Prepared for Professor Colin Mercer, Foundations of Cultural Planning, UBC

The Cultural Planning: A Citizen’s Approach

      When I told my friends and family that I had signed up for a class in cultural planning, they asked me: ‘What's that?’ and to be quite honest, I couldn't give them a straight answer.  It seemed like an esoteric subject hinting at a Kafkaesque bureaucracy.  It can sound redundant or, at its worst, like a coercive regime.  Luckily, as defined in contemporary Western terms, cultural planning is a practice of facilitation not dictation. It is an encompassing theoretical framework available for use not just by a basement office in a city hall somewhere, but, I will argue, for every citizen. I am not a professional planner, but I am a potential citizen. To unpack what this means for me, I will first address the notion of ‘the citizen’ then I will suggest ways that a cultural planning approach can be incorporated into the everyday life of the individual in the transformative process of ‘civilizing.’

As there is hardly the space to deconstruct the philosophical concept of the ‘citizen,’ instead I would suggest that a cultural planning approach requires at a minimum the acknowledgment of a difference between a resident and a citizen. Mercer has delineated forms of the city between the urbs and the civitas: the former being the mere physical space; the latter being a fuller engagement and participation in that space (Foundations). I would suggest that the individual who occupies the space of the urbs could be called a resident in contrast to an individual who participates in the civitas as a citizen.

Referencing Bloomfield and Bianchini's Planning for the Intercultural City, Mercer agrees that ‘citizenship is the connective tissue of intercultural planning’ (“Local Policies,” 13). To extend the metaphor then, my role as a citizen is as a cell within the tissue. Every cell needs to be healthy in order to contribute to the well-being of the tissue. The success of cultural planning in a city rests not only with the planners, but also with those for whom the plan is aimed.  

Ultimately, citizenship is stakeholding; it requires engagement and participation. But a single citizen cannot provide the infrastructural resources that a government can.  As a citizen, I have fiscal obligations to my city to overcome the problem of the commons; but engaging in a cultural planning approach requires more of me than that. And this is perhaps where a cultural planning model has an advantage for enhancing citizenship over an Athenian model of democracy:  the political realm is but one facet of participation for the citizen. The citizen must both produce and consume cultural resources. Bianchini suggests cultural resources can be applied in economic, symbolic, social, environmental, political, educational, and cultural sectors (“What is,” 3). An individual's efforts in each of these areas cannot be equally distributed, but nevertheless, this provides a good framework for how an individual can become a citizen in terms of cultural planning.

One of the primary ways individuals exist in a city is as economic actors. Not all actors are equal:  choices are made that discriminate between a resident and a citizen. A cultural planning approach would suggest that a citizen has a consumptive role to play to bolster local industry and commerce. ‘Buying local’ could support the independent businesses that give a city personal character. Although many chain shops operate as independent franchises, supporting local mom-and-pop shops with individual names sends a message that citizens prefer a unique identity for their city.  Using disposable income on activities within the city, whether by going to a restaurant, to a theatre, or to a hockey game, can act as an investment in the community.

The return of the Winnipeg Jets NHL hockey team stands as a good example of economic citizenship. Naysayers argued that Winnipeg could not sustain the economic requirements for the return of the NHL franchise, but the citizens supported the return of the hockey team to the city.  They demonstrated this commitment  in a variety of ways, and ultimately through economic consumption (Turner). While it's too soon to tell if the novelty will wear-off and the money will disappear-- along with the civic pride it reinforced-- it stands as a good example of how individuals as economic actors can become citizens of their cities.

 Although the citizen's role is often as a consumer, the individual can play a part in the symbolic and educational sectors of a city's cultural plan. The rise of social media has created a space for citizens to act as city marketers. Recommending local activities and sharing information about upcoming events on social media (such as Twitter or Facebook) can help to improve a city's reputation. If I mention a new event happening every day, my connections--both within my city and outside of it--will increasingly sense that my city is rich with cultural activities. Duxbury, Simons and Warfield go further to suggest that citizen's media, often occurring online, ‘take involvement…to a new level, sometimes redefining cultural identity and what counts as meaningful culture.’ (43) If properly applied, online tools can be used positively to fuse the private space with the public, mitigating what Bianchini calls ‘the privatized existence’ of less skilled workers (“The Difficult Art,” 2) 

