Community Savings Microfinance Model

A new article in The Economist: Small wonder - A new model of microfinance for the very poor is spreading.


From the article:

People like these schemes because they are easy to understand, says John Schiller, a microfinance expert with Plan International. And returns on savings are extremely high—generally 20-30% a year. Borrowers typically pay interest rates of 5-10% a month on loans that usually have to be repaid within three months. The rates may seem usurious but they are set by people who are in effect lending to themselves and saving the interest that they charge. 

A village savings scheme typically involves a small group (perhaps 15-30 people) who pool their savings. Each buys a share in a fund from which they can all borrow. All must also contribute a small sum to a social fund, which acts as micro-insurance. If a member suffers a sudden misfortune, she will receive a payout. 

Members select leaders and draft a constitution. The rules spell out how often the group will meet, what interest rates it will charge and what loans may be used for. At the end of a cycle (usually about one year), all the money accumulated through savings and interest is shared out according to members’ contributions, and a new cycle starts. Once members have mastered the system, the groups they have formed can take on additional tasks such as providing training in agriculture, health, leadership and business.

Why Occupy Canada Matters

Occupy Toronto - St. James Park

What happens if the occupiers go home?

Then we accept this whole global problem was just an anomalous “bank thing” that mostly happened elsewhere. A generational crisis that we’ve past, thank goodness, and one to which Canada was just an innocent bystander. We can even be smug, if we want.

And we’ll find ourselves going through another election cycle four years from now, and we’ll do something silly like double-down on our new fighter jets and our fancy prisons. Or not. Maybe we get that fancy oil pipeline and a nice austerity programme to start a generation’s work of clearing the hundreds of billions of new debt we’ve added. The Boomer retirement will really get some momentum going and we’ll hope we can pay for that tsunami of healthcare costs on, what, Financial Services growth? Tourism? iPhone app development?

What’s the plan? How do we turn the engine of the St. Lawrence Basin back on? What does it make? How does it build real value in the world? How do we use that to educate and house and invest? How do we do it in a way that is sustainable and healthy and improves our quality of life? How do we as a nation do more than finally, barely, and belatedly achieve our commitments to carbon dioxide levels and a 0.7% of GDP to developing nations?

Will we wait and hope that a suddenly government-ready and messianic NDP will save us? A newly rejuvenated (and equally messianic) Liberal Party? Explosive growth and sudden ministerial preparedness in the Greens? How strong would any one of these parties have to be to win, hold, and get things done? None of us really believes that will happen.

The real question is how can our Canadian parliaments work without a popular movement that restores legitimacy to government.

And here we suddenly have this popular movement that is reinforcing itself globally, and is making direct connection between democracy, economy, plurality, sustainability, inclusivity and human rights. They are staying there and sharing what they learn with each other and they are changing things.

The more popular support they generate, the more they accomplish.

Everyone should go to the parks and see the occupations and the General Assemblies: the ones I've seen beggar the imagination to understand how they could ever bring about the kind of change we need.

But we know the current systems of government won’t start working again on their own. They will never bring the change we need. And we’re all mystified as to how they're going to become relevant and responsive and effective. It won’t happen inside of any one party. It won’t happen if we accept that a globalized world ends at national borders. It requires a movement that grabs the governing system itself and smartens it up. Holds it accountable. Insists it smarten itself up. Makes it work for all of us and inspires us to be active, informed participants in it.

It’s not up to the people sleeping in the parks to force the changes we all want to happen. The occupations are a manifest symbol, one unlike any I’ve seen in my life. Occupy Canada is taking space and holding it, experimenting in it. Most importantly, they are buying time for the rest of us to come out and do something. And if it’s too hard to come out and stay out - and it is, winters are cold here - then we need to build something to bring it everywhere.

Omnibus Crime Bill C-10 (Letter)

Emailed today:

Right Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 

I am deeply troubled by the omnibus bill C-10 "Safe Streets and Communities Act" being considered by Parliament. While there are parts of this bill that should become law, others are highly problematic, and run counter to the best practices asserted by the social sciences and the experience of Correctional Services in other jurisdictions. 

