by Mark Pickersgill
On Saturday November 29, 2008, the University of British Columbia’s First Nation Longhouse was a hive of excitement with more than 100 organizers, volunteers, speakers, artists, professionals, public officials, students, UBC administration and staff, farmers and community participants gathered for a revelatory day-long design workshop focused on the future of the UBC Farm
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Posted in Point Grey
It’s time to do something about the UBC Farm and the planning process.
The future of the UBC Farm is on the minds of many of the people attending the current series of planning workshop being hosted by UBC Campus Planning. Today’s workshop was no exception –about 80% of the people there were there because of the farm and many were affiliated with Friends of the UBC Farm.
The big picture goals and objectives of the planning process is concerned with thinking about and considering how to lay out the groundwork for the next two decades of building and design on UBC’s main campus. From this vantage point the underlying questions lead us to consider where and how to build student housing, how to integrate academic, residential, and services, how to organize transportation and movement through and around camps, and ways to build and enhance a strong sense of community. These are important questions. However, the combination of the planning process and a well-organized committed community organization is leading toward political gridlock.
The student organizations, the off-campus community supporters, the faculty support groups (of which I see myself a member of), have clearly brought the question of the farm front and center. Only the most myopic observer could say that there are no concerns about the way the farm is being dealt with in this planning process.
It’s very clear. As long as the farm is not dealt with we won’t be able to get to the big picture questions. We will have gridlock. It’s time to find a way forward to solve this immediate problem so that we can move on to deal with the big questions.
If we, both community and off-campus participants, are honest in our intentions to collaboratively engage in the planning process we’ll seek a realistic solution to the planning impasse. We need to find a way to facilitate an opening for the diversity of voices that make up the UBC community. If we fail in being inclussion in planning then the plan itself -whether or not the Farm is saved- will be a failure.
The way forward.
The first thing we must do is set the 24 hectares under question aside. Pull the farm and associated woodlands out of the discussion. Set up a multi-party stakeholder group to examine the issue and report back within a clearly defined timeframe. Once the farm issue is set aside for full discussion with all of the voices at the table we will be able to turn to the fundamental big picture questions that need to be address in the campus plan.
Once the multi-party stakeholder group on the farm and associated woodland area is in place we can then proceed to consider the big questions of the full campus plan and open the process to the full diversity of voices that in fact make up our community at UBC.
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Posted in Point Grey
Announcing a new Forests and Oceans for the Future research project
This is an ethnographic (anthropological) research project designed to examine the social construction of place amongst non-aboriginal residents of Point Grey -specifically users of the UBC Golf Course and Pacific Spirit Park. This project seeks to explore how non-aboriginal residents construct a sense of place and attachment to place. Key foci will be the use of language, metaphor, story in personal accounts of using places such as the golf course and the park.
Anyone interested in learning more about this project is invited to contact Charles Menzies
Given the recent media attention to the BC/Musqueam Reconciliation agreement (in which Musqueam ownership of the Golf Course and portions of Pacific Spirit Park has been affirmed by the government of BC) and given the creation of a Friends of the Golf Course and a Friends of Pacific Spirit Park this provides an excellent opportunity to explore how non-aboriginal peoples construct their sense of the importance of places such as the UBC Golf Course and Pacific Spirit Park. A subsidiary focus is on the discourse used by golf course and park supporters as they construct a sense of ownership over and sense of belonging to these places.
Research methods include anthropological participant observation (essentially participating in public meetings, rallies, joining people on walks through the park and -perhaps- as they play golf on the golf course. Unstructured research conversations will be held with non-aboriginal people who use and identify with the places identified above.
Classic anthropological methods do not involve ‘sampling’ in the sense that other social sciences might deploy. While appreciating that there are many anthropologies, the approach that I am using is one that traces the construction of meaning through networks of people who interact in a common social space. This means building linkages with people and spending time with them through the course of their daily life.
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Posted in Point Grey
