That assertion is confusing, as the Airport is federally regulated transportation infrastructure. The Airport doesn’t need City zoning or permission. It can, within its federal jurisdiction, do whatever it wants with its 400 acres of excess land. It seems this isn’t a matter of the City ‘allowing’ the Airport to do anything.

Instead, I fear the Airport’s desire to be designated an Opportunity Area has more to do with the specific infrastructure and investment benefits that come with that designation. Infrastructure and investments that would be paid for by Saint John taxpayers. This fear is confirmed by a draft planning document produced by the Airport in June 2010, in which it said one component of its strategy must be: Working with the City of Saint John to achieve connection of the airport site to the City’s water and sewage distribution system. I think the Airport wants to be an Opportunity Area because the City would then be obligated to pay for the delivery of municipal services to the Airport.

That isn’t a trivial ask. The cost of running water, sewer and storm lines out to the Airport would be ballpark $20 million or higher. Yet Leblanc insists the Airport isn’t looking for any money from the City. Either Leblanc doesn’t understand what it is he’s asking for, or he’s hoping we don’t.

There’s no argument about the importance of the Airport. It’s crucial, and we’re far better off having one in this region. Hard decisions are likely going to be needed – by both the City of Saint John and other regional municipalities – about what types of investment to make in the Airport. But that clearly falls outside the scope of PlanSJ. The Airport requires a coordinated, regional strategy that brings together all its partners. The days of Saint John taxpayers fronting the bills for people in the burbs are over.

The Airport needs to develop a business plan to ensure its sustainability, and it needs to seek out support throughout its catchment area and from all levels of government. It also needs to be clear with partners and taxpayers about exactly what it’s asking for.

This shows the proportion of your total tax burden that goes to your municipality. Eight cents on the dollar. Yet municipalities deliver most of the services that impact most citizens most of the time … the things you rely on daily. Of all levels of government, municipalities are forced to do the most with the least.

I sometimes wonder if Apple makes its software intentionally bad on PC platforms. Here, a case in point, iTunes. This software has a truly massive footprint, 210 MB in memory, yet all I need it for is to allow connection of my iPod to my PC. And it doesn’t even do that reliably. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And even when things do work properly, you can’t do simple and intuitive tasks like dragging and dropping apps onto the iPod. Apple, really?

So if you want to track this PlanSJ blather, please RSS the new blog (which you can do by clicking here).

Why the move? I’ve had a few comments that people looking for PlanSJ info find the professional topic posts confusing or distracting. And I’d like to open up the PlanSJ stuff at some point to open commenting, which wouldn’t be appropriate on the professional blog.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This is a page from a petition to the City of Saint John Common Council from the Friends of Rockwood Park, submitted last fall. Look at the addresses. On this page almost all the names are those of people who live outside the City.

Think that’s just one page? I looked through a number of other pages from this petition. See below. The yellow tags below flag  non-residents. (I give some credit to those signatories who actually disclosed that they lived in Rothesay, Quispamsis, Grand Bay or elsewhere; shame on those who didn’t.)

These few pages are just a sample, but in fact the petition is filled with signatures of people who don’t actually live in Saint John, but obviously think they should have a voice in the conduct of the City’s affairs. (I can only hope that Councillors didn’t take this particular petition at face value.)

Don’t get me wrong. My article today isn’t about Rockwood Park. I’m simply using the Rockwood Park petition as an example of another problem, and that problem is the sense of entitlement that many outside Saint John seem to have regarding their right to participate in City policy-making. (The Rockwood Park petition neatly demonstrates that attitude, as do many online comments under a typical Telegraph Journal City Section article.) Many residents of Greater Saint John also think the City has an obligation to provide them with services, even if they don’t pay municipal taxes in Saint John itself.

So who is the City actually obligated to serve, and who are its Councillors responsible to?  This is a key question underpinning the very definition of PlanSJ‘s mission, and it’s one that’s already being challenged as PlanSJ begins to c0mmunicate a vision for Saint John that some outside city limits seem to find either inconvenient or threatening.

This isn’t a trivial issue. A municipal plan that optimizes the outcome for the region as a whole would look very, very different from one that optimizes the outcome for Saint John and its citizens. Unfortunately, prioritizing the interests of non-residents means — at least to some degree — compromising the interests of Saint Johners themselves. So it’s absolutely essential that PlanSJ be clear in its mission, both in its execution of the municipal planning work, and in its dealings with various stakeholders inside and outside the City.

I’ve personally run into this issue when the topics of PlanSJ or City politics have come up during conversations with  people who live in outlying communities. More often than not, non-residents I’ve spoken with expect to have a voice in City affairs. They also expect the City of Saint John to look after their interests. That expectation is clearly reflected in the opinions of non-residents about what PlanSJ should and should not be doing, and what Saint John should be putting its money into.

It’s hard not to get a little angry over this. The fact is, residents of Greater Saint John want to eat their cake and have it too. They don’t want the burden of Saint John’s finances, but they certainly expect the benefits of its services and infrastructure.

And it isn’t just individuals. We’ve seen a prioritization of regional interests over City interests in discussions with the Saint John Board of Trade, and that issue also lies at the heart of PlanSJ’s resistance to the demands of the Saint John Airport (which is a regional facility and should be supported regionally). It’s even a key element of Enterprise Saint John’s current dispute with Saint John Common Council.

Regionalism isn’t a bad word. Regionalism and cooperation is the ideal, as long as every party involved gets benefits that outweigh their costs and risks. But regionalism that’s based on investments and compromises made by Saint John alone is unacceptable.

