Tag: Spiral Dynamics integral

Recalibrating the purpose of planning

Figure 1 - Evolving City Purposes

The activity of planning cities is a kind of work that has emerged with cities.  It is a mode of organizing that began in Canada with land surveyors and engineers. The work of planners and planning in Canada is recent; Canada’s Commission of Conservation hired Britain’s Thomas Adams in 1914 as its Town Planning Advisor. His work supported the creation of town planning legislation across Canada, and a whole new area of work distinct from that of surveying and engineering.  For Adams, the additional focus of planning was to improve civic conditions[1].  This was the beginning of a structure (legislation) and a profession dedicated to contributing order to settlements across Canada, work that emerged with the fourth purpose of the city (Figure 1), and the fourth level of organizing (Figure 2).  (For more on the evolution of city purposes and modes of organizing, please see Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4).

Figure 2 - Evolving Modes of Organizing

The activity of planning our communities – even just thinking about planning – has played a critical role in the shape our communities today.  Gerald Hodge and David L. A. Gordon, authors of Canada’s primary text for students of planning Canadian communities, note:

…the regard for planning and making plans is strong.  Even in… contentious situations, the essential debate is not about the need for planning, but for better planning – not whether but how it should be done.”[2] 

Citizens, developers and builders, civil society and our various public institutions and politicians are always ready to tell planners about needed improvements. And they are right – there are many improvements to be made.  What we ought to be wary of is the assumption that it is up to planners to make the changes.

Today’s challenge – recalibrating the purpose of planning, plans and planners

This is the challenge that faces planners, citizens and decision-makers today: our communities function with an extended focus, broadened purpose and less concentrated decision-making processes. The formal act of ‘planning’ as we recognize it today, with zoning by-laws and area structure plans, is in response to life conditions of a certain time, geography, challenges, and social circumstances.  It is as set of activities that fits the era in which Thomas Adams worked. In today’s world the work of organizing a city belongs to many.  The planning profession is simply one of many kinds of work.  The work of organizing ourselves to thrive belongs to all of us.  In 1922, Thomas Adams stated: “Cities do not grow – all of them are planned.”[3]  It is as though we build them as we build a building, with a complete set of plans.  That just doesn’t happen with cities.  They do grow.

None of this means that plans and planning are not relevant.  Plans do have a purpose. Having a plan means that we know where we are going and what it will take to get there.  A plan documents our shared purpose, intention and intended actions to reach our goals.  In every aspect of life, this is a critical function.  Specific to city planning, Hodge and Gordon describe it this way: a plan is “for the purpose of achieving a goal desired by its citizens… community planning is about attaining a preferred future built and natural environment.”[4]  They cite two reasons why a community makes plans: to solve some problems associated with its development; and/or to achieve some preferred form of development.[5]  This is work that makes a meaningful contribution to cities.

In conventional planning circles, the professional planners are charged with this work.  Citizens, civil society, civic builders and developers along with politicians provide feedback to planners through formal public engagement activities.  Yet we are growing into an understanding that city hall is not the only player who organizes a city, but that there are many others involved.  Numerous organizations, activities and events shape the city without city hall’s direction.  Environmental groups have had an influence on our tolerance for weeds.  Arts foundations find the funds to build new museums and art galleries.  Business leaders join forces to advance technology research and innovation.  The university hospital chooses to emphasize health research and expands its facilities.  School boards decide to allow families to choose their schools.  Citizens choose where to live in relation to employment/schools/services.  All and each of these players shape our complex cities.

Citizens, civil society, civic builders and developers are increasingly demanding a role in the process of planning our communities.  Even departments inside city hall are hungry for ways to integrate their work with planners.  As a result, the role of the plan has evolved into something new.  City plans are no longer simply the blueprint early land surveyors and engineers prepared for orderly development.  A new kind of work is being called for that supports an expanded view of what it takes to make cities that are healthy habitats for citizens.

The value of plans is in their intention and common direction.  They are now more about shape and spirit, rather than control.  There are times when control is important, but the scope of planning is widening and more and more aspects of planning are about much more than control.  As an activity, planning has to hold a destination in mind, allow for learning and adjustment along the way, and recognize that we do not know exactly what we are going to end up with and we can’t control that.  Part Two and Part Three of this writing endeavour will flesh out how to organize ourselves with kind of understanding.  For the moment I offer this:

Figure 3 - City "Nestworking"

The next post will conclude Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse with a question: Is planning even the right word any more?   Chapter  3 – The Thriving Impulse, will be a theory side trip into what it means to thrive before thoroughly exploring the City Nestworking model above for the remainder of the book in Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence and Part 3 – Nest City.  


[2]   Gerald Hodge and David L.A. Gordon, Planning Canadian Communities, p. 3

[3]   As quoted by Hodge and Gordon

[4]   Gerald Hodge and David L.A. Gordon, Planning Canadian Communities, p. 5

[5]   Gerald Hodge and David L.A. Gordon, Planning Canadian Communities, p. 5

 

Other Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.


Integrating voices and values

A city is made up of multiple perspectives, purposes and modes of organizing.  In Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 3 and Part 4, I showed the purposes for cities that emerge and the ways we organize in accordance with each purpose.  In City – a dance of voices and values, I made the connection between purpose/organizing and Hamilton’ four voices of city life: citizens, city managers, city builders and civil society (Figure 1).

Three cities, or three different points in time in the same city, could have completely different ‘maps’ of where their values lay.  Imagine dropping the spiral of city purposes on the four quadrants of city voices (Figure 2).  Instead of spirals, imagine concentric circles, radiating out from the center, illustrating the emergence of city purposes and modes of organizing.  The values in play can be seen and mapped for all four voices of the city.

