neighborhoods across the city. So that’s, kind of my two second, maybe that was longer … three-minute coverage.

Mary W. Rowe That’s good! And so, listen, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know, I’m familiar with “trophy wife”. I am not familiar with “trophy office”. So that’s … Is that just code for class A? Like, if you want to have a really spectacular …

Nina Albert It’s class AA ++. So like, views become really important. You know, just amenitizing, you know, that there’s, like, a really great restaurant on the ground floor. You know, it’s really the whole building, you know, so, yeah, it’s … Class A is one thing, then there’s class A+, if you want to get really … or then there’s trophy.

Mary W. Rowe Wonderful. You know, I often invoke – because I’m a person of certain age – I invoke the Petula Clark effect, which is that “when you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown. Things are all brighter there. You can forget all your troubles. Forget all your cares.” There was something spectacular about going downtown. When I was a kid, I’d come in from London, Ontario, which, for your benefit Nina is a couple of hours south of Toronto. And I would come to visit my aunt. And where so we want to go … Can we go downtown? So it’s not a new conversation in that way, I suppose, to look at different ways. And I love your idea of converting to anything. We’re with you on that. There was an initial conversation a couple of years ago, and in Canada’s particular case, Calgary had the jump start on this. It had a shift in the oil and gas industry, which meant it had several empty office floors before Covid hit. So it’s been at this for ten years, and it has the most ambitious, aggressive, as you’re suggesting, incentive program to get conversions happening. But we are, like you, starting to realize it’s not only housing. Could be post-secondary use, could be cultural use, could be light manufacturing. Right? Could be a makerspace. Who knows? You’re muted there. Just keep yourself off mute …

Nina Albert So just a couple quick things. I mean, you know, we’ve been talking to a lot of, you know, sort of thought leaders in, you know, kind of the urban planning space and almost unilaterally everybody sort of reinforces that downtowns are where people go naturally. Like, if you’re coming to discover a city, if you want to, you know, go to a restaurant, the natural inclination of all of us that have, you know, kind of grown up in the built environment will go downtown because that’s where you anticipate the hub of activity to be. And so I think on average downtown, of any of any town, small or large, 70% are visitors. They’re not people who are occupants there. So when you think about that, the importance of the vibrancy of downtown becomes even more important, because that’s the first touch, the first impression and the reason that people might come back. So vibrancy continues to be important. We are looking at short term and long-term activations to make sure that when people come downtown again, they’re getting what they expect. But the other point, there are two other points that I just wanted to share, which is that downtowns are resilient because there is that continued foot traffic that wants downtown to be vibrant. So if something isn’t working now, you know, you can insert and try new things and see what catches. So the resiliency is a function of the fact that people continue to come and visit because that’s their expectation. But the real thing now, that we have an opportunity to do this is a pretty cataclysmic shift in land use and how people are using, you know, you know, buildings and, and cities, you know, probably akin to when the time that, you know, the automobile, started to shift, you know, land use patterns. And we had to recover from that. And we’re having to recover from it again. But to me, the real question that we have an opportunity to tackle is how do we, you know, reinvigorate downtown equitably. And for our downtown, I mentioned it’s 87% commercial office. We’re not going to be displacing anybody by introducing more residential and other uses. And so what I’m really looking at is, you know, we have plans, you know, the real estate process and investment cycle is long, so it’s going to take some time to actually execute. But that also gives us time to be really thoughtful about how to make sure that what is brought to the table and what is being, you know, what downtown is being repositioned into is repositioned for, you know, a broad spectrum of people and users and residents.

Mary W. Rowe It’s interesting, you mentioned this when I was in DC two weeks ago, that in many ways you have a kind of … not a blank slate, but you have a kind of opportunity because of these assets and you’re not displacing. I mean, you might be displacing … there’s a certain concern of displacement, obviously, and I’m actually going to go next to Sujata because I’m interested to hear what the perspective would be from the West Coast. But … so we’re just … we’re being polite Canadians. I’m making sure the Americans get in first. And then I’ll come to the rest of you. But I am interested … This notion that if you have an opportunity to innovate and try some things, because you’ve got these assets that aren’t … and you’re not having to push aside a whole lot of other uses. So let me just next go to SPUR, if we could, we are, great friends of SPUR and your colleague Sujata. We’ve talked with you many times through the pandemic. Certainly. And when I lived in the United States, I had lots and lots of dealings, with Gabe, and with the previous leadership there and continue to just watch with great interest as you’re developing, so … and as you’re animating. And the other thing, it’s so interesting, to echo what Nina just said, you’ve got your transit rides right behind you. And mobility is one of the critical ingredients, I think, right? To the future of these downtowns. So, let’s hear from you, and then we’ll come to the folks that are in Ottawa. Go ahead Sujata.

