Comment 26028

By w willy (registered) | Posted July 21, 2008 at 10:06:44

Very interesting, although I didn't catch the part about "staff organization" beyond the idea that a thorough review of city programmes is needed as part of the budgetary process. It would be nice to hear more from Mr. Robertson about concrete places to look... obviously, as a gentleman, he will not want to be too open about it, but a bit of detail would be helpful.

I do wonder if part of the issue with council vision is the fact that the big picture planning processes seem overly politicized. I participated in several of the GRIDS public meetings and hearings, and it was clear that a certain vision of development (and a specific project) had been pre-selected, regardless of what the public and organized interests had to say. In this context, the mayor and the city's senior bureaucrats have a legitimacy deficit in trying to push their project, because there is no broad public buy-in. In addition, since some councillors seem to have had their pet development projects favoured in the big plan, the other councillors come to feel that their pet projects should also get their day.

Of course, we could also blame the Spec. Its coverage of city planning is pretty well missing in action, so citizens cannot hold councillors to account. THe paper also does not call on the expert opinions of planners who might likewise shame petty councillors. If one compares the Ottawa Citizen's coverage of the 20/20 strategy with the Spectator's coverage of GRIDS, the discrepancy is clear. NIcole McIntyre does a good job, but the View's CATCH update regularly eats the Spec's lunch in asking difficult questions.

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