Here are three examples (Figure 3):

On the left, most city builders value competition and prosperity while a good portion of citizens and city managers have a focus on authority and rules.   A portion of civil society puts emphasis on equality.  In the center illustration, the City Managers are in “turf mode”, with little power in authority.  In contrast, citizens, civil society and city builders appear to be in a position to take advantage of a lack of authority.  In the city on the right we see citizens valuing authority and moral codes while civil society and city managers are seeking much less formal structure with value systems that flatten hierarchy.  The city builders appear to be in turf-oriented competition.  Each map presents a different picture of what is valued in that city, from the perspective of those voices.

 

Varied purposes of cities, along with their associated levels of organizing that correspond with those purposes, coexist. This means that many modes of organizing are occuring simultaneously.  As we organize ourselves in cities, there are people attending to our various collective needs: individual organizations might be in survival mode due to budget cuts; new immigrants assemble to cultivate a sense of belonging and identity in a new place; the fire department responds to emergencies in ‘do’ mode; municipal governments establish order with by-laws regulating on-street parking; the Chamber of Commerce seeks strategic economic advantage; social justice groups demand participative decision-making processes.  As a whole, these are activities we undertake to organize ourselves and create habitats in which we will thrive.  One of the ways we organize is to plan, where we document where we intend to go and how we think we’ll get there.

When our basic survival needs are met, we organize ourselves with the aim to thrive.  As our cities began to grow, there was a point where we saw a need for order.  Eventually, we saw a need to create a new profession: city planning.  We saw a need to articulate, and document, a desired goal to improve our cities (no one plans for things to be worse) and the details of how to get there.  We aim in the direction of making things better, and we identify the steps we need to take to make things better.  This is planning in its simplest form.  It is work we are all engaged in, as profession planners and as citizens.

Planning our cities is work that belongs to all of us at once.  The Integral City model reminds us that we all have a role to play in city life.  The city builders organize themselves to physically construct our city and they make plans to do so.  Civil society organizes the social and cultural life in our cities; they look after various non-physical qualities of our cities.  Citizens, in our day-to-day life bring life to the city with every choice we make, particularly when we follow our passions in our work – whether paid or unpaid.  City managers have a role to play to create the minimal critical structure on which cities sit: our municipal government, health services, education, etc.  Each of the city’s voices shape the city, all at once, creating a world of messiness and uncertainty because no one entity has control of a city.  This understanding is critical for citizens and professional planners alike.

Planners used to be (and some still are, as appropriate) the people that write the plans for political approval.  As policy writers, they take direction from city council or propose policy to city council.  They ask the public and stakeholders what they think and make recommendations to Council.  The policy may be a transportation plan, a facility plan for a school division, a plan for future subdivisions.  We, as the public, assign great responsibility to this profession.  We also miss-assign this responsibility because professional planners shape and influence our cities, but it is a co-creative process.  Professional planners are expected to have the answers – and the recipe – but that is not how planning happens.  Planners do not have a recipe, let alone all the ingredients.

In my next post I will explore this question:  What is the purpose of plans and planning in today’s context?

 

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

Wilber, Ken, A Brief History of Everything, Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston (1996, 2000)

City – a dance of voice and values

 

Figure 1 - Integral Theory 4 Quadrants (illustrated by Brandy Agerbeck)

Drawing on the work of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, Marilyn Hamilton gives us a very simple way of seeing a whole city.

Integral theory conjures four quadrants for life experience.  The two axis in Brandy Agerbeck’s illustration (Figure 1) reflect our individual / collective experiences, and our interior/exterior experiences.  The upper left quadrant is about how I show up inside myself – my inner well-being.  The upper right quadrant is about how I show up on the outside – my behavior.   The lower right is about how we show up collectively on the outside – our structures.  The lower left is about how we collectively who up on the inside – our culture.  Simply, what is going on inside – our inner weather – and what is going on outside – the structures (physical and otherwise) we create.

The understanding that integral theory offers can be used at any scale – an individual, family, neighbourhood, city, nation, species.  Hamilton applies this framework to the city, revealing four voices:

  1. City Managers – elected officials, decision-makers, institutions
  2. City Builders [1] – those that physically build our cities – developers, builders, utilities, transportation, inspectors, municipal organizations, health authorities
  3. Citizens – the people who live in our communities
  4. Civic organizations – service organizations, not-for-profits, community organizations (chamber of commerce, sierra club, united way…)
Figure 2 - Integral City Voices

At quick glance, it is easy to see how each of these voices have a hand in shaping the place we live – both the physical structure of it, as well as the social structure.  What we don’t contemplate is how each of these roles has a legitimate role to play in our creation (and re-creation) of our communities and cities.  For example, the city managers run our institutions – the very organizations that are charged with working for the public interest.  Yet the city builders are the people and organizations that actually build the city we live in.  They take the risk, they do the work, they reap the rewards and losses.  Typically, these two facets of city creation are in conflict with each other.

Figure 3 - City Purposes

In the end, these four quadrants can be quite separate from each other.  They can be very firm in their ‘silos’, with very little interaction (ie only when necessary), let alone integration.  And this can take place within each quadrant as well.  It is easy to imagine citizens in conflict with city hall, or civic organizations in conflict with city hall.  Or an environmental group and a developer in conflict.  Conflict and opportunity is everywhere.  How does this connect to the purpose of the city and our levels of organizing that emerged when asking the question, Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.  (See Part 3 and Part 4 for specifics on the Spiral diagram).

Figure 4 - City Voices May See Various City Purposes

The purpose of the city (Figure 3) and the levels of organizing evolve within and between each of the four integral city voices (Figure 4).  The purpose and levels of organizing do not necessarily advance equally, but the order of advancement is the same.  City voices could, in fact, be in several places at once; it is not a uniform experience.  The city managers could be looking for a high level of order while the city builders could be looking for a lesser degree of order.  Civil society could be looking for a higher degree of order than citizens.  As a whole, the city is a dance among voices and values.

The Integral City voices give us a way to look at the voices in the city – the perspectives.  Each voice, as an individual and as a collective, will see the purpose of the city differently depending upon the life conditions experienced.  How we see the purpose of the city, whether explicitly or implicitly, shapes how we organize ourselves as well. The city is a dance of voice and values, where we organize ourselves to thrive.