Sujata Srivastava Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the major challenge we’ve had with downtown San Francisco specifically is that less … Around half of the office workers are back in the office. Our vacancy rate is about 30,000,000ft². So 36% of the office space. That’s a lot of inventory to try to fill up. Having fewer workers means less foot traffic to support small businesses. So we’ve had a lot of closures and, you know, a lot of budget implications, too, for the local municipalities. And, because of all of those dynamics our transit ridership is very low. We had a really successful, BART transit system that was actually able to recapture a lot of its operating costs through fares. Unfortunately, now those revenues are gone. And so there’s this existential crisis for a lot of our transit agencies of how do they survive. They’ve really been able to make it so far through pandemic relief. And so we’re really dealing with how do we make sure that those agencies can continue to provide high quality, high frequency transit service? A lot of our challenges, though, were even before the pandemic, with the lack of housing that is affordable to the workforce, particularly near the downtowns and near the employment centers and the commute to work. And so if we’re able to address both of the housing shortages and the transit access, I think we can go a long way towards recovering some of our economic prosperity and addressing some of our equity and sustainability goals. Downtown had also become so mono-centric and dependent, not on federal workers, of course, but on the tech sector. And so really trying to think about how do we diversify the economic engines for downtown and create more affordable spaces for smaller businesses and other types of uses downtown. Those are some of the questions that we’ve been grappling with. I mean, fortunately, in the Bay area, we have a few things that are working well. We have, like I said before, a strong transit network that we can leverage, we have a still strong economy. I mean, we don’t have people in the office, but we have a lot of job growth. And AI has really been booming and creating a lot of momentum. In San Francisco we have some of the tourism starting to come back. And then on the public policy side, there have been a lot of changes that have helped to create some momentum, making it easier to convert some of those obsolete class B and C spaces into residential units. But on the financial incentive side, we still don’t really have a conversation here in the Bay area about what can we be doing to help the market recover. We can talk a little bit about like, the cultural … kind of cultural context of San Francisco and the kind of resistance to doing those kinds of partnerships. We also have a lot of opportunities, I think, to think about how do we experiment with the fact that there is some lower cost commercial space? Can we do something creative with artist housing, more small business spaces. We’re thinking a lot about sea level rise, particularly for the waterfront. How can we leverage some of the infrastructure investments that are coming, in the downtown area and the eastern waterfront to create some possible, like, you know, new investments, new public spaces, new exciting things that can make downtown more attractive to more different kinds of people.

Mary W. Rowe It’s interesting both you and Nina have touched on this, this idea that we be open to trying things, you know, that we might have a moment to try some things. And I think that the dilemma is always, I suppose, maybe more complicated in cities that have more of a formal function. I’m going to come to you next, Tobi, because you are very familiar with the dynamics of formality versus informality. But I think this is where you … I wouldn’t say a Canadian wakes up and thinks, “oh, they are risk takers over there in Ottawa. They’re going to try some different stuff”. You know, it’s, it’s an interesting challenge, I think, to a city like a capital about how much risk taking you can tolerate. But, Nina, you were just suggesting you’ve got all these assets and Sujata was saying the same thing, you’ve got these really strong assets. And I want to come back to talk about transit, Sujata, because I think one of the challenges we really see in Canada is, people, because of the affordability issue, starting to live further and further and further away from downtown. And boy oh boy, oh boy, they don’t want to get back onto a transit system that’s not, you know, pleasant and it’s a sort of doom loop on transit. So I’m going to come back to that. But, Tobi, can I come to you, please? Can you just for our American colleagues too, and maybe for people listening, just remind people what the NCC is and a little bit about the fact that you’ve had a couple of different roles and then tell us what your sort of picture is as you look at Ottawa’s downtown, you happen to be there, I’m looking out your window at it. It’s nice to see you. Thanks for joining CityTalk.

