Town & Country Prospects Part 3: Better Together
Original Kitchener, February 27, 2023
In Town & Country Prospects Part 1: The A-word & Part 2: Bigger Isn’t Always Better, I question the relevance of crude, 1970s style amalgamation, especially for non-metropolitan cities and towns like ours. Recent municipal reform directives from Queen’s Park have all been annexations: established centres absorbing suburban areas, not inter-urban mergers. The fact that the municipal order here is, and has always been, multi-centred demands a different approach.
The time may be ripe for some changes, and talking calmly about these matters is always beneficial. It’s not that the old, two-tier order hasn’t been serviceable. Thanks to strong local/regional leadership, there has been progress on many fronts since the current system was imposed here 50 years ago. But today it has become a hindrance. We can do better.
The point I’m trying to make is that the trajectory need not be towards a centralized, monolithic order. Total amalgamation would be going backwards, but devolution to a two, three or seven municipality model would be going back farther still. What we have, right here and right now, is an opportunity to take a great leap forward towards integrity, balance and harmony.
I’ve suggested that a single harmonized planning order is not the antithesis of devolution or decentralization, and that we should look for ways to reconcile what only appear to be polar opposites. That’s why I propose that people who care about improving local government in Waterloo Country explore the possibilities of what could be called a federated approach.
The federal path is not a compromise between union and self-determination, but a way to secure the advantages of both. An individual needn’t lose anything by choosing to become part of a cooperative, a mutual or a partnership. In the same way, a city, town, village or neighbourhood need not give up anything valuable or important by voluntarily associating with other entities of a similar nature -- not their name, not their history, not their character, and certainly not their very existence.
Done right, a federation renders each constituent element more distinct, more free to act, more secure, and more powerful than when it stood isolated and alone. Done wrong, it can become a lose-lose undertaking: A union that dissolves its constituent elements, or that betrays them by becoming a remote, higher power -- an “upper” tier -- is a federation that has failed both the parts and the whole.
Towards A Balanced Order
The new entity that comes into existence through deliberate association is greater only in terms of number and extent. In a federated union, the whole and all the constituent elements operate laterally, side by side, face to face, feet planted firmly on the ground, not up and down a ladder of authority. A properly balanced federation doesn’t operate from the grass roots up any more than it imposes order from the top down.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the best way to transition from the clumsy two-tier order to an integrated, balanced, harmonious new whole designed to suit 21st-century challenges and possibilities might be to dissolve and to continue both orders simultaneously.
The elements -- not just the seven cities and townships as currently staked out, but also business areas, original cities, towns and villages, newer neighbourhoods, college and university campuses, even schools, hospitals and parks -- would come together as a unified, integrated organism. Meanwhile, the regional municipality would abdicate its role as an “upper” tier, and dedicate itself to serving the constituent elements. The parts would constitute the whole, and the whole would exist, not only to serve the parts as a delegated authority, but also to represent them to the world and to each other.
It would be a grave mistake for us to allow the Regional Municipality or its successor to simply absorb the cities and townships in the same way Cambridge was once expected to dissolve its communities. A historic town or city, with distinct beginnings and generation after generation of continuity and variation, exists no matter what the powers that be decide to do with it or to it. Preston can be forever. Hespeler can be forever.
Blair, Ayr, Bridgeport and Maryhill can also be forever. A historic village, town or city exists as long as a saving remnant of living souls choose to remember, cherish and make it part of how they identify themselves. But these entities are also actual, physical realities, and as such, fragile, completely dependent on attention and protection from people who care.
Reducing the whole to serving the various parts without that unifying and representative function would be an even bigger mistake. The idea of replacing the Regional Municipality with a set of “service boards,” for instance, would, in effect, be a kind of separatism on all fronts.
We are better together, always, in every possible way.
The two-tier system imposed fifty years ago is deeply flawed, but we would be wise to acknowledge that bridging the town and country divide was a significant step forward. The countryside line, for instance, became a possibility because we have a regional order that in some respects reversed the original separation of our cities from the Waterloo County matrix. It is a boundary that connects rather than divides: Protection of the farmlands becomes a shared responsibility, and a benefit for present and future generations on both sides of the line.
In the same way, protection of our built heritage could and should become a shared responsibility. Respect for, care for and adaptive re-use of what exists is a corollary of the pursuit of smart growth in general. I’ve long been an advocate of a “townside” equivalent to the countryside line: a demarcation that distinguishes the parts of our cities and towns that were built for getting around on foot, on a horse or in a horse-drawn vehicle, from areas that were built up since the mid-20th century turn to suburban growth patterns, with emphasis in driving around in motorized vehicles.
It isn’t that one is better than the other, or deserving of any special privileges. There are, however, fundamental differences between the built environment on the old, originally Latin colonial grid pattern, and those curved streets designed to isolate homes from through traffic in high modern suburbs. In the beginning, all non-rural parts of the County were 20-minute towns and cities designed for walking, cycling and for horse-and-buggy speed vehicular traffic. We all need and deserve a planning order that recognizes, respects, takes into account, and makes the most of such differences.
A townside line would make a distinction based on how things evolved over time, which is an actuality, rather than an abstraction. The boundary between the old and the new building patterns can readily be traced on any map or aerial photograph. Relative density is also a distinction based on what is actual and measurable. Waterways and Indigenous pathways on the land, like Mill Street in Kitchener or the first King’s Highway from Dundas to London, belong in the same category. They grew over time, in contrast to the abstract pattern of the settler colonial grid.
