Internationally renown geographer David Harvey has written about the struggle over urban planning. In his book Rebel Cities Harvey documents how cities - urban spaces- are at the core of the struggle between profit and wellbeing. He describes the ways in which the state, in combination with developers and financiers, privatize public assets, displace working class, racialized, and impoverished communities, and create opportunities for capital accumulation and individual wealth generation. His vision is not all darkness and despair, he also offers pathways toward more socially just and ecological sustainable urban spaces. UBC’s own land use plan is almost a textbook case of the redevelopment models critiqued by David Harvey.
UBC’s Land Use Plan
I will be voting against referring the Land Use Plan to the provincial government for approval. I do so as I have not been convinced by University leadership that this plan is in fact in the best interests of the university and as such feel compelled to withhold support so that I can honour my fiduciary duty.
I acknowledge the hard work, the care, and the attention to detail of the staff who have worked within the parameters this board set to come up with the land use plan we have before us. They have indeed set a new standard of engagement for UBC.
Acknowledging the unextinguished rights and title of Musqueam and Squamish Nations they established processes that respected both Nations’ interests and desires for inclusion. With Musqueam this resulted in a community-specific engagement process. With Squamish the engagement followed the Nation’s own formal referral process.
UBC staff have also held many information sessions, coordinated online surveys, and facilitated workshops with many different segments of our campus and residential communities. These staff have a right to boast of their thousands of ‘touch-points’ of engagement.
At the same time this was not a free-flowing process occurring outside of constraints and specific terms of reference. All of these engagements took place within the constraint that directed the planning office to find a way to release value from UBC’s public lands to support UBC’s economic ventures (which does include some academic activities). This took place under the umbrella of Campus Vision 2050, a conceptually expansive high level exercise that encouraged participants to think in broad, but realistic, strokes.
At the heart of the terms of reference for Campus Vision 2050 is an expectation to explore and assess a wide range of development scenarios against qualitative and quantitative measures for optimizing value and benefit to the university. This idea has been the central driving force that animated the seven guiding principles foregrounded in the published terms of reference.
Understood as seven big ideas radiating out from a tagline ‘people, mission, and place’ makes one think anything is possible. Taken in their circle they are warm and inviting ideas. A quibble, but these seven principles are not so much ‘principles’ as they are more aptly expressions of desire. We might desire to ‘take bold action on climate change,’ but we will not do so without first optimizing value. We might ‘confront the affordability crisis,’ but we will do so without figuring out what is affordable and for whom. We will ‘support UBC’s academic vision,’ but we will do so by building housing only a few of our new faculty can even dream of owning.
The expectation to optimize value automatically limits and constrains what might otherwise be imagined.
Optimizing value is why the towers are pitched at over 100 metres tall. Optimizing value is why open usable space is being reduced from it’s current levels. Optimizing value is why the primary method of development is by private contractors selling into an unregulated housing market. Optimizing value is what this land use plan is all about.
This plan is built upon a neo-liberal idea of the public good (that is, public lands only have real value through privatizing and removal from the public domain by private firms). This plan did not invent neo-liberalism. This plan did not start UBC’s journey down this path, but the architects of the plan have done little to imagine an alternative possibility. Instead they remain stuck in what future generations will likely consider a socio-economic dark age in which public entities retreated from civic responsibilities in favour of market mechanisms. Despite many expressions of care and concern this plan puts one thing above all others: optimizing value via the mechanism of private enterprise.
Community Voices
I have heard from many people about the Land Use Plan and Campus Vision 2050. I attended several workshops put on by Campus and Community Planning. I attended a community meeting held by the University Neighbourhood’s Association. I have heard from individual faculty as I walk from home to office, in my department, and through the many emails that have been sent our way. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that I have heard, but the strength and clarity of these voices are undeniable.
A great number of my colleagues want us to do better for UBC.
Faculty and staff voices include people from across the disciplines, faculties, and administrative units. They span the generations. They include campus residents and non-residents alike. They are people who have made a commitment to UBC, in many cases involving displacement and sacrifice, they are people who are making a life here with UBC. They share a message - they want us to do better.
My friends, colleagues, and neighbours talk about values - not value- when they offer their views on the Land Use Plan. Values that many of them believe a university should hold dear and place above optimizing value.
But they are wealthy, I’ve heard some advocates of the plan say. They are just NIMBYs, other say. They don’t know how good they’ve got it, others have said. They are spoiled and selfish. These are all things I have heard plan advocates label my friends, colleague and neighbours in the hallways and around the decision making tables.
I will not grace these attacks with a rebuttal. To do so would fall prey to a rhetorical trap that shifts attention away from the substance of what my friends, colleagues, and neighbours are saying.
That is, my friends, colleagues, and neighbours say the plan needs to place values ahead of optimizing value.
Imagine
Imagine what we could have done if we had placed values ahead of optimizing value.
We all agree there is a housing crises several decades in the making. It’s not UBC’s place to resolve the crisis, but we could do something about it if we placed the value of genuinely affordable housing above optimizing the value of real estate. Many speakers at the Land Use Plan hearing advocated housing for UBC students, staff and faculty. Others spoke about the importance of safe usable outdoor space. Some spoke about ecological values and urban ecology.
What if we placed these values at the core of our community plan? What might that look like?
We might never really know what could have been because our entire planning process was built around optimizing value through land lease sales.
I am not able to support referring the land use plan to the provincial government for approval in its current form.
I appreciate the destructive creativeness behind neo-liberal capitalism.
Constant churning and flipping and building is the life blood of a system which, like a shark1, will suffocate as soon as it stops moving. But maybe the time has come for degrowth, not constant growth? Maybe it’s time to advocate for a community “that prioritizes social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption.” This board talks a lot about transformational change. Well, this is one place under our control were we might engage in authentic transformational change. David Harvey talks about our urban struggles between profit making and wellbeing. Why not do something truly bold and put wellbeing at the center of a rewritten land use plan.
Yes, I know that it’s myth that all sharks must constantly move, but it’s a fun image.