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Village sprawl or habitat

Family farms or estate acreage? Open fields or hockey rinks? Townhome complexes or remnant wetlands? Networks of trails or subdivisions? Lisa Richardson investigates the challenges Pemberton, B.C.'s fastest-growing community, is facing.

The debate over Smart Growth could get heated in Pemberton on Jan. 14 th , when local developers gather alongside concerned citizens, planners, farmers and green space advocates to explore sustainable land use practices.

With Pemberton’s ongoing growth spurt making headlines again, the town’s associated aches and pains are about to be aired.

For local property developer Cam McIvor, these growing pains are manifesting in a long wish-list for amenities and recreation services. According to McIvor, Pemberton’s economy needs as much nurturing as its social and environmental needs, and until the town achieves a critical tax-base, checking development will only hurt us.

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The principles of Smart Growth are sound, but different communities are at different stages of development," he says. "Urban sprawl is the main enemy of Smart Growth, and it’s more prevalent an issue for major urban areas. Pemberton is a fairly infant community, in terms of services, so to have a sustainable amount of tax base, jobs and overall economy, we need to allow development until we get to the point where we can start moderating growth."

For others, the changes and population surges of the last eight years have been enough.

Councillor Jennie Helmer recognizes that Pemberton is a young community in terms of development, and says this allows some influence in the direction of village design. " Many people don't want community sprawl with large single-family housing and auto dependency, but they need alternative options," she says.

Mayor Jordan Sturdy, who has spent the past two months getting up to speed with life at municipal hall, has discovered that the village runs on such a tight budget that a 1 per cent tax increase would only generate an additional $4,000 in revenue, which makes the prospect of developer’s cost contributions in order to build new infrastructure alluring.

This tension – between further developing the community to increase the tax base and protecting the quality of life – is age-old and one that Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed has seen play out during his nine years of service as a councillor, throughout which he has also served as a founding member of Smarth Growth B.C.

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One of the things when looking at planning that I hear so often, like a knee-jerk reaction to not having any money, is ‘We have to grow and expand our taxbase.’ Communities have to be very conscious of what that kind of growth means," Melamed says.

"I think people in Pemberton really like the rural nature and quality of living in the valley. How do you preserve and manage that character? It’s a catch-22 to have groups saying ‘We want more because we come from places with amenities and we want those services.’ They don’t necessarily realize that in asking for those kinds of services, you run a distinct risk of wrecking the place and losing the things you like about it."

Family farms or estate acreage? Open fields or hockey rinks? Townhome complexes or remnant wetlands? Networks of trails or subdivisions?

Managing these tensions and conflicts is at the heart of small-town politics. Although the potential exists for these conflicts to erupt, they can also prompt innovative responses and new ways of thinking, which is why Smart Growth B.C. focuses largely on facilitating workshops for communities experiencing population growth in areas of agricultural or environmental significance. The discussion has come some way in Sea to Sky country already, with the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District incorporating Smart Growth principles into the Regional Growth Strategy, but even when it came to signing off on a Memorandum of Understanding last May, signatories were at odds.

Ione Smith, Outreach Co-ordinator for Smart Growth B.C., explains the importance of these community discussions: "It’s great to get everyone in the same room talking. Most people have a real passion for why they live somewhere and if there’s no dialogue between developers, local government and residents, it’s hard for them to feel involved."

Conflict is a trigger for innovation – a truism that echoes throughout the history of design, be it in town planning and land use, art or science. Without conflict, the status quo is never challenged. There is no evolution, a process by which conflict with the environment gives rise to superior or more adaptable genetic traits. There is no story, which grips audiences by pitting the hero against the bad guys or their own inner demons, in order to grow and transform.

New Urbanism, the theory behind Smart Growth, is another example of conflict triggering innovation. A major rethink of the neighbourhood arose in the 1990s as a reaction to the sprawling suburbs that had sprouted across the country. The movement refocused town planning towards walkable neighbourhoods, back-alley parking, concentrated nodes of development, varied housing options including houses with garage apartments for cottage industry or revenue suites, and neighbourhood greens or unique public gathering places at the heart of towns.

Ken Melamed explains, "Smart Growth is an off-shoot of New Urbanism. People in environmental and social movements were saying, we think there are a number of problems in society – what are the causes? It went back to something as fundamental as the way we laid out our houses and roads."

The rise of the automobile had created a new god, relegating human beings to the sidelines of our towns. Forfeiting open space, meaningful civic interaction, and places for children to play safely and spontaneously to the logistical demands of the car gave rise to a deep sense of discontent.

Smart Growth or New Urbanism rallied, encouraging communities to dethrone the vehicle as the centre of urban development, and instead, to focus on a town’s social heart. Urban design became a tool for enhancing the mental environment.

This rise of the role of design, away from mere product packaging and layout to a focus on the big picture impacts of human ingenuity, was emphasized in last year’s groundbreaking Bruce Mau exhibit, Massive Change. The exhibit noted that,

"architects have tended to build pieces of city without regarding their relationship to the whole. But holistic thinking is exactly what we need here if we're ever to develop the capacity we need to provide shelter on a global scale."

