“What needs to be done to improve our communities ? ”

1. “What needs to be done to improve our communities ? ” A tough question posed to Yves Bourgeois, Ph.D., Director, UNB Urban and community studies institute 21 inc accelerator, Saint John, 18 January 2013

2. Which questions to ask ? • Howdo you define and measure community sustainability ? • Whodefines sustainability ? • How do we make communities more sustainable? • Do we choose which communities to sustain?

3. Bubble communities keep more people out than they let in

4. Sustainability requires a case to be made • Can you define and measure sustainability ? …GNB • JF started project as part of PhD -- poached by Rural Sec • So... How do we keep young workers ? • First, Robert P's Q -- why not bypass small Atlantic towns and move straight to TO ? We need that argumentation straight • …which made me ask why is it OK to accept migration from PA to SJ or Fred as inevitable but not to TO? • After all, there are upsides • remittances (Ft McMurray, Guatemala), vehicle sales in North NB • educational and works experiences that develop skills and connexions • attraction and repatriation > retention (YB experience)

5. We have cultivated a collective image of NB as mountaineers in rural nirvana

6. Crocodile Dundee from the Australian Outback… …was played by Paul Hogan, a steelworker from Sydney

7. Small towns are increasingly interpenetrated… …with larger urban areas

8. Urbanization has been around • Urbanization has been occurring in NB 100+ yrs • Urban-rural dichotomy is passé– less and less spatial division of labour and industries (resource vs manufacturing/services) • Rural areas within 1hr of CMAs have become bedroom communities with increasingly “urban” amenities (Scott 2013) • The hometown (village) in which I grew up grew up no longer exists • "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” (Tom Wolfe, You can’t go home again) • Reinvention

9. Communities are evolving organisms: they live, grow, mutate…

10. Trip down nostalgic memory lane, but • Historical Entitlement (“We’ve always had”) no longer an adequate argument • Not euthanizing communities, but they need to be built the ground up, the biz case has to be made, continuously

11. Lucas’ cone – I scream and not ice cream • A great deal of public infrastructure was built during post-WW2 era (1950-1970) of 4-6% rapid growth, and we are now scrambling to maintain infrastructure with stagnant 1-3% growth • Dieppe et al setting themselves up with extensive growth vsintensive • Unrealistic expectations of growth and gov role

12. Pathways to sustainability • Government led, ex. healthcare • strategic planning of facilities and care  mass protests, death threats • accident-induced attrition (Perth Andover)same will start happening with roads (washout) and condemned schools • Community-led, multilevel partners • TG 2.0, RSCs, polycentric community planning

13. Social innovations • Romanian school systems maximizes public infrastructure • “Smart” transportation strategy • Polycentric urban strategy: corridors and triangles • Scaling up social capital, global pipelines • Not just small communities -- people who see SJ as big city has never left the Maritimes • Tech tools

14. Summary • How do you define and measure community sustainability ? • Who defines sustainability ? • How do we make communities more sustainable? • Do we choose which communities to sustain? • “Why not bypass Atlantic towns and move straight to TO ?” • Why is it OK to accept migration from PA to SJ or Fred as inevitable but not to TO?