Given the negative outcomes that could be a direct result of some of the parts of this omnibus bill - including increased rates of crime, rapidly increasing costs of correctional services, and a grave toll in unnecessary human suffering - I urge you to ask Parliament to do the following:

1. Debate and vote upon each of the nine Bills separately,
2. Bring experts to provide a close review of the social science, and 
3. Hear from those in the legal and correctional services in the U.S. jurisdictions of Texas and Arkansas who experienced--and now advocate against--the approach laid out by Bill C-10.

Thank you for your service to Canadians,

Tal Henderson

Toronto

cc: MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre)

Selling the Naming Rights for TTC Stations

The Globe and Mail has an article on selling the TTC station naming rights to corporations with a possible upside of raising $324 million.  

Dundas station – a busy downtown stop in need of a major facelift – will be the test case for plans by the Toronto Transit Commission to sell naming rights, and the head of nearby Ryerson University says he is keen to talk.

TTC chair Karen Stintz said the transit authority wants to use renovations at Dundas as a pilot project that can be copied at other stations in the cash-strapped system.

This is an effort to pay for station renovations and it makes sense to involve any major organizations in the region of a station in the planning and partnership for station rebuilds. Working with Ryerson to ensure the station has entrances at the north end to connect with the new student centre makes sense and if they can be motivated to contribute financially to this, do it. Advertising in that space could absolutely be committed to the patron organization for a period of time - that makes sense.

But leave the names out of it. Some things are best left in the domain of the Public.

G20 Summit Inquiry

Emailed today.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Premier Dalton McGuinty

Mayor Rob Ford

MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre)

MPP Glen Murray (Toronto Centre)

Councillor Pam McConnell (Ward 28)

Right honourable leaders and honourable representatives,

As we approach the anniversary of the Toronto G20 Summit we find ourselves with as many questions as ever about what happened in the days preceding, during, and after the meeting. The patchwork of reviews is producing an incomplete and inadequate accounting. As a democratic society, we owe it to our citizens and our police officers to review the actions, decisions and outcomes of events and assess how they served us as a nation that embraces both liberty and good governance.  

I strongly urge you to call for a full public inquiry into the G20 Summit including:

• The manner of determining that the host site be located in downtown Toronto
• The counsel and intelligence that was used in assessing risk and planning response
• The manner of issue and public announcement of the regulation granted under the Public Works Protection Act
• Adequacy and quality of information to police officers and the Public prior to, during, and following the G20 
• The acquisition of and legal limits placed upon the use of new weapons for use against civilian populations including the four “sonic cannons”, which had use-prescriptions placed upon them by the Courts
• Tactics of crowd control, methods of arrest and detention used by the police to secure the event and protect the public
• An assessment of the extent and type of risk posed by agents provocateur, allegedly connected to the anarchist movement, in Canada 
• The freedoms and treatment of agents of the press as they reported on the events

The fact that the weekend saw the largest mass-arrest in Canadian history should itself require a public inquiry and it is time for our leaders to call for one. 

We as a body-politic and a national public need to reflect upon what the stresses to our systems posed by the G20 stress told us about the laws, policies, and processes that frame our civic lives. While the destruction in downtown Toronto was wholly unacceptable, the greater threat to our democracy lies not with a few disaffected individuals smashing windows and burning cars but with an over-reaction on part of our institutions to secure against this possibility. We cannot eliminate risk from a free society. Ultimately we must strike that balance between public safety and freedom of action that renews its commitment to err on the side of freedom and transparency. 

Thank you all for your dedication and your service.

Sincerely, 

Tal Henderson

[address]

Tough Love for Subway Development

Richard Gilbert in the Economy Lab writes that the subway plan could be saved by greater development around subway stations thereby increasing ridership, and by using smaller, automated trains as in Europe.

He's got some good points to consider here.

Key excerpts:

The mayor’s plan could be rescued by taking into account two factors ... 