In my next post, I will explore how varied these voices and values can be.


[1]   I have used the word ‘builder’ here instead of developer to ensure a distinction from the qualitative aspects of the word ‘development’ in Chapter 1 – The City Impulse.

 

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

Wilber, Ken, A Brief History of Everything, Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston (1996, 2000)

Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 3

St. John's Today - The Battery

As for any city, the shape of St. John’s is derived from its geography, its purpose, the activities within and in connection to other cities (see part 1 and part 2).  There was no master plan for St. John’s to become what it became.  The shape and character of St. John’s did not take place because of a single dream, or a single person, or even a single authority.  In times of colonial expansion, the geography of St. John’s provided ice-free shelter at the Eastern edge of North America.  The settlement was established where it made sense to be.

In the end, colonial authorities and the people living in St. John’s gave it its shape.   Military personnel, governors, port authority officials, businessmen, church leaders, servants and the patterns of how families met their needs all shaped the city.  They organized themselves to make sure they had what they needed to survive and thrive as individuals, as a settlement and as an Empire.   Collectively, they knew what it would take to run the fishery from the port of St. John’s and they did it.

St. John’s continues to adjust and organize as conditions change; it keeps what it values and moves on and away from what it does not:

  1. The Rooms, St. John’s seat of cultural identity that provides public access to history, heritage and art, overlooks the harbor from the site of its seat of military identity: Fort Townshend.

    The Rooms, overlooking St. John's Harbour (http://cruisetheedge.com/galleryimages/9%20The%20Rooms.jpg)
  2. The fish flakes no longer surround the harbor, but the unplanned city survives as a cultural hub and tourism asset.  It is woven into today’s St. John’s.  The public access to pathways on Signal Hill from Outer Battery Road passes over a home’s deck, less than a metre from the home’s front door.
  3. The St. John’s Port Authority continues to serve local, regional and international trade requirements.  It’smission is to provide reliable, economic and efficient port services in support of Canadian trade, fostering regional economic development and serving Newfoundland and Labrador’s distribution requirements.

Purpose and Life Conditions

Figure 1 - City Purposes

Life conditions vary from city to city, each adjusting and organizing itself – and adjusting its purpose as appropriate.  The St. John’s example highlights five distinct purposes (1-5 in Figure 1): individual survival, collective survival, power, authority and prosperity.  (More on this spiral in Chapter 3 – The Thriving Impulse.)  Each of these has its own trajectory that shapes St. John’s over time.  In practice, each of these purposes involves integration of the local needs of individuals and the city, with relationships with other cities – a necessary condition for the city’s survival that is clearly still a focus for St. John’s.

The St. John’s example illuminates principles about how cities fundamentally take their shape:

  1. The purpose of a city guides its form and shape
  2. The purpose of a city, as it adjusts and shifts, becomes diffused
  3. As the purpose of a city becomes diffused, its purpose expands to serve the diffused needs
  4. As the purpose becomes more diffused, decision-making is made by a wider group of individuals to accommodate this expansion
  5. All of the above occurs within the context of the city’s life conditions

St. John’s was not planned to be what it is today, but it is certainly  not unintentional.  Is that enough to say that it is unplanned?  It did what it needed to do in each stage of its development.  Does ‘planning’ mean that it should have done more than respond to the life conditions at each stage of development?  Or are there degrees of planning that correspond to evolving city purposes.

The overriding purpose of a city is to integrate the needs of its people, with its context, to create a habitat in which people will survive and thrive.  This is the fundamental context in which we all work.  And a profession (new work) emerged among us to help us collectively accomplish this: city planning.

‘Planning’ a city is simply an activity that supports our collective work to organize ourselves to ensure our habitat serves us well.  The activity of planning emerged when our life conditions required additional order; Our planning activities will adjust as we need different kinds of order.  

“Is an unplanned city unplanned?” will conclude with a description of the evolution of the role of planning and planning practitioners as our cities evolve.  


Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 2

… the continuing story of St. John’s, Newfoundland.  A wonderful example of how our life conditions, our habitat, connects to the purpose of settlement and cities.  (Here is Part 1.)

Five hundred years ago, St. John’s was a sheltered, ice-free harbor, a place for ships to rendezvous at the eastern point of North America.  As power and might were driving European colonial expansion, securing the lucrative Newfoundland fishery became a military imperative.  When Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived in St. John’s harbour in 1583 with 5 ships and 260 men, he announced to the men of thirty six Spanish, Portuguese, French and English fishing boats that they were under English sovereignty.[1]  The port of St. John’s was fought over: the Basques took it from the French; Dutch from the English; and several wars between the English and French wars culminated in English possession of St. John’s in 1762.

Zoom in of Sir Frances Owen's 1798 Map

The early recorded shape of St. John’s is as military life on the edge of North America.  A map of St. John’s in 1784 shows two forts (Townshend and William), the town, consisting of a series of buildings along the harbor.  Sir Francis Owen’s survey map of 1798 shows more fortification: numerous batteries, a block on Signal Hill, Fort Amherst and Fort Waldegrave.  He also notes the hospital, court house and custom house.  The settlement is still small – still a series of buildings along the harbour.  The church illustrated, but not named.  Other familiar names of the places in St. John’s are named:  Kitty Vitty [sic], Georges Pond, Cuckold’s Cove.

For the Empire, the purpose of this settlement of 3244 people is military presence to claim its stake in the fishery and it is organized to do so.  For people living in the settlement, the purpose of the settlement is more immediate: creating the conditions for survival.  The settlement specifically is a means for survival and livelihood (of the Empire and individuals) by making a living, harvesting fish from the ocean and trading it with Europe.  Fishing is a dangerous way to make a living: isolation, cold winters, scarce food, no health care, minimal contact with “the world”.  From birth until death, endless hard work on land and water provided the basics needed to survive this harsh environment.  The settlement is organized to meet these needs: a hospital, homes, wharfs, public houses and even a church, to support the settlement’s ability to make meaning of life and hardship.  The settlement is organized to survive and thrive.

