Just a quick update for now

I have settled in at Toronto Metropolitan University after a long period of turbulence, and will resume regular uploads now that I have returned to a state of equilibrium. This past year has been packed with learning new things, and now there is such a long backlog of ideas begging to be written down and sorted out that I'm not sure where to start.

Preparing to teach Municipal Finance for Planners has been a blast. I've spoken with several experts here in this space about structuring the course and got great advice. This subject sews many different planning issues together as it deals with how local governments mediate market transactions through fiscal instruments to alter the supply and pricing of critical urban goods and services, and how such analyses are incorporated in plans and policies. Next post will elaborate on the specific questions in municipal finance that concern urban planning. My aim is to connect these theories, models, and graphs to current problems facing so many, like exorbitant housing costs and frustratingly long commutes.

In this fall semester, I will also be teaching an exciting client-based studio, where a small team of students will help out with precinct planning in Toronto's Port Lands by CreateTO, the public agency responsible for managing the city's real estate portfolio. This kind of project management has been very grounding for me, personally.

What's up with tax increment financing (TIF) in Canada

Tax increment financing, where governments borrow against future property tax revenue to front the cost of infrastructural improvement within designated areas or on designated properties, has dominated U.S. economic development and found footing in Canada. A brief survey of its prevalence in the latter revealed what seems to be a mix of enthusiasm and uncertainty, as expected with an instrument proven controversial for its risks/rewards.

I brought this up in my Introduction to Planning class in a discussion on decentralization and the city government's role in economic development as the global-local pivot. What the dilemma of TIFs really comes down to is uncertainty - about whether development would've occurred in their absence, whether projected growth would materialize into enough funds to pay off the money borrowed, whether the public benefits would be equitably distributed within the neighborhood and the whole city or even beyond, whether the foregone revenues from overlapping jurisdictions would have long-term repercussions, whether rent-seeking agenda would sneak into the complex design and lodge itself through their implementation... And whenever there is uncertainty, power dictates the narratives - the ones most cited by TIF supporters being 1) "there's no harm done" - brownfields that yield little revenue unless injected with a dose of investment and 2) "it's good for everyone" - that the investment, paid for by new revenues that would not have existed otherwise, results in better infrastructure for the city. These aren't exactly false, if assuming too much; what gets left out is how extreme TIF is and that there may be more balanced alternatives.

Perhaps it is this controversial U.S. legacy that explains the apparent hesitation in its adoption in Canada. Ontario passed its Tax Increment Financing Act in 2006, enabling municipalities to create TIF districts, apply for provincial grant that match the projected tax increments, and use the funds to support businesses within the designated districts that would otherwise be prohibited. How it works--as best as I can tell--is that a city identifies (presumably contiguous) parcels suitable for redevelopment, remediation, and/or public transit, submits a feasibility study--by itself, through a business subsidiary, or with neighboring cities if applicable, gets approved for a grant from the province, establishes the district, freezes property valuation in that district at a baseline, diverts all tax increments (increases above the baseline from the development in question) into a special fund, uses that fund and payouts from the province to foot the bills. It isn't clear how the grant is calculated--presumably in the amount equal to the projected tax increments given the maximum cap at that amount and lack of specification with regard to the recipient (province or city) of the educational property tax in question. Districts are limited in size and scope--the municipal tax increment in a given year cannot exeed 1% of all municipal property taxes. There is room for governor's discretion to approve ineligible projects that are deemed to have substantial public benefit that cannot occur but for the provincial TIF grant.

Manitoba soon followed suit in 2009 with its Community Revitalization and Tax Increment Financing Act that subsequently enabled the creation of the "Sports, Hospitality, and Entertainment District (SHED) in downtown Winnipeg through the 2002 City Charter section 222. The approach was top-down in that the province designates a property and meet with the affected municipal and school boards and very much growth-oriented in that only the probability of project success and public benefit is considered, not funding availability. There are assessment and levy provisions separately for the designated property and surrounding properties. Once a designation is made, assessed value is frozen; for any subsequent increases or "increments", in lieu of school taxes, property owners pay toward a "community revitalization levy," which is then remitted back to the province to go into a Community Revitalization Fund to be paid out to the property owner(s), occupant(s), the city, and/or entities making supported investments in the neighborhood--to offset any costs they bore for redevelopment, whether it's from increased valuation from making improvements--not unlike the "pay-as-you-go" arrangement in many U.S. TIFs--or decreased valuation from creating affordable housing units--not unlike Ontario's use of Tax Increment Equivalent Grant. (I got exhausted just typing that last sentence..)