The first overlooked factor is revenue from riders. Over the life of any subway line, most of its revenue comes from fares. In Toronto – and elsewhere in Canada – there has not usually been a surplus of fare revenue that can be used to pay down debt incurred for construction. This does not have to be the case. With more riders and lower costs there could be a surplus. 

More riders would come from development at and near new subway stations. Toronto has an astonishingly poor record of transit-related development. There are 54 heavy rail stations outside the downtown, but no more than 16 of them have substantial amounts of station-related development.  

This will mean maximizing the use of city-owned land, massive upzoning of land near the stations, generous buy-outs of landowners to achieve appropriate land assembly, and possible creation of one or more public development corporations to move things along. 

To cover the full cost of a subway line from the fare box, there must be 30,000-40,000 residents or jobs within a square kilometre of each station.

The second thing ... is whether the cost of the proposed Sheppard extensions ... Subway lines in Europe are built for about half this amount. Savings come from designing for short, fully automated, driverless trains that provide high capacity by running frequently most hours of the day.

Shorter trains mean smaller stations and thus lower costs. Automation allows closer spacing of trains and thus higher line capacity, offsetting shorter trains. Shorter trains are lighter, which can result in savings in track-bed and other infrastructure costs. Automation also reduces operating costs, creating more surplus to cover construction costs.

Green Belt replaces the Iron Curtain

Along Scar from Iron Curtain, A Green Belt Rises in Germany. Excerpts from the article follow:

A forbidding, 870-mile network of fences and guard towers once ran the length of Germany, separating East and West. Now, one of the world’s most unique nature reserves is being created along the old “Death Strip,” turning a monument to repression into a symbol of renewal.

... 

Conservationists and government officials are striving to make the Greenbelt the backbone of a German-wide system of ecological corridors. Since 1990, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation has established more than 20 large protected areas connected to the old East-West border. Those protected areas might eventually become part of a much larger effort — proposed by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — to create a continuous, pan-European nature reserve stretching from northern Finland to the Black Sea along the route of the former Iron Curtain. 

... 

“We wanted to prove that this is an area of value and that it can transcend the horrors of the past,” says Riecken. In collaboration with Friends of the Earth, Riecken’s agency began a painstaking inventory of the ecosystems and species along the Green Belt. “We had teams of ornithologists, botanists, entomologists, people for many different taxa, walking for hundreds of kilometers along the former border and recording what they came across,” he recalls. Observations from local birders and plant aficionados were fed into the database as well. In the end, more than 1,000 species from Germany’s Red List of endangered species were identified.
‘We wanted to prove that his is an area of value and that it can transcend the horrors of the past,’ said one official.  

Canada Under-Investing in Green Energy

From an article on the need for Canada to invest in green energy for our economic development:

Data from a recent study shows that U.S. and China spent the equivalent of about $360 and $187 per capita respectively in climate-change-related infrastructure projects in 2009, while Canada only invested $87 per capita [my emphasis]. Canada’s failure to match U.S. clean energy investments in recent years has cost our country 66,000 jobs. 

Our failure to harness opportunities to make Canada a leader in the green economy is endangering our economic future. Furthermore, this appears to be happening against the will of Canadians, 83 per cent of whom support investments in green jobs

Village-In-The-Air Apartment Building Design

This 150-unit multilevel-residential-building-on-stilts  is pretty cool. From the article:

Designed by Budapest based architecture firm Építész Stúdió it’s called the “Village in the Air” will have a total floor space of 15,000 square meters and 150 apartment units. Though the apartment complex, a series of connected buildings, is raised on stilts, the complex as a whole has been designed horizontally, with the idea of a spread out village as the largest and best way to group people residentially. 

The architects capped the height for the buildings within the village at four stories. Some buildings will have only two or three stories, but with four, the buildings will match the height of the surrounding trees, bringing the built environment in line with nature. Further greening the complex is the fact that the buildings are elevated off the ground, meaning the whole surface of the village can act as a park.

