photo credit: Latvian Foreign Ministry

Professor Eugene Bardach is, in my opinion, one of the most practical policy analysts out there. An emeritus professor at University of California Berkeley, Professor Bardach wrote a practical, widely cited, the Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving: A Practical Guide to Policy Analysis. I have used his text and many of his articles not only in my research but also in my teaching (POLI 350A Public Policy).

As I prepare to teach The Comparative Politics of Public Policy (e.g. examining cross-national variations in national public policies, or at the regional level, cross-regional changes), I thought it would be a great exercise for me, for my students and for my readers to conduct a full policy analysis (national or regional level, I don’t expect to do cross-national comparisons) using Bardach’s method.

I plan to write separate blog posts for each one of the steps of Bardach’s model to help my readers (and my students) understand how policy analysis is conducted, in real life. I have been thinking for a long time as to which policies I would like to analyze. I know that the Burrard bike trial could be one, where there’s at least *some* data. I could look at the ban on water bottles at the municipal level.

So, have your say on here. Suggest policy decisions that you would like me to examine using Bardach’s model. I’ll consider all options, primarily based on the amount of information we have available. I’ll decide by early next week (the first week of November, 2009). Drop a comment on this post with your suggestions. It can be a Vancouver, Lower Mainland or Canadian issue, or an international one.

In winning the Nobel Prize 2009 in Economic Sciences, Dr. Ostrom’s research is finally recognized for the significant contribution it has made to our understanding of collective action, resource governance and human behavior in regards to the environment. While her work is strongly based on economics, it’s not only based in economic theory. Dr. Ostrom is an interdisciplinary scholar by nature, and her work spans political science, sociology, economics, and psychology.

Congratulations to Dr. Ostrom on her much-deserved Nobel Prize, as well as to Dr. Williamson, who shares the prize for his work in the boundaries of the firm and economics of transaction costs. Both scholars are foundational to the theory of governance.

Traditional policy sciences had remained primarily focused on their own discipline. My training has been interdisciplinary almost from the start (from chemical engineering to business strategy to public policy to economic geography to environmental studies). My doctoral dissertation was an interdisciplinary study (though much of the subject matter was rooted in the emerging environmental economic geography field) with a policy analytical focus.

More recent policy analysis textbooks have begun to explore other disciplines (for example Michael Orsini and Miriam Smith’s Critical Policy Studies, 2007, UBC Press). You can read the front matter and Chapter 1 here. Last time I taught Public Policy at the undergraduate level I used Orsini and Smith’s book to spark my students’ interest in cross-disciplinary research. I wish the planning and policy analysis professions spoke to each other more often. Certainly, both fields would benefit from each other’s insights.

The Metro Vancouver area (formerly known as the Greater Vancouver Regional District – see map) pose interesting challenges for students of governance, urban planning and policy analysis. Metro Vancouver, as an organization, (from their “About/Frequently Asked Questions” page) is defined as follows:

Metro Vancouver is both a nonpartisan political body and corporate entity operating under provincial legislation as a ‘regional district’ and ‘greater boards’ on behalf of twenty-two member municipalities and one electoral area. The three primary roles are service delivery, planning, and political leadership.

Metro Vancouver’s core services, which are provided principally to municipalities, are the provision of drinking water, sewerage and drainage, and solid waste management. Regional parks and affordable housing are significant services provided directly to the public.

Metro Vancouver’s three main areas of planning and regulatory responsibility relate to: regional growth (land use through municipalities and transportation through TransLink); waste management (solid and liquid waste) and air quality management (a delegated Provincial function).

Finally, Metro Vancouver serves as the main political forum for discussion of significant community issues at the regional level. It acts as a facilitator, convenor, partner, advocate and a significant instrument for providing information and education to the community.

From a planning perspective, a regional governing body would appear as the best option to ensure essential public services delivery at the intermunicipal scale. A similar argument is made for watershed/river basin councils (given that watersheds transcend jurisdictional and political borders) However, as I have indicated before, effective cross-jurisdictional governance requires strong cooperative intergovernmental relations beyond purely high-level discussions. If municipalities are to provide services, their financial budgetary base should be strengthened. These insights would come from the policy sciences literature.

An analysis of the governing relationships between British Columbia and the Metro Vancouver area would be an interesting case for the literature on federalism and intergovernmental relations. It’s particularly relevant to remember that in the Canadian constitution, only provinces and the Federation have a standing (whereas municipalities don’t). Therefore, it is particularly challenging for municipalities to provide services that require increased funding, yet they don’t have the jurisdictional standing to claim it. Countries like Mexico have begun to increase funding devolution from the Federation to the municipality (not without their own problems, given that the states – equivalent to Canada’s provinces – have begun to see budgetary shortages).

Hat tips to Neil LaMontagne for sparking the conversation that led me to this reflection.

With burgeoning electronic arts, gaming and information technology industries, Vancouver industrial base appears to be poised to become fundamentally a creative/information society. Clusters of Information Technology (IT) firms have emerged in Gastown and Yaletown (an area that used to be primarily derelict industrial) and this area continues to flourish with new tech-based startups (Hutton 2008). Vancouver isn’t the first city where this has occurred. Several European (including Barcelona and Milan) and Latin American cities have experienced the growth of information-based industries (a process that I have called tertiarization – Pacheco-Vega 2008, Evans 2009).