Another indisputable boundary is the outline of a watershed, a creature, not of colonial authorities, like our counties and townships, but of the Creator, or, if you prefer, by natural forces over geological time.
In an intentional, properly balanced federated order, boundaries help to make and maintain distinctions, but in so doing serve as lines of connection, rather than as lines that separate.
A Grounded Approach
A federated approach to municipal reformation needn’t stop at the County line, but there is no reason to erase those old settlement lines. It would be unwise to summarily discard boundaries that have been stable since they were set in the 1850s. The shape and extent of Waterloo the County/Region has meaning, but not everything those lines signify is wholesome and worthy of celebration. The fact is, these lines symbolize the colonial order far more tellingly than that quaint memorial to the long reign of Victoria, the first Queen of Canada, that was erected 122 years ago in the Kitchener park that bears her name. If we’re serious about land acknowledgement as a step towards reconciliation and decolonization, the lines of the surveyor, and everything they signify, must be taken into consideration.
The County/Region is not a body politic. It began as a parcel of Crown land designated for “alienation” -- i.e., private proprietorship -- and consequent settlement. Its borders connect us to other parcels carved out around the same time, for the same purpose: Wellington, Wentworth (now Hamilton), Brant, Oxford, Perth. A city or a town is a corporate entity, but the ground on which a body politic stands and lives is not an integral part of it. The land situates and connects us. Watersheds and sub-watersheds have advantages as points of connection among areas where contiguous settlements have formed, as well as between settlement and the ground, the earth, or the “dish,” as in the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant.
Something like the Dish with One Spoon Covenant -- a peace agreement between Indigenous peoples and nations reiterated repeatedly over the years starting long before European settlers arrived -- would make a sound foundation for a voluntary agreement among the communities of our region to come together and become an integrated whole: It would be a declaration that acknowledges our collective responsibility to each other and the Earth, and a shared resolve to take only what we need, leave enough for others, and keep the dish clean.
The relationship between settlements of all kinds - towns, villages, cities, college campuses, neighbourhoods — and the land is fundamental to any discussion of municipal reform. Equally important is the relationship among human habitations of all shapes and sizes. Another reason why a federated union that preserves the integrity of the parts in relation to the whole is preferable is because a 1970s-style “super-city” in Waterloo Country would hinder friendly, equitable and reciprocal relations with neighbouring communities within the dish or bowl that is the Grand Valley -- Guelph, Brantford, Paris, Fergus, Elora -- and near the line that connects us with a bowl next door, like Woodstock, Tavistock, St Mary’s and Stratford in the Upper Thames watershed.
A melting pot kind of union that erases distinctions wouldn’t suddenly raise Waterloo-Cambridge-Kitchener to “big city” status, on a par, say with London and Hamilton. It certainly wouldn’t give us metropole status, like Montreal, Ottawa or Toronto. Without the kind of character and authenticity that only a continuous history can provide, we’d end up being demoted to artificial city status, like Vaughan, King City, Clarington or Kanata, or like Scarborough, North York or Etobicoke of old.
Just as an amalgamated KW would make relations with Cambridge near impossible, and in the same way the relative size of Ontario complicates Canada as a Confederation, an Uber-Waterloo would have a hard time finding friends and allies among neighbouring cities and towns. It would be feared, resented, defied, and rightly so. As for the ambitions of our “Waterloo-Toronto Corridor” proponents, nothing would be gained, certainly not in terms of profile, influence or respect, if we set ourselves up as Mississauga West or as an incongruous appendage to the Golden Horseshoe.
A federation of Grand River Country communities, however, could really make the world sit up and take notice, especially if it included substantial progress towards genuine reconciliation with the keepers of that ancient confederacy of Indigenous nations that found refuge here after the war for settler home rule in what became the United States, and with that, a new kind of relationship with this dish or bowl that feeds, shelters and connects us.
There are precedents. The cooperation between municipalities connected by the river that led to the creation of the Grand River Conservation Authority in the 1930s is an example that outshines all others. Our provincial authorities are abandoning this achievement by stripping organizations like the GRCA of most of their authority, a bit like Greyhound Lines Inc did by walking away from their founding purpose.
We can do it better -- together. Together, the cities, towns and First Nations of Grand River Country could even do inter-urban public transportation better …. and much, much more.
Post Script: Just Imagine — For Now
But how would we decide? And if our minds were in agreement, what would be the first step? The fact is, even if there were a will and a way, Canada as currently federated wouldn’t have the power to allow something like this to happen. All we can legitimately do at this point is imagine an integrated municipal order for Cambridge, Waterloo, Kitchener and area. There is no mechanism for voluntarily coming together as a federation of towns and cities, or for formalizing some kind of belonging to Grand River Country as a land within the land.
Imagining, however, can take us a long way. When integrity, concert, balance, harmony and sustainability become an integral part of how we think, deliberate, decide, plan and act, the rest will follow. It may not even be necessary to take further action. That separation between the two tiers, and the idea that one level stands above the other, is just a mental habit, left over from the original colonial order. If we free ourselves from such anachronistic patterns and assumptions, everything else will fall into place.