By the end of the 1800s, Newfoundland secures its position as the worlds largest exporter of salt cod.[2]  In St. John’s, this means more houses at the edge of the harbor and the fish flakes on hand to preserve the catch.  As trade with others grows, more docks and wharfs appear and more houses and boats.  And the trades to support this work: pharmacies, offices, stores, warehouses, trades and suppliers.  A plan of St. Johns in 1856 shows a much larger physical settlement to accommodate a population of 30,000[3], almost 10 times that of 1798. The unplanned, disorderly city we recognize in today’s St. John’s, between the water and New Gower Street, has appeared.  However, the map itself reveals extensive order and thoughtfulness.  What the settlement needs is on hand:

  • Fortifications to protect the settlement and interests of British Empire
  • Wharfs and docks to accommodate the fishery
  • Land and buildings to accommodate
    • authority and governance  (government house and grounds, custom house, court house, public wharf)
    • various spiritual needs
    • needed services (confectionary, hotels, auction mart, fishing rooms)
    • future needs (‘site taken by telegraph company’)
    • land transportation networks
  • Clean water supply by aqueduct from Georges Pond
  • Information about who occupies premises, such as Theodore Cliff’s Auction Mart, William Woodley (Fishing Room), Brooking, Son & Co., or J.G Kidder (Boston, U.S.)

The people of St. John’s, and the authorities supporting St. John’s, provided sufficient order to meet the needs of the emerging city; the activities of fishing, preserving, storing and shipping the catch needed a town with it to support the industry. As years passed, citizens and governments alike noticed when conditions changed and something new was needed, and likewise, things no longer needed were discarded.  And so the city evolves, constantly adjusting to changing life conditions.

In the 150 years since the ‘unplanned city’ that we now recognize surfaced, life conditions continue to shape St. John’s.  Geography continued to play a significant role: Marconi’s first transatlantic (wireless) telegraph is sent to Signal Hill in 1901 from Cornwall, England.  A Coronation Souvenir Map, 1937 shows a city still expanding.  In World War II the fortifications were again used to protect transatlantic shipping routes and America’s most Eastern point of land from the attack of German U-boats.  Torpedo nets were set up across the narrows to protect the harbor.  New gun batteries were placed at Fort Amherst, and the American military base, Fort Pepperell, was built. The territorial impulse expanded from the British Empire to the Allied Forces.

Our times change the activities of the city: the decline in demand for salt cod and the increase in demand for frozen fish in the mid 1900’s industrialized fishing patterns; the decline of fish stocks resulted in the 1992 fishing moratorium and economic hardship.  The late 1990s brought offshore oil production – 100 million barrels of oil in 2010 for Newfoundland and Labrador – and St. John’s role as the primary offshore energy supply and service center for East Coast Canada.  Today, cruise ships regularly visit St. John’s as part of their ‘Operation Titanic’, ‘Voyage of the Vikings’ and ‘Top of the World’ expeditions.

St. John’s sits right where the land meets the water, connecting the past with the present and the future.   The sheltered, ice-free port is strategically located 500 years ago and today.  In reality, this port city never existed in isolation; it has always been about connections, a meeting place.  It served as a rendezvous site and safe harbour for European nations 500 years ago.  It supported the connection between Europe and the North America through the fisher.  It connects communities by providing supplies and services with other Newfoundland and Labrador communities, with Canada and the United States, and ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean from points all around the world.  And to be all of that, St. John’s became a city.

The shape of St. John’s is derived from its geography, its purpose, the activities within and in connection to other cities.  It may not have been planned to be what it is today, but it is certainly  not unintentional.  Is that enough to say that it is unplanned?  It did what it needed to do in each stage of its development.  Does ‘planning’ mean that it should have done more than respond to the life conditions at each stage of development?

In my next post, I will bring the pattern to light: that there are evolving purposes to cities.  

Cited Sources –

[1] Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada’s History Illustrated with Original Maps, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., Vancouver (2002) p. 35

[2] Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage: Fisheries.  Available at http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/fishery.html

[3] In 1857, 30,476 people resided in St. John’s. Statistics Canada. Nfld Table I – Dwellings, Families, Population, Sexes, Conjugal Condition, etc., 1857 – Newfoundland(table), 1857 – Census of Newfoundland (Population/Sexes/Conjugal Condition) (database), Using E-STAT (distributor).
http://estat.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&EST-Fi=EStat\English\SC_RR-eng.htm

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.


Is the unplanned city unplanned? Part 4

What is the role of planning and planners if the overriding purpose of a city is to integrate the needs of its people, with its context, to create a habitat in which people survive and thrive?  Simply, ‘planning’ a city is an activity that supports our collective work to organize ourselves into, and in, cities with the objective of ensuring that our habitat serves us well.

Modes of organizing

Figure 1 - City Purpose Spiral

In Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 3 , I introduced a spiral of evolving city purposes (Figure 1).  With each level of purpose of the city, there is a corresponding mode of organizing.

500 years ago, when St. John’s harbor was settled (see Part 1 and Part 2), choices were made to ensure people’s individual survival and that of the settlement. They took advantage of a geographic location in proximity to Europe and a calm harbour that didn’t freeze, two geographic factors that contribute to the harbour’s role in transatlantic shipping today.  Specific to the settlement itself, they ensured a supply of fresh water and materials to build shelter.  Decisions were made in response to context to ensure survival, and once immediate survival needs were met, they began organizing themselves.