Tobi Nussbaum Yeah. Thank you. And good afternoon, everybody. And thank you, Mary, for convening this panel. And thank you to the Ottawa Board of Trade, who are really the instigators of having us get together to talk about how to revitalize the downtown core in Ottawa. So, great to see everybody here this afternoon. The NCC is a federal Crown corporation that’s charged with building and inspiring capital. That’s really what our mandate is in a nutshell. And we have some similarities with DC in the sense that we’re sort of artificial capitals. We’re not Paris, we’re not London, we’re not Rome. We’re cities that were established really as a capital. And then that feature being a capital has been central to our growth. And just to say that, you know, Washington has been a great partner. We’ve worked very closely with our equivalents down there, which are a little bit of the National Capital Planning Commission, a little bit of the architect of the capital, a little bit of the National Park Service, and we’re sort of all three in one, if you’re trying to understand our role south of the border. And so, yeah, this notion of how do you create vibrant downtowns while at the same time, reflecting the majesty of a capital and its important democratic role, and also managing that tension between the fact that, capitals, if they’re doing well are attracting a lot of visitors and that’s important, and you want to be welcoming to those visitors. But at the same time, I can tell you that in the middle of March or the middle of November, we need to rely on residents of the capital to be helping with the stimulation of our downtown spaces. So, there’s certainly, I think, a commonality between Ottawa and DC in terms of, managing those two population centers. On risk taking, Mary, I would say that the pandemic did offer us an opportunity to do things differently, both here at the NCC. And I know the city of Ottawa, too, tried, like many cities across the world, to do things differently in terms of patios and open space and public space. We did the same thing in terms of trying to create more attractive spaces for people through turning many of our parkways over for active use. And so we saw that, on many of our parkways, that that funnel into downtown core. And that was a huge success. And we’ve seen, as a consequence of those pilots, continuation of some of that programing. And I think that’s really, really important. And, and maybe a word and I don’t want to steal Zach’s thunder because I know the Byward market was an important recommendation for the work that you announced yesterday, Mary. But just, just to say that I do think there’s an opportunity. I think the lesson we’ve learned, and you alluded to this too Mary, is we want to build our downtown cores for people, and we need to build really attractive spaces. And many of them need to be pedestrianized in order to be successful. And I want to leave you with one little anecdote. I spent the weekend, it was a long weekend here in Canada, at a ski resort called Mount Tremblant. And for those who don’t know it, it’s one of these ski resorts that’s been turned into sort of a Swiss style pedestrianized village. And we have them in different places. We have it at Whistler. It’s the same company that did it here. And it’s remarkable to see that when you do that, the place was teeming with people, and most of the reason why they were there is because they could walk around with their kids play in fountains, wander around safely without having to worry about cars, and it was remarkable to me that people were willing to travel great, great distances, to spend a few hours being in a pedestrianized space. And imagine if we could do that better as North American cities, and what the consequence of that would be for the successful rejuvenation of downtown cores after the pandemic. So I’m going to pause there Mary.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Tobi. You mentioned the C word. So did Sujata. I mean this is … actually so did Nina at the beginning. You know, when cars entered … I mean, I have read all that literature about we used to have horses and buggies and then we had too much methane. And then when we got cars and then we’ve had cars for what have we had cars … For a century. And now we’re into a whole different evolution and technology. And it’s going to reform itself. And as we know, cities are unbelievably resilient. But I appreciate you’re shouting out … People are putting in other InterWest sites – like there is one in Collingwood quite rightly. I am interested to now go to Sueling and then I’m going to finish with you, Zachary, and then I’m going to ask everybody to put their mics on. Sueling, the Board of Trade decided that you wanted to do this piece of work. Tell us what informed that. Why did you and the business community feel that you needed to double down in focusing on downtowns?

Sueling Ching Well, Mary, thank you. And thank you, if I could just use this opportunity to thank you and the team and Jen and the team at CUI for working with us on this. And just to say that you were a proponent of and we were successful in making sure that we had lots of partners working with us through this process, including Tobi and his team at the NCC and, and, and so, I mean, as the voice of business, we often will work on policies that are just aimed at making sure we have a competitive business environment for our business community. But also we became increasingly interested in what our role was representing the business community from a city building perspective. And when, you know, the city was first built, you know, 160 some years ago, business leaders were very involved in deciding how the city would move forward. And we and we just felt a calling, recently before the pandemic and then certainly through the pandemic, to be involved in that conversation again and to provide some leadership. Specifically, we saw a big risk with our downtown, not unlike what Nina had mentioned, where our downtown is a is a business district, but over 50% of it is public service. And when we changed the workforce strategy, it just immediately overnight flipped the switch on what was happening in our downtown and our ability to support the businesses there to maintain some vibrancy. And I think even pre-pandemic, there was some question around the, even though it’s a gift and a blessing to have had the public service here, that there was an opportunity, should I say, to even extend the vibrancy more, outside office hours. And so, we saw two things. We saw a risk, if the hybrid work strategy was maintained and it has been so far, but we also saw an opportunity to become more vibrant, more diverse, and, and, transform the downtown and to have the courage to do that where we might not otherwise have been able to do so.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting dilemma, you know, when the statistic is offered, which I know is true, and Jennifer Barrett, who authored our report with her team, is in the chat providing data points. And she could probably provide this one. But, when you have a high percentage of the foot traffic coming from visitors, which capital cities naturally do, but so does your town, Sujata, you’ve got tons of visitors coming to San Francisco. It’s sort of a … It’s a liability and an asset. Right? And we always say that if you make a neighborhood vibrant and vital for the people that live there, it will attract visitors who come to look as well. But the dilemma is always, how do you make sure that the city that you’re in is a place where people want to live 24 x 7, they want to actually be there. They don’t want to just pop in and pop out. So, Zachary, you are sitting on, one of the great assets of Ottawa. It’s older than the city itself, the Byward Market. And you have witnessed and I have in m, many years of being a visitor to Ottawa and then a resident more recently, the kind of iterations that a place like the Byward Market goes through. And it’s sort of the good, the bad and the ugly, right? And that’s the … But you have a wonderful shot of the good there.