When I conducted my doctoral dissertation research, I focused on the evolutionary transformation of two cities and the industrial clusters that were embedded in them. I have been puzzled by the re-emergence of a trend to change land use from industrial to residential, sparked in part by the decline of industrial activity in certain urban centres. This coupled industrial/urban restructuring presents a number interesting challenges: how can we provide enough land for residential purposes and what to do about the shifting industrial base in the city.

In a city that is contained and encased (surrounded by oceans on one side and by other municipalities at the south and east), Vancouver has no additional land base to grow horizontally and therefore, planners in this city have needed to consider vertical growth and increased urban density. At the same time, an increasing amount of industrial land has been shifted to residential use (for example, the case of the South East False Creek area).

Both themes (the evolutionary dynamics of urban/industrial land use and the need for increased density) are worthy of examination, and I plan to write about them on this blog in the near future, but for now, I want to just focus on the second one (increased density), since it’s the topic of the recently approved laneway housing proposal that is embedded within the EcoDensity initiative. For those not familiar with EcoDensity, you can read the full Executive Summary of the initiative.

A cursory and preliminary literature review (using Google Scholar and library databases) yielded very little to no academic analysis of the initiative itself (a surprising finding, I might add). I did find some articles and a Masters thesis that dealt in some tangential way with the initiative, but nothing really in-depth on the initiative itself (which gives me great hope for this being a good research project). I am puzzled about EcoDensity (and frankly, skeptical) for several reasons:

First, affordability is dependent not on the capacity of home buyers or renters to purchase or rent, but on the price that developers and renters charge. This price is not controlled by the government and therefore one of the two “auxiliary” wheels in the EcoDensity charter ends being a moot point. Last year you could easily read the advertisements for “spacious 480 sq ft” apartments priced in the $ 300,000 mark (in Vancouver).

Second, livability has embedded substantial psychological considerations. The psychology of buyers and/or renters can’t be influenced by policy decisions. I currently live in a small apartment that is near 500 sq ft. For me, compared to my parents’ house, this apartment is ridiculously small. For me, it’s livable. I don’t know if my parents would have chosen to live in such a small space. For many of my friends, the idea of a house (single family dwelling) with a backyard is what they would call a livable home.

Third, increased density doesn’t guarantee increased sustainability. There are strong arguments in favor of the idea that increased density leads to a lower ecological footprint, including the fact that having more dense regions would mean that residents would have access to more services (and they would be able to reach there by more sustainable, less-impacting means – including walking and/or cycling). But there is no guarantee that this will be the case. The element that policy makers seem to forget here is that behavioral change is not easy. I can assure you that there are people who live in really dense areas who still drive just a few blocks (I’ve witnessed this myself).

I am really curious to see the actual effect of laneway housing and secondary suites on housing affordability. While I am glad that the city recognizes that affordability is a complex issue, I would like to see a more fleshed-out scheme within the EcoDensity charter to influence affordability.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, these are just preliminary thoughts. I’ve always been intrigued by the urban planning processes of the city that I’ve called home for almost a decade, and the EcoDensity initiative (and the collateral discussions) could be a good case study. Now, if I only had a research grant to undertake such analysis!

I am, as always, interested in your thoughts on EcoDensity, the laneway housing proposal, the secondary suites proposal.

I’ve been studying transnational social movements for about a decade, and in my research I have found one of the most used strategies ENGOs tend to use is public protest. I’ve been fascinated by some organizations’ choice of disruptive techniques not because I think they are particularly effective but because I always wonder its effectiveness. In my research, I have found that many ENGOs that use lobbying, letter-writing, sitting on intergovernmental panels and providing advice as influencing strategies are much more effective than disruption.

There has been a substantial amount of discussion in the online realm on the effectiveness of Critical Mass (a bicycling flash-mob-type of gathering once a month where bikers take the streets in an effort to raise awareness about the need for sustainable modes of transportation – aimed to reduce car usage). While I can fully see the value of a movement like this to raise awareness, and I am a big cycling as a mode of sustainable transportation, lately the perception of its impact on Vancouver has been that it has become less effective in elevating the discourse to issues of sustainable transportation and has become more disruptive.

I fully support the core principle behind Critical Mass but I disagree fundamentally with its disruptive nature. Let me make three points.

First, the flash-mob nature of the movement diminishes the degree to which participants are accountable. Without clear leadership, nobody is accountable for the impact Critical Mass can have on people’s lives (for however short period of time). What will happen if somebody is in an ambulance heading towards St. Paul’s Hospital and Critical Mass disrupts traffic and the patient dies? Who should be held accountable and who would be responsible? Nobody, since Critical Mass has “no leader”

Second, the degree to which disruption occurs has diminished its effectiveness as an awareness-raising event. It has become unruly social disorder. Disruptive mobilizations have a place in social movements, but when Critical Mass’ mandate has been overshadowed by the general perception that it alienates people, making drivers furious and leading to confrontations, then it’s time to change the strategy.

Third, the non-cooperative approach of the movement creates confrontations. These face-offs between drivers and bikers preclude finding any solid, sustainable approaches to increase awareness. A sustainable transportation policy by nature requires stakeholders to negotiate points of agreement and common ground. But given that there is no apparent leadership and no accountability, there is no way to create common ground amongst actors.

I asked online – “when is the tipping point? when does disruption become unruly social order?”. I think Critical Mass creators and their proponents should re-think this and their strategies. A democratic society is a collaborative society, not a confrontational one.

I would appreciate your thoughts about Critical Mass in the comments section. Let’s begin the dialogue.