Figure 2- City Organizing Spiral

Four levels of organizing (Figure 2) are evident in early St. Johns: reacting (survival), gathering (collective survival), doing (power and might), and planning (authority and moral codes).  In the early days of St. John’s people did what needed to be done.  Activities were coordinated – the port authority, the court house, government house, custom house.  Resources were coordinated – water supply, roads.  Likely in ‘do’ mode, decisions were made by the governor about where to locate the church, the various government buildings.  In ‘do’ mode, forts were constructed.  In ‘do’ mode, the homes and fishery in support of the fort were constructed.  As authority was needed, it arrived.

Once our survival needs are met, we are able to expand our view and consider others.  We gather with others to make meaning of what has happened and what will happen.  We work together to survive and begin the journey to thrive – in the pub or church.  When things need to be done, we meet to sort out what to do.  Some individuals will just do what needs to be done and set up fish flakes wherever it works.  Build a dock where it works.  This can feel unruly, and when sufficiently so, someone will try to give structure to things – in the case of St. John’s we the Port Authority, government house, custom house, the court house.

In St. John’s, the ‘doing’ also takes place at the scale of nations: the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese all want to claim the fishery and access to the fishery.  In ‘doing’ mode, they build kingdoms and lay claim to territory.  As time goes on, hints of plans take root in St. John’s.  And plans come with authority to make sure that the plan is implemented.  St. John’s’ early maps reveal how this took place: pipes for water supply, the custom house (and its rules), road construction, property ownership, and who occupies premises.  In response to our life conditions we organize as appropriate (Figure 2).

A sixth purpose for cities

The fifth purpose for cities is to generate prosperity for its citizens, in thriving economies, a mitigation of the rules that emerged from authorities, and a renewed sense of entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.  In St. John’s this id evident in the corporate structure for the St. John’s Port Authority: users of the port, City of St. John’s, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Canada.  This is partnership, not a central authority simply consulting with stakeholders.  And while not a ‘city’ organization, it certainly shapes St. John’s.

A sixth purpose is emerging for today’s cities (Figure 1): to create the conditions for people to fully access our diversity of knowledge.  We are growing into an understanding that city hall is not the only player who organizes a city but that there are many others involved: chambers of comer, community foundations, advocacy groups, developers and builders, citizens, health authorities, school systems, provincial and federal government, citizens, etc.  All and each of these players shape our increasingly complex cities.  They are increasingly demanding a role in the process of creating our cities.

The planning profession – new work

The formal act of planning our cities emerged as new work when we required additional order in response to life conditions of a certain time, geography, challenges and social circumstances.  Planning in Canada is a fairly recent phenomenon: The Town Planning Institute of Canada was established in 1919, later turning into the Canadian Institute of Planners in 1974.  Further evolution of the profession has involved the regulation of the profession by provincial governments in recent decades:  Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Today, we see the formal act of planning land uses in municipal legislation: zoning by-laws, area structure plans, municipal development plans and official community plans.  In their work, planners help us organize our social and community services, build economic capacity, address transportation and infrastructure needs, manage cultural and heritage resources, ensure environmental protection.  The Canadian Institute of Planners defines planning as:

the scientific, aesthetic, and orderly disposition of land, resources, facilities and services with a view to securing the physical, economic and social efficiency, health and well-being of urban and rural communities.  

While this definition is complicated, it is clear that the planning profession is in place to help the city be the best it can be for its residents.

Two roles for planning today

The challenge for citizens and planners today is to recognize two different kinds of planning support to cities:

  1. Provide the answers – traditional, linear, planning expertise.
  2. Create a habitat for exploration – support the city’s awareness so it can respond purposefully, appropriately.

The difference between the two is simple: planners have expert knowledge vs. citizens have expert knowledge.  There are times when the specific expertise of planners is needed.  This is “top-down” activity, which is the right thing under certain circumstances.  The second role, however, requires acknowledgement that a city is trying to organize itself and there is work to be done to help the city see itself (more on this, what Marilyn Hamilton calls integral vital signs monitoring, in later posts).  To get what we need from our cities, we each need to be in tune to what our cities need of us.  This means honing our telling and listening skills in our work in the world. We need to notice not what we want to do, but what is being asked of us.  This is where the next evolutionary step will emerge for the profession – a profession in service to cities and their inhabitants.

Planners are relevant when supporting the work of a whole city to organize itself.  Individually and collectively, planners support our work to improve our habitat.  Planners are well positioned to create the conditions for cities to see changing life conditions and for cities to figure out how to adjust.  Our work, then, is to create the conditions for ourselves, and our cities, to see and respond to life conditions.  Some of this work takes the form of planning as we know it, and some will take other forms.  The purpose of planning is to support city efforts to notice, adjust and organize to ensure people survive and thrive.

To answer the question, ‘Is the unplanned city unplanned?’, I note that all cities are organized to meet a purpose in a given context.  ‘Planning’ is only one mode of organizing.  The unplanned city is unplanned, but not created without purpose.  This is significant.  Planned cities don’t achieve their plans exactly anyway.  The real matter at hand is knowing the purpose(s) of cities.  Whether planned or unplanned, all cities are organized.

My next post will explore the voices that make a whole, integral city.

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

Is an unplanned city unplanned? Part 1

To tackle the question about whether we are planning or organizing our cities, it is necessary to first look at the purpose of cities.

The large, evolutionary purpose of cities is to create a habitat in which we can generate new ways of thinking, making and doing new things.  We build the very habitats we need in the form of cities.  Our cities are our nests.  Within this large purpose, there are stages of purpose of settlements and cities. At each stage, we are driven to more than merely survive: we wish to thrive and move on to a next stage. This takes place as we constantly look for new work (new ways of thinking, making and doing new things) in relationship with our habitat (physical and social).  At each stage, we build the nest we need.

It is time now to again build the nest that we need.  In order to do that, we need to discern the pattern that can be seen so far.

