Stephen Rees’s blog

and ensuring room for industry – key issues in regional development
This dialogue series will explore the linkages between transportation and density, as well as the need for mechanisms, such as a designation for industrial lands in Metro Vancouver.

I won’t be going to the Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue on May 1 at 11:30am even though it is usually a nice free lunch. There’s a limit to how much of this stuff I can take.

The panel is:

Ann McAfee
retired Director of Planning, City of Vancouver and Principal, City Choices Consulting

Sheri Plewes
Vice President, Planning and Capital Management, TransLink

Bill Tucker
Director, National Association of Industrial & Office Properties

Bob Wilds
Managing Director, Greater Vancouver Gateway Council

This does not seem to me to represent even a pretence at “balance”. It is the elite telling us what is good for us. The audience, being mostly business people, will lap it up. There may be a few greenies, and even fewer genuinely interested ordinary citizens. But the “discussion ” is you ask a brief question and all four on the panel will be allowed to pontificate at length, usually just restating what we have already heard.

Metro has teamed up with the Board of Trade to run these things, so it is not as if they are actually trying very hard to hear anything but business interests.

They do not even give poor old Rafe Mair a credit any more. And he is about the only person on the platform who will cast doubt upon the Gateway, or any of the rest of the “even more business as usual” message.

Lois Jackson writes

While Metro Vancouver has earned its reputation as one of the most livable places in the world, now, as we shift our focus to the longer term sustainability of our region, some of the challenges we face and opportunities available to us are crying out for attention.

New and innovative approaches to regional issues and attention to the growing impacts and opportunities of globalization are fundamental if we are to sustain those things that make our region special. Therefore, your opinions and participation at these sessions are vitally welcome and important.

And if you think she really means that you can register by sending an email to RegionalDialogueWoskCentre (at) metrovancouver.org - just make sure to take out the spaces and replace the at with the right sign