The Vancouver Urbanarium Society partnered with UBC’s School for Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) to host an event entitled IncluCity: Can public process be truly public? On October 27th, 2014, 88 people ventured to the Arts Club on Granville Island to participate in this dialogue on the public process in Vancouver. Dr Maged Senbel, Associate Professor for the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), served as moderator with an opening presentation that highlighted the merits of good design achieved through public processes employing co-creation. However, he warned against the costs of such processes and posed the question: how do we make processes less burdensome and more meaningful? The five panelists then took five minutes each to respond to this question before turning it over to the audience for the last hour to respond.
Panelist Marta Farevaag, Principal at PFS Studio, advocated for consultation on design projects by designers. She encouraged engaging with the community through humour and used an illustrative example of encouraging a community to become stakeholders in a park design by attaching their written input to a stake and then physically placing that stake in the park itself. Patrick Condon, Professor at SALA, emphasized design as the best tool to find solutions to complex problems. He talked about his experiences with facilitating charrettes to produce comprehensive plans for cities like Calgary. UBC Urban Designer Scot Hein spoke of the importance of keeping processes relevant in order to promote inclusivity. Hein recounted his experiences as the former Senior Urban Designer for the City of Vancouver, positing that City designers must work with proponents through co-design to engage at a local and meaningful scale. He suggested the City set an overarching framework establishing priorities for systems, growth and amenities, so more focused processes could strategically use these frameworks as guides, freeing the community to focus on the provision of local knowledge and design professionals to practice and implement co-design processes and results.
Amanda Gibbs, Principal at Public Assembly, offered her insight based on extensive experience as a self-proclaimed insurgent community developer. She echoed that inclusive user-centered design is the best design. Key to successful co-design processes are the principles that all parties understand their respective roles and strengths and that these roles are clearly designed into the process. When designers sit with citizens, they can have deep conversations to learn what the opportunities are, go back to design and then return the resulting product to the community for further input. Trish French, former Assistant Director at the City of Vancouver, rounded out the panel comments by explaining the central requirement to any process is a clear and honest mandate that is understood by the public, decision-makers (City Councilors in the local government context) and staff. French reflected on the many processes she was involved with at the City and underlined the following tenets: process design must reflect the specific planning program, roles of the public, staff and decision-makers must be defined and specific and there must be an honest underlying motivation to consultation itself.
This set of concise, thought-provoking comments provided a solid foundation for thoughtful and nuanced discussion. Questions followed regarding how to best consult a constituency reluctant to change from the status quo and how to rebuild trust that has already been lost in a process. French spoke about people’s innate fear of change that they don’t understand. You have to work from a place of respecting that and addressing it. Most people can be understanding if you talk to them about their issues and adequately respond to them. Farevaag suggested one has to commit time to a process where trust has already been lost. Having regular meetings is imperative to prove you are listening, but you also have to be honest and realistic in communicating what the public input actually has influence over.
The internet was acknowledged as one tool in the consultation toolbox but direct, face-to-face interaction was deemed irreplaceable. Farevaag explained internet-based consultation was too isolating and limiting as you are not being challenged by external values and opinions. Hein commented that a combination of person-to-person interaction and new technologies like social media offered the most promising way forward. Condon emphasized the power of the pen and physical drawing, explaining that even though the general public may lack certain technical skills, everyone has design sensibilities that can be guided through effective facilitation by trained planners and designers. He reiterated that engaging in co-design through iterative charrette processes can be an effective exercise to include the public in the planning and design of their communities while giving them a visual and quantifiable way to conceive of change over time.
Another major issue brought up through the discussion was public consultation’s evolution into more of a public relations exercise. Dr. Senbel commented that when the channel for messaging becomes the same channel you are using for relationship building, transparency is lost. Many in the audience commented that recent consultation efforts made by the City of Vancouver felt more like public relations outreach. The former City employees on the panel suggested this is due to a shift to more of a Provincial or Federal model of government focused on controlled messaging and a highly politicized environment. It was expressed that local government efforts seemed more best-practices driven in the past. Amanda underlined how important it is to get away from a public relations-driven approach by highlighting transparency and vulnerability as vital to building relationships that lead to more effective public processes. It is difficult to summarize the wealth of information that emerged from the dialogue, but the importance of trust and building relationships emerged again and again as obligatory for more meaningful and effective processes.