Land Use Change Processes are from Mars, Place Telling Processes are from Venus - Part III - Getting to Venus (February 1, 2023)
... telling the lived experience of community in land use change processes
Vlog Overview
My return to the academy (in 2014) to earn a PhD after 32 years of parks planning and operationalization of recreation and leisure services practice (1982-2014) uncovered many practice realities extensively studied by researchers. This dual lens gives me a unique inside (practice)/outside (research) perspective (and visa-versa) to bridge the two worlds. I will share park development policy and practice decision-making practice using an academic lens (i.e., institutional theory).
Each vlog, called Ice Sculptures, will have a short video presentation followed by some key takeaway notes. I will use lots of “I” and “me” to personalize my experiences, with lots of examples. My personality is such that I like to have fun, be a bit irreverent, hence some of my memes and (weak) attempts at humour. My goal is to provide a level of nuance to seen and unseen aspects of decision-making processes. I have opinions that may or may not be popular with my planning brothers and sisters, or elected officials. The vlog provides an informed perspective, but mine and mine alone based on my experiences and my studies. Use them as you see fit. So let’s finish off this trilogy on place telling in land use change processes!
Ice Sculpture: Land Use Planning Processes are from Mars, Place Telling Stories are from Venus - Getting to Venus
Part I (January 5) of this trilogy was a reflection and discussion of how telling place stories is complicated by multiple factors based on an iconic article by William Stewart in 2006. Part II (January 17) of this trilogy reflected on and was a discussion of four land use change processes in Edmonton that demonstrated how social actors engaged in land use change processes using an established legislative and process base. The four examples included reviews of how three park parcels and place story telling elements were manage.
However, park lands are also unicorn land for multiple reasons.
(a) The land is publicly owned. Elected officials have both power and agency to act as both judge and jury in adjudicating land use change processes with no appeal mechanism for non-state social actors. Those same actors also define and control the land use change process itself within the broader permissive provincial legislation, but can be influenced by community social actors if given time.
(b) Planning Legislation. The Municipal Government Act of Alberta gives park land extra process protection (i.e., reserve removal ) designed to make the public aware of a land use change. It is fair to assume that this was aimed to enhance knowledge dissemination in decision-making processes related to parks.
(c) Joint Use of Park Lands. Edmontons Joint Use Agreement was designed to provide recreational uses in schools (i.e., gymnasiums) and school uses on park lands (i.e., playgrounds, sports fields, green spaces). In all three park cases, existing unstructured uses of green spaces were lost, as well as planned future uses. In other words the loss of the building envelope is not neutral to the recreational needs of the community.
(d) Evolving Community Needs. As populations grow and evolve in age and culture over time, new and different recreational needs arise and compete with others but with the same land base assembled decades earlier.
(e) Planned Density Increases. Low density residential development is the under-utilized type of land use in the City. City Plan proposes a doubling of Edmontons population and seeks to increase density of existing areas to take advantage of existing infrastructure, through a variety of initiatives (i.e., lot splitting, density targets, etc). The net result is smaller living spaces and smaller private green spaces, both of which need to be replaced close to home, and retention of park lands are integral to the health and wellness of the community.
(f) Community co-production of place. The historical and substantive role of the community in co-production of recreational and leisure services, like no other municipal service.
(g) Expert Knowledge. Those with the most knowledge and relationship to the land itself are local residents and community league executives. Park lands are literally their backyard. There has been much research into the notion that professional experts, while necessary, may have taken on an outsized role in land use change processes. This is particularly problematic in a policy setting where the community are partners in place production, and where neoliberal policies favour expedited decision-making favouring economic interests.
Following Stewarts suggestion to enhance the community voice in park planning processes, we need to rethink the elements of park planning from the ground up (bad pun intended again) from a social process perspective in ways to reach out to hear the community voice more effectively.
Video Overview
Broader Societal Setting
Institutional theory (i.e., historical institutionalism, social relational institutionalism) teaches us that legislation, strategic priorities, policies, practices and land use change processes are socially constructed by social actors not limited to elected officials and administrators. The socially constructed barrier to incorporating place story telling in land use change processes are conflicting and competing valuation metrics of those lands. Land use change processes tend to value the land as an economic asset (i.e., property value) that can be used to leverage other outcomes, most often other economic benefits (i.e., increased property taxes on a site basis, job creation). Community benefits of park lands have been well documented (November 14, 2022 - Why Parks).
