Jane Jacobs Prizewinners C5 Report – Vancouver · Jane Jacobs, in her book Cities and the Wealth...

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Local Currencies: Making Money, Making ChangeSusan Witt and Robert Swann

Efficiency and the CommonsJane Jacobs and Janice Gross Stein

The Waterworks – Photographs 1967Noel Best

Jane Jacobs Prizewinners

C5 Report – Vancouver

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Ideas That MatterVolume 2, Number 2

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We were first in contact with SusanWitt, Executive Director of the E. F.Schumacher Society (www.schumach-ersociety.org), in 1996 during the earlypreparation of events for Ideas ThatMatter: Jane Jacobs ’97 in Toronto. Herpresentation at that time, on the powerand opportunity of local currencies,spurred locals to conceive of TheToronto Dollar project, which has sincegrown to become one of the best exam-ples of this community economicdevelopment device. We’re pleased toprovide, in this volume of ITM, moreinfo about the local currency move-ment, as well as a short recent volumeof essays by Witt, Schumacher andWendell Berry, which, coincidentally,is dedicated to Jane Jacobs. Witt notesthat since September 11, we’ve seen arenewed discussion of the importanceof regions and what Berry is to ourunderstanding of agrarian regions,Jacobs is to our understanding ofregional economies.

Noel Best is a renowned Canadianarchitect, principal of the Vancouver firmArchitectura (www.iarchitectura.com).We came by his remarkable photos byaccident, rather than design, as theywere part of his student portfolio in thelate 1960s. They’ve been transformedhere from their construction paperbacking to a high-resolution format,and reflect so aptly the enduring beau-ty of some of the built forms that areunesthetically termed infrastructure.We appreciate Best’s willingness andassistance in reproducing these images.

Also included are profiles of four

recent recipients of the Jane JacobsPrize. Now numbering eight, this affili-ation of community leaders is finding acritical mass. Their interests and exper-tise vary, yet they manage to find com-monality and points of intersection intheir approaches and experience. Theywere instrumental in the mounting ofGrazing on the Commons, an eventfrom which we have excerpted here anedited transcript of a conversationbetween Jane Jacobs and ProfessorJanice Stein, Director of the MunkCentre in International Studies at theUniversity of Toronto, and the 2001Massey Lecturer. The title for Stein’sMassey Lecture, The Cult of Efficiency,suggests the extent to which the mar-ket value of efficiency has beenascribed an almost sacrosanct impor-tance. Seeing a connection to the con-cerns Jacobs raised in her 1996 volume,Systems of Survival (New York: RandomHouse, 1992), when the separate valuesof the trader and guardian syndromesbecome enmeshed, we invited the twoto meet, for the first time, at Grazing.

Finally, our last issue chronicled theinaugural meeting of the C5: five ofCanada’s mayors in their early stages ofproblem-sharing and consensus-build-ing. Since that time, there have beenmeetings with the provincial ministersand premiers, a federal task force, thefederal Minister of Finance, and a sec-ond meeting of the C5, the opening ofwhich is summarized in these pages.The C5 meets again in June inMontréal. We’ll keep you posted.

HISTORY AND THEORY OFLOCAL CURRENCIES INTHE UNITED STATESBY SUSAN WITT ANDROBERT SWANN

Susan Witt, Executive Director of theE. F. Schumacher Society in Mass-achusetts, presented at Ideas ThatMatter: Jane Jacobs ’97. RobertSwann is Founding President of theE. F. Schumacher Society.

E. F. Schumacher argued in Smallis Beautiful: Economics as ifPeople Mattered that from a

truly economic point of view themost rational way to produce is “fromlocal resources, for local needs.” JaneJacobs, one of today’s foremost schol-ars on regional economies, empha-sizes Schumacher’s point through heranalysis of a healthy region as onecreating “import-replacing” indus-tries on a continuing basis. A well-developed regional economy whichproduces for its own needs is possibleonly when control of its resources andfinances lies within the region itself.Throughout North America, theownership of land, natural resources,and industry and the determinationof conditions for receiving credithave become increasingly centralizedat the national level. Now all but afew large urban areas find that theireconomic resources are controlledfrom outside the area.

HistoryThe U.S. banking system is one ofthe most centralized institutions ofour economy and one of the majorobstacles to strengthening regionaleconomies and the communities

within them. Yet centralized bankingis only a recent development in theUnited States. The customs of bor-rowing and lending and money-print-ing grew up over generations in townsand rural communities to form whatwe now call our banking systems.These systems were small-scale,regional, and decentralized. Papermoney was made standard, or nation-al, in 1863 in order to raise funds forthe fight against the ConfederateStates, but it was not until 1913 thata central system became formalizedwith the Federal Reserve Act.Centralized banking and control ofmoney called for large banks andwealthy investors who could assemblehuge, unprecedented sums of money.These banks in the money centres,with their industrial customers, couldpay a higher interest rate to deposi-tors than could the smaller, oftenrural, banks which began sendingtheir deposits to the large cities. Thenational currency made money more

fluid and allowed rural dollars to sup-port urban industrial growth. Ruralcreditors were pleased with thisarrangement until the first time aNew York bank closed and carried offthe savings of a small town or until alocal farmer couldn’t secure a loanbecause a Chicago bank was borrow-ing from his bank at a high rate ofinterest.

A national currency facilitated theindustrialization of the United States,which in turn created many jobs;however, the centralization of the

monetary system has served to cen-tralize the benefits of the system aswell.

The effect on small farmers andrural economies has been devastating.The ongoing “farm crisis” is a dram-atic manifestation of what is really amonetary crisis that began in thedeep depression of the 1870s and1880s and was later codified in theFederal Reserve Act. Credit forsmall-scale farming and the small ruralbusinesses that are a part of the farmcommunity had dried up long beforethe Depression of the 1930s, andthe United States government hadto create the Farmers’ Home Admin-istration in order to help replace–withtax money–some of the rural capitalthat had been lost to the large cities.

The “housing crisis” is also in part amonetary crisis. Investors place moneyin land as a hedge against inflation,which drives land and housing pricesup. The high cost of land is a majorfactor in the present shortage of

affordable housing, and it takes homeownership out of reach for the major-ity of Americans.

The local and decentralized bank-ing systems of a hundred and fiftyyears ago had the advantage of diver-sity. The failure of a local bank–even aNew York bank–was still a local fail-ure, and its costs were internalized.But today we are facing the failure ofan entire system. Consider the billionsof tax dollars spent by the nationaldeposit insurance system to bail outthe Savings and Loan industry. And

A quarterly 3

Local Currencies:Making Money, Making Change

Volume 2 Number 2

A well-developed regional economy which producesfor its own needs is possible only when control of its

resources and finances lies within the region itself.

Local Currencies: History and Theory Susan Witt and Robert Swann

recall that billions were added to thenational debt in order to bail outlarge banks when developing coun-tries defaulted on their loans. Thesesystemic failures are bound to occur iflocal economic control of bankingcustoms and money supply is compro-mised by centralization and sacrificedto serve the heedless demands ofgrowth.

This predicament calls for a reor-ganization of economic institutionsso that they will be responsive tolocal and regional needs and condi-tions. These new institutions woulddecentralize the control of land, nat-ural resources, industry, and financ-ing to serve the people living in anarea in an equitable way. We need tocreate an infrastructure that encour-ages local production for local needs.Community land trusts, worker-owned and worker-managed business-es, nonprofit local banks, and region-al currencies are some of the tools forbuilding strong regional economies.

Because we have all learned toassume that national currencies arethe norm, a regional currency is per-haps the least understood of thesetools. Jane Jacobs, in her book Citiesand the Wealth of Nations, views theeconomy of a region as a living entityin the process of expanding and con-tracting and a regional currency asthe appropriate regulator of thisebbing and flowing life. Just like anation, a region which does not pro-duce enough of the goods it consumescomes to rely heavily on imports andfinds that its currency is devalued.Import costs increase, the exchangeof goods is reduced, and the regionhas to borrow, which means that itexports its capital–dollars, notgoods–and ends up importing nearlyeverything it needs. But if the regionis supplying its own needs, then itscurrency “hardens” and holds its

value relative to other currencies.Imports are cheaper, and trade ismore equitable–or even skewed infavour of the self-reliant or “import-replacing” region.

Jacobs describes currencies as“powerful carriers of feedback infor-mation…and potent triggers ofadjustments, but on their own terms.A national currency registers, above

all, consolidated information of anation’s international trade.” Thisfeedback informs economic policy-makers. But should the industrialGreat Lakes region or the farm-beltstates adjust their economies in thesame manner as the sun-belt states orthe Silicon Valley of the West Coast?A very significant part of any region’seconomy is governed by a monetaryand banking system over which mem-bers of a community have little or nocontrol. The dependency on nationalcurrencies actually deprives regions ofa very useful self-regulating tool andallows stagnant economic pockets togo unaided in a seemingly prosperousnation. What the E. F. SchumacherSociety proposes instead is the estab-lishment of a system with communityaccountability.

Regional currencies are not arecent invention–the practice is cen-turies old. The so-called free bankingera of U.S. history, when many cur-rencies circulated, contributed sub-stantially to bringing about ThomasJefferson’s dream of a nation of small,independent, self-reliant farmers whofound ready credit with communitybanks to produce and sell their goods.Even in the early years of this cen-tury local banks issued their owncurrency, which John KennethGalbraith says was important for therapid development of the Americaneconomy.

How were these banks differentfrom banks today? Because they were

located in small towns, the bankersknew the people they were dealingwith in a personal way and couldmake loans on the basis of “charac-ter,” not strictly on the basis of howmuch collateral an individual had tosecure the loan. A more striking dif-ference is that each bank could issuea local scrip. Unlike a national cur-rency, which easily leaves the regionin which its value is created, the localcurrency could circulate only in alimited regional area; local currenciesand local capital could not travel tothe money centres to finance theoperations of multinational corpora-tions or interest payments on debt.Credit decisions were made by localbankers with particular personalknowledge not only of the borrowersbut also of the needs of the region asa whole.