Green roofs symbolically connect the building tops with the ground underneath in addition to providing environmental benefits. Well defined courtyards and atriums help break the large scale village into smaller pockets of neighbors, making the complex as a whole more personal.

A Realistic Energy Plan for the City of Toronto

This Clean Energy Plan for the city was co-authored  by a group of local Greens and presented in 2006, largely in response to the proposed Portland power plant (now called the Portlands Energy Centre, live as of 2008). The plan noted some important opportunities that we should still be pursuing to improve our efficiencies in power consumption, most notably:

Ontarians use 60% more electricity per capita than our neighbours in New York state. There is immense conservation potential, far more than this generator will achieve, at far lower cost and with many substantial economic and health benefits.

Even with the last few years of home and business power efficiency rebates there is likely to still be considerable room left for improvement. For this reason, the rebate programs offered by the federal and provincial governments should be renewed until Ontarians are at least as efficient as our neighbours. The Ontario Home Energy Savings Program is now closed (no press release); the ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program also appears to be closed, but an extension or new program is expected following the election on May 2.

Toronto Environmental Alliance's position on the Portlands Energy Centre.

High Speed Rail on the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

Building high-speed rail to serve the Quebec-Windsor corridor is one of the most important investments that I can imagine for Canada. This article in Fast Company looks at some projected benefits for HSR in the US based upon the experience in the EU.

In the crowded Northeast Corridor (the perfect place for high-speed rail), 62% of the people choosing between taking a train or a plane from Washington, D.C. to New York pick the train, as do 47% of Boston to New York travelers. And the people who choose the train instead of driving would decrease wear on the roads, resulting in $270 billion in road repair savings by 2050. That pays for the trains right there. And lest we forget the environmental benefits, remember, trains are the most efficient mode of passenger movement, especially high-speed...

Now, the Canadian situation is even more interesting because the Quebec-Windsor corridor is home to probably 60% or more of the country's population. There is literally no other infrastructure project I can think of with the business and environmental benefit that would provide. Can you imagine making the trip from Montreal to Toronto in a little over two hours [estimate source]?

Despite its low cost (est. $2.6 billion) I don't consider the ViaFast proposal to be all that compelling for the Quebec-Windsor corridor because trains still have to compete with freight rail using the same tracks. An estimate for a dedicated, electrified track (presumably serving a 300 KPH rail service) is given in Queen's Policy Review  (QPR) at $25 billion [PDF].

In my last post I noted that tax cuts are a poor investment for creating a sustainably attractive business environment. The estimates given by the Conservatives put the cost at $10 billion between 2011-2012 and 2013-14 (the Parliamentary Budget Officer pegs it higher, at $11.5 billion) [Globe & Mail]. In the Fast Company article, they quote a recent report [PDF] by the American Public Transportation Association which notes that "for each $1 billion invested in high-speed rail projects, the analysis predicts the support and creation of 24,000 jobs" and all the taxes they pay. The QPR report, mentioned above, also notes the annual $170 million subsidy to VIA to make up their shortfall which should be considered, and the more-than $1 billion in subsidies to Bombardier since 1982 to keep it afloat despite it being one of the finest train manufacturers in the world. Finally, there is the cost of traffic congestion, estimated in 2009 by the OECD for Toronto alone at $3.3 billion per year which, granted, will not be wholly solved by HSR, but it will help. That's got to be half the money needed right there. If Ontario can find $4 billion to prop up GM and keep manufacturing jobs from evaporating entirely, surely we can find some money to invest to rejuvenate manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec while accomplishing one of the most important public infrastructure projects in the history of this country.

More Canadian HSR resources:
http://highspeedrail.ca/
http://highspeedrailcanada.blogspot.com/

Tax Cuts or Infrastructure?