PlanSJ’s mandate is clear. We’re here to help make Saint John sustainable, and to serve the needs of citizens of Saint John. While I wish the residents of Grand Bay, Rothesay, Quispamsis and other outlying suburbs well, the sustainability of their communities and the interests of their citizens are not the responsibility of the City of Saint John or the PlanSJ team. We’re here for the citizens of Saint John, and that’s it.

So my message to all those good people of Greater Saint John who want a voice in City policy … If you aren’t allowed to vote here, then you’re out of the game. That’s one of the many costs of choosing to live outside the City.

Residents of Grand Bay, the Kingston peninsula, Quispamis, Rothesay, Westfield, Hampton, Sussex, St Andrews, Black Harbour, Musquash, Norton, Baxters Corner, St Martins, et al … please think about that the next time you’re signing a petition, pontificating in the TJ, or going mad dog at a dinner party. If you really want a voice in municipal affairs, camp out on the doorsteps of the people to whom you actually do pay taxes.

The CBC has decided that Saint John no longer deserves terrestrial (over-the-air, or ‘rabbit ears’) TV coverage. In its application to the CRTC for digital television, the CBC is proposing that it abandon Saint John altogether. (Link to Wire Report article here.)  This means that starting in the summer of 2011, Saint Johners will no longer be able to watch CBC TV unless they subcribe to a cable or satellite provider.

What’s unexplained in the application is why Fredericton will continue to get terrestrial CBC TV coverage, even though its population is only half that of Saint John. Given the income demographics in Saint John, I would expect that the need for terrestrial TV is far greater in Saint John than in Fredericton, regardless of population. (More homes in Saint John are challenged to afford the $50+ per month of a TV subscription.)

I find it offensive that the CBC has decided to ignore one of the most densely populated areas in the province and has chosen to rob many Saint Johners of a service that we all pay for through our tax dollars.

The CRTC is looking for input from stakeholders and the public. The deadline is February 17th. (Link here.) If you care about this issue — either because you watch CBC, you use it to reach others, or you simply care about those in our community that can’t afford subscription TV — make yourself heard.  Make a submission to the CRTC on this issue. You should let the CBC know what you think too: contact page.

UPDATE: It looks like the proposed digital footprint will also cover Oromocto, which combined with Fredericton roughly matches the population of Greater Saint John. That takes some of the sting out, but it still doesn’t explain why the Fredericton area gets to keep its terrestrial while Saint John loses out.

I’m moving servers. This means that in the next day or two this domain is likely to be off the air for a short period.

Computerized ‘fly by air’ commercial aircraft have created a new type of pilot error: mode confusion.

From Lectures in Aviation Safety, G.F. MARSTERS, PhD., P.Eng.:

The first full authority fly-by-wire civil aircraft, introduced into commercial service by Airbus Industrie, has precipitated myriad new safety issues, primarily related to the way in which the pilot interacts with the aircraft. As new, much larger, and much more fully automated aircraft are planned, these human factors safety issues take on increased urgency. As a result of these complex interactions between the human operator and the machine a new accident “cause” denoted “mode confusion” has emerged, as it becomes apparent that pilots often do not fully understand the logic systems that were introduced to reduce pilot workload and propensity for error. Since about two thirds of all accidents are attributable to human error, reducing the opportunity for such errors is an essential step. Regardless of the level of complexity, the pilot must still ultimately control the aircraft, and to do that, it is essential to have a full appreciation for the way in which the automated systems function and interact. There have been several recent accidents where it is clear that the pilots were unsure of what the aircraft systems were doing, and as a result, took incorrect corrective actions. The accident at Nagoya, Japan is an example of this. In this case, the pilots engaged in actions that contradicted the logic of the autopilot. Not realizing the effects of their efforts, they were unable to take the correct actions, and ultimately lost control of the aircraft. This was a clear case of “mode confusion”.

Mode confusion has caused many accidents in the aviation, nuclear and petrochemical industries.

A similar everyday experience is drivers’ reaction to antilock braking. Ever hit the brakes on a slippery stretch and felt a moment of panic when the brake pedal began chattering? Some drivers unfamiliar with the feel of ABS react by taking their foot of the brake, thinking they’ve pushed too hard and broken something. This very simple form of mode confusion has been the cause of many traffic accidents.

To prevent mode confusion:

• System users need to have a greater understanding of the logic and automation in the system, and how it can behave in off-nominal situations. (For example, drivers should get used to their antilock brakes.)
• System designers need to ensure that system interfaces provide cues that notify or remind users about automated actions and states.
• Importantly, interfaces should not provide feedback that could be misinterpretted during critical moments. (The pulsing of the ABS should not be transmitted back to the driver through the brake pedal, as the notification that ABS is engaged is not useful to the driver.)
• There should be defence-in-depth within the automation to identify and react to user misoperation in response to automation.

Mode confusion will become a greater challenge as more and more systems (even in daily life) develop greater levels of complexity, automation and intelligence. Mode confusion can also occur when complex, automated systems interact in unexpected ways.

The greatest threat occurs when personnel are required to perform both active tasks (doing something to the system to control it) and supervisory tasks (monitoring the system’s automated behaviour). System designers and users must be aware of this risk when dealing with system components that are automated but autonomous (and thus able to interact to create greater complexity).

There’s been a good discussion going on regarding CAC members blogging on PlanSJ issues. In general, I think the CAC is in consensus that individual committee members should feel free to engage with and communicate with the public, whether through social media, blogging or other channels.