One of the major objections to“free banking” in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries has beenthat some of these local banks failedand some printed money to speculatein land and to make unproductiveloans. The argument is that suchabuses can be controlled if money isissued centrally. But it was unity–ashared belief in communal responsi-bility and vigilance–rather than uni-formity that was needed. Communitydevelopment banks like Oregon’sShore Trust, Chicago’s South ShoreBank and the Grameen Bank ofBangladesh make up an intellectualdiaspora–they are decentralized andunified. The Savings and Loan indus-try is uniform.

Decentralization andDiversityDecentralization and diversity havethe benefit of preventing large-scalefailure. This is as true in banking as itis in the natural world. Think ofseeds. If many different strains of cornare planted by different farmers and adisease hits the crop, some strains willresist and the corn will be harvested.But if all the farmers have shifted to anew hybrid seed and a blight hits thecorn, the result can be widespread


The dependency on national currencies actuallydeprives regions of a very useful self-regulating tool.

Susan Witt and Robert Swann Local Currencies: History and Theory

crop failure and disaster. How do weensure diversity in banking? As theeconomist Frederick Hayek haspointed out, to keep banking honestit would be better to return to a bank-ing system that utilizes competingcurrencies rather than to rely on acentral system.

Local ScripIn the 1930s, a worldwide deflationencouraged many new forms ofexchange that competed with thenational currencies. The town ofWoergel in Austria created a scripsystem that drew international atten-tion. The people in this little townwere able to trade in labour andmaterials, which they did have,rather than in Austrian shillings,which they didn’t have, and theymanaged to pull themselves out ofthe Depression in a matter of months.Local scrip also sprang up around theUnited States. A former editor of TheSpringfield Union in Massachusettstold us the story of a scrip issued byhis newspaper. He was just a copyboyat the paper during the bank failuresof the 1930s; he remembers that thepublisher, Samuel Bowles, paid hisnewspaper employees in scrip. Itcould be spent in the stores whichadvertised in the paper, and the storeswould then pay for ads with the scrip,thus closing the circle. The scrip wasso popular that customers began toask for change in scrip–they wouldsee Bowles around town and hadmore confidence in his local moneythan in the federal dollars.Newspaper money helped to keep theSpringfield economy flowing during aperiod of bank closures, facilitatingcommercial transactions that wentwell beyond the original intent of theissue.

Forty years later in the town ofExeter, New Hampshire, the econo-mist Ralph Borsodi and RobertSwann, founder of the E. F.Schumacher Society, issued a curren-cy that was based on a standard ofvalue using thirty different commodi-ties in an index similar to the Dow

Jones Industrial Average. It wascalled the Constant because, unlikethe national currency, it would holdits value over time. The Constant cir-culated in Exeter for more than ayear, proving, as Borsodi had hoped,that people would use currency whichwas not the familiar greenback. Atthe time, it received national public-ity in Time, Forbes, and other maga-zines. When asked by a reporter if hiscurrency was legal, Borsodi suggestedthat the reporter check with theTreasury Department, which thereporter did. He was told, “We don’tcare if he issues pine cones, as long asit is exchangeable for dollars so thattransactions can be recorded for taxpurposes.”

This is all that the governmentrequires of a local currency, and allthat a local currency requires of acommunity is trust. A currency isonly as strong as the confidence thatpeople have in one another to pro-duce something of value. Trust is atthe heart of the successes inSpringfield and Woergel and Exeter.

Borsodi discontinued his experi-ment after a year, but he had accom-plished his purpose: to demonstratelocal acceptance and verify the legali-ty of locally issued, non-governmentalcurrencies.

Forms of CurrencyA local currency may be dollar-denominated or measured in chick-ens (as Wendell Berry once suggestedfor his part of Kentucky) or hours orcordwood, as long as people knowthey can spend that chicken cash orthat cordwood note. Confidence in acurrency requires that it beredeemable for some locally availablecommodity or service. TheSchumacher Society recommends thefollowing policies to maintain confi-dence over the long haul:• The issuing organization should be

incorporated as a nonprofit so thepublic understands that providingaccess to credit is a service not linkedto private gain. The organizationshould be democratic, with member-ship open to all area residents andwith a board elected by the members.• Its policy should be to create newshort-term credit for productive pur-poses. Such credit is normally provid-ed for up to three months for goods orservices that have already been pro-duced and are on their way to mar-ket–credit for things which pay forthemselves in a very short time.• The regional bank or currencyorganization should be free of govern-mental control–other than inspec-tion–so that investment decisions are

independent and are made by thecommunity.• Social and ecological criteriashould be introduced into loan-mak-ing. (Community investment fundsalso use a positive set of social criteriaparticular to their own region. Thesefunds could join with hard-pressedlocal banks to initiate regional cur-rencies.)• Loan programs and local curren-cies should support local productionfor local needs.

Local currencies can play a vitalrole in the development of stable,diversified regional economies, givingdefinition and identity to regions,encouraging face-to-face transactionsbetween neighbours, and helping torevitalize local cultures. A local cur-rency is not simply an economic tool;it is also a cultural tool.

Adapted from: “Local Currencies:Catalysts for Sustainable RegionalEconomies” by Robert Swann and SusanWitt, in People, Land and Community(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1998).

A quarterly 5Volume 2 Number 2

A local currency is not simply an economic tool;it is also a cultural tool.

AN UPDATE ONCURRENT ACTIVITIESBY SUSAN WITT

On May 30, 1998, the New YorkTimes Metro Section carried afront page story about Thread

City Bread, a local currency issued inWillimantic, Connecticut. Within afew days CNBC, ABC World NewsTonight, Voice of America, Fox News inBoston, Northeast Magazine, as well asseveral regional papers, TV and radiostations had swooped into Willimanticto interview select persons, bankers,and shop owners about their home-made money.

Local currencies are experiencing arevival in North America, but for newreasons. During the last decade smalltowns and inner city neighbourhoodsare discovering that local scrip helpsto define regional trading areas, edu-cate consumers about local resources,and build community. There are nowover twenty different communities inthe United States and Canada whereyou can use colourful bills with nameslike BREAD, BloomingHours andBrooklyn Greenbacks for anythingfrom buying groceries to having yourhair cut or your computer repaired.

The current revival of local curren-cies started in 1989 when FrankTortoriello, the owner of a popular

restaurant in Great Barrington,Massachusetts, was rejected for a bankloan to finance a move to a new loca-tion. In a small community, wordspreads quickly. The Berkshires arealso home to the E. F. SchumacherSociety. All of us in the office knewthe Deli; we ate lunch there and rec-ognized that Frank had a committedclientele who could afford to take arisk to keep the cherished luncheonspot in business. We suggested thatFrank issue Deli Dollars as a self-

financing technique. Customers couldpurchase the notes during a month ofsale and redeem them over a year’speriod after the Deli had moved to itsnew location. Martha Shaw, a localartist, donated the design for the noteswhich were dated and read“redeemable for meals up to a value often dollars.” Frank sold ten-dollarnotes for eight dollars and in thirtydays had raised $5,000. Over the nextyear, Frank repaid the loan, in sand-wiches and soup, rather than hard tocome by federal dollars. BerkshireFarm Preserve Notes, MontereyGeneral Store Notes, and KintaroNotes soon followed in what lookedlike a movement.

Ithaca HoursPaul Glover of Ithaca, New York, sawthe media coverage of the Berkshirenotes and liked the idea of hand-to-hand currency that let consumers sup-port local business through pre-pur-chase of products, but he wanted tobroaden the concept. Instead of eachbusiness issuing its own notes, whycouldn’t the community as a wholeissue a local scrip? To learn how thismight be done, he spent a week doingresearch on the history and theory ofregional issue of scrip at the E. F.Schumacher Library, and had long dis-cussions with one of its founders,

Robert Swann, who has spent a life-time promoting local currencies.

Back in Ithaca, Paul talked to thosewho were running small businesses outof their homes. As is typical in ruralareas, many people support themselvesnot with one $25,000-a-year job, butwith five $5,000-a-year cottage indus-tries. They bake pies, repair lawn mow-ers, do landscaping, paint houses,bookkeep, tutor, and dog sit. Most ofthese businesses are undercapitalizedand underpublicized and would benefit

from more customers. Paul asked theowners if they would agree to accept alocal scrip for their goods and services.With nothing to lose, people signedup. Everyone initially enrolled was“issued” forty dollars worth of localscrip, known as Ithaca HOURS,denominated in units of hourly labour.Each HOUR note was valued at tenfederal dollars, a fair hourly wage forthe region. Paul printed severaldenominations of HOUR notes withpictures celebrating Ithaca’s naturalwonders, children, and famous persons.Heat-sensitive ink, high rag-contentpaper, serial numbers, and embossinghelped to prevent counterfeiting.HOURTown, the free newsprint paperlisting all businesses accepting IthacaHOURS, focuses on successful tradingstories to draw in new participants.

Behind the scenes, Paul is always atwork to keep HOURS circulating suc-cessfully. He finds out which business-es have too many HOURS in their till,then sits down with the owners to rec-ommend ways for them to expandtheir HOUR usage. Paul knows whichcarpenter among the HOUR tradersdoes the finest carpentry work, knowsif the farmer has a reputation for deliv-ering carefully washed lettuce, andknows if the guy with the rototiller willget the job done before the weekend.

Largely as a result of this persistentattention to detail, $100,000 in IthacaHOURS are in circulation today, rep-resenting several million dollars intrade in local scrip. A board of direc-tors, fondly called the MunicipalReserve, keeps an eye on how the scripis circulating and whether and howmore should be issued. There are 350area businesses–contractors, farmers,restaurants, movie theatres, masseurs,the local credit union–that nowaccept partial payment in IthacaHOURS. In fact, when bidding thecontract for improvements to theirnew offices, Bill Meyers, the presidentof Alternatives Federal Credit Union,specified that the contractor must takepart payment in Ithaca HOURS. Themessage was loud and clear: non-localsneed not apply. Meyers explained that


Local scrip helps to define regional trading areas,educate consumers about local resourcesand build community.

