From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:
Gwendolyn Hallsmith currently serves as Planning Director for the City of Montpelier, Vermont. She's had a wide range of experience, including: work as a county planner (Franklin County, Massachusetts); as a town manager (Randolph, Vermont); as a state agency official (Deputy Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources); and as founder of a non-profit working in the U.S. and South Africa (the Global Community Initiatives). She also written and spoken extensively on sustainable development issues. We're pleased that Gwendolyn will be joining the Planning Commissioners Journal as a regular contributing writer.Wayne: What projects are you currently working on in Montpelier that you find especially interesting?
Gwendolyn: We’re working to make Montpelier the first sustainable state capital. To do this, we’ve developed a long-range sustainability plan, and have started several new projects including an innovative elder care program, a biomass combined heat and power plant, a Time Bank, a Food Systems Council, an energy team, and a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) District. They’re all interesting, and its very challenging to keep so many balls in the air at the same time.
Wayne: I'm sure we'll hear more about some of these in your future columns for the Planning Commissioners Journal. Looking beyond Montpelier, what do you see as the most challenging two or three issues generally facing planners and planning commissions across the country?
Gwendolyn: I think the economy has changed to the point where Euclidian zoning is no longer relevant in many communities. We need new tools to increase density, reduce the energy intensity of our communities, and encourage new economic activities that can co-exist with residential development. Planning commissions are tasked with looking at the future, and right now it’s changing faster than any other time in human history.
Reorienting ourselves as learners rather than experts can help us ride the waves of change instead of being inundated. One way to cultivate a learning orientation to the planning enterprise is to reach outside the normal time frame -- there are lots of cities around the world now who are trying to look at a 30 to 100 year plan instead of the usual 3 to 5 year plan. When you ask yourselves what the world will be like in 30 years, the gaps in what we know are much more apparent, and the creativity and challenge of addressing the issues of the 21st Century can come more to the forefront.
Wayne: As I noted in the intro to this posting, you've had some very interesting work experiences. For example, you were a founder of a nonprofit called Global Community Initiatives. Can you tell us a little about it?
Gwendolyn: Global Community Initiatives was founded in 2002 to promote sustainable community development in the global “north” and the global “south.” Our main office is in Montpelier, Vermont, with a sister organization -- Global Community Initiatives, South Africa, based in Johannesburg. In the north, we provide technical assistance and training to cities who are working on sustainable city planning. In the south, we have initiated development projects that use our integrated approach.
I’ve learned an enormous amount over the past eight years. The organization has taken me on two trips around the world -- most recently to China, South Africa, and Europe in the fall of 2008. I’ve worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, Canada, and the United States. We worked with the Cities of Calgary, Alberta, and Newburgh, New York to do a 100 year plan for their city -- Calgary’s plan won an award from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in 2006.
In South Africa, we’ve trained local municipal officials in sustainable economic development and have established a demonstration project in a city called Diepsloot to train young people to be bicycle mechanics at the same time we shipped used bicycles in from the United States for them to sell as a business. Over 1,000 bicycles have been shipped to the project, and now the business supports the training activity without grant funding from GCI.
I am still involved in the organization. I’m the Co-Chair of the Board, and I’m often invited to speak and offer training to other cities.
Wayne: Where did you get your start in planning?
Gwendolyn: I started working as a planner in rural Western Massachusetts, when my husband and I moved out there after living in Boston. In Boston, I had been a Senior Planner at the Executive Office of Energy Resources, and so when I applied for a County Planner position in Franklin County, the titles matched, even if the job responsibilities didn’t. I have to confess that I didn’t know a lot about land use planning at the time, so I learned on the job.
Wayne: Your first column for the Planning Commissioners Journal focuses on the importance of strengthening local economies. You say that "companies that are locally owned are much more sensitive to community needs and environmental conditions, and can lessen a city or town’s vulnerability to job losses when economic downturns occur." If that's the case, why have so many communities focused on trying to recruit businesses from outside?
Gwendolyn: The grass always looks greener on the other side. It’s the "great white hunter" approach, rather than the careful farmer who cultivates the little seedlings that are already growing. There’s a lot more heroism and recognition involved in bringing in the next big plant than in helping the small local business expand into slightly larger space with a few additional employees. And yet 90 percent of the new jobs come from these small, local businesses, not the big corporation.
Wayne: Have you seen evidence that cities and towns are starting to turn to more locally oriented economic development strategies?
Gwendolyn: Well, some of the evidence I have about cities and towns turning to locally oriented economic development strategies is the number of people who have been using the workbook I wrote in partnership with Hunter Lovins of Natural Capitalism and America’s Development Foundation. It’s called Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal, and it’s available on line for no charge (pdf document). I just finished my second workshop for the International Society of Sustainability Professionals on the methodology, and there is a long list of cities and towns from all over the world on the web site. I think the interest in sustainable, local solutions to our current economic crisis is driving the interest in this approach.
Wayne: As you note in your upcoming article for the Planning Commissioners Journal, planning commissioners are in a key position in their communities. From your experience, how can planning commissions best position themselves to play a productive leadership role?
Gwendolyn: They need to reach out to everyone in the community, and get people from all walks of life involved in their work. In Montpelier, we’ve appointed youth members to our Planning Commission, and we initiated a broad multi-stakeholder process to update the Master Plan. The more they listen and learn, the better leaders they will be through increasingly uncertain times.