However, there have been concerns expressed by some CAC members:

• Dissenting opinions from different CAC members might confuse the public about what PlanSJ is trying to do.
• CAC members speaking on their own about PlanSJ must make it clear that an opinion is theirs alone, and not the position of the CAC as a whole.
• Confidentiality may be an issue. Some of the inputs the CAC receives may be considered private communications. There must be an assumption of confidentiality unless that confidentiality is waived by the originator or the communication is already in the public domain.

A specific point of discussion has been my response to the Board of Trade earlier this week, which is why I raised the issue of public communication and blogging at the latest CAC meeting. There were several criticisms by another CAC member (see Facebook) of my Board of Trade response:

• That my blog entry was more an attack than a rebuttal.
• That it isn’t appropriate to single out a specific stakeholder for criticism when other stakeholders have also expressed similar views, even if that stakeholder was the only one to put its feedback in the public domain.
• That the CAC’s approach and language should always be constructive, and never confrontational.

Those criticisms are worth consideration and there was a useful debate during the CAC meeting.

My position on this is as follows.

At the time I posted the blog entry, I hadn’t seen the other inputs mentioned in the Facebook discussion linked above. (And I’m still not certain I’ve seen everything the other CAC member is referring to.) Regardless, the change in my response would have been minor, and my post still stands.

However, it’s important that I clarify why my response this week was directed to the Board of Trade specifically:

1. Other stakeholders voiced concerns similar to some of the concerns that the Board of Trade identified, but those stakeholders were more balanced and had taken more considered positions. Some of their comments might not have been convenient or actionable, but I believe the comments were made in an honest effort either to support the PlanSJ process or at least work within it. I applaud their effort, regardless of whether I agree with specific positions. (Since those inputs are not yet in the public domain I can’t be more explicit.)
2. The Board of Trade’s letter didn’t simply state positions I didn’t agree with, it stated some positions that appeared to have no basis (putting it mildly). And in that way, so far as I know, the Board was the outlier. Read carefully, their letter challenged the very idea of Saint John taking a planning approach focused on its own needs. At best, the Board did not take the time to research their position adequately or to consider the framework in which PlanSJ must function.
3. Whether they were required to do so or not, the Board did make their challenge in the public domain. That not only gave me license to respond publicly (as there was no presumption of confidentiality), it compelled me to do so. Enormous effort and cost has gone into PlanSJ, and the future of this city relies on the creation of a municipal plan that will serve Saint John’s citizens first and foremost. It would be irresponsible to allow the PlanSJ process or its very basis to be criticized unfairly without providing an equally strong counterargument. As much as I dislike conflict and controversy, this is simply too important.
4. To have made a general counterargument without critiquing the Board of Trade’s specific position would have implied falsely that these outlier concerns are more broadly represented than they really are. Context is important, and that context would have been lost without a direct, specific rebuttal.

The real question here isn’t what to do in response to criticism or negative opinion in the public domain. Bring it on, as long as those criticisms and opinions have a basis and are useful.

The question is how to respond when a stakeholder either rejects PlanSJ’s underlying goals or ignores the City’s very real constraints – or simply can’t provide considered input – yet wants a real voice in the PlanSJ process.

My hope is that the Board of Trade will accept the realities that this city faces and provide more considered feedback that can be translated into action within the plan. I also hope the Board begins to work more collaboratively and consistently within the PlanSJ process. If the Board can do that, I’ll be as fervent a supporter in future as I have been a critic these past several weeks.

I attended the presentation and open house that American Iron and Metals (AIM) hosted in the Lower West Side on Tuesday evening. AIM is proposing an enhancement of its metal recycling facility on the Port of Saint John lands on the west side of the Harbour, and is entering the permitting phase of development.

(See http://www.sjmetalrecycle.com.)

I have to commend the AIM representative for the quality of his presentation, particularly given the challenging environment of the Carleton Community Centre. The presentation addressed all the questions I had in mind when I arrived, and the representative and his associates seemed equipped to answer most of the questions asked of him by the audience.

I also have to commend the citizens who came out. It was a viciously windy, rainy night but the turnout was good. And the audience was respectful. There were mixed perspectives in the room but for the most part things remained civil and constructive. (Mostly.) The physical space and noise level was frustrating for many, yet people stuck it out to the end.

With respect to the proposed expansion, I’m not sure what to think. The facility is basically a metal shredder used to reduce cars, fridges and other large items into small pieces of metal that can then be shipped off to be re-used in new products. At first blush that doesn’t sound like a good thing to have right beside a residential neighbourhood. Personally, I like industrial spaces and I’m realistic about noise in an industrial city. (In fact, I love the sounds of the trains being shuttled down the street from my house.) But I’ve heard a car shredder before and there’s no way I’d want to be living anywhere near one. I’m very sympathetic to the residents of Lower West who are concerned about this proposal. Especially those close to Market Place, only a couple of hundred metres from the site.

On the other hand, the Port has been an industrial space for a very long time … longer in fact than that part of Lower West has been residential. And there’s already a metal shredder in operation at that site, first commissioned in 2002.

Furthermore, if you trust in AIM’s engineering assessments, the design of the upgraded facility will produce the same noise level as the current facility — while providing 23 additional jobs. I have trouble imagining how that can be, but then, I don’t know how loud the current operation is.

It’s also important that we don’t say no to business outright in this city. While we need to be a lot more careful about the types of business we promote, Saint John must remain ‘open for business’. Not blindly open, but open.

The audience the other night was mixed. A couple of people spoke out strongly for and against the proposal. Some simply had questions about environmental protection, jobs, hours of operation, and AIM’s somewhat questionable assertion that having a metal shredder in one’s neighbourhood would actually increase property values.

