Frank Cunningham’s Pragmatic Perspective

This article is a longer reflection on Frank Cunningham's Ideas in Context in light of the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey

Bringing the Neighbours into Infill

Bringing the Neighbours Into Infill provides analysis of two case studies of innovative public engagment processes in the Metro Vancouver region, both of which resulted in a significant change in resident attitudes toward infill and smaller housing development.&nbsp

Resilience and Pedagogy: Learning From International Field Studies in Urban Resilience in Canada and Germany

What impact does an immersive, international field school experience have on learning about urban resilience; and conversely, what impact does a framing concept of urban resilience have on international field schools in environmental and planning studies? This article reports on qualitative analysis of learning outcomes related to a novel pair of international field schools on the theme of urban resilience. Our field schools took place with German and Canadian students seeking to understand urban resilience in two different contexts, one a context of urban decline and post-industrial transformation, the other a context of urban growth encountering new climate change-related constraints. We found that the elements attributed the most importance for learning by students were the immersive experience of instrumental efforts being taken to advance urban resilience and the opportunity to see concepts of urban resilience put into action in the field. Mixed success was achieved in the students’ ability to incorporate more intrinsic understandings of urban resilience into their experiences; in particular, instructors’ expectations of students’ readiness to engage in social and peer learning were tested, as were the complications in navigating across instrumentalist and intrinsic understandings of urban resilience. This review of field school and resilience pedagogy offers insight into the challenges of teaching and learning in the terrain of urban resilience

Bringing the Neighbourhood into Infill

This report provides an overview of the Bringing the Neighbourhood Into Infill partnership project, its motivation, key priority messages, and next steps. It also presents the results of a representative sample survey of Metro Vancouver residents on their attitudes toward infill development

The Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory (RVu): counting on Vancouver, "our view" of the region

The Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory (RVu) was established in 2004 to provide a new model for measuring and monitoring regional progress toward sustainability. RVu is the first indicator project in Canada to join the UN-Habitat Global Urban Observatory network. RVu takes up the challenge within sustainability assessment theory to analyze and inform at the same time as it attracts and unites the widest range of citizens possible toward the goal of improving our common future. This article presents the processes carried out by RVu in 2005-2006 to recommend sustainability indicators for the Vancouver region. While RVu’s expert process built upon rational models, RVu’s nonexpert process operationalized a systems modelling approach. RVu has aimed to mesh international expectations and regional aspirations, expert- and citizenbased views of progress, and hard line and storyline trends. The process and results hold lessons for other regions grappling to apply sustainability principles in practice

Toward a Better Understanding of Housing Vulnerability

Housing vulnerability is a complex and elusive concept. In this report, we draw upon a scoping review and partner consultation to provide a systematic review of vulnerability associated with housing in the Canadian context. We identify five conceptual approaches to housing vulnerability. They can be differentiated based on different treatments of:   • entities considered to be vulnerable; • risk factors of vulnerability; • ability to respond to vulnerability; • outcomes of vulnerability.   Most studies of housing vulnerability in our review take an outcome-based approach, examining substandard housing outcomes, such as homelessness and severe housing deprivation. These studies expose both the systemic failures and individual deficiencies that drive vulnerability. The second category of approach is a risk-based approach to vulnerability. Research in this category treats poor housing conditions as indicators of the inability of households or communities to manage explicitly identified vulnerability risk factors or events that may affect them negatively in the future, such as natural hazards, food insecurity, or health risk factors. Thirdly, the household financial vulnerability model takes a similar risk-based approach, but its empirical focus is on the risks to households from their financial situation related to housing. Neither risk-based nor financial vulnerability-based approaches do an effective job of treating the outcomes that may result from these risk factors. Fourth, the capabilities approach incorporates housing vulnerability as a component of social vulnerability writ large, where social vulnerability of any kind is understood as a deficit in the freedoms and opportunities to pursue desired well-being outcomes. This approach emphasizes a composite measure of social vulnerability that takes vulnerability from housing situations into account. While appealing in offering a specific conceptualization of the human cost of housing vulnerability, negative capabilities outcomes are often poorly measured. Another strand of literature in economics distinguishes itself from other approaches by looking at the vulnerability of the housing market to economic shocks or risks. This strand is only treated in a summary way in this review.   In consultation with our CHC partners on how they view their own understandings of housing vulnerability within this framework, there was recognition of each of the identified approaches. The most common affinity was with the outcome-based approach. However, our partners also pointed out that existing concepts and measures of "housing" and "vulnerability" should take the multi-faceted manifestations of vulnerability into account. The consultation highlighted the importance of re-conceptualizing housing in order to address housing vulnerability in both research and practice. Specifically, consulted partners agree that residential autonomy (i.e., choice or control over residential space), accessibility, social capital, social connectedness, cultural appropriateness, and intersectionality should be taken into account when defining housing vulnerability or the right to housing. There is also a strong consensus that housing vulnerability, despite its various definitions, stems from systemic failures rather than any individual deficiency. Beyond housing precarity, housing vulnerability brings with it a wide range of financial, social, and environmental costs along with the trauma inflicted on households living in this state.   Based on our reviews and consultations, we offer a starting point for a policy research position to guide Community Housing Canada’s common work. Namely, alongside housing policy analysis, research that identifies specific negative outcomes and associated risk factors of housing vulnerability is needed for effective rights-based housing policy in Canada