St. John’s

St. John's - the Battery

In North America, St. John’s, Newfoundland is a perfect place to marvel at how human settlement changes as the purpose of the settlement changes over time.  In his opening remarks at the 2011 Canadian Institute of Planners conference in St. John’s, Mayor Dennis O’Keefe invited conference participants to explore and pay particular attention to the ‘unplanned city’.  He made this invitation in jest, for you can’t miss the unplanned part of this city.  There is a crazy mix of buildings and roads, houses perched on rocky slopes hovering perilously over the water.  The steep hills that every engineer I have worked with – if asked for approval – would scream rejection.  Streets everywhere connecting and ending with no discernable pattern.  Streets impossibly skinny, too short, too curvy.  Today, much of this shape remains as St. John’s unplanned city.

This unplanned city is mesmerizing. The word unplanned immediately conjures in my mind some form of  ‘accidental’ or ‘inadvertent’ city, but St. John’s is not an unintentional settlement.  It was very purposeful, and that purpose guided the very shape of St. John’s. In fact, the purpose of St. John’s as a settlement has shifted over time, with each step in its evolution leaving its mark.

Fish Flakes in St. John's (http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/images/coll_03_07_006_600.jpg)

Mayor’ O’Keefe’s jest might have slipped by me were it not for two things that startled me while exploring the unplanned city.  First, the St. John’s Port Authority is over five hundred years old.  Second, seeing a map describing land ownership with the words, “from the high water mark to the back of the fish flakes.”  The life conditions of historic St. John’s are radically different from what I know on the Canadian prairies.  I am not used to imagining European settlers’ lives in North America over 500 years ago.  While the words, “from the high water mark” are familiar, the words, “to the back of the fish flakes” belong to a way of life in another era, wholly unfamiliar to my life on the Canadian prairies in Edmonton.

Life Conditions

I see the evolving purpose – and shape – of cities from the vantage point of their life conditions.  With the words ‘life conditions’, I am drawing on Clare Grave’s work on evolutionary value systems, and the notion that humans are driven by the dynamic interaction between our internal states and our external worlds.  Our life conditions, our external worlds, are our habitat:

  1. The historic times we live in (the era)
  2. The geographic place (the physical conditions)
  3. The challenges we face to exist (priorities, survival issues, threats to safety); and
  4. The social circumstances in which we find ourselves (status, lineage, political systems).

St. John’s reveals clear examples of how life conditions have an impact on the purpose of a city, and the shape a city ultimately takes.  And as life conditions change, the city’s shape evolves as needed.

In my next post, I will explore the evolution of St. John’s to discern how our life conditions – our habitat – connects to the purpose of settlement/cities.  
Is the unplanned city of St. John’s unplanned?

 

 

Sources –

Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher C., Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford (2006), particularly pages 52-56.

Hamilton, Marilyn, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, New Society Publishers Inc., Gabriola Island (2008)

Sanders, Beth, “From the High Water Mark to the Back of the Fish Flakes: The Evolutionary Purpose of Cities,” Vol 51, No. 4, p 26-31, Plan Canada.  Print publication of the Canadian Institute of Planners.

 

 

 

 

The power in consultation

What on earth is “true public consultation”?  This question begs to be asked after reading an article in the January 8, 2012 Calgary Herald.  Reporter Clara Ho’s first two paragraphs:

An environmental group is demanding a ‘true public consultation’ after learning of pro-posed plans to clear cut more than 700 acres of trees in the west Bragg Creek are in Kananaskis Country.
 
Sustain Kananaskis – comprised of Bragg Creek residents, trail users and outdoor enthusiasts – is calling for Spray Lake Sawmills and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development to hold a ‘transparent approval process that includes facilitated, accessible and meaningful public consultation in regards to logging activities in Kananaskis Country’.

A little more on the dynamics of the situation, as I read it:

  • The Government of Alberta (through Alberta Sustainable Resource Development) approved a 10 year logging plan that delegates forest management activities to Spray Lakes Sawmills.
  • Spray Lakes Sawmills has conducted ongoing public consultationover the last 10 years on various forest management activities.
  • Specific to west Bragg Creek, Spray Lakes Sawmills has consulted with stakeholders.  The next opportunity for the public to learn more and share concerns is at an open house January 26.
  • Sustain Kananaskis’ mission is to hold Spray Lake Sawmills and ASRD accountable to all Albertans affected by the proposed logging.
  • 90 percent of the trails will be affected in some way by the logging, including 30 km of new trails.
  • Sustain Kananaskis is advocating for a transparent approval process that includes public consultation, not just stakeholder consultation.
  • Sustain Kananaskis is demanding full public consultation so that dialogue can occur.

On the surface, the conflict appears to be about citizens (in the form of Sustain Kananaskis) demanding true, meaningful and full public consultation.  On their web site, Sustain Kananaskis defines ‘proper’ public consultation in three stages: let people know what’s going on (notification), seek their opinions (consultation), and involve them in the formulation of objectives, policies and approaches (participation).  By their own definition, they are getting consultation; they have been and are being asked for their opinion.  Whether they like the decisions made with their input is another story.

Sustain Kananaskis is actually looking for one of two things.  In the realm of consultation, Sustain Kananaskis is looking for evidence that their opinions and input affect the decisions of the decision-makers, in this case Spray Lakes Sawmills and ASRD.  In the realm of participation, Sustain Kananaskis is really seeking a role as a decision maker to shape the future of Kananaskis Country consistent with their vision.

The underlying issue in Clara Ho’s article is about who has the power to make decisions.  As is often the case, those without the power would like to have some.

The question I am left with:  Under what conditions can power be shared while maintaining our expectations for accountability?

An entrepreneurial city hall

I can’t wait to see the GO Centre this Saturday, Edmonton’s latest recreation facility.  It sounds remarkable – three huge gymnasiums that can be 12 full size basketball courts or 25 volleyball courts.  And a gym for the gymnasts.  It is both a facility for the U of A teams and a community centre. And unlike most recreational capital projects in cities, it came in on budget.  And the price tag was only $38 million.

