This is a letter I wrote on May 30, 2006 to the Times-Colonist in response to a really stupid article that purported to report on a public hearing for the "WaterFall" (now simply called "The Falls") project. I never sent the letter, so it never was published. Till now...

May 30, 2006 to Times-Colonist? (not sent, therefore unpublished):
Dear Editor:

Your title, "Generations at odds over condo project" (May 27), would perpetuate a cliched view of public opinion, given that the Thursday evening Council meeting included older people who spoke in support of the project, along with two younger ones who spoke against. What I found most intriguing about some of the expressions of opposition had little to do with so-called generational differences. One of your older persons, the lawyer representing a neighbouring property owner with a vested interest in the status quo, suggested darkly that unnamed forces at City Hall somehow prevented him from obtaining the necessary documents that could crush the project and render it "unbuildable." He effectively implied, without producing evidence, that justice can't prevail because procedures, allegedly corrupted by special interests, weren't transparent. Interestingly enough, the only other suggestion (this time from one of the "younger" set) that special interests were manipulating things from the wings came from the companion of Victoria's youngest-ever candidate for mayor. He felt compelled to warn Council that a group in the audience was conspiring in support of the project.

I found it striking that these speakers from different generations, and representative of superficially different interests (the established status quo of capital and property ownership on the one hand and a traditional, party-hierarchical NDP leftism, on the other), clung so strongly to the idea that clandestine forces are at work in the city.

I ask myself why anyone would bother with elaborate conspiracy theories when the simple truth can be so much more interesting. As your reporter noted, one supporter said he learned about the project on the internet. The internet provides a public space for people to have "conversations," irrespective of political party hierarchies or investor / property owner interests. It's not surprising that more traditional interest groups might feel threatened by open, unhierarchical discourse on the net: who is in control?, who is in charge?, and who will tell people what to do?, they wonder. They might simultaneously wonder: how do I get noticed?, how do I get control? Because it gives everyone and anyone an opportunity to rant, exult, reveal, or dissemble at will, the net makes some people very nervous: since no one appears to be in charge, there must be someone manipulating things from behind the curtain, they reason. But its virtue as an agora -- an open, truly democratic place of discourse -- that lets both the uninformed along with the very well informed speak unmuzzled is what makes the web authentic and vibrant. That's what can make it the best thing to reinvigorate public discourse since some guy in Germany built a printing press. And in Victoria's case, web-based discourse might actually be contributing to real-space discussion around reinvigorating downtown.

As with all democratic discourse, there's a lot of what netizens call "noise" on the web: folks straying off-topic, putting out wrong information, moving into a tangent, etc. But the marvel is that open conversations are often self-correcting -- tell a lie and it will come back to bite you -- and that the sheer volume of noise ensures that directorship from above is too difficult to be rewarding. The other marvel is that netizens soon learn that there is no single-voice master discourse.

In The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs wrote that "Development depends on co-developments." (p.19) She added, "I mean that development can't usefully be thought of as a 'line,' or even a collection of open-ended lines. It operates as a web of interdependent co-developments. No co-development web, no development." There isn't an immutable directive extraneous to the process itself, in other words. At the end of the book, Jacobs's platonic characters muse about what economies are good for. The sceptical antagonist gets the final word: "Like language, economic life permits us to develop cultures and multitudes of purposes, and in my opinion, that's its function which is most meaningful for us." (p.147)

"Pay no attention to the man behind the Green Curtain," the Wizard of Oz tells Dorothy and friends, and that's how Dorothy manages to get back home: she learns that there is no wizardous Master Plan. Click your heels -- or your mouse -- now: there's no place like a revitalized downtown, and the Yellow Brick Road never was a straight line.

And by the way, on the web no one needs to know what generation you're from...

Yule Heibel