Dear Greenspace Alliance members and friends,

I am writing in response to the thoughtful postings made regarding Christine Hartig’s request for ideas on resolving environmental issues in Ottawa. (This also relates to Erwin’s recent posting on the Ottawa Official Plan Review.)

There are certainly many well-conceived ideas on ways to resolve the crises that are related to our neglect and abuse of nature. Acting on any one of the suggestions that have been made, such as creating better modes of public transportation, organizing “watershed walks”, and planning to conserve or restore wild places, would be a blessing. Especially if, as Albert Dugal noted, they were designed, planned and acted on with an integrated approach.

I would like to suggest a novel approach that arose from a series of conversations, in the early 1990s, with two fellow residents of Ottawa, Gail Stewart and Nikki Basuk. We met together to explore ways of planning and living in our region that would go beyond the conventions of “ecosystem” methods and the business-as-usual agenda in regional land-use plans. We had become restless with the limitations of what was being proposed by the planners and consultants for a Regional Offical Plan review.

The “citizen participation” approach presented by regional planners for the Official Plan review was, we thought, unsatisfactory. Such approaches most often reduce residents to being mere commentators on plans that have already been made. This leaves residents without any say in the overall aims, structure and process of planning for their communities.
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Yet, we didn’t want to start a separate, alternative planning group outside of community or government. Since we as residents are responsible for our governments and they are there to serve us, it was important to be recognized, listened to and linked directly into the regional planning review. Moreover, the Regional Planning Department needed to participate in review processes created by residents.

We met with officials of the Regional Planning Department (with the aid of a Carleton University political science professor) and were pleased to find our proposal accepted for an associated planning process created by residents. This associated process would involve residents working with each other, and with the planners, rather than regional government staff doing the planning and then presenting it (often all too briefly) for residents’ input.

Our aim was to create and engage in a Residents’ Associated Process, open to everyone as residents of the Greater Ottawa-Carleton region (including the Outaouais Regional Community).

We also thought it was essential for this be a social, economic and ecological planning process for the whole region and all of its inhabitants – land forms, plants, animals.. This led us to imagining an “approach for learning to live and plan with the larger natural ecology of the land” in the Region of Ottawa-Carleton (ROC). From this perspective, each part of our lives – personal, social, cultural, economic – is an expression of and contributes to (for better or worse) the larger natural community of the region. This would be quite different than conventional planning, which focuses more on using land for narrowly defined purposes, such as expanding housing development. The broader approach that we explored was to plan with the natural forms and processes of the land and its local inhabitants.

From then on, the title of this initiative became Residents’ Associated Process – Region of Ottawa-Carleton, RAP-ROC.

Rather than go into the details of what was proposed and done, I can send to those interested a notice that we sent out to invite people to participate in the Residents’ Associated Process. I would also be glad to post the notice on the GACC website (in the “Living in the Land” forum).

Another way to find out what was done is to contact the City Planning Department. They ought to have a record of RAP-ROC, since the Regional Planning Department, in 1995, did receive and agree to keep in accessible public files each document from the Residents’ Associated Process for reviewing the Official Plan.

This was a community planning process that opened the way for creative thinking through all the sciences and arts, and most importantly, through conversations and the sharing of stories among people as residents of the land – from local to regional to continental to earth perspectives.

The Residents’ Associated Process that happened during 1994-1995 was a modest endeavour, involving a small number of residents and planners. We felt nonetheless that the process had opened a door to a different way of local planning. It initiated an improved citizen-government relationship, yet also went further in creating a new way for planners and citizens to come together to plan as fellow residents of the land in the Ottawa region.

It’s never too late to engage in this kind of planning process. We need to keep on reminding ourselves and our city planners and councillors that this can be done. Our governments may then begin to learn with us to co-plan* in ways that contribute to well-being of the land-community.

Thanks for your attention.

Lorne Peterson**
January 2008

*One of the latest ideas in the environmental governance field is co-planning. For example, aboriginal peoples and forest companies are currently engaged in co-management projects. The Residents’ Associated Process approach can be seen as a pioneering step towards co-planning. A new book has just come out from UBC Press: Adaptive Co-Management: Collaboration, Learning and Multi-level Governance. One of the co-ordinators of this book project, and co-editors, is Nancy Doubleday, an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at Carleton University.

**As some Greenspace Alliance members and friends know, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, I was engaged as a resident, and independent writer and photographer, in proposing and working on a series of projects for making “an ecological portrait” of the Ottawa-Rideau-Gatineau River Region. This is a project-in-process that I plan to continue when I return to Ottawa. The latest working title is “Greater Ottawa Ecology: Explorations and Expressions of Where we Live”. I showed photographs, stories and poems from the project in public exhibits during the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. One of the exhibits was at the Region of Ottawa-Carleton headquarters during an “Ideas Fair” for the Official Plan Review, 1994-95.
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