Uploaded on 2016-09-23 by Sasha Kvakic

Three of the most important stocks and flows at play in our local territorial environment are food, people/density, and finance capital. Each of these play a central role in the ongoing creation of our environment and are the focus of intense dialogue and debate within the community of engaged citizens. Food Greater Victoria is a collection of municipalities located at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. This island is 32 thousand km2, largely covered by mountains and forests and home to only 750 thousand people (by way of comparison, Switzerland is approximately 40 thousand km2, with 8 million inhabitants). Despite the relatively small population, the island is almost completely dependant on imports of food. Current estimates are that there is only a three day supply of food kept in local wholesale storage facilities and retail stores. We are dependant upon supply chains that flow from stocks located in such places as the Canadian prairies, California's central valley and myriad overseas agricultural production and processing zones. Alarmed by the apparent precariousness of our dependance on these flows, food security activists have sought to influence planning policy to encourage urban farming, prioritising farming over more intensive land uses. This is to some extent at odds with development policies intended to encourage transit oriented higher density urban centres in order to reduce car dependence and increase vibrancy. In a classic case of perverse outcomes, the very policy that encourages farming in the urban center could drive development pressure to the periphery, resulting in the loss of farmlands that may be more fertile of a size that can enjoy economies of scale in food production. People/density In common with many North American city-regions, Greater Victoria has a spatial distribution of residences and workspaces i.e., more or less temporary stocks of people that encourage a semidiurnal flow analogous to an ocean tide, largely accommodated in private cars on an ever expanding network of roads and highways. We are now attempting to adopt an urban form that shortens the distance between stocks of housing and work to lessen the intensity and distance of the flow of people that has to be accommodated by our roads. This faces several challenges at the levels of individual attitude and the inertia created by a century of infrastructure built around the old model of single use zoning. Finance Capital Victoria’s economy is situated in a legal/cultural context where the majority of investment decisions are made by private interests on an open market. Capital is accumulated throughout the global political economic system and virtually “stockpiled” in locations like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Vancouver, Seattle, Silicon Valley etc. In the face of volatility in financial markets (for equity, debt, and derivative instruments) the owners and controllers of this capital are seeking opportunities to deploy and invest funds in luxury real estate. These inflows of capital to attractive real estate markets like ours have had far reaching effects on housing affordability for residents and led to the development of specific forms of multifamily residential dwellings to cater to this market. Many of these new units are kept vacant and held as investments for resale, doing little to contribute to the construction of community vibrancy. Connecting these seemingly separate threads of a community seeking to manage the relationship of various stocks and flows across our region is the desire to relocalize and in some respects reterritorialize the vital factors that make our community work. This is part and parcel of a move to a more ecological paradigm for understanding the dynamics at play in an urban system. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect that we will be able (nor would it be desirable) to eliminate all extraterritorial in and out flows of matter, energy or information. The point is to uncover and identify the stocks and flows we depend upon and rather than accept them as eternal properties critically examine how they can be altered to reflect our community values.