Guiding principles for Manitoba's new TIF framework. Source: https://news.gov.mb.ca/asset_library/en/newslinks/2018/12/BG-TIF_Graphic-MR.pdf

In 2018, Manitoba introduced a new framework to make TIFs more transparent, accountable, and collaborative (see above) so they don't become a runaway public risk or burden. Reforms include more representative decision-making, delayed payouts, and more stringent evaluation criteria, including but-for tests, which seems to have gone into effect, according this policy adopted by the Winniopeg City Council in 2022. Within hours of the announcement, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation responded with its rejection and criticism against the new framework as part of its stance against TIFs in general, citing the failure of development projects that Manitoban taxpayers had to pay for. At this point in time, Winnipeg officials were already doubting whether their city was all set on TIFs, according this CBC News analysis, and "whether Winnipeg has already mortgaged too much of its future to pay for projects now" and possibly trading long-term sustainability and resilience for relatively short-term gains that make sense to pursue for election cycles.

Ontario wasn't Canada's TIF pioneer: Alberta first created the Community Revitalization Levy through the Municipal Government Act in 2005 that was later suspended in 2014 pending a thorough review of its impact on the redistribution of educational property taxes and resumed in 2022 with a number of transparency and accountability reforms. So far there are six TIF districts throughout the province--the earliest to begin (in 2008) and last to conclude (in 2047) being the redevelopment of Calgary Rivers District through its business subsidiary, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation. The approval process, public involvement, and fiscal impact for this and the Edmonton districts were called into question in a 2019 paper by researchers with the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. These districts, along with Toronto's SmartTrack proposal and Winnepeg's SHED, are definitely worth keeping an eye, as Canadian governments continue the TIF experiment.

The Rivers District Community Revitalization Levy district Source: https://www.calgary.ca/planning/community/rivers-district-map.html

Teaching cities and city planning

It is a great honor to be entrusted with the responsibility of teaching 300+ undergraduate students this semester across two courses/departments at the University of Calgary -- one for geography on the evolution of cities through our past and the other for planning on building better cities for our future. This post will be short as I am quite busy every day prepping and refining my course content and delivery, in addition to writing papers.

It's hard to believe that we are only two weeks in. So much has happened. From the first small self-contained cities of five thousand years ago to the massive mechanized cities and sprawling suburbs that are our reality today--we experienced through reading the vicissitudes in the delicate balance between peoples and resources as well as the dramatic rise and fall of urbanized empires, which are really the cumulative result of daily mismanagement that went unnoticed or neglected. (I often stress, nothing big just happens without a bunch of small things adding up.) We witnessed how external fixes to resource crises--that is, attempting to repair the balance through expansion and acquisition of new resources, often involving dispossession of the more defenseless--tend to be unsustainable. We explored better solutions by unpacking the sociospatial configuration of cities.

While it's great fun getting lost in the fascinating details of the past urban forms and functions--pockets of civilization in Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Indus Valley, Egypt, and Northern China, Greek city-states, Roman empire's defensive outposts, Medieval hubs, mercantilist trading centers, burgeoning steam-powered metropolis, factory towns, planned suburbs, we also must ground ourselves in the continuities and generalizable characteristics of urbanism as well as disruptions in the form of new institutions (such as the private ownership of the means of production that gave rise to cottage industries). We also keep track of the theories that people all over have come up with to explain and understand urban phenomena--thus linking documented experience with epistemology.

Over on the planning side, similarly, we familiarized ourselves with the many plans of Calgary and its surrounding region (it's nice to see some degree of intermunicipal coordination), teasing out its various elements--visions and goals down to strategies and actions--and matching them to theoretical justifications and experimental results. Inspired by how the City Reader opens with the study of cities, I opened with the education of planners through accredited professional degrees and why certain coursework is required, so that we understand the problems, objectives, stakes, and planners' roles and powers. We examine not only theories in planning that inform our policy recommendations and theories of planning that guide implementation but also theories about planning that illuminate the paths and obstacles ahead. We look at the broader geopolitical and socioeconomic configurations that circumscribe the purview and possibility space for local planners and identify less-understood or -researched areas in the Canadian context.

Words cannot adequately describe the fulfillment I get from teaching urban studies and city planning and my gratitude for the opportunity to do it. I am learning so much each and every day, and I hope my students are too, and are having fun at the same time.