Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part II
Posted on | April 30, 2010 | 7 Comments
Below is Part II of a three-part guest series exploring community development and its impacts. Part I can be viewed here.
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A Tale of Two Communities, Part II
By Peter MacGibbon
In my first posting, I described two neighbouring rurban communities undertaking simultaneous Community Centre development projects, with very different challenges posed to them by their contrasting geographies. I’ll now compare the vision and process each community followed and how these have either supported or detracted from their final objective.
The socio-geographic factors mentioned previously have played a role in attracting different sorts of newcomers over the last several decades to both Chelsea and Wakefield. Chelsea has tended to appeal more to outdoorsy jocks, while Wakefield has become something of an artists’ colony. These are generalizations, of course, in that there are mixes of all kinds of people in both places, but locals would have no trouble identifying which community is which.
This demographic distinction has influenced the design of their respective Community Centres, with a definite bias towards sports in Chelsea (whose centrepiece will be an indoor hockey arena), and a recognition of the arts by the inclusion of a performance theatre for Wakefield. The problem is, hockey arenas are expensive to build and maintain, and thus rely for revenues on outside visitors arriving for a single-stop purpose (to play hockey, then leave), while a theatre has the potential not only for local and outside revenue, but to support the village’s surrounding restaurants, cafes, and shops, all of which make a trip to a performance a full social outing.
Then there is the question of a cohesive community self-image. Wakefield is a real “village” where people enjoy meeting to do things, which often include volunteer-driven projects such as their grass-roots Community Centre campaign itself, which obtained well over the number of its actual population in paid memberships a full four years before the Centre’s plan was recognized for external funding.
Chelsea, situated much closer to the city, yet lacking any natural gathering centre, is in limbo between its not-so-distant rural community past and the suburbanizing influence of local politicians and developers keen on taking advantage of one of the highest per-capita income municipalities in Canada. Indeed, substantial tax hikes in Chelsea in the last few years, along with few discernible improvements to actual services, have added to the perception of the Municipal Council as fat-cats who are pushing through Chelsea’s Community Centre project from behind the scenes, concurrently with a host of other fiscally and environmentally controversial projects that leave many (up to half) of the municipality’s residents angry and resentful.
The Wakefield Centre committee first formed a volunteer cooperative, and invited the entire community to be members. It has consulted, wrangled, cooperated, and compromised in full public view, and with minimal political support.
Chelsea formed a foundation (which few people knew about) and paid its inner circle to develop a plan. Its one significant attempt to consult with the community via town-hall meetings and surveys was dismissed by the insiders as being “unrepresentative,” when results showed that many residents were unhappy with both the vision and the process.
Wakefield’s Centre will host the village library, youth centre, recreation centre and theatre company, all with overwhelming local support. Chelsea’s Centre, with community support split evenly down the middle, will house the hockey arena, along with a multi-purpose “space” for ad-hoc events and services.
It’s thus been hard for the electorate of Chelsea not to perceive the Centre project as a giant daycare centre for the children of latter-day yuppies and soccer moms sick of returning back to the city yet again, kids-in-tow, after returning home from work. (While less driving is good for any of us, the Chelsea Centre’s business case still rests on drawing more traffic out from the city to use the arena.) These perceptions have only been aggravated by the recent election which saw a Chelsea Foundation member elected mayor by the slimmest of majorities amid heavy-handed threats to sue opponents and the local press for defamation. Hardly the stuff of inspired community leadership.
In my third and final posting on this topic, I will look at some of the lessons learned from these dual processes, and invite comment as to why, given the obviously different circumstances from which both communities were operating, Chelsea could not pull itself away from an as-yet-unresolved disaster in community development politics.
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Tags: Chelsea > exploring rural development > friction > rural > rurban > two communities > Wakefield
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7 Responses to “Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part II”
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Community development, growth and communication in the rural-urban fringe landscape.
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April 30th, 2010 @ 3:42 pm
I would love to see pictures of these, if you have any.
April 30th, 2010 @ 5:02 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ray Bates, Gilbert Bogle. Gilbert Bogle said: Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part II … http://bit.ly/9Il77y [...]
May 3rd, 2010 @ 11:02 am
I love the style of this series. The issues discussed here are being played out all over the United States, as stimulus money trickles down into rural communities.
The first question, that many communities ignore to their peril is how to approach this opportunity. I’m linking to these posts today at ruraltourismmarketing.com and looking forward to installment 3.
May 3rd, 2010 @ 11:23 am
[...] The lesson begins in Part 2. [...]
May 8th, 2010 @ 9:13 am
Hi Zeeshan,
I’ve forwarded some photos to Jennifer for her to post.
Thanks,
Peter
May 8th, 2010 @ 9:16 am
Hi Joanne,
I like your three questions:
1. Who should initiate a rural development project?
2. Who should be in charge?
3. Who should benefit?
So simple, yet if answered with full consideration, so essential, starting with the initiation question. Many people in Chelsea feel a suburbanizing agenda has been pushed onto them, and simply don’t see why it’s necessary. In their minds, no one asked for it, so where did it come from? Conversely, there seems to have been a widespread assumption amongst the pro-development crowd that this was the “natural” order of things, so might as well make a buck out of it. Very old school thinking!
Thanks,
Peter
May 12th, 2010 @ 2:05 pm
[...] Part II and III of this series are now posted here and [...]