The funds for the GO Centre are from federal, provincial and city governments. $4 million in private donations were also made by individuals, businesses and community partners.[1] The donations are not what are unique about this project – it is the entrepreneurial spirit within Edmonton that is worth noticing.  One of the two usual suspects –  the City of Edmonton or the University of Alberta – could have built the facility with $4 million dollars in sponsorship.  But what happened here reveals so much more of Edmonton’s creative entrepreneurial spirit.

The sports of volleyball, gymnastics and basketball came together as an unusual partnership: the Edmonton Grads Club, Ortona Gymnastics Club, Edmonton Volleyball Centre Society and the University of Alberta.  As a partnership, they declare that the GO Centre project “harnesses the talents and energy of all partners to address critical issues and to create a prime venue for growth and expansion of recreation and sports opportunities for all people in the Region.”[2] They organize

d themselves to meet the needs of their organizations, their sport communities, the University community and the wider community.

What I appreciate about this project is that the handful of Edmontonians needed to get the project underway stepped up to do it, and chose to look after their own organizations needs, but also that of the larger community[3].  Federal, provincial and city government supported their work.  The GO Centre builds on the City’s Recreation Master Plan and delivers on a trend toward multi-purpose facilities with versatile and flexible spaces.  They take it a step forward and build a facility for sports that are underrepresented.  They are thinking beyond traditional boundaries of partnership: the U of A is served, the community is served, the Edmonton Capital Region is served.

In all of this, I find myself curious about the role of City Hall in this entrepreneurial spirit.  At a minimum , the City is responsible for the basic infrastructure on which we build our city.  The roads to get places, the pipes to move water and wastewater, the waste we generate.  On this we build our city – and our recreation facilities.  In addition, the City brings rules and regulations for what we build and where, and ensure that the minimum standards for construction meet safety and construction standards through the permitting and building inspection processes.  The City provides emergency support in policing and fire protection.  All of this, in the strictest sense, is a service not performed by others in community.  For the provision of these services, the word ‘entrepreneurship’ in City Hall is not about competition, but finding the balance between creativity and efficiency in the delivery of these services.  Outside these service areas, however, entrepreneurship takes on a different meaning.

Case in point – recreation facilities.  The City builds and operates recreational facilities, but unlike the service areas noted above, other players also provide facilities and programs.  The city is a player among many.  That immediately conjures a picture of these players in competition with each other.  But the GO Centre illustrates that that is not what is happening.  Entrepreneurship in this case is big scale collaboration to work in new ways to build what really needs to be built.  Multi-sport facilities already exist for hockey, swimming, indoor soccer (Tri-Leisure Centre, Millenium Place, Terwilligar).  The GO Centre meets a whole new need and compliments the facilities that are already in place.

City Hall could have fought this, with hurt feelings that others are stepping on its feet as a recreation service provider.  The City could have insisted that its role is to build such facilities and missed the opportunity for the community to meet its own needs.

In the end, entrepreneurship at City Hall doesn’t quite mean that it gets more business like.  It means that it recalibrates its authority to make more room for partnerships.  An entrepreneurial City Hall will:

  1. Acknowledge that it is not all things to all people
  2. Recognize that the city knows what it needs
  3. Support partnerships that enable the needs of the community to be met
  4. Provide infrastructure to support the initiatives
  5. Establish (and enforcing) the rules that ensure what we build meets our collective standards.

An entrepreneurial city hall is one that makes room for the city’s creativity – the ultimate entrepreneurship.

 

 

For readers interested in Spiral Dynamics integral: The GO Centre partnership is an ORANGE initiative.  To do more of this kind of work, City Hall will have to recalibrate its BLUEness.  It doesn’t lose its BLUEness, but adjusts its focus to provide the structure needed for the city’s entrepreneurial ORANGE spirit to emerge more fully.  What would BLUE in service to ORANGE really look like?
The GO Centre’s ORANGE flavor is also interesting because it fully intends to deliver on PURPLE and RED threads by building community and providing a healthy place for competition and sport.

[1] Scott Hennig, “Partnership, not taxes, the way to GO,” Edmonton Journal, p, A21, September 29, 2011.

[2] http://www.gocentre.com/about-edmonton-go-centre/

[3] Current board members: http://www.gocentre.com/edmonton-go-centre-board-members/

Survival systems

This is the headline that wrapped up my hiking trip on the West Coast Trail a week ago today:  Rescuers from Comox had to Overcome Bad Weather.

Shifting to survival senses

With four fabulous days of hiking and hard work behind us, and only two days ahead of us, my brother broke his ankle.  In a moment our journey shifted from exploring a beautiful land and shore to a journey of a different sort: ensuring his well-being and survival.

I blew SOS on my whistle.  No answer.  We were alone.  I pulled out my cell phone to call the emergency phone number given to us at the trailhead but calls could not leave my phone.  The instructions said not to call 911, but I tried anyway.  It went through.  I introduced myself and the situation and requested evacuation off the West Coast Trail.  The response: “Is that in the United States?”

I was patched through five places before I found Purnell and Shannon, the West Coast Trail search and rescue personnel.  At last, someone knew where we were and that we needed help.  We were to sit tight until they determined what action to take and called us back.

But they couldn’t call back.

My phone could not make or receive calls.

This might look like it is the beginning of a bad story, but it isn’t.  I made contact with a sliver of the emergency response system on Canada’s west coast.  I am just now grasping the sheer size and significance of the organizations and institutions that got my brother to safety and set him up well and quickly to begin his healing journey.

19 Wing Badge

In the big picture, several institutions were in service.  All the operators who helped me get through to Purnell and Shannon.  They ascertained that it was not possible for my brother to get off the trail on his own or carried down by stretcher, night was falling and the weather deteriorating, they called the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria.  This engaged 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron and 19 Wing, Canada’s only air force base in British Columbia, out of Comox.