Local Currencies: Making Money, Making Change Susan Witt

the winning contractor then became,of necessity, a promoter of IthacaHOURS to subcontractors, furtheraccelerating trade in scrip and addingnew businesses to the growing list ofparticipants. The use of local scripgives a positive advantage to small,locally based businesses, which recir-culate the wealth they have generatedback into the community.

The Ithaca HOURS HometownMoney Starter Kit has inspired groupsaround the country, each working todevelop currencies that are right fortheir particular communities. For PaulGlover and other visionaries of themovement, local scrip is much morethan a device for revitalizing the localeconomy. It provides a direct way torespond to the alienation we experi-ence in an expanding global economy,and restores the possibility of regionaleconomies based on social and ecolog-ical principles.

In a simple barter economy produc-tion methods are highly visible. Thevalue of the carrots we offer in trade isdirectly related to our memories of hoe-ing in the garden, of building the com-post pile, and of waiting for the rainafter planting. And though our pictureof the cordwood for which we are bar-tering is not as detailed, still we proba-bly have seen our neighbour as he splitand stacked the wood from the ashtree. Barter transactions link us inextri-cably to a particular place and time.

Money, for all its obvious advan-tages, introduces an element ofabstractness into the economicprocess. This was less so in the past,when real goods were used as currency,or to back currency or denominateunits of currency. Value was stillunderstood in terms of the amount oflabor applied to natural resources.When the Tibetan herdsman traded abrick of tea (once used as currency inTibet) for his lamb, he had a picture of

tea brewing in a bucket over a fire in ayurt, and could imagine the days ittook to cultivate the tea plant on itsmountainside plantation and thehours of bending to gather the tinynew tea leaves. He could compare inhis mind the value of a generalizedbrick of tea to that of the actual lambin his arms.

Most of today’s national currenciesare no longer commodity-based. Theyare at best pegged to each other, ortied in a vague way to the general pro-ductivity of the country of origin. Atthe end of the twentieth centurymoney has become altogetherabstracted from our daily experience.We talk of earning 6 percent interest,but have no picture of “what ourmoney is doing tonight,” whether it isworking to build wheelbarrows inBrazil, grow corn on chemically fertil-ized land in Iowa, or make shoes in acrowded factory in Thailand.

One of the crucial tasks of this newcentury will be to so shape our eco-nomic system that environmental andsocial safeguards are built into itsdesign. Advocacy for better workingconditions and nonpolluting methodsof production will certainly play a partin this reshaping, but theoreticalknowledge by itself will not necessari-ly stimulate a change in our consumerhabits. Rather, we need to be able topicture the manufacturing processes soclearly that we are compelled to

demand secure conditions for theworkers, and to restore the waters poi-soned by toxic waste.

By intentionally narrowing ourchoices of consumer goods to thoselocally made, local currencies allow usto know more fully the story of itemspurchased–stories that include thehuman beings who made them and thespecific locale of stones, rivers, forests,and fields from which they are fash-ioned. Such stories work in the imagi-

nation to foster responsible consumerchoices and re-establish a commit-ment to the community.

Management of localcurrency programsOne of the key problems in the localcurrency movement has been how tosupport start-up and managementcosts. The small home-business ownerswho first enroll in the HOUR pro-grams may be the folks most in need ofa revitalized local economy, but theylack the income margin to pay for theadministration of such a system. Thecoordination for most HOUR pro-grams has for the most part been car-ried out by volunteers. As a resultwhile they are often showered withmedia attention, the majority of localcurrency systems do not have the staffand financial capability to meet theirfull potential.

Some local currency systems issue asmall percentage of the total amountof scrip in circulation to make a tokenpayment to administrators–IthacaHOURS under Paul Glover’s watchfuleye kept a tight cap at 5 percent. Butas a general policy, issuing for adminis-trative purposes can jeopardize thesoundness of the issue. Administrationis more appropriately paid from fees forservice.

Other local currency groups areorganizing as programs of existingorganizations using the administrativestructure already in place. In Calgary,Alberta, for example, the BowChinook Barter Exchange formed outof a committee of the Arusha Centreand has received substantial organiza-tional funding from the CalgaryUnited Way, which views the programas a means for creating jobs. Still othergroups are looking to affiliate withestablished local economic-develop-ment organizations.

Several large social service agenciesare embracing local currencies as in-house projects, as changes in federalwelfare laws are forcing them to findemployment for their clients. Unwill-ing to take single mothers from theirhomes and place them in low paying,


Susan Witt Local Currencies: An Update on Current Activities

Local scrip restores the possibility of regional economiesbased on social and ecological principles.

fast food service jobs, the agencies uselocal currencies to develop opportuni-ties for home businesses, keeping theneighbourhoods healthy and mothersat home when their children return

from school. In Philadelphia,Resources for Human Development, anonprofit organization contracted todistribute state and federal govern-ment assistance funds, has investedsignificant time and resources to issueEqual Dollars. In North Carolina,Suzanne Kinder coordinates theDollar program of the Down EastPartnership for Children (DEPC).Clients are paid for work at a numberof nonprofit organizations in DEPCDollars which can be spent for donat-ed food, clothing, toys, and otheritems in the DEPC store.

While these agencies have beeneffective in operating a limited localcurrency system, they are constrainedby federal tax code to serving onlytheir low income clientele. If theywish to continue to support the newly-formed small businesses createdthrough their efforts, they will soonneed to evolve their local currencyprograms to include the banking com-munity, Main Street businesses, andprofessional service providers.

Ultimately it will take a coalition ofnonprofit groups and for-profit busi-nesses, working together, to form thekind of regionally based, democratical-ly structured organization needed toprovide long-term management of alocal currency program. In such amodel, administration costs would bepaid from membership fees. Broadusage of scrip would assure that wealthis recirculated in the communitywhere it is generated, supporting adiverse group of regional producers.Several groups are already laying thegroundwork for these developments.

In October of 1997, Avana Capital

Corporation mounted a week-longinternational conference and multi-neighbourhood block party calledIdeas That Matter celebrating the lifeand influence of Jane Jacobs. Toronto

author Joy Kogawa and merchantSusan Braun took the occasion tospearhead a discussion about a dreamthey shared–a local currency for theirown St. Lawrence neighbourhood.

[See box below.]The Toronto project is just one

example of program innovation build-ing on the influential Ithaca model. Inthe future, local currencies could beissued solely through the making ofproductive loans. Productive loans areloans resulting in new goods circulat-ing in the economy in excess of thevalue of the loan itself, such as loans toa farmer for seeds in the spring gener-ating a bountiful crop of fall vegeta-bles. The interest rate could be 0 per-cent, encouraging the development ofsmall local manufacturing enterprisesor renewable energy generating plantsthat currently are not economically

Local Currencies: An Update on Current Activities Susan Witt


Broad usage of scrip would assure that wealth isrecirculated in the community where it is generated,supporting a diverse group of regional producers.

1st Issue: December, 1998Currency: The Toronto Dollar trades at par with the Canadian dollarand is backed by Canadian dollars. Initially, consumers can exchangetheir Canadian dollars for an equal amount of Toronto Dollars (1Canadian dollar buys 1 Toronto Dollar). Each time a Toronto Dollar ispurchased from Toronto Dollar Inc., 90 cents is deposited in a reservefund and 10 cents goes to the Toronto Dollar Community Projects Fund.Participating businesses have agreed to accept Toronto Dollars on parwith Canadian dollars. A business can continue to spend at par theToronto Dollars it receives or it can redeem its Toronto Dollars forCanadian dollars at 90 cents on the dollar. The bills have a three yearexpiry term, with the expectation that 12 percent of the Toronto Dollarssold will never be redeemed so that the total new money created is about22 percent. The main challenges experienced with this program were: 1)getting supporters to purchase Toronto Dollars because of the potentialinconvenience, and 2) dealing with inherent risks involved with a systemtied to cash, i.e. having tight controls as one expands.Participation: Approximately 250 businesses in the St. Lawrence Marketand Riverdale areas have agreed to accept Toronto Dollars.Approximately 40,000 Toronto Dollars are in circulation at any one time.Background: Organized by a volunteer group, the Toronto DollarCommunity Project Inc., the Toronto Dollar was launched December 5,1998. Originally located in the St. Lawrence Market area, circulation hasrecently expanded to include businesses in the Riverdale area of Toronto.Overhead for the program is covered by interest on the reserve fund anddonations. The Toronto Dollar Community Projects Fund is used to giveToronto Dollars to people as “thank-you honorariums” for volunteer workwith a focus on supporting those who need more income. In its first twoyears of operation, the Community Projects Fund was able to donate$25,000 to 22 agencies and community groups.

THE TORONTO DOLLAR PROJECT

competitive. Eventually a nonprofitissuer could untie the local scrip fromthe federal dollar, establishing a localbacking such as cordwood, or a basketof commodities–corn, soy beans, andwheat for instance–as was done in theexperiment in Exeter, New Hampshire,in the 1970s. In such a scenario, cur-rency would retain a constant localvalue related to a natural resource andmake visible once again the connec-tion between the health of a localeconomy and the health of the land.

Such ideas, while not new, mighthave seemed utopian until a few yearsago, when the HOURS programs andother alternative currencies began togather momentum. Today when local-currency activists get together, there isno mistaking the positive dynamic atwork. The movement has all the ener-gy, idealism, and mobility of youngadulthood–still experimenting to findthe right form, not afraid to take risks,able to alter direction as needed, anddetermined to change the economicsystem to reflect their deeply heldsocial and environmental values.

Adapted from “Printing Money, MakingChange” by Susan Witt, originally pub-lished in Orion Afield, November 1998.


Susan Witt Local Currencies: An Update on Current Activities

Recently publishedby the E. F. Schumacher Society…An Economics of PeaceE. F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry and Susan WittGreat Barrington, MA: E. F. Schumacher Society, 2001.$10.00

In the weeks following the tragedies of September 11, the Schumacher Society receivednumerous requests from around the world for Fritz Schumacher’s essay, “BuddhistEconomics.” This essay was first published in 1973 in the classic Small is Beautiful:Economics as if People Mattered. It is now reprinted along with Wendell Berry’s “Thoughtsin the Presence of Fear,” written in response to September 11. Accompanying these twoessays is “A New Peace” – comments made at the Global Dialogue for Peace Gatheringin Sussex, England, on September 17, 2001 by Susan Witt, Executive Director of the E.F. Schumacher Society. Taken together, these three essays sound a clear call for alterna-tive economic systems as a means to lasting peace the world over.[To order, see page 23.]