Mary W. Rowe So talk to us about what the challenges are for you. And, and you have to service a visitor community and a tourist community and a business visitor community and entity as well. And then you’ve also got all sorts of other challenges. So just give people a picture about how you’re anticipating the future.

Zachary Dayler Sure Mary. Public space is just that. It’s for the public. And I like to go back to, you know, we had, the now King, come through, and the effort that sort of went into that experience. At the same time we have individuals who perhaps are homeless or within that, who live in the same space.

Mary W. Rowe I just want to pause for a minute, just for the benefit of our American visitors. If you actually heard what Zachary said. The now-King, just to remind you. Canada continues to have a King. So when King Charles came swanning through … sorry Zachary, just adding a little bit of cultural context for people wondering who were you talking about. Keep going …

Zachary Dayler So it’s really about balance. And it’s really, you know, I get the opportunity to have conversations, you know, on a policy level, and then come down and sort of see how they unroll on the street. And I think one of the things that’s a recurring theme, what’s working. I do think we’re coming out of the phase of Covid, where, communities, cities are prepared to try things. In Canada, we are very, very young when it comes to being politically organized in the scope of history. And I think in a lot of ways, what our biggest value is … Here you go. I’m going to give a little bit of a political science 101 here. But in the US, it’s an it’s a melting pot. And in Canada we say a cultural mosaic. And what’s important about that in public space is as people come together, that’s really going to be our strength. We’re seeing large immigration levels coming into Canada, and we’re seeing cultural communities come here who have a far better understanding of what it is to come together. And I think we’re learning that as a country and as a city. And so the future for Byward is really how can we provide spaces for these communities to come together and celebrate? Mary said, you know, “Canada’s living room”. Well, then perhaps, Byward is our backyard … come to play in our backyard, you know? And that’s what we want to do. We want to invite cultural communities, and we want to invite, you know, creators, makers, all those things to come down here, and reinvest in that market tradition. Because if you look around the world, public markets are something different than they are in Canada. It’s a place where people exchange information, where they discuss. And I think, to Tobi’s point, the next and most important challenge, of what we’re trying to do with public space in Ottawa is pedestrianize it. You know, the car and the pedestrian is not something that that is really in a lot of Canadian planning, discussion. How do we keep them separate is part of that. But I think we’re seeing some really interesting things. And I’ll end on saying, you know, if you’re interested in sort of seeing what the city of Ottawa is planning for Byward and where we’re going with that, the city has really put together a really ambitious public realm plan for the Byward Market district, which includes a lot of pedestrianization and includes, sort of creating that table for people to come and gather around. And I should say, when it comes to connecting the city, Byward’s an important piece here, but so it’s Lansdowne, so is LeBreton … So are the pathways that are connected, you know, through the MTC. And I think our biggest strength here, and I’ll give a big shout out to Sueling and Mary, is what this agenda has done has, in some respects forced the conversation and forced people to say, “hey, I’m here. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves. Let’s make this happen”. We have a lot of opportunity coming out of Covid, but I think we also have a lot of work.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. Part of the … If I could just have everybody on the screen now because we’re going to … this is what I always affectionately call the bun fight section. So Wendy, if you can just put everybody up on the screen … So it’s Hollywood Squares time and I’ll ask our panelists to open their mics. You know, this is kind of the dilemma that I think we’re facing around shared uses, right? So how do we make sure that … and I’m interested … I’ll just come back to you, Nina, for a second. I lived in the US 25 years ago when Washington, DC was not what it is today. And it feels to me like a lot of what happened there, tell me if I’m wrong, is that local business folks and local neighborhoods started to get very engaged in not just letting things happen to them. Do you know what I mean? It was a moment of realization that they could make their neighborhoods and make Washington as a whole, a city for them. And can you talk to us a little bit about that transition? Do you remember what I’m talking about? Am I wrong in my perception that there has been a significant transition?