The AIM representative addressed the proximity to residential, noting that only one other of its facilities has similar residential proximity. That proximity does seem like an obvious problem, particularly given the topography — with much of Lower West looking down into the Port property, not just sitting alongside it.

But the fact is, Lower West is already colocated with an industrial park. And here’s where PlanSJ comes in. The PlanSJ process has led to a vision of enhanced residential development in the Lower West Side. PlanSJ calls it a residential ‘urban opportunity area’ (see the red blob in the slightly out of date PlanSJ map below).

Becoming an opportunity area would mean that the neighbourhood would benefit from incentives and zoning criteria to promote appropriate infill with quality housing, greater investment in infrastructure, strategic promotion of local retail/commercial to create a ‘ complete community’, and so forth. In effect, the City would spend a lot of time and money to try to restore Lower West as a complete and vibrant neighbourhood.

That effort may be fruitless if at the same time the Port is transforming itself into an industrial park for heavy industry.

The challenge here is larger than whether to accept this specific proposal; at some point very soon the City and the Port are going to have to strike a balance between the desire of the Port to find new sources of revenue, and Saint Johners’ vision for the Lower West Side.

This city was founded on its port, and any reasonable vision of this city’s future will continue to include a working port. But is the Port’s vision for its future consistent with Saint Johners’ vision for their city? A Port that has transformed itself into a heavy industrial park that just happens to be beside the water is going to cripple this city’s ability to achieve any kind of urban transformation.

The issue isn’t just in the Lower West Side. We can expect to see more of this type of usage conflict throughout the Port lands, east and west.

The Port is under federal jurisdiction, so the City’s options as a municipality to influence these types of developments are limited. It’s important that the City and Port work together to achieve a compromise both can accept, but the motivation to drive that compromise will probably have to come from citizens themselves. Regardless of what happens with this AIM proposal, I think we’re seeing just the beginning of a much larger challenge for this region. Saint Johners will need to be vocal with both their City and their federal representatives to protect a balance of interest between Saint John as a working port and Saint John as a place where someone would want to live.

I was very disappointed to read the Saint John Board of Trade’s response last week to the latest round of PlanSJ consultations. (See the letter their website.)

Essentially, I read the Board’s letter as expressing the following criticisms:

1. Regional focus good, Saint John focus bad.
2. Build an economic development plan rather than a municipal plan.
3. Focus on industrial land use as well as residential land use.
4. Resistance to the very idea of municipal planning.

While there may be some merit to item 3, and that’s worth discussing to ensure that it’s more clearly addressed down the road, the overall Board of Trade position is that the very basis of PlanSJ is wrong. That simply isn’t credible, and the Board has provided no sound basis for their criticisms.

Key points

Projections vs. goals

The Board of Trade seems to misunderstand the difference between goals and projections.

Realistic population projections are essential to any urban planning exercise. (The 1973 plan failed catastrophically because of overly optimistic population projections.)

In our case, the population projection sets the lower bound of the envelope within which the plan remains valid. Since in our situation there is no realistic upper bound to population that would challenge the plan, we only care about the lower bound. Hence our numbers may appear ‘pessimistic’ to some. In fact, they’re realistic and based on methodologies and research that Urban Strategies applied using established urban planning practices.

The Board of Trade can have all sorts of optimistic goals, goals which should drive its plans to promote business in this region. The City also has goals towards which it works in accordance with the values and priorities of the citizens of the City of Saint John. Goals are just that – ideals (hopefully realistic) to work towards. However, the attainment of goals cannot be guaranteed. (Let’s recall the train wreck of the Benefits Blueprint.)

Thus, goals cannot be the sole basis of a plan – unless you’re planning for failure. The municipal plan must be based on realistic estimations of near-future population growth and not the Board’s hopes and dreams.

If the Board has a basis to justify an increase in the lower bound being used for the plan, I’d like to hear it. If they have some substantive argument for more ‘optimistic’ numbers, they should make the case for that, in detail, providing evidence. I’m very disappointed by the motivational language that PlanSJ has received from them to date. It might play well with their membership or with the public but it doesn’t provide any basis for a change in our methodology.

Defined opportunity areas

The Board of Trade is rejecting the very idea of defined opportunity areas (page 3 of their letter, item 1). Instead, their letter appears to propose that we continue on with the status quo while providing incentives to achieve ‘higher density development’ in urban, suburban and rural areas. I’m not even sure what they mean by that, as it appears to be self-contradictory.

I’m confused about why they even care about defined opportunity areas. Such areas appear to benefit local businesses by providing a growth medium in which businesses can thrive by meeting the needs of small, complete neighbourhoods. The Board’s position is that the use of defined opportunity areas could actually reduce urban density. (See page 3, item 1, para 2.) I cannot imagine how that would be true.

Boundaries and growth

The Board is ignoring the oft-stated fact that while defined areas must inevitably have boundaries, those boundaries are gradients and not ‘walls’, and development can occur outside opportunity areas (with conditions, obviously, to offset or prevent burdens on taxpayers). (See page 3, item 1, paras 1-2.)

Rejection of the very idea of urban planning

The Board apparently does not understand the nature of planning and zoning. (Bottom of page 3, in case anyone misses this whopper.) Zoning – telling developers where and what they’re allowed to build, and people where they can live – is a universal practice. It isn’t something new to PlanSJ. Is the Board of Trade really arguing against zoning? Or are they arguing against urban planning in general?