The events of this past fall havehelped to end the lingeringenchantment with the mono-

culture of the global economy. Theconsequences are more visible. Thecost is too high in the discrepancy ofincome and resource use, environmen-tal degradation, displacement of peo-ples, disruption of local cultures. Itbreeds resentments and hostilities thatcan only be subdued through a danger-ous and volatile world wide policeforce.

But quietly and surely, around theworld, new attention is given to therenewal of village economies. Theleaders of this movement in villageafter village are those whose roots rundeep in their local community. Whoknows from direct experience the nat-ural riches and human skills availableto shape new patterns of local produc-tion and local trade? Who are usingtheir imagination to craft new localinstitutions to support this renewal?

The literature for the renaissance of

our rural communities is well-known.2002 is the twenty-fifth anniversary ofthe publication of Wendell Berry’sclassic work, The Unsettling ofAmerica: Culture and Agriculture.A whole new generation of place-based nature writers are describing lifein rural America and pointing to theeconomic forces displacing the patternsof that life. Agrarianism is again atopic of earnest discussion at universi-ties and cultural gatherings.

Jane Jacobs remains the single mostpowerful voice for the renewal of oururban villages. It will take thousandsof villagers working to renew thou-sands of villages around the world toshape a lasting economics of peace.We will need map makers and storytellers to guide and encourage thisrenewal. Jane Jacobs helps chart thecourse for our cities.

Susan WittGreat Barrington, Mass.

April, 2002

SUSAN WITT WRITES …


Susan Witt has served as ExecutiveDirector of the E. F. SchumacherSociety since its founding in 1980.The Schumacher Society is a NorthAmerican, nonprofit organization thatpromotes and supports grassroots ini-tiatives to develop more self-reliantregional economies. It conducts annu-al lecture, seminar, and publicationprograms that have hosted such speak-ers as Wendell Berry, Jane Jacobs andIvan Illich. The 8,000 volume E. F.Schumacher Library is a premiere col-lection on decentralist thought andaction.

Witt has no formal background ineconomics; she was a literature teacherat a small private Waldorf high schoolin New Hampshire and loved theworld of great books that surroundedher. She came to believe, however,that some of the world’s most pressingsocial and environmental problemscould be solved only by changes in theeconomic system, and she wanted tohelp make that change. In 1977, at agethirty-one, she received a small inher-itance from her grandfather thatenabled her to volunteer for organiza-tions working to bring a renewedmoral dimension to economic activity.When she happened to turn on aBoston radio program and heardRobert Swann speaking about E. F.Schumacher, her course was set. Threeyears later, at the request of the BritishSchumacher Society, Witt and Swannfounded a North American Societylocated in the Berkshire region ofMassachusetts. The new organizationpursued both the conceptual develop-ment and practical implementation oftools for a sustainable economy.

In 1981 Witt organized theSHARE micro-credit program as amodel for consumers to collateralizeloans to local small businesses.SHARE facilitated over twenty smallloans in its first three years of opera-tion, without a default. Many were towomen without credit histories whowere starting new businesses. Theloans were handled by a local bank,

establishing credit for the borrowers.Deli Dollars, Berkshire Farm PreserveNotes, and BerkShares all followed asmethods for customers to supportexisting businesses during hard times.

From SHARE emerged SHARE-croppers, a local newsletter connectingBerkshire consumers and farmers.SHAREcroppers drew Jan Vander Tuinto the Schumacher Society in 1984 todiscuss an approach to farming he hadseen in Switzerland whereby con-sumers contract to pay a yearlyincome to farmers in exchange for ashare of the harvest. Witt introducedVander Tuin to Robyn VanEn whoowned nearby Indian Line Farm and

who was looking for a partner on herfarm. Out of that partnership grew thefirst Community SupportedAgriculture (CSA) farm in this coun-try. There are now over one thousandCSA farms around the country,thanks to Robyn’s perserverance andcommitment to the concept.

Concerned about the lack ofaffordable housing in the region, in1985 Witt worked with theCommunity Land Trust in theSouthern Berkshires on a four year,one point five million dollar buildingproject, resulting in eighteen units ofaffordable housing for year round fam-ilies. Witt oversaw the land purchase,land use planning, permitting process,construction financing, contracting,lease development, and sale of units

at Forest Row.Never having done this kind of

work before, she depended on thecooperation of local bankers, lawyers,builders, land use planners, and townofficials to work with the nonprofit toaccomplish its goals. In the processstrong community partnerships werebuilt. Vacation-home owners loanedmoney to a second mortgage poolcalled the Fund for AffordableHousing, enabling families withoutsufficient downpayment to purchasethe units. The project was completedwithout government subsidies—a truelocal citizen initiative.

In 1997, Robyn VanEn died tragi-cally, and her Indian Line Farm cameup for sale. If it were to be affordablefor farmers, the community wouldhave to help. Witt worked with theThe Nature Conservancy and theCommunity Land Trust in theSouthern Berkshires, to purchase theland value. Two young farmers pur-chased the buildings and lease theland. The lease stipulates organic pro-duction methods and places a cap onthe resale value of the buildings. Inthis way the ecological integrity of theland is maintained and the buildingsremain affordable for future farmers.

It is these stories of her Berkshireneighbors working together to shapethe future of their local economy thatWitt describes in her articles andtalks. She finds their striving and theirstruggles compelling and hopeful in anage so dominated by faceless globalcorporations. She believes that a sys-tem of vibrant and diverse localeconomies best meets the challenge toconduct our affairs on earth in a man-ner responsible to the natural worldand to one another.

Susan Witt may be contactedthrough the E. F. SchumacherSociety, 140 Jug End Road, GreatBarrington, MA 01230 (413) 528-1737, www.smallisbeautiful.org

Adapted from Environmental Activists,edited by John Mongillo (Westport, CT:Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001).

About Susan Witt

Photo courtesy of E. F. Schumacher Society

The WaterworksPhotographs 1967Noel Best

In 1967, I was leaving home in Toronto to attend the School of Architecture at UBC in Vancouver. I bought myfirst real camera –a 35mm slr – to record for myself what I thought were two of the more interesting aspects of myhometown: the streetcars and the waterworks.

The RC Harris Filtration Plant has since been recognized as a unique and spectacular part of Toronto and itshistory – it appears in movies, novels and architectural surveys; but back then it was just this odd, surrealistextravagance in the neighbourhood where we grew up. This is where we swam, played baseball, and tobogganed.Like most of my old neighbourhood, where my parents still live in my childhood home, very little has changedhere thirty years later – except there used to be more children.

The Waterworks then had, and still has, this evanescent quality, dreamy, quiet – symmetry and serenity.Looking inside, you could see in the upper building the central skylit corridor that went on seemingly forever,flanked by this succession of still pools. In the lower building there were these giant turbines – and never a soulto be seen.

Noel Best is a principal in the Vancouver firm Architectura. He specializes in airport design and educational and culturalfacilities. His projects include the Contemporary Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery (with Arthur Erickson), theCentre for the Study of Global Issues and the Koerner Library at UBC; and airports in Bermuda, Santiago, Fort SaintJohn and London. These photos were selected from the larger suite of original 1967 photographs – bound in two volumes,the first the single images and the second the collages.


THE TORONTO WATERWORKS


THE TORONTO WATERWORKS


EFFICIENCY ANDTHE COMMONS

A conversation between JaneJacobs and Janice Gross Steinat Grazing on the CommonsNovember 15, 2001 in Toronto

JACOBS: As you already said cogent-ly in your Massey lecture, [published inThe Cult of Efficiency, Toronto: AnansiPress, 2001] efficiency harms medical

care, public schooling, accountabilityand choice. It invites stupid police andslap dash justice. It undermines whole-some communities. It cheats the inter-ests of posterity and toys very danger-ously with all types of security–fromwater to airports. Your question,“Efficiency for what?” is the right ques-tion with its emphasis on effectiveresults. But here’s the rub: Effectivehealth care, schooling, accountabilityand so on are not the bottom lines that

register political effectiveness. Rather,the bottom line for political organiza-tions is success at winning or retainingpower to govern. In Canada, thismeans winning elections.

No matter how specious the cult ofefficiency is, if enough voters fall for it,we get it. So, your brilliant analysis ofthe cult’s fraudulence is importantcivic education. But what about themany, many well-educated expertswho help the voters fall for this


RECLAIMINGTHE COMMONS

Alan BroadbentFrom his opening remarks atGrazing on the Commons,November, 2001

The image of the Commons hasalways been an attractive one forme. I think of the village common

where livestock was grazed. Those animalswere a significant part of the wealth and wellbeing of the village, and it was in every-body’s interest that they be well fed. Thisnecessitated that the Commons be main-tained as a productive source of nutrition. Itwas in everyone’s interest. Such things as

overgrazing the Commons, or fencing a partfor private use, reduced productivity, whichreduced the production and weight of thelivestock, which reduced the wealth andhealth of the village. Over time, the villagelearned the best balance of use of theCommons.

In Canada, we have built an enviablesociety based in good part of the concept ofthe Commons. Much of what has been builtin this country we have built together: anexcellent system of public education; a pub-lic health system that Canadians value; andcities and neighbourhoods that are secureand supportive. While there is much toimprove, there is much we have achieved.

Over the course of the past couple ofdecades, the Commons has been seized by

interested and powerful people. It has beenfenced, sold, resold and, in many cases,overgrazed. What we once all held in com-mon has become private property which weare increasingly being asked to pay to use.What we once all owned together, we mustnow seek permission to use.

It is time for us to reclaim the Commons.It is our experience that great things emergefrom the community, that activities andgroups which self-organize will find inge-nious ways to do things. It is time for us allto stand up to the privatizers and marketiz-ers and tell them that we will not have whatCanadians have built together, so carefully,over so many years, sold off, piece by piece,for a song.

Grazing on the Commons:The Public Good Project

“Come with one good ideaand leave with five more.”