Nina Albert Well, you know, DC is kind of interesting because it was a federal city and controlled in many ways by the federal government. And then, you know, it’s the history is, we got home rule in the 1970s or so. Maybe it was even later than that. Anyway, that’s really when you saw DC start to kind of, you know, take control of, you know, how the city functioned, number one, but then also like how it was designed and who it was for. And so the business community specifically, as we as a city and tending the operations of the city, started to kind of, you know, start up and mature, the business community set up a variety of different, you know, structures, not least of which are the business improvement districts.

Mary W. Rowe Just so you know, Nina … Canada, we invented those. Just saying, Toronto … they started …

Nina Albert Well we copied them. [Yeah, that’s good]. And we have 13 of them, throughout the District of Columbia. You know, the two biggest ones are downtown, but there’s, you know, kind of a number of others that made sure that there’s like marketing, branding and then that curation of an experience or of a neighborhood or community, you know, at that local level. And so I think there was through the business improvement districts, like quite a bit of like local empowerment of businesses and community coming together. And so over the years, DC now has 39 very distinct neighborhoods. I don’t want to say it’s because of the Business Improvement district. It’s just these natural clustering and commitment to, you know, and empowerment at that neighborhood level. Right now, what we’re learning that we have to do is, like I said, there’s two business improvement districts that govern or that cover the downtown. We’re actually talking about how to break that up into even smaller submarkets so that you can get that dynamic, and also intimacy, between businesses and community that really leads to much more innovation. And, you know, we’ve been talking about this moment and how it’s going to require some nimbleness and ability to try and innovate. And I think getting organizational or governance structures down to a scale that you can ensure that type of nimbleness, is really important. And just culturally, that’s what I’m trying to promote within the government, you know, and within what we call my cluster, like the five agencies that are affiliated with my work. So I think that, yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the evolution of how DC has sort of, grown into be what it is and, and how the business community has historically gotten involved.

Mary W. Rowe It is interesting, this kind of ground up … You’ve got to have a … how do you actually get to the granular, even the creation of the Byward Market District. Exactly. That was partly to do that, was to actually get very focused on a particular amenity. Sujata, when you look at the markets that SPUR works in – San Francisco’s also …and the Bay area is also a region of neighborhoods, in essence. Have you seen … And I think you have the same challenge that it became too expensive for lots of people to live there or to open a business there. So how do we how do we deal with that? The place gets hot and then it’s too expensive.

Sueling Ching Yeah, it’s well, it’s interesting too, because the dynamics have changed in the neighborhoods of San Francisco, which are the more residential areas that are often mixed use, but certainly not the same sort of intensity and density as the downtown. There’s actually been a bifurcation there where the neighborhoods seem to be doing well. A lot of people are working from home. Spending a lot of time in the neighborhoods. And what we see is not a lot of people wanting to play and hang out in downtown because they have their own community. So there is that dynamic. And we also think that the downtown, the fact that the values have dropped significantly is also an opportunity for us to start to create more entrepreneurship, more artist spaces, really take advantage of those opportunities. We just have a little bit of a disconnect between what a lot of the institutional landlords are expecting in terms of rents and what they’re willing to concede on and what the actual market demand is. So we still have persistent vacancies at the ground floor level. We really have to actually, this is where I think the public sector and public private partnerships through the bids can play a really important role in starting to create some of those programs and incentives that will start to shift the attitudes, because there is a little bit of a perception issue. When you have a lot of vacancies on the ground floor, it depresses the market and you don’t see that type of activity happening. But I do think this is the perfect moment for us to take advantage of historically low values, to be able to start to make that shift and create a downtown that really is for everyone, and urban centers that are really for everyone and not just for the elite.

Mary W. Rowe The dilemma, though, and I’m interested whether or not other cities and maybe somebody in the chat will put in some awesome ideas. But as you … If those storefronts stay vacant, then you start to … It devalues the real estate value, which means that it diminishes the amount of property tax that can be collected by the municipal government that actually has to provide the services that make it appealing for a business to open or and as we’re seeing in the chat, lots of concerns about community safety, that if you don’t have businesses that are operating, and there’s a vibrancy and lots of people living there, then it starts to feel unsafe to people. And I know that American cities are dealing with this the way we are. We have a much more visceral presence of people who are homeless or dealing with mental health and addiction challenges, and aren’t necessarily getting the supports that they require. And so that also is a dynamic that’s affecting the perception, potentially, but also the reality of operating a business on a main street. So how do we deal with vacancies? Anybody got a thought? And it came up yesterday in the press event, for Sueling’s report, a concern about an iconic street in Canada, Bank Street. Every Canadian city has a version of this. You in American cities do too … of a particular street that’s particularly challenged. So what do we do?

