Archibald or Baron? Some thoughts on density and history

The proposed Baron development is fine. Not great. Not exceptional. Fine.

And the Archibald block, at least with a massive awning obscuring its historic looks, is also fine. Not great, not exceptional. Fine.

This is the problem. And given this, what’s most important when we’re just working with fine — history, or density?

Screen capture of City of Edmonton video.

To bring you up to speed, a nine to 11 storey development, called The Baron, is proposed at Whyte Avenue and 105 Street. To build the Baron, the developer would have to demolish the Archibald Block, the street-retail box at Whyte Avenue and 105 Street.

Now, ordinarily, I’m against demolishing historic buildings that add needed street retail atmosphere as buildings erected before the rise of the car, like the Archibald Block, seem so effective at doing.

There’s now a campaign to “Keep the old in Old Strathcona” from a group called Heritage Forward. It hopes to drive residents to share their views on the proposal with the City of Edmonton.

My issue is that the Archibald, with its very large awning, evokes approximately zero historic feeling as I look at it or walk past it. It looks like an anodyne retail box like so many others, dominated by its awning rather than architectural features or signs of patina.

Perhaps others would feel more compelled by the history along Whyte if we showed it off a bit better. If we told its story a touch more clearly.

I think The Baron would be great anywhere other than along Whyte Avenue — unless it was built on a current parking lot or brownfield area and therefore adding a building where there isn’t one currently. But I also think The Archibald needs to look its part to engender support to save it from the wrecking ball.

So, which is it: fine history or fine density? Or should we ask for something better?

A quick proposal for a cheaper, more democratic future for mobility

There is a coming revolution in mobility. The future is electric.

But you already knew that.

What you might not know is that there’s a potential democratization of mobility that could change our lives for the better — if governments make smart decisions right now.

While we focus on the electric part of the future, what could also shift is the intellectual-property side of things. The small electric vehicles of the future — e-bikes, e-trikes, e-whatever else — could share key interchangeable components in ways that current automakers do, but in a very limited way.

Why should we care? Cost and simplicity.

Shared components and standardized mounting points would dramatically lower costs for consumers, allow all sorts of new manufacturers to set up shop in places where manufacturing has been fleeing, and offer cutting edge options without having to invest huge amounts in research and development. You could have a scenario where someone buys an e-bike but, rather than replace the whole thing in five or ten years, simply upgrades the motor and battery and saves a whole lot of money.

In short, if we incentivize the next generation of mobility to be more collaborative and sustainable than the current world of auto manufacturers are, we might shift more than just how we move.

Of course, this won’t happen unless we begin to adopt standards for the future electrified mobility world. Standardized sizes and mounting points are not at all sexy. But if we had them we might really allow electrification to take off in ways we haven’t imagined.

Can we fix the broken integrity process at city hall?

I found myself walking against the progressive wind in Edmonton recently. This was in the lead-up and aftermath of a city council meeting concerned with its code of conduct, and specifically whether it should sanction a colleague who was “misleading,” “disrespectful,” and made “personal attacks” on fellow councillors.  

Before, during and after this meeting, I’ve argued that a sanction from council would be largely performative and worse, would likely damage council itself. I argued this as a realist. Many who are progressive in Edmonton disagreed with me. 

The surreal political dynamics created by the COVID-19 pandemic have amplified our disconnection from one another, and in turn increased the power of weaponized social-media outrage. What I saw in a sanction scenario was, therefore, quite worrying. To me it looked like a person who for years has displayed a lack of good-faith in their approach to politics would now be given even more ammunition to focus social-media outrage onto city council itself.

Photo: Unsplash

This is why I was glad the vote to sanction the councillor failed — even though, let’s be clear, the councillor deserves all the sanction they can get. What I see happening is a process that isn’t working as it should, which can instead be hijacked and used against council.

As I got to thinking about how we might fix this, if we can at all, I reached out to people. One person who has a deep understanding of the inside-baseball side of municipal politics is Alexandra Hryciw, who once worked as an advisor with Mayor Don Iveson and is now a senior director of communications at IABC.

And Hrcyciw had a lot of interesting things to say. 

Rather than write an essay, I’ve decided to save my own time and just transcribe our chat — though I have edited this for clarity and length. What stands out in my chat with Hryciw, to me, is the human side of this ethics and integrity problem. It makes it complex to solve.  

Enjoy.

***

Tim: What about the way the code of conduct rules and structure are set up is the problem, in your view?

Hryciw: The Municipal Governance Act set out that all municipalities need to have an integrity office or commissioner as a part of their municipal business. The problem that I see with the office is the fact that in a party situation [as you find at the provincial level], you’re protected by the party. A complaint is filed with the office, the commissioner investigates it, and then they present a report and recommended sanctions, just like it happened here. But the parties are protected. It’s not somebody going out on a limb, solely, as a councillor, saying, ‘I believe 100 per cent in these sanctions.’

We’re all human. I think a lot of councillors in any situation would really pause on whether or not they would go forward sanctioning [a colleague] in any situation. They, too, may screw up and they don’t know how other councillors are going to vote. When you’re inside a party, you’re protected. You’re not going out on a limb. You can discuss these things.

[The process right now] almost isolates each councillor to be too afraid to make a move.