Historically, citizens gathered on com-mon ground to pasture their livestock,trade their wares, and discuss theissues of the day. From this sharedplace– which every citizen had a vitalinterest in maintaining as produc-tive–came innovation, creativeexpression, and wealth creation. Theuse of the Commons fundamentallyshaped a community’s definition of thepublic good. Grazing on the Commonsis the first in a series of events to focuson the public good.

haven’t done a great job in workingwith citizens to be accountable. So, theguardian culture comes in and says, inJane’s words, “We’re going to do it thisway and we’re going to impose thesemeasures, whether you like it or not.”

My big problem is, where are thelevers to start this? I see individual citi-zens doing it. I see some communitiesdoing it, but how do we scale this upfrom small groups so we get some criti-cal mass?JACOBS: I’m always amazed at howmany people don’t trust their own expe-rience. They don’t think that what hap-pened to them can be important.STEIN: Are you saying selfishness canserve the public good?JACOBS: Yes, indeed it can. There aremany kinds of selfishness and unfortu-nately greed is what pops into most peo-ple’s heads when they hear the wordselfish. But selfishness can mean con-cern for your family and your neigh-bourhood. It can mean concern forwhat touches you, and many thingstouch you besides material things.STEIN: I was working on schoolchoice. When I listened to parents talk-ing about why choice mattered to them,I was struck with how strong support forschool choice is in minority communi-ties where their culture, their languageand their community matters to them.Those parents feel their kids aren’t wellserved in the larger public school sys-tem. They want to be able to choosetheir kid’s school but still stay withinthe public school system. They mightbe called selfish, but they were telling astory that was very important to them.JACOBS: That’s the kind of selfishnessthat is so important.STEIN: That’s right. And when I asked,“Are you worried that if you set up aschool just for your community, your kidswon’t have the chance to get to knowkids from other communities?” theiranswer was, “We need to provide a safeenvironment where our kids can learnand become more self-confident, moresecure; then they will be able to go outand meet kids from other communities.”

This is tough for me because, assomebody who works in internationalpolitics, I know what happens when

think Michael Adams, who does all thiswork on citizens and their attitudes,would say, “It’s not good enough formost citizens.”

Where’s the bottom up conversationcoming from citizens? How do we getparents and schools to really engage andsay, “You know, I don’t really like thisstandardized test. My kid is more thanthe ability to answer a multiple choicequestion.”JACOBS: Well, we do need account-ability, obviously. One reason that thisnutty cult of efficiency got power is thatit became clear that throwing money at

problems didn’t solve them. That does-n’t mean that nothing works but I thinkwe’ve got to look at what is sneeringlycalled “anecdotal evidence.” It’s good tohave statistics but I think anecdotalevidence is often sharper and truer.

It’s like novels. If you want to find outabout a part of the world you haven’tpersonally experienced, you probablywill get a better idea from a good novelthan you will from any nonfiction.Novels are like collections of anecdotalevidence. We should take them serious-ly and look much more at what happenswith many individuals, not as statisticsbut as stories, and use that as an impor-tant ingredient of accountability. Doesthat make sense to you?STEIN: It does make sense to me. Oneof the things I was asking these two highschool principals was, “What about fol-lowing individual students when they’reat school and when they leave? Whatabout following high school studentswhen they graduate? A year later, do thestudents feel they have learned whatthey needed? Can they tell us what theywished they had learned?” Let’s makethe measure of effectiveness the storiesof the people involved.

People can identify gaps in the publicinstitutions that I call “gluey” becausethey stick to citizens. Those institutions

because they, themselves, have?Do you think miseducation helps lead

civil servants, elected officials, themedia and institutional administratorsas well as voters astray? Do universities,schools, governments, businesses anddepartments of economics and politicalscience have an important part to playin unmasking the fraudulence of thiscult? Is information from the new sci-ence of complexity developed by physi-cists, biologists and ecologists, neededby social scientists and civil servants?Do you think university communitiesare listening to you? I would value your

thoughts about any concrete means forputting government efficiency on asaner, intellectual setting.STEIN: I agree with every word yousaid, Jane. We just assume that efficien-cy is an end, not a means. So pushingthat one step further, and asking people,“Efficient at what?” should enable us toget beyond this myth of efficiency thatdrives our public policy and harms ourpublic good. The rub is that politiciansrun a four-year cycle; their goals are shortterm. I think the real place this discus-sion has to happen is among citizens.And, it’s a tough conversation to have.

I had an e-mail today from two highschool principals in British Columbiawho said they were dissatisfied with theaccountability measures in schoolsbecause the timelines are too short.What is really the measure of an effec-tive school? It’s how well that schoolequips the students to be citizens; howwell the school equips people to be pro-ductive members of society.

In my book, I ask one of the vice pres-idents of one of our hospitals, “If it wereup to us as citizens, what criteria shouldwe use to judge a community hospital?What is reasonable?” The answer was,“Well, we measure work, we can’t beheld accountable.” I bet that wouldn’tbe good enough for you, Jane. And I


Jane Jacobs and Janice Gross Stein Efficiency and the Commons

One reason that this nutty cult of efficiency got poweris that it became clear that throwing money at problemsdidn’t solve them. Jane Jacobs

Volume 2 Number 2

people stay only within their own com-munities. They develop stereotypesabout others and opinion polarizes. Butif we don’t listen to what these parentsare saying matters to them, we’re notgoing to fix anything.JACOBS: I think it is absolutely wrongto sacrifice your children to any ideolo-gy or affinity that you have. Youabsolutely have to change it if it’s notworking for your children. That’s yourfirst responsibility when you’ve hadchildren. Any child is more importantthan any idea.

When parents want their children tobe educated in their own communitybecause they’re safer, there’s something

very wrong. One thing I have admiredabout Toronto is that there are notghettos in the sense that there are inAmerican cities. The nearest thing wehave to ghettos in Toronto are the mis-guided public housing projects but we’refinally learning how to do it right.

We also need to look at specific thingsthat make parents feel unsafe. Bullyingis very bad. And it’s amazing howprevalent it is, generation after genera-tion. My husband went to a nice subur-ban public school and he had many sto-ries to tell me about bullying and howfrightened he was to walk home atnight. I went to a nice suburban publicschool and I had no such trouble. But Iremember my brothers did. So anecdo-tal evidence suggests it’s a male problem.STEIN: Safety is one of the biggestissues that concerns parents. Thestrongest support for school choice isamong African Americans who aremoving to charter schools; the commu-nities come together, set up and runtheir own schools. These parents feelpassionately that these exclusive com-munity schools are their highest priority.JACOBS: I think it’s very importantthat such schools should be publiclyfunded because in real life one size does-n’t fit all. Every individual is different.

We know that. Every town. Every city isdifferent. Every chain store isn’t differ-ent and that’s getting very boring.STEIN: If one size doesn’t fit all, why is“choice” a right-wing word? When didchoice become a right-wing word?JACOBS: It’s a right-wing word but it’snot a right-wing deed. And it leads tothe second question I have for you.

Within hierarchies, differing arrange-ments are possible. That’s choice. Oneavailable choice is called subsidiary,meaning that higher governments candelegate various responsibilities andresources downward to governmentsthat are in closer touch with local needsand possibilities. Under this principle,

the federal government hands manyfunctions and resources to theprovinces. All federalism is built on thisidea. Under the same principle,provinces and the federal governmentshould be able to yield to municipalitiesmany responsibilities and resourcesthey badly need but now lack; they canhandle these much better than theprovinces because one size doesn’t fit allmunicipalities.

But here’s the rub. For historical rea-sons that are now long out of date,municipalities must consistently resortto begging from higher levels of govern-ment. They’re also forced to embracethe cult of efficiency. It seems thatMarshall McLuhan was right when heobserved that you can’t centralize cen-trally.STEIN: You can’t decentralize central-ly. But I think we’re on the edge ofmeeting some of the concerns thatyou’ve addressed in your work, Jane.The big missing voice in our politics iscities and communities. We can’t makethat voice heard. What stops us is thatcities and communities have no politi-cal home in our structures. I think we’reon the edge of seeing a change becauseI think hierarchy is diminishing. Ourculture isn’t as supportive of hierarchy

today as it was fifteen years ago. So,even the state, which is, after all, theultimate hierarchy, is changing on us.

Government today has to reach out.It has to pull in advice from outside. Ithas to find partners because it doesn’thave the resources or the knowledge todo it all. The old top-down hierarchicalstate that we had all through the lastcentury is beginning to transform itself.And that’s the one big positive of effi-ciency. In a sense we’ve bought theargument that old top-down hierarchi-cal structure isn’t very efficient and soit’s changing. But here’s where citizensare going to have to weigh in.

I think citizens are correctly distrust-ful of hierarchies. They’re skepticalabout markets, too. It’s that skepticismamong citizens–the lack of deference toauthority–that I’m counting on tochange the way we as citizens relate tothese institutions. It’s confounding tome that we have a guardian culturewith values. And we have a commercialculture with a set of values. But where’sthe citizen culture? How do you fit thecitizen culture into your picture?JACOBS: The hierarchy, I agree, ischanging. I think we live in a time ofwhat you might call “dying priesthoods”of all kinds. You can’t believe howintimidated women used to be by doc-tors not so long ago and how intimidat-ed everyone was by lawyers. And, ofcourse, if you read novels, you will seethat people were kept in line by clergy.

We’re also probably living in the lastdays of feudalism. It’s been a long term,thousand-year thing, but change is hap-pening rapidly lately. So, we are diggingaway at hierarchy. And I think that’sreason for optimism. On the otherhand, and there is another hand aboutthis, if we get too starry-eyed about themarket and what it can do, we get real-ly monstrous things like prisons run byprofit-making organizations. That is anabomination to my way of looking at it.And yet right here in Canada we haveit. And we’re threatened all the timewith having our health systemdestroyed by the American-type systemand that’s an abomination to my mind.

We have to be very clear about whatwe dare make the responsibility of the

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I think we live in a time of what you might call“dying priesthoods” of all kinds.

