There’s an online survey asking which measures the Foundation should be using. It’s a good opportunity to tell them that perception of crime or police officers per capita are not worth basing decisions off of. It’s interesting to think about how things should be measured:

Arts and Culture

I suggested they measure the import/export of art. eg: How many foreign artists participate in our cultural festivals? (Fringe and Film Fest are the two I’m involved in.) To what extent are our local artists exhibited in other cities?

Belonging and Leadership

I liked their idea of measuring the economic value of volunteer contributions much better than counting volunteers or donations. They suggest measuring women in municipal politics, but obviously it would be better to look at the extent to which local politicians at all levels reflect the demographic makeup of the community on many Census dimensions.

Economy

Some interesting suggestions were business start-ups and failures, jobs by sector (economic diversity), and percent of people making a living wage. The latter is much more useful than looking at underemployment or minimum wage or whatever – can people get with however they’re able and opting to work?

Environment

They suggested measuring amount of land with regional ecological significance, which is way more useful than land in the Agricultural Land Reserve, which includes golf courses.

Getting Started

Since Victoria’s population is aging, total childcare spaces isn’t important: I’d rather see them measure the ratio of spaces to children. Similarly, the number of children in government care reflects government policies rather than the actual child poverty rate. And student debt doesn’t matter if graduates can find awesome jobs, so I’d like recent graduate income measured.

Standard of Living

They suggested the change of consumer price index compared to average wage increase, that’s an awesome way of measuring real income change controlling for inflation and supply.

None of the options that I like were in last year’s report, so go vote for what I say!

Say you really like farming but you live in a city, even an apartment building. You note that there is not that much opportunity for you to do farming around you. So you think, “is there any way I can convince policy makers and influential residents to support my hobby?” You decide that farming is the solution and start looking for problems it can fix:

Emergency management

In the event of an apocalyptic disaster, we should be stockpiling oil or grain, not growing plants that could be months away from harvest.

Carbon emissions

If you want to reduce the carbon footprint of food, the most savings are in the transportation chain from boat to grocery store to fridge. Growing ultralight lettuce won’t make any difference.

Feeding the homeless

There’s plentiful free food in Victoria, whether from soup kitchens or dumpsters. I’ll never forget what a homeless guy told me when I offered him half a dozen eggs while cleaning out my fridge: homeless people need homes.

Educating children

Farming on school grounds is a great idea. But since children are not allowed to wander around unsupervised, they’ll never be exposed to any farming that’s off school grounds.

By offering itself up as a solution to all these issues, food security distracts from real solutions.

I think farming is a great hobby. Allotment gardens are a legitimate recreational use of green space. Everyone should have the right to keep bees or raise chickens on their private property. Roofs and boulevards covered by indigenous plants have many benefits. But don’t try to pretend that your hobby is going to save the world and demand the community subsidizes it.

After all, I like climbing things but I don’t think buildering should be in the plan. Although now that you mention it…

Downtown turned out to be one of the hardest places to canvass, because many pedestrians there suffered from panhandler fatigue and refused all solicitations.

The canvassers were wearing blue smocks with a logo on the front and holding a clipboard with petition sheets. Crockford can’t mean that they were mistaken for panhandling street people? No, the canvassers looked like street fundraisers, known in Britain as charity-muggers = chuggers.

Chuggers are paid, sometimes on commission, to solicit donations to private corporations. After the corporation’s shareholders have been paid, any money left over goes to the charity.

Panhandlers use a direct opening: “spare a little change?” “sorry”. Chuggers usually use an indirect opening, which requires more effort to deflect: “how are you today?” “fine” “got time to talk about…” “no”. I find chuggers significantly more annoying than street people, but just because I haven’t resorted to telling them to “fuck off”.

Occasionally I approach people on the street to compliment their clothes or or to ask for assistance or whatever. Since chuggers came to Victoria, I’ve actually been asked if I’m selling something in response to a compliment. Chuggers are poisoning our public spaces.

But Crockford points out something even worse: chuggers are poisoning democracy. Provincial initiatives and the local government alternate approval process rely on volunteer citizens being able to approach others on the street. Representatives of politicians and parties should be able to make a pitch on the street, against apathy if not for their candidates.

I’d like to see an amendment to the Safe Streets Act to ban chuggers or at least a local bylaw.

The planning department for the City of Victoria has a micro survey with just two questions, in the hopes of getting as many responses as possible. They’ve identified twelve issues, from affordable housing to heritage protection. For each issue, you specify how well it’s currently being addressed. Then you get 10 points to allocate between the issues to advise them how to spread their attention. It’s quick, elegant and it gets my stamp of approval as a voting system.

Dan, who is apparently an honorary member of the planning department, has come up with another micro survey tool. On Twitter, post a tweet how you imagine Victoria in 30 years (add the #VicOCP hashtag). If you don’t have a Twitter account, add a comment to this post with few enough characters and I’ll retweet it (eg: “RT Jack:[125 characters]#VicOCP”). Here’s mine:

Distinct. Dense: 200,000 people. Bike & pedestrian oriented. Diverse industries; most of CRD’s jobs. Amalgamated. #VicOCP

Prove Yule Heibel wrong that we have no vision for our city.

500 metres is commonly used in urban planning because it’s the distance the average person walks in 5 minutes (I’ve previously used 400). For groceries, it’s the distance that old people can transport a few days worth of food on foot and young people are willing to “run out” to. Beyond 500 metres people start taking a car.

Alison recently asked me to comment on the viability of a permanent food market in Victoria. I say that’s putting the cart before the horse: many people in Victoria can’t even get to a regular grocery store! Council should figure out how to solve that key environmental, social and security issue before they start worrying about fancy markets.

Here are the 500-metre radii around full-service grocery stores in the municipality of Victoria:

There are food stores that are less than full service. They don’t have butchers, so carnivores who like fresh meat will have to shop somewhere else frequently. They have uneven produce quality and selection. I believe most people who live by these stores will regularly make a trip to a full-service grocery store. You can select the checkbox to display each store on the map:

[Redacted]

The Local Government Elections Task Force is developing a new model [for local government elections] and started soliticing feedback today.

[Redacted]

• weighted cost of living
• night life (I think they just counted bars per capita)
• transportation including walkability, public transit and commute times
• health and environmental quality
• earning potential
• education and public information

Surprising to me, Victoria came out #1! Infuriatingly, the point of the ranking was to advertise consulting services, so the full results and methodology are secret.

So I’m not sure I get exactly what it means, but this poster is definitely amusing:

Anyway, I’m going to go see if one of the 295 single women under 30 in Iqaluit strikes my fancy…

The paper makes a compelling argument that a dramatic rise in the affordability of mortgages led to a increase in demand for housing that markets were unable to meet due to artificially constrained supply. This market failure caused a housing price bubble, which led to the mortgage meltdown, which triggered the financial crisis. The housing supply was constrained by two things:

• urban containment boundaries
• neighborhoods that, through planning or reactionary NIMBYism, prevent densification

Municipal voters and neighborhood association members are disproportionately homeowners (eg: your mom). Homeowners have a huge incentive to increase the price of their home. Therefore, they will seek policies that constrain supply both out and up.

Being a “neo-con” think-tank, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy says getting rid of urban containment boundaries is the only path to affordable housing. I’m going to talk about how we can increase densification in future posts.

* I think this is a good measure. Imagine homeowners being matched one-to-one to houses: the nth richest homeowner will probably buy close to the nth most expensive house.