FCM Dispatch: Day One

(L-R) Mayor Yves Lévesque (City of Trois Rivières), Peter Partington (Region of Niagara), and Mayor Brian McMullan (City of St. Catharines) at today's Cities on the Shoreline session.

“Here’s your ATM machine,” said architect Avi Friedman, pointing to an image of the majestic Peace River in Alberta.

During his keynote speech this afternoon at FCM’s Sustainable Communities conference in Ottawa, Friedman touched on tourism in waterfront communities as a wealth generator. When I asked him later to expand on this thought, he told me that communities must diversify their income to include many sources, and that waterfronts are a natural option.

“If you clean and develop a river, it can be a fantastic service of recreation,” he said. “We do not fully understand the tourism potential our waterways can bring.”

That’s not to say we should rush in and develop waterfronts.

“We need to mostly leave waterfronts as they are,” said Friedman. “But you can maintain environmental integrity and bank on it to help sustain future prosperity. We have lots of water; we must use it in an innovative way.”

Friedman’s words complemented one of the morning’s sessions on Cities on the Shoreline, which not only discussed waterfronts for tourism, but also for lifestyle and community. Mayor Yves Lévesque of the City of Trois Rivières shared his municipality’s plans for waterfront redevelopment in a former industrial zone that housed a pulp and paper mill. “Water is a magnet,” he said, echoing Friedman, “as long as you don’t take advantage of it.” In addition to a new boardwalk along the perimeter, Trois Rivières is adding housing, a tech park and commercial space to make the newly-remediated parcel of land more attractive for its people. The city is hoping to see economic benefits as a result of its implementation.

Mayor Brian McMullan of St. Catharines and Peter Partington of the Region of Niagara contributed to the same session, discussing the Mayor’s Collaborative Action Plan to Protect the Great Lakes and Niagara Region’s water strategy, respectively.

Presented by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, the session also highlighted the US-Canada promise to renegotiate the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the promised $475 million from the Obama administration, and the St. Lawrence Action Plan renegotiation. “We have a historical opportunity to make shorelines a prime feature [in our communities],” said the session’s chair, Nicola Crawhall. “The importance of water is obvious to everyone who lives beside it.”