Planning the way we have always planned is a Dinosaur move. Refusing to see, or keeping others from seeing, that context is changing is hazardous to our health. (For more on cities, see this post – Uneasy journey of cities and dinosaurs.)
When I first started working in Brandon, Manitoba in 1995 I had to learn the ropes. I was fresh out of school so I didn’t know how development came about, how approvals took place, how the community’s planning documents worked, let alone how all the people involved in these processes fit. So I asked questions about things with the intention to understand how the system I was working in worked. For one colleague, Dave, the answer was always, “Because that is the way we have always done it.”
I see now that in saying this, he really didn’t understand why things happened they way they did. The connection to purpose of our rules and protocols was lost. Or, if he had the purpose in mind, it was a purpose that was no longer desirable. The result was that Dave was unable to see the value of a different way to do something, even if it meant responding better to the community’s needs. He was a dinosaur.
Now in saying that Dave was a dinosaur, I don’t mean this pejoratively. I simply mean he had a hard time noticing that when the context changed, the purpose for our rules changed as well. That meant that our rules needed to shift and adjust along with what those rules were supposed to accomplish.
And herein lies the planning trap – planning with what happened.
We so often research to see what has worked before, or we research what has worked in other places. We look for trends and then plan for that to continue, assuming that what has worked for years will continue to work, or what has worked elsewhere will work in our place.
At the heart of this trap is standardization.
There is a time and place for standardization, when the life conditions are appropriate for it. It’s companion is diversity, necessary to spark our imagination. Moreover, we learn little when applying anything blindly, with no regard to setting. We do learn if we explore, notice patterns, reflect on what is happing in our mileu, then find the way forward that meets the life conditions of our mileu, not those of another.
The way through the trap is patterns.
There is a distinction between standardization and patterns. Standardization is a predetermined course of action, where a pattern emerges from what we notice about how things happen. Standardization is a recipe. Pattern is about discernment. Standardization is about having more of what has happened. Patterns is about being sensitive to what has happened, but holding this lightly, ensuring that our ability to notice when the pattern changes.
So, is planning a dinosaur move? I propose that rampant standardization is a dinosaur move. Finding peace with the discomfort of not knowing is the opposite. It is an uneasy journey, and the more uneasy it is, the less likely it is a dinosaur move.
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This post forms part of Chapter 4 – An Uneasy Journey, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities.
Nest City is organized into three parts, each with a collection of chapters. Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City. Click here for an overview of Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence, chapters 4-7.
I am spending this week in Banff, Alberta for the Canadian Institute of Planners’ national conference. In my official capacity as president of the Alberta Professional Planners Institute, I welcome 800 planners from across Canada, and some special guests from the United States and Australia. We work in urban and rural settings, north and south. We work in agriculture and urban design. Some focus on policy, others on implementation. Collectively, we work in many areas, at every scale.
Collectively we also share an itch – an itch to find and implement better ways of organizing ourselves and our cities to work better. This itch is not unique to our planners. It is an integral aspect of humanity.
We aim, endlessly, to improve our lot. This is the essence of an impulse within us to grow and develop. Specific to our cities and communities, this is what 800 planners are gathering for this week. We are telling stories about our itches and how we scratched them. We will also, informally, while we visit with each other around the formal aspects of a conference, notice new itches.
At this point, the choice will be about what we do with the itch. Sometimes, the best thing to do is ignore the itch and let it go away. Other times, the best thing to do is scratch the itch, invite more itch, invite the discomfort that comes with learning something new.
I’m curious to see what we will itch this week, and the itches I/we will choose to scratch.
I keep asking myself if planning is the right word any more to describe this organizing activity that takes place in our cities. It is the right word if it can hold a lot more than a tidy, linear, mechanical, rational practice. There is a time for this kind of work, but planning can and should be much more to accommodate the messy, uncertain, complex world we live in.
Of all the organizing we do, planning can simply be act of declaring a destination and the steps it will take to get there. At the end of my last post, Recalibrating the purpose of planning, I left you with a diagram (Figure 1) noting that planning also involves the ability to learn and adapt along the way (journey) in order to accommodate a future that we have know way of knowing will actually be (emergence). Our planning work shapes the future but does not define our future.
Figure 1 - City "Nestworking"
A new era of organizing our cities is emerging that is much more conscious of collective intention and purpose to drive our work. I see a different kind of planning that doesn’t reject the work we already do, but adds to it and informs it. It is time to build upon the mechanical processes and plans we have created. There is a time and place for them, but like any tool, just because we like the took does not mean we ought to use it everywhere. When we pretend to have control we thwart our ability to thrive as both citizens and as whole communities. We sabotage the potency of our collective wisdom. It is time to learn how to live with the messy, uncertain world – an plan accordingly.
We are not comfortable in a messy world, so our tendency to seek control actually reduces our ability to reach our destination. We choose to ignore feedback that tells us something we would rather not hear. This new era of planning is complex yet very effective – if we get out of the way. Every day, every moment, we live with tension as we discern what we can control and what we can not. This work is as much about our inner selves as it is about the work we do in the world.
Cities are growing and we are growing with them. We are organizing ourselves in response to life conditions, which are as varied as the purposes of a city are varied. In fact, being in service to a city’s varied efforts to organize itself in response to life conditions is a role for the people that build the city, the people that manage the city, civil society and citizens. There is a role and responsibility for everyone to support a city’s efforts to notice, adjust and organize for the purposes of creating the conditions for citizens to survive and thrive.
I will next tackle Chapter Three – The Thriving Impulse, to explore what it means to thrive, a foundational piece before presenting how Nest City thinking works in Parts Two and Three.
I leave you today, at the end of Chapter 2 – The Planning Impulse, with the wise words of Ben Okri.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
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)
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.
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:
The purpose of a city guides its form and shape
The purpose of a city, as it adjusts and shifts, becomes diffused
As the purpose of a city becomes diffused, its purpose expands to serve the diffused needs
As the purpose becomes more diffused, decision-making is made by a wider group of individuals to accommodate this expansion
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This thought just struck me – what if the purpose of the cities/towns/villages is to bring people closer together? And the closer we get to each other, the more conflict there is. Is the purpose of the city then to generate conflict? What is the purpose of generating conflict?
Conflict generates dissonance, a distinct or subtle sense that things are not right. A city, just like a person, can sit quite a while with the feeling that things are not quite right before we decide to take action. Smoking in restaurants, idle-free parking, deciding to support active transportation are all collective decisions that have come about as a result of conflict in a community.
There is a pull in us to be closer together, but we also push each other away, to not live too close to each other. We resist being close, because we resist being in conflict. As a city planner and community volunteer I regularly hear people – on the public record and off – say they do not want people close to them, especially more people close to them. I wonder if we resist the pull to be closer to people because it brings conflict with it, and we tend to either avoid conflict wherever possible, or even stir it up, neither of which takes acknowledges of the wisdom within conflict. What are we missing as a result?
I am left with a series of questions:
What if I/we let conflict teach me/us?
What would happen to cities if I/we welcomed and invited conflict for the purposes of generating new understanding?
What if I/we viewed conflicts as opportunities?
What if I/we found ways to work through and beyond conflicts?
In the end, I notice that when I work through conflict, I arrive a new understanding. I change. Is that what I/we am/are afraid of when avoiding conflict?
Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea,wonderful leading spirits in Circle work, asked my mom, Margaret Sanders, to share our story of our work with the City of St. Albert. A wonderful tale of how Circle can bring community together around much more than what the conflict is about. As I think about it, it was a wonderful experience that deepened a design charrette experience for participants.