Jane Jacobs

Efficiency and the Commons Jane Jacobs and Janice Gross Stein

Volume 2 Number 2

market and what we must keep as theresponsibility of the public service andthe public good. When they get toomixed up–and this cult of efficiency isexactly such a mix-up, taken withoutunderstanding from commercial lifeand applied idiotically to govern-ment–it hurts the common good. Thereare lots of things that are not subject tobeing judged by financial success.

STEIN: Jane, in your book you talkedabout two modes of working–the com-mercial value structure and the hierar-chical value structure–and you arguedthat those values don’t move back andforth easily. What we’ve done by apply-ing markets to public goods is moveacross those two value hierarchies inways that don’t make sense.

When we look at these two ways ofworking, how do we develop a cultureof working citizens?JACOBS: It depends what kind ofwork you’re doing. Just because you’re acitizen, you’re not different from some-body governing society or keeping astore. You switch back and forth.STEIN: But how do we make citizen-ship a part-time job for everybody? Ithink as we chip away at the hierar-chies, we need to think of citizenship asa part-time job that we all have.JACOBS: Yes, there’s political citizen-ship. I used to go around and canvass. Itwas interesting, you go down your streetand talk to people and figure out whothey’re probably going to vote for. Thisis Plato citizenship. I stopped doing itbecause there wasn’t any party I felt Iwanted to help. There must have beensome earlier failure of citizenship thatthings got to that point.

But there are other ways of being citi-zens. There are some awards given inmy name to people who do things fortheir community and that’s a veryimportant kind of citizenship. Here’swhere innovation is a great thing inpublic life. The Jane Jacobs prizewin-

ners think up things that aren’t beingdone and take initiatives–having acommunity bread oven the way JuttaMason does, or watching out for thearcheology in the city the way RolloMyers does, or looking out for thehomeless the way David Walsh does.There’s Margie Zeidler who’s done somewonderful stuff with old buildings andartists’ communities. I am constantly

filled with admiration for the peoplewho are doing these things.STEIN: I think we need to think aboutcitizenship not just as voting in an elec-tion. We need to start thinking aboutcitizenship as a part-time job that we allhave. And then we ask ourselves,“Okay, which job am I going to take on?Am I going to go work in my localschool? Am I going to go help out in thelocal clinic? Am I going to help out witha community issue?” Because it seems tome that’s what crosses that bridge thatwe built between states and markets.

We know states do some things andmarkets do others–how do we fit thispart-time citizen into our economy?JACOBS: I think what you are describ-ing has a great deal in common with artwhich has always been a big questionmark. Art done for art’s sake is outsideeconomic life. Artists do need, some-how or other, to eat but that’s not whythey do art. They do it because they’redriven to it. And it’s a gift. And I thinkthat community things are done not forlivelihood and not for power. That’swhere that work belongs.

In the past, all major empires havegradually become stagnant when theywere unable to maintain themselves. Inhindsight, we can see that the course ofthis melancholy pattern is marked bywarfare that might be described as “con-tinually sporadic,” which sounds like anoxymoron, in order to combat insurrec-tions, safeguard resources, strengthenunstable borders, bring client states intoline, and oppose rival and would-be

powers. Beginning with the KoreanWar, the U.S. seems to have fallen orbeen pushed into this pattern of contin-ually sporadic warfare. The anticipatedpeace with the end of the Cold War hasnot materialized. What do you make ofthis, Janice? Is this an inevitable pat-tern for empires until they disintegrateor is there plausible reason to believethe U.S. could be an exception?STEIN: That’s a short question I couldspend the rest of my life answering. Myinstinctive response is we don’t know. Ithink the U.S. may be the exceptionand why do I think that?

I think that warfare was highly orga-nized, and I think that’s now in ourpast. We’ll see some of it–just like peo-ple duelled even after duelling was out-lawed. But I think that large-scale,mass movement, commanded controlwarfare, which not only definedempires but which made states, is com-ing to a close. The modern state, as weknow it, grew out of the capacity tomake war. So did empires. War was thehandmaid. Bureaucracies grew aroundwar making. I think that idea is com-ing to a close. I really do. And we’removing to a different kind of network:knowledge-based world will. Therewill be lots of struggle. Power will stillmatter. It’s naïve to think it won’t.Work will still matter. Economics willstill matter, but we may have passedthrough the death of empires throughcontinuous warfare.JACOBS: Good. I certainly hopeyou’re right. That’s what I would like tobelieve, too.

Janice Gross Stein is the HarrowstonProfessor of Conflict Management in theDepartment of Political Science and theDirector of the Munk Centre forInternational Studies at the University ofToronto. She is the winner of the EdgarFurniss Prize for outstanding contribu-tion to the study of international securi-ty and civil-military education. She iscurrently a member of the InternationalSecurity Committee of the AmericanAcademy of Science and the Committeeon International Conflict Resolution ofthe National Academy of Sciences.

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I think as we chip away at the hierarchies, we need tothink of citizenship as a part-time job that we all have.

Janice Gross Stein

Jane Jacobs and Janice Gross Stein Efficiency and the Commons

Volume 2 Number 2

The Jane Jacobs Prize is anannual acknowledgement ofindividuals who are contribut-

ing to the fabric of Toronto in uniqueways that demonstrate the ideas ofJane Jacobs. The recipients’ contribu-tions have probably not been publiclyrecognized. And, as with the work ofJane Jacobs, their work reflects differ-ent aspects of city life. This groupdoesn’t always agree on what makesthe city work. Or what the answers areto making it work better. But this is allpart of urban life: we learn from eachother’s observations and experiences.

The Jane Jacobs Prize, created as atribute to Jane, draws together peoplewho care about cities, specificallyToronto, in order to better understandhow citizens make a difference. It isfunded by Alan Broadbent, chair ofAvana Capital, who is a longtime pro-ponent of Jane’s ideas and advocate ofher work. The prize includes a cashaward of $5,000 per year for threeyears, and membership in an exclusivegroup of thinkers and doers.

Previous recipients1999: Mary Lou Morgan (food entre-preneur and activist) and DanYashinsky (storyteller). See Ideas ThatMatter Vol 1 No. 1.2000: Rollo Myers (urban historian)and Iria Vieira (community organizer).See Ideas That Matter Vol 1 No. 3.

2001 RECIPIENTS:JUTTA MASON ANDDAVID WALSHJutta Mason – Giving a wholenew meaning to Parks and RecJutta Mason is an urban dynamo. Thesoul behind the revitalization ofDufferin Grove Park, she is the yeastthat spawned the community breadoven which has so much been the hall-mark of community revitalization for

the Dufferin Grove Park community.Jutta Mason has a profound belief in

public space–the Commons–and itsvalue in making neighbourhoods work.

Born in Germany in 1947, Juttaimmigrated to Canada as a child in1956. She originally trained as a nurse.Her interests–both professionally andas a volunteer–have always revolvedaround communities, and the way inwhich the people who inhabit themfind ways to care for each other.

While home schooling her threechildren, Jutta read a book by AlisonStallibrass about a community centrein England between the two worldwars, called the Peckham Centre. Thisbook galvanized her into approachingher local community centre with somefriends to set up an “indoor park.” Itquickly grew into a once-a-week“scene” involving 60 to 100 people,food, music, and lots of fort-buildingby the kids. It’s still going. When shemoved to a block away from DufferinGrove Park, a neighbourhood withthree high schools nearby, she attend-ed a few meetings and heard sugges-tions that the teenagers who hung outon the streets and in the park, swear-ing and making trouble, ought to bearrested and jailed. She had theimpression lots of the people who livedin her neighbourhood didn’t knoweach other. She had a suspicion thatpeople living side by side as strangerswould be more likely to see confine-ment as the only form of social con-trol.

So she helped to create Friends ofDufferin Grove Park which now boastsa community bread oven, a skatingrink, and a clubhouse and hosts a widerange of community activities, bothformally organized and spontaneous.Jutta claims one of her biggest achieve-ments has been hunting up old forgot-ten Parks locker-room benches andgetting them put out all around the

park. Every day the benches are in dif-ferent positions, depending onwhether they were most recently usedfor courting or snoozing or hanging upthe laundry for the homeless people’swashday. Or for rapping at midnightbeside the basketball court. Or as spec-tator benches for a theatre piece. Or asa nursing/changing bench beside thebake-oven on family pizza days. Orpiled on top of each other as a boldand innocent statement about thepower of teenagers to rearrange theworld. Fun!

Over the years, Dufferin Grove Parkhas been the subject of much attentionfrom communities across NorthAmerica wishing to learn from its suc-cesses. But some of what has been writ-ten and said about the experiments atthe park has irritated those who wereactually there. So last fall, a group ledby Jutta decided it would pre-empt theanthropologists who wanted “to use usas their natives” by establishing theirown research centre, the Centre forLocal Research into Public Space.“Establishing the Centre was prettystraightforward, since we already hadthe park clubhouse and the colouredpaper and the computer printer tomake the signs for the door,” said Jutta.One book has been published: Cookingwith Fire in Public Space. [To order, seepage 23.] Two more are on the way:What is a Park? and Whose Conflict is itanyway?

David Walsh – Communitybuilding from the ground upDavid Walsh is a real estate investorwho contributes literally to the build-ing of communities. Through RealcoProperty Limited, in which he is apartner, he has invested in downtowncommercial properties throughoutOntario and Quebec for the last threedecades. Initial investments focusedon historic buildings such as the

18 A quarterly

Winners of the Jane Jacobs Prize: 2001 & 2002Jutta Mason, David Walsh, Amanuel Melles and Mel Greif

Volume 2 Number 2

Gooderham Flat-Iron Building indowntown Toronto, the Flat-IronBuilding in Atlanta, Georgia, and theSt. Lawrence Building in Port Hope.Subsequent developments haveincluded downtown retail propertiessuch as the Carrot Common, a retaildevelopment on Danforth Ave that isa partnership with the Big CarrotNatural Food Market.

The projects that interest David areones that strengthen a community’ssense of itself, enrich its history, andempower its future. He is also critical-ly concerned about people’s basicneeds.