Zachary Dayler If I can add in on on that? Because again, in Byward, I just looked at this, of our census that we did, where we go and measure sort of the vacancy. We had about a 9% vacancy in Byward last year, which, which is quite low, in terms of other areas and what we’re seeing, and there’s some reasons for that. But one of the things that we’ve noticed, and this is the benefit of the District Authority, and it’s sort of a nuanced point here. A district authority or a central authority has given sort of powers to generate revenue in a variety of ways, whether that’s commercial tenancies or whether that’s patio revenue. And one of the unique things that we have under our portfolio is some small scale commercial operations. And what we’ve been able to do is … we’re not going to impact the market by doing pop ups and, and low scale rents in these locations. We just don’t have enough. But what we are able to do is show people what’s possible at a very affordable entry point. So a lot of the pop ups we do in that vacant storefront are three months. They might be a year. But the hope is to transition them and their business model into a market commercial space.

Mary W. Rowe And this report is calling for a business incubation district. It’s, again, an opportunity to do collaborative retail. Nina, what do you call it when you’re trying to support independent businesses so that you don’t end up with just a bunch of chains, national chains, to come into these spaces? How do you actually foster local economic development?

Nina Albert Well, we’re doing so we are doing … We are incentivizing pop ups, for anything between a month up to two years. And we’re working with property owners. So, you know, so the marketing that we’re doing at the local level is really to both artists as well as to businesses. And we have, I think a market that’s kind of similar to the one you run, Zachary, which is, you know, really geared towards food. But we don’t have that same kind of pop-up marketplace for the retailer, or for the artist. And so we know that there’s pent up demand, particularly from artists, you know, for space and a place to … So we’re concentrating, we’re, you know, we’re really focused not on just, like, put retail anywhere there’s an empty space, but really concentrate certain activities, so that that sense of vibrancy is really there. It also allows the property owner, even though they might not be collecting rent, they’re also not forgoing their property. So they still control the timeline. And the access to that property. So the other thing too by the way, I’ve really been thinking a lot about our role as a capital city. And, we have world pride coming to DC next year and trying to take that international festival and invite international businesses to come in the pop ups, you know, for the month before, up to a month after, however long they want to be if they want to test the American market. I’ve also been reaching out to embassies, that have a permanent location here, and they’re cultural attachés that don’t necessarily need to make a buck. Right? It’s not sales driven. It’s more brand driven. And so that’s another way, just again, like curating sort of an experience of, “hey, when you come to the capital city in Washington DC, you get exposure to the world and it’s done, you know … Yes, it’s through the retail space that we have available. But it feels more curated and intentional than just, you know, different things popping up. So again, taking a look at what our assets are, as a capital city and saying, we have an international brand and presence. How do we leverage that and play off of that? You know, is there a community where there’s existing demand for these spaces? The artist community is that pent up demand that’s looking for space now and then, how do we also go after local businesses that couldn’t have afforded necessarily, a retail space [kind of both] for that opportunity and we are offering grants to local businesses specifically, to be able to pay for, you know, whatever limited investment needs to be made to make that space more suitable.

Mary W. Rowe And you’re doing that from the from the municipal government … It’s the DC government.

Nina Albert Correct, yes. So we’re … I think we’ve got, you know, close to a $5 million program for next year.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah. And I mean, these grants don’t always have to be big. You know, they can be quite modest. That’s often a small business doesn’t need much. Tobi, you’ve been in the culture diplomacy business a few times. You know, tell me your reflection on what Nina’s suggesting for Washington. That’s certainly one of the value propositions for Ottawa, I would think … Go ahead.

