A commentary by a retired urban planner.
What kind of world city does Victoria want to be?
Cities around the globe are growing rapidly. In 2011, 52 per cent of the world population lived in cities.
By 2021, it was 57 per cent. By 2050, it will likely be 68 per cent (UN Conference on Trade and Development data).
What constitutes “living” in cities differs around the world. For many in the mega-cities of the global South, living means marginal housing shelters, in favelas or shantytowns.
What characterizes these cities is also a tremendous inequality: the rich and middle class are well housed; the poor make do with tents, corrugated iron, cardboard, whatever comes to hand.
Of course, change in these cities hasn’t happened overnight. Over time, rural poverty and a loss of social and community infrastructure has led to depopulation, causing the flood of humanity toward the cities.
The traditional market for housing has built homes for the rich and middle class — but not for the poor. This, of course, is happening on the other side of the globe … far away.
But these inexorable forces are at work here, too. They are evident in a drive down Pandora Avenue or by Topaz Park.
In the stories of young people couch-surfing. In the mega-houses of the world’s rich being built in Oak Bay and elsewhere in the region.
And in council reports that show both renting and owning are unaffordable by 50 per cent of the population.
It is good to see Premier David Eby visiting Singapore, for not every world city is following this trajectory.
In Singapore, Berlin and Vienna (to mention a few), housing is kept affordable through government action rather than leaving everything to the market. Rents are controlled and many families live in co-operative or co-housing developments.
The market is active but not the only way housing is delivered.
Greater Victoria is on its way to becoming a world city. Vancouver is already there.
But what kind of world city do we want to be? The present trajectory of high and increasing inequality, an all-powerful housing market and high unaffordability will see the scattered tent cities and couch-surfers morph into favelas or shantytowns, with more areas being off limits to most people during the day and at night.
The tweed curtain will be more strongly fortified to keep out the riff-raff.
Now is the time to make those fundamental political, social and economic changes that will put the capital region on track toward being a world city where all its residents share in the good life.
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