A municipal plan is not a regional economic development plan

The Board apparently does not understand the difference between a municipal plan and a regional economic development plan. Much of what they’re talking about falls into an economic development strategy. That’s not what PlanSJ is meant to be. The Board of Trade should be looking to Enterprise Saint John to drive economic development regionally, with the burden of that development also shared regionally.

Airport and port

The Board’s argument for prioritization of the airport and port (both regional assets) is not within the scope of the municipal plan. I’m against ‘hotwiring’ the plan to serve arbitrary, specific interests. The City is littered with assets and enterprises that could be considered critical, and if we start assigning arbitrary designations outside the underlying logic of the plan there could be no end to it, leaving the plan essentially meaningless. I think it’s worth looking at the criteria used in the plan to identify industrial zones, in order to ensure that they’re fully rationalized, but I’m against arbitrary designations outside those criteria.

Specifically with regard to the airport and port, any ‘special consideration’ should be exercised by Council outside the scope of the municipal plan itself, whether that consideration takes the form of pipes or dollars. Particularly in the case the airport and port, the benefits those facilities offer are regional and not municipal; any investment or support should also be regional in nature, and the costs of promoting that shared infrastructure should be shared across municipalities and levels of government.

Regional approach

Finally, and most importantly, the Board’s insistence that we take a regional approach to this planning effort is simply ludicrous, and seems to betray a real lack of depth in their consideration of PlanSJ and their understanding of the issues.

Trying to accommodate regional interests solely within Saint John’s municipal planning would be difficult to impossible at this point. Such an effort to define a regional land use plan would require the active collaboration of all the region’s municipalities, and we know that’s not going to happen.

Even if other muncipalities were interested in regional land use planning, it’s been pointed out to me that Saint John wouldn’t have a legal basis for doing what the Board of Trade has suggested. A municipal plan is a legal, binding document and Saint John has no jurisdiction to plan outside its current legal boundaries.

Regardless of the legalities, the fact is, Saint Johners don’t want to continue bearing the burden alone for regional prosperity. Compromising Saint John’s municipal planning goals to optimize regional interests isn’t fair to Saint Johners, and most would be very angry at the suggestion that their quality of life should be ‘leveraged’ for regional interests.

If and when amalgamation eventually takes place, the region will be operating under a new reality that will require new planning. If the Board’s vision of a desirable future is one in which Greater Saint John is managed on a regional basis, they should be lobbying the Government of New Brunswick to attain that goal.

In the meantime, PlanSJ must remain focused on the goals and challenges faced by Saint John as it is currently defined. It would be highly irresponsible of us to do otherwise. It is very important that PlanSJ not be perceived by our citizens to be compromising local interests for regional ones.

General concerns about the Board of Trade

I have more general concerns about how PlanSJ should disposition feedback from the Board of Trade and other entities that do not necessarily represent the best interests of Saint John citizens. For one thing, the Board of Trade is inherently a regional body. Their inputs have value, but not necessarily face value.

How we try to de-bias or interpret that input is a complex issue. It isn’t just a matter of coming up with a methodology; it’s also a challenge to explain this to Saint John citizens who may be concerned about undue influence by business interests. Saint John has had a long history of business interests co-opting public interest. People are watching for that, and we have to be able to demonstrate the fairness and integrity of the process.

In closing

• I’m glad the Board of Trade has finally begun to participate in this process.

• The PlanSJ team values the viewpoints of all our stakeholders as we work together to improve quality of life and sustainability in the City of Saint John.

• The Board of Trade must recognize that PlanSJ is designed to serve the interests of Saint Johners first. While business interests are important to the future of this region, Saint John’s 68 000 citizens need liveable communities and a sustainable city. We won’t compromise on that focus.

• PlanSJ is a municipal development plan, and not a regional economic plan. The Board of Trade should pursue Enterprise Saint John to find new ways to foster economic development in the region and to develop a regional economic development strategy. That economic development plan needs to accommodate a new reality:

§  If there is to be a regional approach to economic development, that regional approach needs to accommodate the vision of the residents of Saint John (not the other way around).

§  Saint Johners don’t want a future where Saint John exists primarily as an industrial zone to promote wealth generation in other outlying communities.

§  That means other communities need to share the burden of economic development, rather than simply reaping the benefits.

§  It means that any regional economic planning, and the Board of Trade, must accept the priorities that Saint Johners have expressed for their city through the PlanSJ process.

§  The Board of Trade should be working with Enterprise Saint John and all the region’s municipalities to attain regional goals that accommodate municipal priorities rather than trying to prescribe them.

Rashid recognized the value of heritage but raised a couple of important questions:

• Why are we trying to preserve heritage for heritage sake? If a building is simply old, and not in and of itself of value, do we want to sacrifice the quality of our community to keep it?
• What buildings might we build today that could become the quality heritage of the future?

Rashid’s point was that heritage should not be a trap, and that heritage is not a static snapshot of the past but itself a living, evolving thing. The audience seemed to agree.

That choice, and the fact that many pet owners will put themselves at serious risk by making the wrong choice, is why emergency management personnel need to take this issue seriously. We’ve seen examples of how a failure to address this has put residents at risk. In Katrina, people died because they wouldn’t evacuate without their pets.

The risk of fatalities aside, planners and responders need to recognize that cultural values have changed. Pets are no longer property, no longer a replaceable commodity for families. For many people, particularly seniors, their pet is likely to be their family.

The solution isn’t easy but it is necessary. Disaster response plans need to give citizens options for pet care, and instill the confidence needed to enable effective evacuations. Sheltering must be provided for pets — either in the form of pet-friendly reception centres or separate emergency animal shelters. The public must be educated about pets and disasters to ensure that pet owners are prepared, and to demonstrate that emergency management plans will protect companion animals.