Tobi Nussbaum Yeah, absolutely. I agree, I mean, we started this thread by talking about business vacancies and the solution in part, on top of the various ideas that have been put forward are, you know, what are the other related elements that can help. And one of them is certainly arts and culture. And Washington does that in spades and does a fantastic job. We have great cultural and arts institutions within walking distance of the market that Zach is responsible for and our downtown. And so, you know, that’s already an asset. And, we’re working hard and in partnership with them to improve that. As one example, we are opening a new public park, a new public space right on … it used to be the back of the National Gallery of Canada. It should be the front yard. Which leads me to the other word that I wanted to use, which is, waterfronts. And, you know, that’s another asset that, you know, we’re seeing, again, cities across the world starting to do more. They used to be, you know, these industrial outputs that people ignored. And increasingly, and we’re certainly doing this in Ottawa, is embracing our water, finding moments to activate our shorelines and waterfronts, bringing people to them, whether it’s through passive opportunities, terraces and patios and bars and restaurants or active, as we did last year, with opening River House, which is a swimming spot. We’re doing that again on the west side of Ottawa next year. And so, you know, really trying to marry both arts and culture, shoreline, waterways – density is something that I thought you did a great job yesterday in the report highlighting the importance of we need people to live here, too. We need people to live in the downtown core. But all of those things are going to help. And I do want to acknowledge that I think Washington has done a fantastic job. I was down there last year and seeing how they’re really bringing density and residential opportunities for people on the river, both on the Anacostia and on the Potomac. It’s super impressive. And, you know, we’re certainly thinking deeply here at the NCC about how we can contribute to that, about using our extraordinary water to both, you know, attract residents in the density we need, but also give visitors an opportunity to enjoy them.

Mary W. Rowe I honestly, I could just have you guys on this all afternoon. You don’t have any other meetings, do you? Can we just, you know, hang on. Don’t worry, I’m going to release you in eight minutes. Sueling, you know, your members are concerned about investment. They’re concerned about whether or not we’re continuing to attract investment and actually build a kind of business infrastructure there. What do you, in terms of the emphasis you placed on the report, what do you see as the party’s … What are your members telling you they’re most concerned about?

Sueling Ching If I could just back up to the vacancy question, you know, how do you fill vacancies? And part of the reason why I think we did this report is because you can fill vacancies through vision. And so part of the reason why we did this report … It’s not that this is going to, you know, it’s not that every single thing in that report is going to be done perfectly the way we did, but we can use it now as a platform to marry the good work of the NCC, to marry the good work of the Byward Market, you know, and other economic partners and sew them together so that everybody can see where everyone else is going and that they can be inspired by it. And so part of the reason why we wanted to do this, I didn’t know if you asked me or someone else in the beginning, is because we just wanted to create one platform, one conversation about all the good things that are really already happening. Right? All the good things that are intended to happen. And then you can layer in the incentives and layer in the policies and layer in the funding, to make it happen. But for us, a lot of it comes down to – we believe economic growth is the key factor here, and that it has to be a marriage between the private, the public sector, economic partners, work. And so for us, by having a plan, by demonstrating the partnerships that we have, you know, as we layer in each of the pieces, what we really are trying to do is build confidence in the community, both from the capital markets, you know, from the people deciding to live here, visit here, work here. We want to build in some confidence so that when people say, you know, they’re considering Ottawa, whether they’re an artist, an entrepreneur, an investor, a developer, that they can see that we’re working together and that we have a plan.

Nina Albert Can I just double down on that Sueling, I just … I absolutely think that right now coming out of the pandemic there took, you know, a year or so, you know, everyone’s just kind of coming out of that fog. And then there’s the big question of like, what is the impact of telework on our economy, on our downtown, on the future, like, you know, is the 15-minute city going to govern it, like just all these questions and then from the business community, very significant concern because, you know, they’re, you know, sort of analyzing, their health on a constant basis. And, you know, the world just can’t shift quickly enough for them to recover. And so I have found that … I’ve been in this job for about seven months now … What people have wanted and craved and needed the most is clarity about direction, even if it’s not perfect. But that confidence and like, do they see themselves in where, you know, the city is going in the future? Incredibly important. I just want to tell you, I just double down on that.

Sueling Ching Yeah. I mean capital want certainty. And they do move fast. They do move fast. And so they will go, all other things being equal, if we’re looking at competing with other markets, they will go where there are certainty, where they see potential and opportunity and where they see a willingness to work together. I believe.

Mary W. Rowe And certainly a key point of this report that was done for Ottawa, was creating a table of champions and having that kind of mutual accountability, which is a model that’s very prevalent in American cities. And that SPUR has supported for many years around this Bay area, not just in the Bay area, but across lots of different environments that you guys have worked in. Sujata, I just want to leave us with … we’ve only got a few more minutes, but I am concerned about inclusion. How do we … you talked about mobility, you talked about how we bifurcated communities in many ways, over time, thanks to the car, thanks to the way the economy grew. What kinds of measures do you think, and I might ask each of you to, to speak to this, and then we’ll quit. But I’ll start with you, Sujata. What do we need to do to make sure that we’re actually building an inclusive downtown and inclusive urban cores where there’s room for everybody? How do we do that? Because right now a lot of people have misgivings about whether that’s possible.

