'Expose, Propose & Politicize': The Planners Network Conference, Winnipeg, July 17th – 19th, 2008

As a grassroots
North American organization for "people involved in planning," Planners
Network (PN) attracts not just professionals and academics but laypersons and
activists as well. This year's PN conference was a dramatic debut for the
Winnipeg chapter of PN, which was only formed in January of 2006. The conference title, "Flat not Boring" was an amusing reference to
southern Manitoba's notoriously unvarying geography. More revealing was the
theme of this year's conference: "Planning in Challenging Climates." Topics
included planning for food, alternative transportation, storytelling in
planning, Indigenous planning, creative practices, alternative economics,
teaching climate change and political activism.

The PN conference was just one of two major planning events held in Winnipeg between July 13th and 19th: the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP)
national conference, "Planning by Design in Community:
Making Great Places," which drew over 700 participants and dominated the city's convention
centre, ran earlier that week.

The PN conference was a somewhat smaller meeting, attracting some 200 participants for a free public event, a day of mobile workshops across the city and and one day of sessions at the Faculty of Architecture at the University
of Manitoba.

The free public "kick-off" event was an evening on alternative
transportation featuring Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute
and Will Toor, former Mayor of Boulder and current Boulder County Commissioner.
Litman's ideas of shifting focus from the personal auto to other modes through
price restructuring, infrastructure improvements and upgrades to transit
technology served as inspiration for what could be. Toor, on the other hand,
presented the practical application of some of these ideas: the changes made to
transportation during his tenure as mayor of Boulder in the 1990s are a
practical precedent from which any city can learn. That city's efforts to improve infrastructure and technology for
alternative modes resulted in marked increases in transit ridership, cycling
and walking. Both men also reiterated that, far from
"bashing" motorists, investments in walking, cycling and transit actually
benefit drivers.

On Friday
attendees could choose between 10 different mobile workshops, ranging from
inner city tours to Aboriginal initiatives to an examination of Winnipeg's
ecology. They focused on local examples demonstrating how the engagement of
community-based non-profit organizations and activists can challenge dominant planning
assumptions. For example, the ecology workshop showed how NGOs are addressing local environmental
issues, and that community engagement is crucial for improving and
protecting environmental integrity and bridging the gap between people and
natural environments in urban settings.

This focus on
activism was also a key element of "Writing for Progressive Planners," the
purpose of which was to provide planning activists with the tools to write
effective opion pieces for alternative and mainstream media outlets. Session
leaders Tom Angotti, (co-editor of Progressive Planning Magazine) and
Louise Dunlap (author of Undoing the Silence: Tools for Social Change Writing)
stressed that, while urban issues are extensively reported in various media,
the essential "understory" of social and environmental injustices is often
missing.

At two sessions
on creativity and "urban know how", participants discussed how, as planners, we
need to regularly revisit the ways in which we interact critically with our
surroundings; what once seemed creative can quickly become stale. Whether
engaging the public in community design or spearheading walking tours, it is
important that we avoid simply seeking evidence to reinforce our existing
beliefs: a stereotype is a stereotype, be it held on the fringe or not.
Panellists showed how they are using film, photography and informal gatherings
as lenses to interpret our surroundings. In the process, they are finding that
space can be used in very complex ways in the most unexpected places, with
everything from the sidewalk to the screen sparking the imagination.

The lunch-hour
plenary was a tribute to long-time planning scholar and social critic Peter
Marcuse, perhaps most famous for his 1978 article on the "Myth of the
Benevolent State[1]," which
provided critical counternarratives for key American housing policies.
He has also contributed numerous articles to PN's flagship journal Progressive Planning; one of his best-known articles critiques as "delusional" most of the discourse on sustainability. Throughout his career, Marcuse has sought to highlight inequalities in society
through a unity of theory and practice. As one of the conference Co-Chairs Richard Milgrom
stated, his favourite Marcuse quote could be a motto for Planners Network:
"Expose, propose & politicize."

In that spirit,
participants could take in an art installation of decorated t-shirts and other
apparel that exposed "planning's dirty laundry", which catalogued such harmful
practices as redlining, restrictive covenants and anti-immigrant ordinances.

Like the CIP
conference earlier in the week, there was a focus on planning for agriculture
and food security, which is so essential for addressing poverty. Governance structures
and urban policies – such as food charters – were shown to be key to supporting
such innovations as community-supported agriculture, Tribal agriculture on
reservations, and even farmers' markets, which are often impeded by inflexible
municipal permitting. The urban ecology tour of Winnipeg's ecosystem also
highlighted the surging interest in community gardens on campuses and the inner-city, while
also illustrating cross-cultural values and community engagement in land
reclamation and food security initiatives.

Another session
looked at the potentiality for making planning accessible and inclusive -- rather than crisis-oriented -- through the
use of community design centres and public-interest planning that take a
"storefront" approach. While such initiatives require a great deal of support
from their communities, they also need to avoid appearing to duplicate the
city's planning functions. But they could go a long way towards addressing
information disparities in planning, which can cause citizens to fear that
decisions about their communities are being made behind closed doors.

Case in point:
the City of Winnipeg has recently announced a controversial proposal for a new
football stadium in the inner-city neighbourhood of South Point Douglas,
which sits in a V-shaped bend in the Red River. If built, the stadium would
require extensive demolitions, a huge investment in new infrastructure and
would make surrounding areas not only unaffordable, but subject to intense
vehicle traffic, all of which have local residents very worried. PN members
were given a tour which involved a lengthy round-table discussion on how to
fight such proposals effectively -- a very real example of planning in a
challenging climate. (Interestingly, PN delegates were prominently featured in
the local press for their uniformly negative appraisals of the proposal!)

Other progressive topics included housing
and workers' co-ops (Manitoba's provincial government was lauded for its strong
support for co-ops and the workers' co-op movement); and strategies for dealing
with gentrification. The renewed Winnipeg neighbourhood of West Broadway was
seen to dance a thin line between urban revitalization and gentrification,
through ensuring that landowners, residents and government agencies work
closely together to accommodate all needs.

Throughout, attendees were challenged to
look at planning in new ways, through the eyes of others, and in terms of how
planning can contribute to addressing societal power imbalances. Coming as it
did immediately following the CIP conference, the PN conference was a
stimulating and celebratory way to cap to an exciting week of planning
deliberations in Winnipeg.