David’s interests and commitmentto community and neighbourhood arebroad: from retaining the GooderhamFlat-Iron building in which his office islocated, to advocating for the residentsof Tent City, a temporary shelter thatcurrently houses a few dozen ofToronto’s homeless on a portion ofvacant waterfront lands, David Walshis a force with which to be reckoned.Quiet and determined, his values areput in play every day as he tacklesobstacles preventing someone’s accessto the basic entitlements of life: foodand shelter.

His efforts often pit him against bus-iness colleagues who don’t alwaysshare his commitment to social justice.“I have three children in their twen-ties,” says David. “I know all abouthaving my views challenged on a rou-tine basis.” But more often than not,David is able to bring others along intheir understanding and appreciationof the challenges many in the city face,and of their obligation to respond andparticipate in finding practical solu-tions.

2002 RECIPIENTS –AMANUEL MELLES ANDMEL GREIF

Amanuel Melles – Organizingnewcomer communitiesOriginally from Eritrea, Amanuel(Aman) came to Canada in 1993with hope of creating a more stableand peaceful life for him and his fam-

ily. A lecturer and former Head ofthe Marine Biology and Fisheriesdepartment of the University ofAsmara, Aman is an immigrant whosees that Toronto must combine thebest of the old world with the new.He brings a tremendous sense ofgrace and respect for valuable tradi-tions, but also does not hesitate toquestion the ongoing relevancy ofcertain practices and institutions.

Amanuel has done extensive com-munity work since his arrival toCanada, including helping to foundthe Eritrean Canadian Society forYouth Advancement. He is a strongadvocate of immigrant communitiesmaking an effective transition toCanadian life, believing firmly thatthey must rise above any conflictsthey have brought with them.Having lived within a war-torncountry for many years, Amanexhorts settlement communities toput aside their divided pasts, and hasspearheaded various efforts to settleconflicts and encourage newcomercommunities to engage in Canadianlife. Often plagued by fragmentationand competing agendas, Aman has

been able to forge new partnershipswithin the African settlement com-munity in particular.

In addition to his involvement inhis local Toronto and newcomercommunities, Aman helped foundand chaired Canadians for Peace andDevelopment in Eritrea, a Toronto-based nongovernmental organizationthat has been vehemently advocat-ing for peace and respect for human

rights in the context of the warbetween Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Aman has actively volunteered ingrassroots organizations committedto immigrant youth development,suicide prevention, social justice andcommunity peacebuilding. He is anavid user of electronic technologies,and has incorporated them into hisvarious community building andadvocacy efforts. He is a mentor tonewcomer refugee youth, a commu-nity leader, and a vital example ofthe tenacity and commitmentrequired to make the transition to anew culture.

Currently, he is the Manager forCommunity Action at the FamilyService Association of Toronto, and

19A quarterly

Winners of the Jane Jacobs Prize: 2001 and 2002

Left to right: Iria Vieira, David Walsh, Jutta Mason, Dan Yashinsky, Mel Greif,Amanuel Melles, Mary Lou Morgan, Jane Jacobs and Rollo Myers (front).

Volume 2 Number 2

volunteers as a member of the Boardof Toronto Distress Centres, Co-chair of African CanadianCommunities Social DevelopmentCouncil and is the Vice President ofthe Community Social PlanningCouncil of Toronto. He is also a deepsea diver, and holds a Masters degreein Applied and Fundamental MarineEcology from Vrije Universiteit inBrussels. Prior to coming to Canada,he spent ten years in research andacademia in Eritrea, Mauritius,Kenya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Italy,Germany, Belgium and TheNetherlands.

Mel Greif – History in actionMel Greif, like Amanuel Melles, is animmigrant to Canada who choseToronto. A refugee, Mel left his homeof Czechoslovakia after World War II,and as a result is deeply sympathetic tothe issues of building love for a newcountry, respect for diversity andaccommodating newcomers during dif-ficult times.

He is the President of theCzechoslovak (Toronto) CreditUnion, which since the mid 1960s hasenabled hundreds of newcomers fromthe old Czechoslovakia to pay theirfirst and last month’s rent and buytheir first cars and their first furniture,as well tools with which to start newbusinesses.

A high school history teacher forover thirty years, Greif is renowned forhis inspirational lectures and innova-tive teaching style, having experi-mented with conveying his abidinginterest in the story of Canada. Hiscreativity, specific knowledge of andinterest in urban, aesthetic andhuman-interest opportunities havebeen coupled with boundless energyand enthusiasm. Mel Greif has a spe-cial interest in Canadian urban histor-ical geography and the nature andshape of cities and their architecture.Currently, Greif has partnered his highschool Humberside Collegiate withthe West Toronto and JunctionHistorical Society to complete a hous-

ing and building inventory. Historystudents are learning about their com-munity as well as techniques of prima-ry research. Additionally, because ofhis long tenure at HumbersideCollegiate, he has been able to use theschool, a historic institution in its ownright and a fine example of theCollegiate Gothic style with Italianateflourishes, as a laboratory in which togive students opportunities to takepossession of their heritage.

During the Humberside CollegiateInstitute Centennial celebrations, MelGreif made sure that hundreds of stu-dents were involved, over a period offive years. A massive set of Canadianhistory-based stained-glass windowswas installed. Well known Canadianglass artist, Robert Jekyll, usedresearch contributed by students inMel’s grade ten Enriched History class-es to compose six massive windowsunder the enthusiastic direction of MelGreif.

Humberside and its students have along tradition, stretching back to1926, of sponsoring Canadian artists.Arthur Lismer was commissioned topaint what is thought to be the largestCanadian mural–The HumbersideLismer Mural. This famous paintingwas dismantled, damaged and partiallylost during school reconstruction. Melhas raised over $100,000 from alumniand government and cultural sourcesand arranged for the repatriation anddeaccessioning of the missing pieces.After seven years of creative and hardwork by conservators from Queen’sUniversity, the glorious mural onceagain hangs in its full majesty in theschool auditorium, renamed LismerHall. The story of Canadian values,exploration and settlement is continu-ally retold to his students as they takepart in assembly exercises under thecolourful Lismer creation. Without thelong term initiative, driving force,continual activity and successfulfundraising abilities of Mel Greif, thismural would have remained “lost.”The project is now in its final stagewith the last missing piece havingbeen located.

An active community member,Greif has helped the AnnexRatepayers Association as a boardmember with responsibility for zoningand planning, and as a member ofGrassroots Albany, where he has beenactive in the planting of trees, shrubsand other plants. Currently Greif andothers are bringing back amphibians tothis special corner of the Annex as anexperiment in rebuilding the environ-ment.

JANE JACOBS: I feel very simulta-neously very proud and very humbledto be associated with this prize,because of these wonderful people andwhat they do. And there are a lot ofpeople who haven’t been recognizedyet, so the prize can go on for a longtime.

I’ve been thinking about the win-ners so far. They’re all live wires.That’s one thing they have in com-mon; another thing is that they have alot of initiative, obviously. The thirdthing is that they’re originals. Theythink of things to do–or they juststumble over things to do, to hearthem tell it–that nobody else is doing.And the first response they get is, “Youcan’t do that,” or “That’s not allowed,”or “That won’t work,” or whatever.These prizewinners don’t pay anyattention. We have to get their spiritinto more people who are in authority.

Honouring the prizewinners’ under-standing of what this city is and whatmakes it work is really the point behindthese awards. If these people were justlonely atoms doing their own thing,that would be pretty sad and ineffec-tive. But they do their thing and tellothers, who also get involved, andthat’s what makes our city possible.

Editor’s note: Recipients of the Jane JacobsPrize are nominated by a diverse group ofanonymous “spotters.” Jane Jacobs playsno role in the selection or administration ofthe prize, but is warmly hospitable and, asalways, constructively provocative atsemi-annual gatherings of the recipients.

20 A quarterly

Winners of the Jane Jacobs Prize: 2001 and 2002

Volume 2 Number 2

The C5 provides opportunities forthe Mayors of Canada’s fivemajor hubs to discuss common

challenges facing their urban regions anddevelop mutually beneficial strategies.

In May 2001 at the invitation of JaneJacobs, the Mayors of Vancouver,Calgary, Toronto and Montréal convenedwith their host, the Mayor of Winnipeg,to form the C5. The discussions of thatfirst meeting were summarized in Volume2 No. 1 of Ideas That Matter (availableat www.ideasthatmatter.com).

The C5 met for a second time inJanuary 2002, in Vancouver. Hosted byVancouver Mayor Philip Owen, the sec-ond meeting included two newly electedMayors–David Bronconnier fromCalgary and Gerald Tremblay fromMontréal–and returning Mayors MelLastman from Toronto and Glen Murrayfrom Winnipeg. Each Mayor was accom-panied by a community delegation of upto five of his choosing.

The following is excerpted from theopening session of this historic secondmeeting, where British Columbia PremierGordon Campbell exchanged ideas withJane Jacobs. The C5 meets again in June2002 in Montréal.

JANE JACOBS: It’s hard for me to beanything but upbeat because I’ve beenhaving such a good time in Vancouverand I’ve been seeing such wonderfulthings. Really, the planners and thecity administration here are brilliantand how they do things in Vancouveris really very heartening.

However, a big however, I don’treally feel I can be upbeat at thispoint. In spite of it being the best oftimes as well as the worst of times,which is usually the case, I feel a greatsense of urgency that we have to makechanges in our system affecting cities.

Calgary has emerged out of a sort ofcity adolescence in the last half cent-ury but, in a country the size ofCanada, one emerging creative city in

fifty years is simply not enough. Andto have a whole section of the countrysuch as the Atlantic provinces withouta single creative metropolis in it is agreat drag and a great waste of humanpotential as well as a sign that some-thing is awfully wrong.

Now I would like to mention somecatch phrases. One of them is “learnedhelplessness” and we know how badthat is for people. It’s also bad for set-tlements and the way that our munic-ipalities are placed in relationship tothe two senior levels of government isjust tailor-made for learned helpless-ness. It comes from the old sort ofOliver Twist days when the provinceswere the only ones with the expertiseto run these country-bumpkin placesthat formed Canada at the time.Things have changed. Learned help-lessness is very demoralizing to ourcities. It has infantilized a lot of theirattitudes, making their own citizensdisrespect their governments becausethey see they don’t have power. LikeOliver Twist, cities are always saying,“Please, may I have more?” And youcan see a reflection of this in low voterturnouts in municipal elections. Thisis bad.