Here’s a link to the October 21st presentation and associated materials. If you’re a planner, give some thought to integrating animal welfare into your plans for preparation, response and recovery. If you’re a pet owner, find out what you need to do to ready yourself and your pet in case disaster strikes.

1980

2006

I’m concerned about the article in today’s TJ about the Board of Trade and PlanSJ. I strongly disagree with any extension of the deadline for feedback.

First of all, the PlanSJ schedule is already defined to meet specific milestones. A delay here will roll forward throughout the rest of the schedule, as well as setting a precedent that will introduce additional delays later in the schedule. A delay would have significant cost implications.

Secondly, while the Board of Trade might not have seen the document before, the invitation was made for them to participate right from the start. Their lack of engagement until now speaks to their lack of interest, and not any attempt to exclude them.

The feedback period allowed at this stage in the plan development process is appropriate for the decisions that stakeholders are being asked to make. Even for the Board of Trade. If they aren’t able to solicit feedback from their members in the 15 day feedback window (Oct 15 to 29th), that suggests to me that they simply aren’t prioritizing this opportunity to participate. Again.

Third, there will be additional opportunities for feedback as the process goes forward. The engagement with the public and stakeholders is a process of increasing refinement and detail. If Board of Trade members aren’t able to fully voice their feedback now, there will be additional opportunities to have a voice later on.

Fourth point: Why should the Board of Trade get special treatment? If PlanSJ makes an exception for them, many other groups in the community would be justified in demanding the same, or even greater, extensions. That’s a losing game. We’ll end up with much longer periods of consultation that will generate little additional input of value, while throwing the plan development schedule out the window.

Finally, while the Board of Trade is an important stakeholder – hence the efforts to date to engage with them – they are not the only people the new plan must serve. PlanSJ must serve the interests of our citizens first. Businesses bring benefit to the region as a whole, but I think we’re all on the same page that the priority, as a municipality, is quality of life for Saint Johners first, with regional business interests as a less central consideration.

If we want the PlanSJ process to have any credibility and validity with Saint Johners (especially those who have made the effort to provide feedback in a timely manner), then the Planning department needs to say no to demands for special treatment from any sector.

I’m also surprised and disappointed that the Board of Trade has chosen the public forum of the TJ to make this play. It smells more like an attempt to attack the credibility of the process than a good-faith argument to provide input.

This is the next step in PlanSJ’s ongoing chain of public consultations. This open house and workshop will focus on some specific planning methodologies and philosophies being proposed by the Planning department and its consultants (Urban Strategies Inc.). Staff and consultants will be on hand to present and explain the direction in which PlanSJ is going, and your input and feedback will be welcomed. This isn’t the last chance to provide input by any means … the real work still lies ahead. But this is an important milestone for PlanSJ and it’s important that we find out from you whether the planning work is on the right course.

Here’s the 411: PlanSJ_Oct14 (pdf file).

This isn’t just nostalgia. Saint Johners see their landscape in four dimensions … the City as it is today, and the City as it was. People refer to Centracare or the K-Mart (which have been gone for decades) like they’re still there. Lancaster and Portland and Simonds no longer exist as legal entities, but they’re a part of daily conversation. And even the Saint John of today is defined as a collection of 80-odd different placenames. Citizens of Saint John are citizens within localized communities that may not be easy to find on any city map.

The importance of local identity and local community needs to be accommodated within PlanSJ. This means taking steps to ensure that neighbourhoods keep the basic elements needed to make them ‘complete’ — social spaces, recreational opportunities, retail, and so forth. A focus on overall sustainability is essential, but the sustainability of neighbourhoods is also a priority.

We had an interesting discussion at the last PlanSJ citizen advisory committee (CAC) meeting regarding the impact of Peel Plaza on the PlanSJ process. It was suggested by one CAC member that the recent decision to proceed with Peel Plaza will make it much more difficult for PlanSJ to engage with citizens, as people are likely to feel fed up and disheartened with planning and the City. (I’m paraphrasing.)

I don’t have any intimate knowledge of the Peel Plaza project so I won’t speak to whether the decision to proceed is appropriate. However, I have noticed that arguments for Peel Plaza seem to be based on verifiable data or sound principles, and the arguments against it seem to be based on emotion and supposition, with a dash of misinformation and perhaps even self interest. (GW, I’m looking at you.)

That isn’t hard to figure out. So despite a concerted campaign by key players like the TJ, I think many (if not the majority) of Saint Johners may either feel unmoved by the Peel Plaza decision or actually support it. As is often the case in Saint John, the vocal minority can appear much larger than the silent majority.

So I don’t buy the underlying premise of the other night’s discussion — that is, that most Saint Johners were strongly against Peel Plaza. And thus I don’t think PlanSJ’s ability to engage has been harmed by the Peel Plaza decision. In fact, the effect might even be the opposite: those who supported Peel Plaza could see that decision as a commitment to change, and those that didn’t support it could see a greater need to engage with the planning process to guide future decisions.

And that’s the key thing to remember about PlanSJ. Regardless of what you think about today’s planning and today’s Council decisions, PlanSJ is about future planning. It’s about guiding how the City will grow and be managed over the next 25 years. For better or worse, the decisions of today are fait accompli. We need to focus on making sure that future councils and planners work within the vision that Saint Johners have expressed through this PlanSJ process.

I urge everyone to engage and participate, to ensure your voice is heard and your perspective helps guide our future. Choosing to be silent now out of discontent with today’s Council and today’s development decisions doesn’t serve anyone’s interests.