Tim: The meeting was the weirdest thing I’ve ever watched. It felt like the councillors didn’t know what to do, and they didn’t really want to say things. I think Coun. McKeen said he has a ‘soft spot’ for the councillor, which is what you would expect because they’re colleagues. It felt like they felt awkward sanctioning a fellow colleague.

Hryciw: Right. Because you could also make a mistake at one point. And to what level are your colleagues going to hold you to account? Obviously the councillor went out [and did things] with intention in mind. But you could make an argument a lot of times [that lines are crossed with less clear intentions]. There was an outburst at another councillor earlier in the term, for example, with one councillor tearing up and yelling into the microphone. That could be construed as demeaning a fellow councillor, which is written in the code.

When you’re not protected by your party and you don’t know how your colleagues are going to vote, you’re put into a very weird situation where you might be the only one who thinks a sanction is worthy or not. And you’re doing that in a public setting that the public can judge you on. I think it works at a party level because you can see where you all stand. You don’t have that opportunity at the municipal level.

Tim: Do you think the COVID situation amplified things? Before this, the councillor that caused all of this would have to look their colleagues in the face. That informal social situation would keep behaviour somewhat in check. But that’s gone now.

Hryciw: A hundred percent. That’s why I think this online bullying and the future of politics and COVID, they’re almost all going to merge. There’s no other way for politicians to get their message out necessarily. They can try to do Facebook, Twitter or Instagram Live, but they’re still using the social platforms to connect with communities. It’s really easy behind a computer screen to be a cyber bully. I do think COVID made this interaction possible and easier for people like the councillor, but it’s ultimately changing the face of politics anyways. It’s reducing the amount of interactions councillors can have, face to face, in their own communities to build awareness of what they’re working on. 

The integrity office and commissioner, at the municipal level, I think, just fails in the sense that they can’t really speak to one another about what the true issues are, as council. 

Tim: What would you see as a fix, then? 

Hryciw: I don’t think it should be up to council to choose the sanction. I realize in this case [the commissioner] made a recommendation that the letter be the sanction that was appropriate, but council still needed to vote on it. A fix to me would be that it’s completely removed from the municipal level and maybe it sits within the province, and the sanctions are decided upon by the provincial body that governs municipalities. Or you give the integrity commission more power and it doesn’t come to council unless it’s about, say, withholding pay from a councillor — that there’s a number of sanctions that go through the office without going to council. 

Tim: The algorithm of social media seems to be gamed toward outrage. So, in some ways I think we dodged a bullet. The councillor, I honestly think, wanted the sanction. He wanted to weaponize it — ‘Look at me, I’m being crucified.’ So, if that’s true, how do we fix this while thinking of that darker intention? How do we make it that you don’t win by breaking things?

Hryciw: This goes against everything I believe about the future of municipalities in Canada, but I think you have to throw it back up to the next order of government. I think the solution is having the integrity commissioner for municipalities run out of the province. At the municipal level, the way to stop allowing people like the councillor a platform is to almost have that parent-child approach to managing the integrity office. Without that, everyone [on council] is out there by themselves. And they all knew the sanction is exactly what the councillor wants anyways, even if they voted for the [code of conduct] policy and then voted against the sanction. The hypocrisy is so real there but I think everyone’s floating around there being like, ‘I don’t want to be the one who says that this is inappropriate.’ You take the weaponizing away if it’s at the provincial level.

Tim: To me it felt like the weaponizing was going to be about de-legitimizing council itself. It felt like this idea that ‘freedom of speech’ was going to be curtailed and who’s behind it — well a bunch of conspiring councillors acting on their own. This is how it was being portrayed at least. And then it always goes to this idea of, ‘Why don’t we just leave it to the voters?’ But as many have said, no other workplace works like that. I don’t get to do whatever I feel like at a job until my next workplace review; I can get fired at any time. What are your thoughts on that? It feels like this sort of scenario is just waiting to be used to delegitimize council in the eyes of the most cynical out there. 

Hryciw: I think the issue with the integrity office and commissioner is that it’s so inside baseball. It’s actually the Municipal Governance Act that forces municipalities to have this office functioning. If the provincial government views this as a necessity, then the provincial government needs to set it up properly so that it doesn’t become what it currently is now — a thing used to weaponize and used to basically give people like this councillor a platform to say their rights are being limited. You can’t show up to work five hours late. But technically, as a councillor, you could up until when this office was established. One councillor took six weeks off to go to Florida once. Voters are really disconnected at a municipal level because it’s hard for them to follow, because it’s not party orientated. I just don’t think there’s going to be a solution for this office unless it lives with the province. 

Tim: Yeah, I can’t envision any councillor wants to be seen as someone calling another colleague out for taking a vacation, for example. It would be weaponized on all sides. So, if this lived at the province, what would be the process, then?

Hryciw: I think it’s the exact same process, just not a body within the municipality and not recommendations that come back to council. 

Tim: How would this apply in Calgary, with what we saw with a councillor’s expenses there?

Hryciw: In that example, it would be so much easier for them to enforce. Of course council is not going to send 17 letters to this guy and not figure out a way to work with him. They followed the recommendations, nothing happened, the guy did not act on it. Basically I could hear [Mayor] Nenshi and his colleagues say we need to find a way to move on now because he [the councillor] couldn’t give a s**t. A provincial body could withhold pay. And then it doesn’t become politicized because it lives at the province.