Want something done? Don't ask the government. (Canada)

From the Toronto Public Space Committee exhibition "What the TTC Could Be: An Art Exhibit Featuring a New TTC where ads have been replaced by imagination."

Christopher Hume, the urban design writer for the Toronto Star, comments on the glacial pace of change by municipal governments. From the article:

If modern life is as fast as they say, why do things seem to move so slowly? In politics, at least, the pace of change is glacial. Indeed, if it were any slower, one would think we were moving in reverse. That's never with us more than during an election, when promises fly and policies whiz by at every turn. Suddenly, the possibilities appear endless, urgent and speedy.

But then one finds oneself waiting impatiently for the streetcar to arrive and wondering just how quickly life has become so slow. Speaking of the TTC, which always tries to run according to schedule, we were reminded recently that it took 10 years — a full decade — to force the commission to require its drivers to announce subway stops.

Ten years! How can that be? Though Toronto Transit Commission chair Howard Moscoe tried to defend the organization, he doesn't have a leg to stand on. The TTC's response is not only shameful, it's deeply disturbing. But it's also revealing...

So is it any wonder that the young — and the old, for that matter — vote in ever-smaller numbers? Who's surprised that people are staying away in droves, either through indifference, contempt or frustration? We inhabit a society in which a simple transit authority can squander years and years avoiding an issue that could have been dealt with in days. If one were a teenager now, one would be looking at an inaction that began in childhood — for a young person, a lifetime ago. So it's not surprising that when the issues become more complex — in other words, more political — the pace grows even slower...

But as the highly respected former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, author and president of the International Union of Architects, Jaime Lerner, says, "The starting is very important. If you wait until you have all the answers, you will never start." Lerner turned around the fortunes of Brazil's third-largest city through planning and public transit. Curitiba's rapid bus system, built at one-hundredth the cost of a subway, has been copied around the world. One need look no further than York Region, which recently bought a fleet of buses to help ease the gridlock.

According to Lerner, he is guided by three basic principles: Keep it simple, do it now and don't delay until all of the answers are known...

BBC photo of a Curitiba bus rapid transit entryway.

But as the just-released PricewaterhouseCoopers report, "Cities of the Future," points out, "Speed is increasing in all areas of life. Citizens and customers want online access to all public and private services, and the `democratic dialogue' increasingly demands rapid exchange of information between government and citizens." Rapid exchange of information is one thing, action quite another. In the meantime, hurry up and wait.

But surely, democracy delayed is, like justice, democracy denied? In fact, democracy has very little to do with governance. The world has changed, speeded up, while the parallel universe of the official grinds on ever slower. The gap between the two has grown into a chasm.

The 21st-century activist, especially the young activist, bothers less and less with government. Instead, he or she starts a movement, or at least a committee — the Toronto Public Space Committee, for instance, which has fought tirelessly on web, print and street to make the city a better place.

This is a tiny example, one of many, too many to count. Fortunately, election apathy isn't necessarily the same as civic apathy. It's just that some things are too important to be left to government.
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This online article has more about Jaime Lerner.

My only proviso, in response to Mr. Lerner's point that "if you wait until you have all the answers, you will never start," is that I think we have a lot of the answers already. But for some reason these answers, or at the very least, insights, are ignored. And this is very frustrating.

Here are two examples as illustrated by the Washington Post:

Photo by Kevin Clark, The Washington Post. Steve Coleman of Washington Parks and People addresses concern and outrage over the sewage leak and the poor repair job in and on Watts Branch Stream that is a direct feeder into the Anacostia River. See the Post article "Spill Spurs Call for WASA Accountability."

Photo by Kevin Clark, The Washington Post. The mens restroom at the North Michigan park Recreation Center stands as a storage room. The center, which opened two years ago, is the subject of community complaints about the six restrooms in the one-story facility.

See the Post article "D.C. Recreation Center Rich With Restrooms." From the article:

Reid and others say the one-story center has so many restrooms -- six with 38 stalls -- that two are being used for storage. In fact, they say, the city spent $400,000 on the additional restrooms but left the center without enough meeting space and no money to build a playground.

I went to the Sierra Club Happy Hour last night, met some good people and had some good conversations. One was about the upcoming Elections. Here are a couple issues, energy is an economic competitiveness issue (plus people die so the U.S. can live in sprawl), and we need to build a strong local economy, yet neither is an element in the Comprehensive Plan.

We have five mayoral candidates, but who is really out there, with intellectual heft, on these kinds of issues? There will be at least three competitive City Council races in Wards 3, 5, and 6, how many of the candidates are strong on the issues that this blog covers?. Said issues are about what I think of as "built environmental justice" grounded in civic engagement and citizen participation:

Placemaking through historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

I'm with Christopher Hume, "Fortunately, election apathy isn't necessarily the same as civic apathy. It's just that some things are too important to be left to government."

I have a lot of respect for the people involved in the Comprehensive Plan revision process but in many respects their hands are tied by the overly accelerated time frame as part of the charge given to them by City Council, the politics in the city, and the provisions in the Home Rule Charter that separate the Zoning Commission from the planning and land use functions of the City Government.

Fortunately, the fundamental issues we face as a city were laid out years ago by two local affiliates of national groups, the Sierra Club, in the report "Restore the Core" published in 2000 (subtitled "A Citizen's Guide to Building a Livable Washington, DC") and "DC At the Crossroads" by Friends of the Earth/DC Environmental Network, also published around the same time.

These reports are going on six years old, and their prescriptions and proscriptions are seemingly evergreen and even more apt for the development, planning, land use, and sustainability questions we face today.

Index Keywords: civic-engagement; municipal-services