This line of handheld tablet computers was sold from about 1993-1997. I owned the Newton 2100, which I bought — as I often do — about ten minutes before they announced they were discontinuing it.

The 2100 was incredibly light, durable, forgiving of both mistreatment and careless handwriting, practical, able to play well with your Mac or PC, able to tether to your cellphone or connect to a physical network (which at the time was a dialup phone line), structured in a way that suited business users, very long lasting on either rechargeable or AA batteries, and fabulous to use in full sunlight. In short, this was a real computer for people who actually needed to use one in the real world.

And now it’s 2010, and the new iPad appears to be none of those things. But it doesn’t matter because it’s sexy as hell and people will buy it first and convince themselves later they can use it for something. That, too, is good design.

Saint John has been in desperate need of a refresh of its municipal plan for decades. The current plan is more than 40 years old and for most of that 40 years it seems to have been disregarded in favour of variances and some plain old crazy.

While Saint Johners themselves seem blind to the beauty and potential of this city (unless they’ve spent some time away), Saint John does have some serious problems that need to be addressed. The city — like many similar municipalities — is struggling under increasing financial burdens and faces climbing tax rates and falling service levels. A new municipal plan won’t fix everything (won’t fix most things), but it will be an essential part of a larger strategy to make the city sustainable, and to improve quality of life here.

The Goal was actually a textbook on systems management and business process engineering, written as paperback fiction. It told the story of a company executive suddenly faced with the imminent failure of his business … unless he could transform his manufacturing operation and achieve profitability. There were jobs at stake, a career on the line, and from what I remember even a failing marriage. The protagonist’s arc as he fought through problems, failed, experimented and finally succeeded actually served as the backbone for a stealthy course in systems engineering.

The use of the fiction genre to deliver training was both bizarre and effective. I read the 300 odd pages in a weekend, and at the end of it I didn’t just know more about systems science than I ever wanted to, I actually, intuitively understood it.

Unfortunately my own book was less inspiring. My brief was to produce a manual. A how-to guide that let people figure out very quickly how to do specific tasks using EPS’s software. It wasn’t flowery, it wasn’t complicated. It became, however, one of the pieces I’m most proud of in my own portfolio. It was simple without being simplistic,  balanced yet comprehensive, and profoundly effective. I think part of what allowed me to get such a good result was that intuitive understanding of the domain I gained from Goldratt’s work.

The lesson for me was that effective knowledge transfer doesn’t always come in conventionally packaged forms. Anything that gets the learner to engage with the knowledge-set is worth trying, especially if that engagement happens through a range of types of cognition (including emotional ones).

A more recent example of out-of-the-box learning is the stage play Charlie Romeo Victor (wiki here). CVR dramatizes a series of aviation accidents by re-enacting the cockpit conversations the pilots had during those accidents. (The scripts are taken directly from transcripts of the accident cockpit voice recorder — CVR — tapes.) The play is emotionally compelling, but it’s also an incredibly effective training tool that provides a crash course in human performance and crew resource management. (CVR has been used, in fact, by the US military for pilot training.)

Learners need to be captured and inspired — if not by the content itself, then by the medium used to deliver it.

I won’t get into the whole story. (Wikipedia does it justice.) In a nutshell, Petrov was on duty when an alert came in from the Soviet satellite-based launch detection system indicating a US first strike had been launched. Petrov ignored protocol and decided that the alert had to be in error despite the fact that alert confidence was high. Petrov chose not to report the alert up the chain of command to the Soviet leadership, who at that time were in such a state of paranoia that they expected a first strike and were likely to launch on warning. It’s felt by many that this is about the closest we ever came to nuclear holocaust.

This is interesting from a human performance perspective because Petrov’s decision was the result of knowledge-based performance when he should have been in a rule-based mode. Instead of simply picking up the phone as he was trained and obligated to do, he stopped, thought, acted … or in this case didn’t … and reviewed. In effect following STAR. Petrov put aside protocol and applied a ‘questioning attitude’. He analyzed the situation and determined he was ‘out of procedure’ (OOP) based on the premise that a first strike was unlikely to take the form of a single missile. This initiative — and for a Soviet missile command officer ignoring nuclear combat protocol, this courage – allowed the time needed to review the situation and determine that the alert was in error. (In fact, it had been caused by sunlight reflecting off clouds.)

The issue of personnel operating in a knowledge-based mode when they should be in a rule-based mode is a complex one. This example clearly demonstrates the value of allowing a task performer to use knowledge-based decision-making to recognize when a rule-based mode is no longer appropriate. However, operating in a knowledge-based mode can also introduce its own risks.

The knowledge requirements for a worker operating in knowledge-based mode are much higher than those needed to operate in rule-based mode. If a worker without that knowledge is allowed to step out of rule-based mode (that is, to improvise), the results can be unexpected. This is a problem if the organizational system and processes have been designed to allow less knowledgeable workers to perform tasks (the monkey grinder approach).

Different industries have tackled this issue in different ways.

In the traditional telecoms industry in most of the western world (the southern US aside because of its literacy challenges), craftspeople working on systems in rule- or skill-based mode were almost universally overqualified. A craftsperson was expected to recognize when they were OOP and further empowered to switch to a knowledge-based troubleshooting or problem-solving mode as soon as it became necessary.

This was possible in part because of the incredible redundancy built into modern switching systems and in part because of the availability of a highly trained, skilled and disciplined workforce.