Sueling Ching Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I don’t have the full answer of like, here the three things we do to make this an equitable and inclusive downtown. I think one of the number one things we always try to tell people is we’re not trying to go back to where we were before, because that was not inclusive. We had prosperity. We did not have inclusion. And so for us, when we talk about downtown, we try really hard not to use metrics like, what’s the value of the commercial real estate asset? Because that’s not … that’s an important metric for us to understand in terms of the economic health of the city. But that’s not actually going to be the indicator that will tell us if we’ve been successful in creating a more inclusive, vibrant and equitable downtown. So we really need to think about who is actually benefiting from the public policies that we are setting forward, and is it actually going to make it a city where other people can feel like they belong?

Mary W. Rowe So do we need some different kinds of measures? We all … Everybody laments … Why do we talk about GDP? It seems to be the only thing we can talk about, but we do need other measures that give us this indication that we’re on the right track. I’m going to ask each of you for a little closing comment. Just be aware we’ve only got three minutes. Do the math. That means you have to talk quick like me, Zachary, then Tobi, then Nina, and then Sueling. Go ahead Zach.

Zachary Dayler Sounds good. The only thing I’ll leave folks with is A) big thank you for showing up. And to that point, show up. Show up in your public spaces. Show up at your committee meetings. Show up in your elected officials offices. The time is now to roll up our sleeves and do this work.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah. Tobi …

Tobi Nussbaum Yeah. I mean, so much to digest from the report yesterday and from this conversation. But I think your emphasis on partnership, on mutual accountability, is hugely important. There are many organizations and levels of government that are interested in this. And I think Sueling and the Board of Trade has done a great job of starting the conversation, and there’s lots of work still to go, but I feel really encouraged from what’s happened this far. So thanks.

Mary W. Rowe And you’re a good model. I use the NCC model often as an example of a tri-level … Are you tri? You have Ontario in there too, don’t you? Are you?

Tobi Nussbaum Yeah. I mean the province matters too for sure.

Mary W. Rowe Oh yeah, the province. Yeah. Like those are our states. Yeah. But you’re a good model for governance and how do we actually move forward … I always feel the … We get defeated if we say it’s somebody else’s jurisdiction. Just for Nina and Sujata’s benefit. Canada is seized with the housing crisis. And one of the challenges that we hear, like you are … One of the challenges we hear is that none of the orders are prepared to take responsibility for it. And so that’s when we get kind of stuck. So I appreciate what you’re saying, Tobi. We’ve just got to stay on and partnerships and how critical that is. Nina, last thought from you.

Nina Albert Yeah. I mean, somebody said … Zach said, “show up”. I’d say, you know, partner, a lot of people come to me with problems. I know what the problems are. I need solutions, and I need people who can execute. And so if there’s something that you’ve got then find a partner and bring it forward and don’t hesitate, we are all innovating and we get to define ourselves at this moment.

Mary W. Rowe It’s pretty interesting, isn’t it? We can try some stuff. Yeah. Sueling …

Sueling Ching I just want to echo Zach and Tobi and thank them for their partnership in this community. And that’s why I’m so optimistic about Ottawa. So those partnerships, showing up, working together. But, you know, thinking big, like thinking big, like having some lofty goals, believing that together that we can do amazing things. And I always loved the term “if you reach for the moon, even if you fall, you’ll land in the stars”. So like thinking big, look … And the NCC and Zach have both done beautiful work in this in this regard. And so I think for the downtown we’re well set up for that.

Mary W. Rowe Last word to you, Sujata.

Sueling Ching Yeah. I mean, I think what I’m really excited about is the fact that everybody does seem to have a handle on where the vision needs to go at this point. And so it’s really time to kind of roll up sleeves and do the implementation. And I think there’s a lot of low hanging fruit, even on removing barriers, making it easy for folks to open a small business in downtowns. Thinking about how government is actually a force for good. That can really be an important part of changing the culture and the mindset.

Mary W. Rowe All right. Listen, thanks, gang. Really, always as you can see in the chat, people so appreciative. You just have an infusion of ideas and imagination and good questions and lots of open struggle about how we all move forward. So congratulations again Sueling. The work just begins in Ottawa. Sujata, nice to see you. Thanks, Nina. Always great to have DC with us. And we continue to refer to you fondly. And Tobi and Zachary, thanks for all the work you do. Thanks everybody for joining us on City Talk. Have a good day!