The following aren’t suggestions or even opinions, 
just a kind of worrying out loud.
The if/then hypothesis goes something like this; the argument is made that development and growth will solve many of what are generally held to be our problems as a community. Lack of water supply is seen as the single greatest obstacle to growth. Therefore, increased water supply will solve problems. The “problems” are variously defined as lack of housing options (including senior’s housing and affordable starter housing for young people); a shabby and declining business district; a shortage of recreational and social facilities; low parks to population figure, etc.
Growth often seems to be as much a psychological as an economic factor. Are we just addicted to growth or do we need it to thrive, indeed to survive? It is difficult to visualize an economy that is not growing. Who would invest in a company that didn’t have growth potential? Who would buy government bonds from a declining country? Yet we all know that on a finite planet, growth must have limits. Defining those limits is difficult. If you could ask a tiger or a polar bear about limits to growth you would be told we have already gone way beyond sustainability. At some point, continued growth – of the economy and the human population – becomes counterproductive to quality and, inevitably, the quantity of human life as well. However insignificant this little community on the edge of the world is, are we comfortable continuing to be part of the problem or should we consider the probably futile attempt at being part of a solution? My guess is, probably not. My guess is that we lack the initiative, perhaps even the imagination to conceive of an alternate civic model just like the wider world is failing to conceive of an alternate economic one.
It is difficult to envision an elected local government whose aim is to essentially do nothing. Oh sure, just maintaining static systems and applying new technologies to them requires some attention …but not much. There is a natural propensity towards change on the part of persons seeking elected office. The growth bias is built into our political culture as well as the economic model, which is its natural partner.
What are our local limits to growth? Who decides? I am thinking about this in terms of our water supply and how, in the past, that has made the question of growth moot. Now, we may have the opportunity to release the floodgates, so to speak, and the growth potential that goes with it. In fact, it is that tantalizing growth potential, in the guise of developers, that has greased the hinges of those floodgates. Even stasis can have unintended consequences but growth opens a whole new Pandora’s box of possible and unforeseen outcomes.
The fear expressed by property owners currently on the water system has been that the costs of finding and securing increased water supply would be borne by them, while the real benefits would accrue to developers and people who don’t live here yet. We have water, they don’t. We pay for more water, developers get to subdivide, sell many lots and give us more neighbors who we may not want. Developer-enabled water may allay some of these fears, but the fact of transformative growth remains. Would a community have the right to say, “We don’t want growth; things are better the way they are”? Would an elected council risk asking the question?
Many local residents define their community (somewhat negatively) by seeing it as being what the new North Nanaimo is not. OCPs notwithstanding, what has ensured the difference is the non-availability of water. With developer-enabled increased supply, the enabling tradeoff would be higher densities than the OCP had previously allowed. Otherwise their investment would make no sense. So then just what would be the difference between the new North Nanaimo and us?
Ushering in a local era of rapid and transformative developer-driven growth, in order to spruce up the business district and house our seniors within the municipal boundaries, sometimes seems like a radical solution. Is the cure perhaps worse than the illness? We wouldn’t be the first community to answer yes to that question once it is too late, nor probably the last.
I honestly used to see the no-growth advocates as irresponsible Luddites. Now, I’m not so sure. I once found the behaviour of a small group of fear mongers reprehensible when they campaigned successfully against our joining the Arrowsmith water system. Now, I’m not so sure. We are fishing with a double hook. One barb snags all the goodies; the other brings in the unknown.
If communities operate at an intuitive level that somehow reflects the real wishes, or responds to the real satisfaction of the populace, then Lantzville’s water-shortage induced stasis may have been no accident.
Great food for thought, Brian!
Insightful article. Particularly relevant is the mention of being annoyed with the ‘rabble-rousers’ who dare question growth and the illusion of progress. These people are quickly pushed to the margins as radical or too-political when deviating from our corporate government, media, and culture.
Hopefully in Lantzville we can begin to redefine citizenship with a de-emphasis on the pragmatic and utopian and instead, a focus on the moral and dialogical.