This approach was necessary because of the time-sensitivity of telecommunications problems — you can’t just turn off a switch and walk away, because people still keep trying to make calls — and because of the level of complexity in modern telecommunications systems. (By the early 1990s, a DMS switching station had more than ten million lines of code and an enormous range of failure modes.) There’s no such thing as rendering a phone system safe. The people pulling line cards and responding to switch alarms had to be able to quickly characterize and respond to complex problems, both within procedures in rule-based mode, and outside procedures in knowledge-based mode.

In contrast, in the nuclear power industry workers are very strongly discouraged from moving to a knowledge-based performance mode without substantial oversight and process overheads. In keeping with this culture, many  performers doing rule-based work on nuclear systems lack the knowledge needed to work in a knowledge-based mode on those same systems.

In other words, the worker may know what switches to throw and what warning lights to look for, but may have little or no understanding of the underlying system they are manipulating.

The worker relies on the rigor and conservative design of the procedure to identify when the work is OOP. Once OOP, work stops altogether and another worker (typically a system specialist with extensive systems knowledge) is brought in to continue in a knowledge-based mode.

This approach works because the systems are robust and workers typically stay within procedure. It works because the system is designed to fail safe and be easily rendered safe (removing the urgency in moving to a knowledge-based mode) and because the technology itself is relatively primitive. Workers are unlikely to encounter complex or ambiguous failure modes that cannot be easily recognized as OOP. (However, when they do, the results can be profound — as happened at Three Mile Island.)

This approach is necessary because of the potential for extreme outcomes if workers move into a knowledge-based mode without the necessary knowledge. As importantly, it is necessary because of the required regulatory oversight within the nuclear industry. It’s essential that workers stay within procedure because procedures are binding not only within the job function or organization, but also with the regulator. Procedures are crafted with enormous care, requiring the approval of system specialists, management and in many cases regulator representatives. Going out of procedure is thus exceptional. Within the nuclear power industry, procedural adherence is paramount.

Coming back to the example of Petrov, a duty officer at a nuclear command centre — at least, within the Soviet command system — didn’t need to have an understanding of nuclear combat strategies because they weren’t expected to make those types of evaluations. Petrov’s job was to respond to launch alerts from the automated monitoring systems and report those alerts to the Soviet leadership. Hear a bell, read data off a screen, and pick up a phone.

More than that, the requirements regarding procedural adherence in a nuclear combat environment would have been far more extreme than even those of the nuclear power industry. The expectation to stay within procedure — to follow orders — is absolute. The potential outcomes are almost unimaginable. Both the demand for compliance and the need to avoid an error, once Petrov recognized the likelihood of that error, are truly exceptional. Petrov had reason to fear the repercussions of ignoring that protocol — especially that protocol — in Soviet Russia. He could also have been wrong and facilitated a US first strike on his country.

In this case, whether Petrov’s understanding of the situation was simply fortuitous, or whether there was some unrecognized defence-in-depth within the system (because, perhaps, duty officers performing that ‘monkey grinder’ role were intentionally overqualified) isn’t obvious.

The lesson in terms of human performance is that there can be enormous value in making sure that even workers expected to perform only in rule-based mode have the knowledge and understanding needed to recognize and react to OOP conditions. Systems and procedures aren’t always rigorous enough, and there are times despite our best efforts when the only thing preventing catastrophy is knowledge, understanding and confidence.

I’ll leave you with this last thought … where were you on September 26, 1983?

Turns out NASA does it right, although the study also showed that Go/No Go decision-making can be a little more ‘noisy’ (error prone).

The Silent 700 used a built-in acoustic coupler to connect the user to a remote computer (usually a mainframe). The user entered data and commands by text, and the output appeared on thermal paper. The use of thermal printing made the terminal incredibly quiet (hence the ‘Silent’). Connections were slow — typically running 300 bps — but the quality of the acoustic interface allowed you to maintain connections for hours or days at a time. The Silent 700′s keyboard was a joy to write with, and the terminal was virtually indestructible.

The Silent 700 was the first device to make computing truly portable, though at 15 lbs, we couldn’t consider it mobile computing by today’s standards. All you needed was a telephone, a power plug, and a mainfraime computing account.  (And a paper bag to put over your head, because walking around with a Silent 700 in 1973 wasn’t quite as sexy as walking around with a iPhone in 2008.)

While it’s hard to recognize this today, the Silent 700 was a tour de force of industrial design in its day. The devices it replaced were clanky, fixed teletype units the size of small refrigerators, and heavy desktop video display terminals that tied users to their desks. The portable terminal let knowledge workers take their work into the field, and notably, into the home. The Silent 700 was the first step in the decoupling of data from location. Though now long forgotten, it launched the transformation of knowledge work into a mobile discipline.

The most commonly used language in the world is Mandarin. Over one billion people speak Mandarin as their mother tongue.

The next most common languages are:

These are the most important languages in terms of total population, but the world has 191 countries and over 6800 languages. Many of those languages are limited to very small geographic areas or small ethnic populations, but they’re all fully evolved, complex, culturally rich linguistic systems.

Important languages in business and for Internet service providers

The languages that are important in international business, as an Internet service provider, depend largely on the specific business you are in, the service you provide, and where you are focusing your marketing efforts. In general, we can say that the following languages are key for most international service providers:

• English
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Spanish

What makes a language important to business? It’s partly a matter of target population, and it’s partly the affluence of each population and their willingness to do business outside their local communities or nations.

Important languages in science and technology

The languages that are important in the fields of science and technology are arguably the following:

• English
• German
• Russian
• Spanish

What makes a language important to science and technology? It’s primarily the amount of science being done in a given linguistic group, and partly the accessibility of that language to the larger scientific and technical community (either through multi-lingualism or through machine-mediated translation).