Stimulating a Canadian narrative for climate

ABSTRACT: This perspective documents current thinking around climate actions in Canada by synthesizing scholarly proposals made by Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD), an informal network of scholars from all 10 provinces, and by reviewing responses from civil society representatives to the scholars' proposals. Motivated by Canada's recent history of repeatedly missing its emissions reduction targets and failing to produce a coherent plan to address climate change, SCD mobilized more than 60 scholars to identify possible pathways towards a low-carbon economy and sustainable society and invited civil society to comment on the proposed solutions. This perspective illustrates a range of Canadian ideas coming from many sectors of society and a wealth of existing inspiring initiatives. Solutions discussed include climate change governance, low-carbon transition, energy production, and consumption. This process of knowledge synthesis/creation is novel and important because it provides a working model for making connections across academic fields as well as between academia and civil society. The process produces a holistic set of insights and recommendations for climate change actions and a unique model of engagement. The different voices reported here enrich the scope of possible solutions, showing that Canada is brimming with ideas, possibilities, and the will to act

The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods around the World

In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities, and solar cities. They have become frames—sometimes the dominant frame—used to orient the construction of new pieces of a city in a growing number of countries. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social, and design-based terms. Ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different contexts. This article presents an original typology of ecourbanism as the integration of seven extreme type principles. We developed this typology through an abductive approach, or the back and forth testing of observed practices with arguments advanced in theories of sustainable development, planning and urban studies. While ecourban neighbourhood developments by definition express integrative goals, this typology permits assessment of the extent to which outcomes are being achieved in terms of each specific principle. We define and present a limiting case for each of these extreme type principles. Rather than attempting to render different standards equivalent across national contexts, this typology-based approach to understand the outcomes of ecourban neighbourhood developments promises a means to facilitate orienting these developments toward higher levels of integration within a common set of principled boundaries, as they are developed around the world

The Rhetoric of Sustainability: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy?

In 1991, development economist and American public intellectual Albert O. Hirschman wrote the Rhetoric of Reaction [1]. In this book, which was prescient of more contemporary popular books such as Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine [2] and James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State [3], Hirschman proposed a way to understand the kinds of arguments made by conservatives about proposals for change. His compelling trilogy of modes of arguments included arguments of perversity, futility, and jeopardy. I argue here that this schema can additionally be used as a way to understand the limits that are seen to exist to approaching sustainable development. I will demonstrate the pervasiveness of arguments that our best attempts to move toward sustainability in our cities today may present threats that are just as grave as those of not acting. This exercise serves two purposes. One is to urge those who would call themselves sustainability scholars to think critically and carefully about the lines of thought and action that may separate different sustainability motivations from the far reaches of interdisciplinary work in this field. The other is to suggest that, because of the persistence of certain kinds of arguments about the impossibility of sustainability, suggestive of deep and enduring instincts of doubt through human history, we should be skeptical of the legitimacy of these claims about the limitations of achieving sustainable development.sustainable development; Albert O. Hirschman; pragmatism; planning; social change

Homelessness in the Livable City: Public Space Regulation in Olympic City, Vancouver's Poorest Neighborhood

This paper examines whether public space regulation changed around Vancouver’s preparations to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, particularly in the poor neighborhood of the Downtown Eastside. We argue that Vancouver’s desire to be competitive on the international stage has major effects on how public space is used and regulated. Any policy shift would have a disproportionate impact on the homeless, given that this demographic group is compelled to live their lives in public space. We find that changes have occurred, but the Olympics have acted as catalyst for such changes, not the sole driver. The spotlight provided by the Olympic Games has amplified a new round of power struggle between city government and the police department to set the policy agenda for tackling concentrated social problems. The outcome of this conflict will determine the future of public space regulation in post-Olympic Vancouver, and the extent to which a poor neighborhood and those who call it home can be included in a world class, livable city.