The Conservatives are going to force an election over corporate tax cuts. This confirms for me yet again the short-sightedness of their vision. Tax cuts are provisional - given today they can be taken away by the next government. They do nothing but increase profits but do not create a stronger long-term outlook for business or anyone else. This is not a sustainable advantage to business and so won't increase business investment in real, skilled-labour jobs like manufacturing but will focus instead on resources (because they are there) and services. We miss all the secondary- and tertiary-value-added opportunities that our resources should afford us because we're not a reliable long-term manufacturing investment if our competitive advantage is "tax breaks". This is especially true in the deficit-laden future that is looming with rising healthcare and energy costs.

If we need a more attractive investment climate, fine. But let's do it right. Let's do what businesses can't do, and give them an advantage they can count on.

A conscientious investment in infrastructure against the known-rising costs of petroleum is something that businesses can plan around for a major investment in plants and jobs. We already have an attractive skilled-labour business climate in that we have a well-educated population and socialized medicine; businesses do appreciate that. If you can show them a system of transportation and power generation that they can rely on into the future--if you can show them how you will be less reliant upon ever-more expensive oil--you've created a sustainable advantage for businesses.

We need some serious government investment in infrastructure projects, not corporate tax cuts. My call would be:

1. public transit in the top-ten largest cities in the country - Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver at the minimum must have the best public transportation on the planet
2. Windsor to Quebec corridor highspeed passenger rail - it's ridiculous this hasn't already completed
3. a great, nation-spanning non-petroleum rail-freight system - get freight off combustion engines, rubber tires and asphalt - most of it is going to the same places anyway
4. a non-petroleum transportation system will put massive pressure on the electrical grid so significant clean energy investment will be needed

green megacity by popular science

stunning and beautiful

http://www.popsci.com/futurecity/plan.html

The Eight Best Places

In their article The Best Dollar You Will Ever Spend, Slate reports on the top eight investments identified by Nobel laureates in Economics that will help the planet the most.

...the experts identified the best investments: those for which relatively tiny amounts of money could generate significant returns in terms of health, prosperity, and community advantages. These included: increased immunization coverage, initiatives to reduce school dropout rates, community-based nutrition promotion, and micronutrient supplementation.

The full list of eight from the Copenhagen Consensus Centre site:

• Combating Hunger
• Micronutrient Supplements: Vitamin A and Zinc
• Micronutrient Fortification and Biofortification
• Community Nutrition Promotion
• Child Health
• Expanding Vaccination Coverage
• Deworming
• Malaria Prevention and Treatment
• Education and Empowerment
• Lowering the Price of Schooling and Improving Girls’ Schooling
• Supporting Women’s Reproductive Role

Vertical Theme Parks

Skyscraper amusement parks! See, now this is the kind of thinking that shows today's Nuit Blanche to be but the pale shadow of the wonder-that-could-be.

This so-called Vertical Theme Park is the idea of Harvard GSD grad Ju-Hyun Kim, and it is, in his telling, “the new prototype” for “the cities of tomorrow.”

Theoretically, none of it is as absurd as it sounds. More than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in the cities; by 2050, the figure will bump up to 70 percent. At the same time, we’re inching closer and closer to a carbon-neutral world, which means that if you’re gonna build roller coasters at all, you might as well build them near people’s homes -- and, more to the point, right next to public transit -- to minimize their environmental footprint. (Kim also suggests outfitting the park with assorted solar panels, rainwater collectors, and recycling facilities.)

What an international-scale attraction this would be. Put it in the heart of the Club District to minimize the impact on the sleepier of the downtown residential areas. Build the Queen Street subway to connect it to the rest of the system (and get started on a Queen Street subway out of the deal).

Considered with the artistic-cultural festivals of TIFF, Pride, Caribana, and Nuit Blanche, the cultural institutions of the ROM, the AGO, and the Four Seasons Centre, and the athletic attractions of the Rogers Centre (Skydome), Air Canada Centre, and BMO Field, this would make a magnificent counterpoint that confirms Toronto as a year-round entertainment destination.

BlogTO's "Toronto of the 1890s"

University Avenue

BlogTO has an amazing, ten-part photo series on Toronto. Collected into albums by decade, it shows a century in the life of this city.

The series starts here in the 1890s.