Land use change processes crafted by social actors are not neutral. Social actors are unequal in power and agency. Inevitably redevelopment of park land for non-park purposes will benefit some actors and dis-benefit others - and visa versa. As seen in part II of this trilogy, administrators and elected officials could facilitate or impede efforts to enable the community to tell their place story. Impediments or facilitators of good process and story telling are visible (i.e., legislation, policy, process steps), some hide in plain sight (i.e., use of jargon, legal language in reports, site signs, public notices, and public hearings), some are invisible (political lobbying, interpretation of policy and strategic direction) and some can be made invisible (in-camera council reports, incomplete council reporting). Moreover, impediments to equitable and fair processes may not be recognized by state or not state social actors (see photo and caption above). The good news is that in Edmonton and elsewhere, community actors have influenced policy, land use change process design, and implementation.
Planning Context
The starting point of discussions of fair and equitable land use planning is the strategic and policy framework, created by a specific set of social actors in their own stand-alone unique social process (consultation processes, surveys, best practice reviews, etc.). In Edmonton we have City Plan, which replaced The Ways. The primary products of these plans are well meaning, high level yet overlapping motherhood statements, relatively impossible to argue with individually, but largely not materially grounded (i.e., your lot, your neighbourhood, will be changed in these ways driven by what policy prioritized over another).
Interpretation of the policy and targets of application by elected officials and/or the administration to retain or decommission park lands is itself a social process. The narrative of the past and present lived experiences of the community can be used to interrogate and negotiate a future place, support or not support a desired change on public park lands, if: (a) the community is part of the social process to target neighbourhoods and sites; and (b) knowledge dissemination includes timely, accessible, legible, complete and accurate information (c) overall process timelines actively consider community social actor needs who have much less knowledge, power and agency.
None of the recommendations below eliminate or add to steps undertaken in existing land use change processes, but should reorder and reframe the activities within them. To briefly reiterate those steps from Part II include:
landowner due diligence
landowners direct preparation of a land use change application for area plan and zoning bylaw amendments
circulation of application to internal and external social actors, including public notifications both on site and by mail
establishment of administrative position
council report writing
public hearing
council decision-making
Key Recommended Changes
Accurate and Available Knowledge Dissemination. Provide enhanced public parkland land use data on city web site and in open city data portals to include identification of ecological goods and services, social and cultural goods and services, park amenity development history, and park infrastructure data (i.e., inventory and replacement costs).
Rationale - to provide easily accessible off the shelf data for all social actors (i.e., local communities, community NGOs, elected officials, administrators, and land use planners) when reviewing or responding to land use change processes specific to park lands.
Revisit Process Steps. As part of due diligence of land owners, in this case city elected officials and administrators, initially decouple parks review processes from land use processes that target sites for redevelopment from the land use change process. Undertake a public review of sites prior to land use application, that includes a review of strategic direction, policies and plans with and for the community, and a review of a public land assay..
Rationale - A separate stand alone process for each site, much like the 1994-2006 surplus school process, gives the community a place to voice their place story in a non-threatening manner and venue co-hosted by the local community league.
Public Land Assay. A park assay is defined as a “analysis to determine the presence, absence, or quantity of one or more components." In this context, a park assay is defined as an analysis to understand both the past and present uses of land used as a tool to enhance the health and wellness of the community in the future. A combination of qualitative and quantitative measures can be pulled from #1 above, augmented by face to face unstructured interviews with community league executive members past and present, park users, and local neighbourhood residents. The data, interviews and sharing of outcomes should occur on site, not at city hall. Open ended interview question of park users and league executives could explore the following: when do you use the site; what time of year; what time of day; what activities; who do you visit the site with; what do you like/dislike about the site., etc?
Rationale - Research has documented that land use change process public hearings are not a venue where negotiation of future place can occur effectively That process is adversarial at best, creates winners and losers, and does not facilitate thoughtful exchange of ideas when competing needs are in play. My bias - there is no such thing as a parks planning emergency that requires an expedited process to decommission public lands. The land use change process creates an unnecessary sense of urgency to get to a resolution.