A small crowd gathered at the Stratford Public Library for the Provocation Ideas Festival event ‘Reimaginging Stratford: Designing the future city’. What they came away with was a handful of collected ideas on what the role of the city’s citizens need to play as they step towards the future.
The panel discussion featured four speakers: Melanie Hare of Ubran Strategies and a Grant Trunk Renewal project volunteer, Huron County Director of Economic Development (and former Stratford businesswoman) Vicki Lass, planner and urbanist Jason Thorne, and Municipality of North Perth Councillor Allan Rothwell. The group was tasked to answer the question of what community building and the role of citizen-based engagement looks like while factoring in current and future needs like housing, transportation, environment, culture and economic development.
“Transformations can be physical but also can involve the people and experiences in a city,” Hare said. “One of the biggest challenges in this is getting going and not fearing change, which can be a novel idea in some communities. People have to be willing to look ‘future forward’, and that takes partnerships and a willingness to make trade-offs.”
Thorne said this particular conversation is best had in the ‘big-picture’ stage and made sure to stress that changes don’t happen by accident.
“This is a ‘seize the moment’ time in the process, so you have to be thoughtful and intentional with the decisions being made,” he said. “One thing I remember hearing that I still find important to apply is that you’re building the stage on which other performers perform.”
Lass talked about taking an accounting of assets and noting what works well, but she also made a point of saying decision-makers should be asking what is it about a community that makes people feel they belong. She referenced a statistic that shows the diversity of Stratford in a way that mostly goes unnoticed.
“There are 47 languages spoken in homes in this city, and we need to make sure that we’re hearing all the voices for these decisions,” she said. “This is a community that punches above its weight, but we’re also a community that puts people first.”
A central underlying theme to all that was talked about was the idea of compromise being not just necessary but essential – not only in making future decisions but in agreeing on what those decisions will be focused on. Rothwell said that communication will be the centrepiece when it comes to a starting point, as people will know what they’re stepping towards with a clear message from all involved.
“It’s not just showing up to that public meeting and getting frustrated by what you hear; it’s about dialogue and discussion and doing more than just the minimum,” he said. “It has to be heard by the community, but they can’t just throw their arms up and say nobody cares. People have to know they’ve been heard, but they have to understand that it’s a back-and-forth conversation.”
The idea of competing ideas within a community is typical fodder for municipal politicians, and Rothwell said people can work better together when all parties understand compromise will be a key element.
“Change is a constant thing and whether it’s now or at some point in the future, we probably are going to see some of those changes people really don’t want to have,” he said. “I don’t want to rush people off their viewpoints on (the changes), but I think it's important to understand that. It’s critical for all of us to be willing to open our ears and talk and have dialogue and find a way to compromise. It’s a great word to say and hard to do, but that's what needs to happen.”
Coun. Jo-Dee Burbach attended the event as a spectator and gained some perspective on how the city’s current council can begin to engage people in this discussion.
“I really liked the conversation they had around community engagement and what that means and how it can be done in a better way,” she said. “I see that as an area where the municipality can improve and also invite other community groups to help us with that dialogue, having conversations that aren’t necessarily around a set decision or a set project but to have overall conversations. I do feel like the municipality is doing a little bit better at that.”
Burbach talked about how Stratford is undergoing its official plan review and has held a few pop-up events to get the word out about what’s being done. She did add that they might need to put more thought into where they can go to maximize the impact those types of public interactions will have.
“Maybe it’s that 10 minute conversation somewhere that’s not a special meeting that people need to set aside an evening to go to – there are other ways outside the box to think about communication, and bringing it to the community is where this all starts,” she said.
Bringing the focus back to figuring out how to compromise the varied nature this particular conversation could take on, Burbach said it comes down to using tools the city already has in its toolkit (visioning and values exercises) to help put a framework in place they can start hanging specifics on with every step forward.
“We need to take the work we do as council and bring it to the public and say, ‘okay, these are the common areas that we understand to be things that bring us together, and these are our values and the goals we have moving forward,” she said. “So we now have to decide how to come to decisions where those values are honoured. Sometimes, it may not be satisfying everybody’s particular requirements, but we have to have those values always be the guiding force.”