Participating in the social and environmental improvement also has a different meaning for the citizen than for the planner. A citizen alone can't increase funding to implement safer streets initiatives; and standing on a bad street corner to prove ‘I'm not scared’ may not be the most effective strategy to improve the overall perception of a neighbourhood's safety. However, choosing to use public spaces, in lieu of private alternatives, can improve the overall sense of place. Instead of hosting a backyard barbecue (a private space), a public park could be used for the same event, contributing to a sense of neighbourhood. In some neighbourhoods this would increase the sense of safety that might be lacking, whilst in others, it would display to the parks department that the facilities are actually used. It's hard to defend spending money on maintaining a park that never has any people in it.  Inevitably, some public spaces may not be worth defending in their extant forms.  In such cases, the citizen could engage the political sector for solutions.

The degree of effectiveness of the individual's actions ultimately lies in the responsiveness of the local government. If the government itself is not open to concepts expressed through a cultural planning approach, many of the quiet efforts of the individual will not be fully recognized. If local government does not conduct thorough audits regarding the use of local spaces, attendance at local events, influencing the allocation of fiscal resources will be more challenging (Mercer, "What is Cultural," 6). The political sphere is the domain for the citizen to participate in larger scale, more direct action. This should mean more than simply voting, but it is not necessarily reasonable to expect that all citizens can dedicate their lives to Athenian-style professionalized citizenship. Attending city council and departmental meetings is a traditional possibility for engagement; however, the contemporary citizen is an email away from voicing concern. As in the case of Montreal,  the physical town hall can give way to online forums for citizens' ideas and concerns (Montreal for Tommorrow). If an administration is slow to embrace the principles of cultural planning; the citizen could voice his or her concerns either directly to the administration, or to the political opposition.

Citizenship following a cultural planning approach could be a full-time job, but in this paper I have tried to outline the small choices that an individual can make to engage as a citizen rather than an idle resident. If we don't consider the active role of the citizen in the cultural plan, then the cultural plan itself becomes what Mills has called "the icing on the cake rather than the yeast." (7) At the crux of cultural planning is an encompassing approach that requires the internalization of its principles; principles that go beyond merely the political.  Whilst planners and governmental implementers must be working strategically to create an essentially intuitive plan for the citizen, I have argued that the citizen also benefits from a conscious understanding of cultural planning. If we all know the name of the game, it's easier to play.

Works Cited

Bianchini, Franco. "The Difficult Art of Cultural Planning."  The Arts Council of England. Nd.

---.  "What is 'Cultural Planning'?" Urban Cultural Policy in Britain and Europe: Towards Cultural Planning. Griffith University, Institute for Cultural        plannning Studies: 1993.

Duxbury, Nancy. Derek Simons, and Katie Warfield. “Local policies and expressions of cultural diversity: Canada and the United States.” ed. Institut           de Cultura, Barcelona City Council, as Chair of United Cities and Local Governments' Working Group on Culture, in the framework of the study         "Local policies for cultural diversity" commissioned by the Division of Cultural Policies and Intercultural Dialogue of UNESCO. Institut de                    Cultura,  Barcelona: 2006. Print.

Montreal for Tomorrow. Ville de Montreal, nd. Web. 23 October 2012.

Mercer, Colin. Foundations of Cultural Planning. University of British Columbia. n.d. Web. 25 October 2012.

--. "Local Policies for Cultural Diversity: Systems, Citizenship, and Governance: With an Emphasis on the UK and Australia." ed. Institut de Cultura, Barcelona City Council, as Chair of United Cities and Local  Governments' Working Group on Culture, in the framework of the study "Local policies for cultural diversity" commissioned by the Division of Cultural Policies and Intercultural Dialogue of UNESCO. Institut de Cultura, Barcelona: 2006. Print.

--. "What is Cultural Planning?" ed. Community Arts Network National Conference. Sydney, 10 October 1991.  

Mills, Deborah. "Cultural Planning-Policy Task, not Tool." Artwork Magazine, 55, 2003: 7-11. Print.

Turner, Randy. “Go! Winnipeg Go!” Winnipeg Free Press. 10 October 2011.  A9. Web. 25 October 2012. Web.