The face of all the help behind the scenes began with Search and Rescue Technicians (SAR Techs) Chris and Marc (with a ‘c’).  Since there was not enough fuel to get my brother straight to the hospital in Victoria, the airport got involved, as well as Tracy and her partner with BC Ambulance.  Then all the emergency room staff, who were waiting and fabulous.  And the x-ray gal.  And the orthopedic floor staff, the surgery staff and a physiotherapist.  And all of the systems behind the scenes that enable these people to do their work: the mechanics, accountants, managers, support staff, building maintenance personnel, lab technicians, including the providers of fuel and energy for all of this to work.  Everything just got looked after once I told the system help was needed from a tiny phone on kilometre 33 of the West Coast Trail.

The whole system did this in 24 hours: search, rescue, deliver, diagnose, operate and discharge.  Within 24 hours of his fall, even surgery was behind him.

This is remarkable.  This huge system of systems worked as I could only dream.

The whole system is wanting to help

A helpful institution is not an oxymoron.  This experience has revealed that what feels like a big maze of horrible bureaucracy is actually a huge system of systems wanting to help.  That is its purpose.  And it can do wonderful, helpful things for people. As I reflect on my brother’s experience, I notice that:

  1. The system helps me when I know what I want from it. With each call into 911, my message to the operators got more and more specific.  Eventually, I learned to say to the US operator, “Please put me through to British Columbia RCMP.”  Then to the RCMP operator:  “I am on the West Coast Trail of Vancouver Island awaiting evacuation.  This is the only way I can get in touch with the people helping us, please put me through to this phone number.”  They did it.  And eventually, they knew my calls were coming and helped even quicker.
  2. I need to learn about the system to help the system help me. I had to craft my message to be responsive to the kind of help that operator offered. I had to learn their language.  Mentioning the West Coast Trail to the US operator was meaningless. The path through the maze was much smoother when I had the right language for the right people.
  3. I need to learn and adapt with the system to help the system help me. I became a part of the system when I made the first call to 911, which required me to learn and adapt with it as we adjusted to the unusual situation where  my phone could not make or receive calls.
  4. The system helps me even when I don’t know what I want from it. In the end, the system just delivered what was needed.  It has expertise that I do not have and it was delivered via phone, on the trail, in the air and through to the hospital.    
  5. To receive help, I have to be willing to let the system help me. I remember a couple of times feeling mad and frustrated, but I know that if I got mad, the system would just have a harder time helping.
  6. There is a big system invisible to me that is there to serve the public. It might not always work this well, but the point is that it did.  Various parts of it slip into play when needed, and slip away when not needed.  This big system works.  It can do what we ask of it.
  7. My fellow citizens and I have created this system and its service. As a taxpayer I pay for it.  I am glad I do. 

Thank you to Shannon, Purnell, Chris, Marc with a ‘C’, and the folks on Nitinat Lake

I find that I am all caught up in the pride I feel in Canada’s search and rescue and health personnel – and in particular the people that came to get us.

Two people we didn’t meet, Purnell and Shannon, were on their way by zodiac to spend the night with us if the conditions made it impossible for the airlift to take place. They also coordinated getting all our gear that we had to abandon on the trail, back out to us in Victoria.  Thanks to the folks that live on Nitinat Lake for the transfer.  All that is missing is a sandal and a water bottle.  We didn’t expect this.  Thanks.

FC2009-001 11 January 2009 Mount-Washington, British-Colombia A CH-149 Cormorant helicopter flies over Mount-Washington in preparation to land. CF Photo by Sergeant Eileen Redding

I am quite moved by the experience of being rescued.  My whole body vibrates when I recall hearing the helicopter, but not seeing her for a long time as I waved flashlights into the sky as she hid behind the low cloud cover in the rainy, dark night.  At last, we could see the bright lights of our new friend the CH-149 Cormorant, and when we saw the first SAR Tech lowered from the helicopter, we knew help arrived.  We saw a second SAR Tech lowered to the ground, and a Stokes litter (rescue basket/stretcher), then the helicopter flew off.  We waited and waited, but no one came up the path.  We thought we must have been dreaming.  After a few hollers back and forth in the quiet, I learned they were in the bush – I had to head down the path to help them find their way to my brother.

GD2008-0454-12 30 May 08 Sydney, Nova Scotia Search and Rescue Technicians from 413 Transport and Rescue Squadron, participate in an exercise with a vessel from the Coast Guard College. CF Photo by Private Melissa Spence

And so we met Chris and Marc and they settled in to do their work and prepare my brother for transport up to the helicopter.  And their immediate confirmation that there was no other way for a guy with his foot pointing in the wrong direction to get off the trail.

My whole body vibrates again as I recall the SAR Tech preparing me for my trip through the air up to the helicopter, his help to stand in her downdraft that was snapping trees, and the wind-whipping trip itself.  I was a shock to be physically touching help (him) and feeling help (him) and being held by help (him).  Then trusting that below me my brother was also coming up safely, but alone, in the Stokes litter.  And then help, in the shape of this big bird, whisked us away to Victoria and the next phases of help.  The 19 Wing badge (shown above)  is most appropriate.

cx2003-0152-20c CFB Comox, BC 24 April 2003 Sergeant Mike Falardeau, a Flight Engineer at 442 Squadron Comox, prepares to lower the stokes litter to the deck of the HMCS Brandon during a hoist exercise outside the Esquimalt harbour in Victoria, British Columbia. Photo by corporal Miranda Langguth, 19 Wing Imaging.

Thank you Squadron 442 .  HAIETLIK, the Lightening Snake of Nootka Indian Legend in the center of your badge resonates with the history of the land you plucked us from.  And your motto, UN DIEU, UNE REINE, UN COEUR,  resonates with your purpose – that others may live.

Thank you to the land of the Nootka.  Thank you for the experience of enjoying your land and shore.  Thank you for the safe departure.  Thank you for returning our gear.  The whole experience is a gift.

We will be back to pick up where we left off.  For those that know the trail, we were traveling from south to north.  The hard part is behind us.

Post script

Here is what the first sounds of rescue sound like (the CH-149 Cormorant).