GEOG 346: DAY 5 Economic Transformation

Housekeeping Items  A reminder that that the outlines for the major assignments are due on February 5 th, preferably in hard copy form, but an electronic submission is OK  I forgot to have you sign in Tuesday so please sign in for both days if you were here  Any thoughts/ feedback on the film, “Biophilic Design”? It’s available at the VIU Library  I will be absent next Thursday (the 31 st ) for a medical appointment, and I need a volunteer to help our guest speakers get set up. They will be from the Save the Linley Valley Society

Housekeeping Items  Another relevant resource to what we have been discussing is the book and the film entitled Energy Autonomy about the efforts of German parliamentarian, Hermann Scheer, to support renewable energy efforts.  Today we’re going to focus on the economic transformation that cities have been undergoing and the implications for urban and regional management. Hermann Scheer

Economic Transformation  What are some of the major changes that we have seen in the Canadian economy over the last fifty years, and how have these manifested themselves regionally in Nanaimo?  The traditional way of breaking down an economy is to talk about four main sectors: primary (natural resource), secondary (manufacturing), tertiary (service), and quaternary (knowledge-intensive).  What have been some of the big changes with regard to these in B.C. in general, and in Nanaimo in particular?

Economic Transformation  Sociologist Richard Florida has had a major impact on the field of economic geography, and related disciplines, with his writing on the “creative class” consisting of “people who add value to the economy through their creativity” (see p. 68 of The Rise of the Creative Class). They include scientists and engineers, professors, writers and artists, entertainers, actors and filmmakers, software and game developers, architects, researchers, managers, lawyers, and doctors, etc.  This has major implications for traditional migration patterns and employer-employee relations. In the past, people often followed the jobs (can you think of examples where this is still true?). The quality of the urban or regional environment was often a secondary consideration.

Source: history.com/displayimage. php?imgId= &story Id=1-9-E

Economic Transformation  What Florida observed was that members of the creative class were very picky about where they wanted to live. They wanted to live in cities that were diverse, tolerant, that had a vibrant arts scene, and offered abundant cultural and recreational amenities such as restaurants, cafés, places to ski and hike, etc. He even found a correlation between the number of gays and lesbians and how attractive a given location would be because both groups valued tolerance and urbanity.  Implications for gentrification??  To some degree, these factors have also been part of the calculus of how post-secondary students have chosen where to go to school – something that VIU propaganda tries to trade on (“Love Where You Learn”), and that forms something of a challenge for places like UNBC (Prince George anyone?)

Economic Transformation  What are the implications of these changes for cities’ and regions’ economic development strategies?  Also, given what we discussed last class about peak oil, what are the implications in terms of economic re-localization?  One grassroots effort to re-localize economies is the transition towns movement, which has grown explosively. For more on it, see  In addition to these grassroots efforts, what can be done by municipalities and regions? San Francisco has mandated that all public agencies have to buy local food and Bundanoon, Australia has banned the sale of bottled water.  Jan Barham, mayor of Byron Shire, Australia’s first Green mayor, has been promoting economic localization, but I couldn’t find much on it.

Economic Transformation  A particular challenge involves rust belt cities in the U.S., Great Britain, and to a much lesser degree in Canada:

Stats from Economic Development Office Report  p. 26  p. 28  p  p. 54

Arts, Culture, and Place-Making  One of the sectors of the economy that has grown enormously is the arts and culture sector. According to the Canadian Council for the Arts, in in 2007, the economic footprint of Canada's cultural sector was $84.6 billion or 7.4 percent of Canada's gross domestic product. Even though it receives limited support from government, it has considerable multiplier effects. For every dollar invested by the provincial government, there is a return of $1.36. The average provincial expenditure on the arts in Canada is $26 per capita; in B.C. it is $6.50. At the municipal level, the multiplier effect is between $7 and $13.  A healthy arts and culture sector is one of the factors that attracts members of the creative class, while making life richer for the rest of us. What would your assessment be of the relative richness of the arts and culture scene in Nanaimo – including in relation to its size?

Arts, Culture, and Place-Making  In the final analysis, is the presence of an arts and culture scene all that important? What aspects are most important to you? Can we perhaps get everything we need off cable or the Internet?  There are numerous cases of artists and activists using the arts to heal or revive a community. Here is a sampling:  City Repair in Portland;  Mosaic Creek Park in Vancouver;  Beckoning Cistern in Seattle;  Heidelberg Project n Detroit;  Other?

Arts, Culture, and Place-Making Heidelberg Project, Detroit Beckoning Cistern, Seattle

Places vs. Spaces  If we are going to build a sustainable society, we need to be able to inspire people, not create environments that program them to be consuming robots.  A genuine place does not maximize profits, facilitate the passage of cars, facilitate maximum consumption, or alienate people from nature. It minimizes ecological impacts and even heals the human- nature divide, serves people not cars (the “8/80 principle”), is beautiful, and helps build community and civic engagement. See

Places vs. Spaces