This is a letter I wrote on July 26, 2006 to theVictoria News in response to their reportage of Jeremy Harris's talk at City Hall on July 13, 2006. The letter was published. (Subsequently, and unrelated to my letter, there was a stink in that newspaper in the "letters" section about Harris, with a number of people implying -- cynically? -- the "the city" had forked money over to Harris to come speak [not true, he came for free, but did get a lunch] and that Harris had badly mismanaged Honolulu, so why should we listen to him, and so on and so forth. As a dual Canadian-American citizen who has lived in both countries, I couldn't help but register a certain anti-Americanism in all of this, and most especially an overweaning ignorance of how America works.)

July 26, 2006 to Victoria News (published):
Re. "Honolulu visionary offers tips for Victoria," July 26, 2006


Dear Editor,

Many thanks for Brennan Clarke's detailed reportage of Jeremy Harris's and Ben Lee's presentation at City Hall on July 13. I also attended that meeting and can attest that Harris and Lee were inspiring. There are some key economic differences between American and Canadian methods of financing urban renewal, however, that we need to understand as we pursue sustainable development here. Trevor Boddy, in"Vancouverism vs. Lower Manhattanism: Shaping the High Density City" ( ArchNewsNow.com, 9/20/05) notes that: "It is a surprising fact that redevelopment of the core areas of American cities is dependent to a much larger degree on federal government funding than in otherwise more social democratic Canada. The American model is one of redevelopment agencies, special tax relief zones, and direct public investment in urban regeneration. Money is flung at American urban problems in the form of bond financing and direct subsidies to private sector builders."

Note that bond financing is the prime method Mr. Harris referred to when pressed by several listeners to explain how Honolulu "did it." It was literally through creative borrowing and leveraging of funds.

Trevor Boddy continues: "Canadian urban redevelopment is much more intermediated, slower, and distributed through narrowly-defined public domain funds, such as the Vancouver Agreement ... Especially over the past five years, Canada's federal government has been investing far less per capita in cities than that of the United States. Moreover, Canadian constitutional arrangements mean that municipalities are unable to institute sales taxes and similar revenue generators, and cannot issue bonds, a key means used by American cities to raise capital for infrastructure."

With nearly surgical precision, Boddy concludes that "the key shaper of city building in Canada is city planning – understood as a Utopian technocratic art performed by public agencies. The key shaper of the American city is pragmatic funding programs – some of them direct investments, others less visible allocations of public money to private recipients, such as mortgage payment tax deductibility, a huge investment of public funds unknown in Canada and most other countries."

Victoria cannot "float" bonds or collect GST or PST directly, regardless of how many of us consume here, ...and just imagine the uproar if Victoria's city council allocated "public money to private recipients," i.e., developers! Instead, the city has to get funds from federal and provincial governments, with allocation based on population. It doesn't matter that Victoria services the needs of neighbouring communities from Saanich to Sooke: on paper, we're a tiddler at 75,000 even though we're about 350,000 once you strip away the municipal boundaries that balkanize the administration of this region. We have needs based on the latter number but get funding based on the former.

Perhaps funding of cities should be an election issue -- I wouldn't mind seeing more federal and provincial money so that we can finance affordable housing, cultural infrastructure, and environmental sustainability.

Let's figure this out and push for the right thing. Honolulu's example shows that greening and sustainability are possible, and we all know they're needed.

Sincerely,

Yule Heibel