Prosperity! If We Get Off Our Butts
There is great hope for BC's economic future. But it won't happen unless we lose our traditional way of thinking and embrace change.
Economist Richard Florida, the creative class guru who's currently the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, has posited that in the wake of the recession, Canada needs to reset its economic thinking in many ways.
He cites five areas specifically, but three have particular relevance to BC.
Housing
The first is that Canada has to shift private consumption away from housing and energy, because most Canadians are spending more than half of their income on housing, energy and transportation. This, of course, means that there isn't much left to invest in new growth industries of the future. You can bet that the situation is most dire in BC, where housing and transportation costs often reach more than 70 percent of disposable income.
Already that's having a huge effect on BC's "industries of the future". Many of the creatives who will work in those industries are fleeing Vancouver in particular because they can no longer afford to live here. The creative industries, while attracting most young people today, don't pay that much, and so anyone in them becomes a victim to the get-rich mentality that pervades this city with its absurd housing costs.
Not everyone in this city works for government, a strong union, or is a lawyer or doctor. Also, there are only so many basement apartments available for rent, and many of these creatives are growing older and starting families. When it comes to raising a family, the choice between impossible to live in Vancouver, or some place like Edmonton is easy to make.
Mega-Regions
The second is the creation of strong mega-regions that act as integrated economic units and are vital to economic prosperity in the 21st century. Cascadia, the region that includes Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, houses 8.9 million people, produces $260 billion in economic output, and is among the world's 40 leading mega-regions.
Yet, to date there have only been a few feeble attempts to create a strong Cascadian economic corridor. Instead, we concentrate on selling traditional resources to the giant California market. If BC wants to be an economic power in the 21st Century it must link with its nearest neighbours to the south who think most like us. Together we can form a powerful consortium of 21st Century industries instead of low-end service jobs for tourists.
Movement
Florida points out that if we are to thrive in a knowledge economy, we must speed up the velocity of people, goods and ideas, largely with high-speed rail, and other less-stressful modes of transportation. Here in BC, we've been talking for years about high-speed rail between the three largest cities of Cascadia but have done little about it.
There were increased rail links with Seattle for the Olympics, and they were a huge hit, drawing masses of people. But the concept has gone nowhere since. Amtrak , the American rail system, would like to increase its daily trips into Vancouver from 2 trips a day to four, but has yet to receive approval from the BC government, and, especially has yet to conquer the twin problems of holdups at the border, and the requirement to go slow in urban areas.
All of these economic initiatives are do-able if we can get off our old ways of thinking. Of course, every change has its impediments, but these can be conquered if we insist that traditional thinking of the past give way to preparation for the future.
But prosperity will only come if we stop dreaming and start doing something. We need to get off our butts and actively promote them.
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