ABSTRACT
The public engagement approach designed for GCAP was a radical extension of the City’s participatory planning. It also represented the start of standardization of this participatory approach, aligned with the exigencies of the latest thinking on communications deriving from a city-branding agenda and ecological modernization attitude.4 Despite Vancouver’s relatively good experience with citizen engagement, the staff person directing the communications process for GCAP saw this job as ridding the public participation process of its bad reputation. Whereas citizen mobilization and protest politics were effective in stopping freeways from cutting through the downtown peninsula in the 1960s, for example, this is not seen as an appropriate type of public participation in the contemporary context, as voiced by staff: ‘Public consultation has a bad reputation too because it’s usually the same kind of people that show up to an open house and yell at you … how representative is that? And where is the silent majority and what do they think? So … it needed to be with a vision as big and as bold as we were moving forward with … that we wanted to involve a ton of people in it, and everyone likes to brainstorm so … submit your idea, let’s vote it up, we wanted to try that.’
