Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer plans to introduce a motion to create what she calls an Engaged City Mayor’s Task Force, which would identify ways to increase neighbourhood engagement and improve the ways in which the city interacts and connects with its residents.
“Vancouver is a city that leads the world in many ways, and we can do more when it comes to building a more engaged city,” Reimer said.
Indeed, critics have lambasted what they consider a “broken” model for how the city solicits community input.
They point to vigorous protests over major Vancouver development proposals such as Paragon Gaming Corp.’s failed attempt to build a mega-casino attached to BC Place and Rize Alliance’s successful bid to build a 19-storey tower at the corner of East Broadway and Kingsway Avenue.
Architects, designers and real-estate consultants believe more consultation is needed earlier in the process to provide clarity and reduce the chance that the public will be surprised with projects that some call “spaceships” that land without warning.
“It’s not developers that are the enemy. The enemy is the flawed process that the city uses for rezoning large development sites,” architectural designer Annabel Vaughan told city council earlier this year.
If Reimer’s vision of a mayor’s task force comes to fruition, it would aim to:
- increase neighbour-to-neighbour engagement and cultural interconnectedness;
- increase literacy on, and engagement with, municipal government processes and budgeting; and
- identify ways to enhance how the city engages with citizens and vice versa.
Members of the task force would broadly have experience engaging citizens and building community. They would be chosen from an open call for applications, with the goal to have the task force up and running by December and to complete its work by next June.
The creation of a task force to improve citizen engagement was a Vision Vancouver campaign commitment in the 2011 civic election.
@GlenKorstrom