The second catch word I would liketo mention is “particularity.” We hearevery other day now that Canada is 80percent urbanized, which sounds as if80 percent of us live in cities. What itactually means is that 20 percent ofthe population is living in very ruraleconomies and the rest live in largecities, little company towns and exur-bias as well as suburbs that work asdormitories–all very different kinds ofplaces. Particularity is importantbecause when senior levels of govern-ment try to micromanage or evensemi-micromanage all these so-calledurban places, they’ve got an awful lotof different kinds of problems and dif-ferent kinds of places. They can’t pos-sibly know them all intimately

enough. So what do they do? The onlything that centralized governmentshave ever been able to do in such situ-ations is to try to make one size fit all.To try to standardize solutions. To tryto pretend that places are more alikethan they are. This doesn’t work well.And yet there’s no way out of it exceptdevolving more authority and moreresources to deal with things down tothese various different kinds of munic-ipalities.

The ones that actually can’t handlethese things will need the province totake care of them in ways that themore sophisticated, complete andmore experienced settlements don’tneed. Over the course of time, thisproblem of particularity grows moreintense and learned helplessnessbecomes so demoralizing. Somethinghas got to give and this is what I feelurgent about.

The system that we have inheritedand have neglected to change not onlyvictimizes cities, it’s also bad for theother two levels of government. Forexample, the federal governmentrightly feels frustrated and resentfulwhen it allocates grants to provincesthat are intended to go for city infra-structure such as transit, and theprovince in turn lowers the amount ofits grant to the municipalities. Whathas the federal government accom-plished? I mention transit becausethere’s exactly this kind of kafufflegoing on with the federal government,the province of Ontario and the city ofToronto right now with the transitgrant that the federal governmentgave, or promised, the province andthe province now thinks, “Ah-ha, wedon’t have to give as much to thecities,” and the federal governmentsays, “Well we won’t give you thisunless you restore the amount youwere giving.” It’s a very mean mess.

The provinces are big on their ownparticularity and they should be. They

21A quarterly

C5 Meeting – VancouverJanuary 2002

Volume 2 Number 2

all have different problems. They arenot only different geographically, theyalso have different histories and differ-ent expectations of different possibili-ties. They bridle very much when thefederal government, for instance,wants to make them too standardizedor doesn’t honour their particularity.However, curiously enough theprovinces don’t see that what’s saucefor the goose is sauce for the gander.They’ve got to respect the particular-ity within their own provinces. I don’tneed to say how frustrated and resent-ful the cities are at their learned andenforced helplessness. And the peopleway down at the bottom of the totempole–the taxpayers, for instance–weget resentful and frustrated because weknow how much we pay in taxes.

We’ve got to get out of these boxes.It’s not just a matter of physical infra-structure. It’s not just a matter of eco-nomics. It’s not just a matter of moreefficient government. They’re allimportant and we need to change ourpresent arrangements for all those rea-sons and others. But it’s also because ofthis demoralization. If we had somekind of measurement of envy andspleen in Canada we would see thatthese have been on the increase. Thisis not good. A federation isn’t meantfor that; a federation should mean thatits various parts support each otherand help each other so everybody canfeel proud and secure about belongingto it. And, the higher the gauge ofenvy and spleen, the more the countryis undercut. As somebody who lovesCanada and is proud and happy to behere, it distresses me to see that.

PREMIER GORDON CAMPBELL:I think we have to stop talking onlyabout cities and provinces and govern-ments. I think we have to start talkingabout citizens because until we talkabout citizens and the services thatthey expect and deserve and need,we’re going to continue with the kindof wrangling that we’ve had in thepast.

One of the reasons I decided to runprovincially is because, as Mayor of

Vancouver, I saw how much was nothappening because of the impositionof provincial constraints and unfound-ed mandates that didn’t allow us to dosensible things that we could plan outover time. Cities are, frankly, far betterat planning than provinces.

I think what we have to start think-ing about first is citizens and thencommunities and then cities and thenprovinces and then the feds. And theway we created this country in 1867 iswe started first with the provinces,then we got the feds, and we fit theselittle tiny responsibilities for cities inbetween mental institutions and pub-lic housing. That pyramid has got tochange.

In British Columbia, what we’re try-ing to do with our Community Charteris start to exercise that change andactually get ahead of it because it’sgoing to happen whether governmentsor politicians want it to or not. I thinka lot of the frustration the citizens feelis the real world pushing against insti-tutional infrastructures that are resis-tant to change and we’re losing thepolitical leadership to move us forward.

And I do think it requires politicalleadership. The leadership is going tocome from you [municipal leaders]because you are connected the closestto your citizens and you can createthat understanding, that literacyamong the electorate, of what you cando to meet their needs.

I don’t really think people standaround asking themselves, “How do westart taking care of cities?” They think,“How do I start taking care of myself?How do I make sure I live in a safe andsecure community? How do I live in aplace where there is cultural activitytaking place–where there’s excitement,diversity?”

There is a book called CosmopolitanCulture (Atheneum, 1987) by BonnieMenes Kahn that talks about howcities can attract people and what theycan do to build not only a sense ofbelonging to a place but also intellec-tual capital. All those things, I think,create the fabric we need to strength-en the federation, to strengthen our

provinces, but most importantly toreinforce people’s own lives and theircreativity and stability.

I want you to be a little more upbeatthan you are right now. But I want theupbeatness to start from the ground upas opposed to starting from the topdown. We have to try to liberate peo-ple so they can be part of that. OurCommunity Charter will give cities inBritish Columbia responsibilities andresources. There’s no more download-ing but there’s also no more uploading.

It’s time for us to take responsibilityfor what we’re doing and demand thatour provinces give us those responsi-bilities. That demand has got to beframed not in terms of “we want moremoney,” which makes it too easy forprovinces to say no. We hope that cre-ating a Community Charter and pro-viding local autonomy, local account-ability and local responsibility willactually reinvigorate the electorate.And, if we can be successful with ourexperiment here in B.C., we believewe’ll then be able to go to the feds andsay, “See how we did it in B.C.? Youshould do that federally with the otherprovinces.”

And I just want to say this to themayors while I’ve got the chance: I amnot one of the big fans of saying, “Let’sget a Federal ministry that will doleout money to municipalities,” becauseI will guarantee you that it will not doit on the basis of your priorities. It willdole out money on the basis of its ownpriorities and they’ll be political andtypically they will fail.

I think we have to work together.Provincially, we’re going to try to workwith the City of Vancouver and withother municipalities to make sure thatthey get the autonomy they need, thatthey get the resources they need tomake decisions. And I’m going to say,frankly again, that this is selfish. I’vegot enough problems at the provinciallevel without dealing with local prob-lems. So, I think that we can make amajor institutional shift here. I thinkwe can unlearn our helplessness.

C5 Meeting – Vancouver

22 A quarterly

Volume 2 Number 2 23A quarterly

Appearance & RealityStephen Hogbin(BETHEL, CT: CAMBIUM PRESS,2000) $44.95

Handsomely designed, richly and sys-tematically illustrated, well-pacedand accessible, Stephen Hogbin’sAppearance & Reality is an importanttransitional treatise for the arts anddesign world. As many of the mani-festos of design modernism shockedtheir advocates by crumbling meredecades after their heroic proclama-tions, late 20th century aesthetic lifedeclined into the “style wars” of post-modernist fragments versus nostalgicand limited late modernism. Ratherthan argue from either perspective,Hogbin presents a global and refresh-ingly constructive look at the com-munity-based approaches recentlyemerging in art and design.

Quadriforms and other diagrams,concise probing text, diversethoughtful quotations and sump-tuous photographs of worksfrom four regional groups ofmakers (central Canada,southeast England, northernCalifornia and southeastAustralia) are the four-part har-mony woven by Hogbin to stim-ulate and reintegrate designthinking from the more convention-al structural approach to a newrespect for the embodied wholeness

of life experience. The last chapter,Critical Methods, confirms one’spleasure and profit in revisiting manyparts of the book repeatedly.

For those who have read andappreciated Hogbin’s earlier work,this book gives one immediatedelight and great anticipation.Appearance & Reality is a distilledjournal of his life to date as a design-er, his journeys in its service, and hisrelationship to these global commu-nities encountered.

Appearance & Reality is not aclosed mechanical system. It is anopen invitation to a richer and root-ed complexity in creativity.

– John Harrison

Also referencedin this issue

An Economics of Peace,E. F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry andSusan Witt. (Great Barrington, MA:E. F. Schumacher Society, 2001)$10.00

Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs.(New York: Random House, 1992)$17.95

Cooking with Fire in Public Space(Toronto: Dufferin Grove Park,2001) $10.00

The Cult of EfficiencyJanice Gross Stein(TORONTO: ANANSI PRESS, 2001)$16.95

We live in an age dominated by thecult of efficiency. Efficiency in theraging debate about public goods isoften used as a code word to advancepolitical agendas. When it is used cor-rectly, efficiency is important: it mustalways be part of the conversationwhen resources are scarce and citizensand governments have importantchoices to make among competingpriorities.

Even when the language of efficien-cy is used carefully, that language aloneis not enough. Unilingualism will notdo. We need to go beyond the cult ofefficiency to talk about accountability.Much of the democratic debate of thenext decade will turn on how account-ability becomes part of our public con-versation and whether it is imposed ornegotiated.

In The Cult of Efficiency, JaniceGross Stein draws on public edu-cation and universal health care,locally and globally, as flash-points in the debate about theirefficiency. She argues that whatwill define the quality of educa-

tion–from Ontario to India–andthe quality of health care–from

China to Alberta–is whether citizensand governments can negotiate newstandards of accountability.

Books That Matter

Order these and otherBooks That Matter from:

THE GINGER PRESS BOOKSHOP848 Second Ave East, Owen Sound

Ontario, Canada N4K 2H31-800-463-9937 • (519) 376-4233

Fax (519) [email protected]

Place your order on-line:www.gingerpress.com

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