For environmental scientist and organizer of Pemberton’s upcoming Smart Growth workshop, Lisa Helmer, this type of holistic thinking requires us to put something else at the core of planning in Pemberton: nature.

"We’re a farming community living on a floodplain," says Helmer, noting that we wrestle with what to do with this water. "Farmers don’t want water in the fields, but the fish and other animals rely on it. How do we balance it?"

This conflict, which is brought home for Helmer by her dual roles as a fisheries scientist and as a farmer, has given rise to a unique vision. "I’m interested in how we can incorporate the things we would usually build for a development, like curbing, or grates or stormwater drains, with natural systems. Some building standards initially called for big fish stamps on stormwater drains, to warn people not to dump toxic liquids down the drains. But what if we go beyond that and say, let’s have no grates, and just let the water run into ponds. Decades from now, we’re going to be wondering where all the water went. But we can build a cushion for ourselves. Water retention ponds and native vegetation running the length of the valley will assist with stormwater run-off and recharge our aquifer."

Because her smart vision of Pemberton involves developing the hillsides and leaving the valley’s arable land for farming, dealing with water run-off is crucial. "If we focus urban development on the hillsides, there’s no point protecting farmland if it’s just going to get slammed with the water run-off," she says.

Helmer’s environmental consulting has recently found her at the fore of a wetlandscaping project for a $13 million home in Barnfield. Originally sited beside a manky ditch, the homeowners commissioned a water feature with a difference – a wetland. Regularly replenished with water used to geothermally heat the home, the wetland provides a source of clean drinking water and native habitat as well as a striking example of urban design. Certainly it helps to have a landscaping budget commensurate with a multi-million dollar property, but Helmer explains that constructing a wetland is as simple as digging a hole. "It’s not very complicated. You just design a shape and start digging, and try and hit a ground water level."

"Wetland construction," explains Helmer, "uses bio-filtration, instead of mechanical filtration. A wetland is like a giant kidney. It filters out pollutants, and we get clean potable water. One Mile Lake is an amazing example of this. It’s located right next to the highway, and yet, from our water quality sampling, the water is extremely clean. So the pollution is being filtered out by the cattails. Here’s this example right at the entrance to our village – this big pond taking pollutants off the road."

The wetland is proof to Helmer that we can look to the earth to teach us what we need to know about how to live and how to design our towns. "We need to incorporate nature back into our designs. Either we do it now, or we’ll be forced to do it later."

This natural resources conflict we’re facing is driving new initiatives and technology, but perhaps not with the necessary sense of urgency. And for Helmer, the biggest paradigm shift is to remember that we are animals; that our towns and villages are, in fact, habitat. "Habitat is food, shelter, water. That’s all we need. We’ve taken ourselves out of nature, but we have to realize that nature is not just something that’s nice to look at. We need it."

Reconnecting with nature offers a myriad of habitat solutions, from incorporating natural ponds or geothermal heating, to sod roofs, community gardens, permaculture, and grey water systems.

The reaction against these innovations is commonly about the bottom line. "Sure, in the short term, it looks like there are financial barriers," acknowledges Helmer, "but in the long term, it’s cost-effective. The cost of treating water by building new wastewater treatment plants, and producing more power with nuclear power plants, is so much greater than biting the bullet now. But it’s the immediate cost that people see and we have a really hard time planning for the future."

Smart Growth B.C.’s Ione Smith acknowledges that "sustainability" in building and design is the more expensive route. "In the short term, it can be quite expensive. But in the long term, the benefits far outweigh the costs, especially with respect to infrastructure. So if you choose to do infill development, your infrastructure costs are lower. New technologies for energy efficiency are more expensive at the outset, but over time with increasing fuel costs, that’s offset by savings you can garner. I agree it’s hard for local councils to pursue that long-term gain – it’s not necessarily well-received by the public, so that’s the importance of these workshops."

It’s even harder for local councils who have very little in reserve, nor any major industry to help fill the coffers, and there’s little doubt that Pemberton’s newest council will feel the pressure from these conflicting interests.

Nor is there any question that population growth has found us. Projections for Sea to Sky country show that the pressure will continue. The question now is, what is the "smart" thing to do? Biologist Edward O. Wilson calls human beings "the future-seeking species," with natural selection choosing in favour of the most intelligent and hopeful.

Here’s hoping that in the face of growth and fiscal scarcity, we can leverage the conflicts to accomplish something truly amazing.

Sidebar:

Smart Growth B.C. and the Whistler Blackcomb Environmental Fund present "Planning for a Livable Pemberton Valley: Ensuring Land Use Sustainability" at the Pemberton Community Centre, Saturday, Jan. 14, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. For more information, contact mailto:pemberton@smartgrowth.bc.ca pemberton@smartgrowth.bc.ca or call Ione Smith on 604-915-5234.

Smart Growth B.C. is a provincial non-governmental organization devoted to fiscally, socially and environmentally responsible land use and development. Working with community groups, businesses, municipalities and the public, Smart Growth B.C. advocates for the creation of more livable communities in British Columbia.

Smart Growth is a collection of urban development strategies to reduce sprawl that are fiscally, environmentally and socially responsible. Smart growth is development that enhances our quality of life, protects our environment, and uses tax revenues wisely.



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