Bottom-Up Shorts: How To Build a Stronger Richmond Hill
In this episode of Bottom Up Shorts, Norm is joined by Saeed Vahid, a Local Conversation leader from Richmond Hill, Ontario. They talk about how he started the Local Conversation, how the group is collaborating with city officials, and how the expansion of the Greater Toronto Area has affected Richmond Hill.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:06
hello and welcome to bottom up shorts. This is norm with strong towns, and I'm so excited to be able to welcome you to this new episode with Saeed Vahid. Saeed is a strong towns local conversation leader in Richmond, Hill, Ontario, and he and I have been able to discuss, actually, once already, the conversation about what they are doing in their community in order to help build a stronger, more cohesive community that actually helps to build wealth and prosperity and provide many more opportunities within the community. Saeed has worked together with other members of his local conversation in order to meet with neighbors, kick off key conversations about safety and land use and transportation routes and just even what it means to invest carefully in the long term prosperity of his city. And so said, can you talk about the work of strong Richmond Hill?
Saeed Vahid 0:56
Yes, it started with my own interest in the in the housing issue that I had my own personal problems with housing, and I tried to look into the causes, root causes, and each time you would get explanations that didn't make sense, until I came across strong tones and I read about issues that Chuck was bringing up, and all of a sudden everything made sense. And I thought that, yeah, this is why it's been broken. Everyone is feeling the pain. Everyone has this problem, and it also gives you a more realistic sense that it's not like some people are asking, yeah, you the politicians should do this and everything is going to be fine. No, it's not. It's not a simple solution. It's a multi faceted a lot of things, a lot of parts in this problem that has to play so we can get into a into a development pattern as strong towns calls it that everyone can afford shelter, and there's also a lot of interrelated issues to housing, like transportation, transit, Parking, safety on the roads which they are all interconnected. And if you look at them, you see how solving one issue or trying to solve them is going to open the doors to to make inroads into getting rid of the issues on the other sides of the of the picture, and that's why, when I when I read about strong towns, when I heard the podcast and watched the videos, I thought, yeah, this is something that's gonna help us to get there. It's not gonna be easy, it's not gonna be fast, but it is something that we can we can do if we get together. So I joined, I joined the conversation group, local conversation group for Richmond Hill. And so far, I've been able to get a few people who are very committed, very active. And yeah, we have started a few projects underway too. Do
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 3:19
you want to talk about those projects? Because I think that's part of the excitement that starts to build over time when you have just a few of those other folks, and then it starts to take us root. And can you share a little bit more about what what's happening in Richmond? Hill? Yes,
Saeed Vahid 3:35
one of my group members, he's a very passionate young person, he's a student, and he he's had this project of a community garden beside the the place that they live, and we started correspondence with the city officials so that we can, We can work on this project, there was some paperwork. They were asking for insurance, you know, all that stuff that the city people usually are concerned. But after after some contacts, now, they have agreed to cover our team members under their insurance. It's now much easier in terms of the paperwork, and we are planning to to get some kind of a design for the park yet, or guard community garden, what we are going to plant in there? What kind of plants are going to be there? What? What's the irrigation way that we are going to use, how we are going to mark the borders of the of the garden, and all of that, which is very exciting. I haven't done anything like that in a public way, but when I see my team members, my group members, that how excited. They are, how passionate and active committed they are. It really inspires me to learn and to help them and to to bring these projects to fruition. And
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 5:12
is it right to say that Richmond Hill is a suburb of the Greater Toronto sort of region? And do you want to share just a little bit about how that situate the situatedness of where you live really does impact the types of projects that you're now identifying. Like hey, together as a group, we're going to have to do the small things, the local things, in order to make our place stronger.
Saeed Vahid 5:34
Yes, Richmond Hill used to be a city north of Toronto, but after the expansion of the Toronto to Greater Toronto Area, now we are kind of a suburb, and it's even expanded up further to the north. There are other cities, other suburbs, yeah, old cities, the new market, which is now considered part of the Greater Toronto Area, and as it's happening throughout all the North America, Richmond is it's not that a suburb that upper middle class people used to live and commute to work, back and forth to work. It's now housing more lower middle class population which are using transit. They need a better transit infrastructure. They need a better biking infrastructure. They need a more affordable housing that that could provide them with with an easy, you know, way of living. So it's changing as it is with most North American suburbs, and we are getting more people coming to Richmond Hill at the same time that the fabric is is changed at the diversity of the people that live here is very different than 1020, years ago, and it's a very beautiful city. It's exciting to live here, but there's still a lot to do. We can do much more to make it even better place.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 7:19
And can you share just how did you spark other people's interest to start up a group with you? I'm
Saeed Vahid 7:26
going to tell you a story with one of my friends that he was telling me we have a lot of immigrants in Richmond Hill. So immigrants come to a new place to start a new life, a better life, and sometimes, sometimes that expectations that you had in mind, you feel that it's not being satisfied. And he was telling me, hey, said, I'm having a lot of problem in terms of housing. I can't find a place to live. It's very expensive, and all of that I'm I'm hearing from another friend who lives in Denmark that the life there is much better. How about we? We consider moving to Denmark, and that made me really laugh. I told him, it doesn't work like this. You can't just decide to move just because you have a problem in housing. Yeah, these countries are great countries, because people who came here first, who started these cities, these towns, they worked hard, and they faced all those problems, and they stood up to the challenge and solved them and built these nice places for all of us to live. And now we are facing problems that we have to we have to find solutions for them to make it a good place for ourselves and our kids. So this is the way that you can make a good place to live, not by giving up and leaving to find another place. Yeah,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 9:13
well, that's spot on, and a great rallying cry for starting a group and bringing people together. And I'd love for you to share with our audience, just a little bit about you and what it is that put you in this position to be able to take on these challenges in your community together with others in your community,
Saeed Vahid 9:30
in the community, I feel that I have a responsibility to Make a change for good. So each one of us, this is this is our calling. This is our responsibility, that to make our each other's life, to make life better for each other, we have to act as shareholders, as a stakeholders, who each of us are. Are, are responsible to to do something to make it, to make the life better for for us. And that's why I think sitting there and complaining is not, is not the way out of this is not going to help, and it's very cynical to to just brush off any effort that's going on and call everyone who is trying to to make a change. You know? I mean, my point is that people are suspicious and very not happy with politicians, so they consider any participation useless in the civic process. They don't see the point to participate, and just by going out there and voting once is not going to be the solution. You have to keep pushing and asking and helping and contributing to the whole process to make the change. That's how you can you can build good, nice cities, good place to live. That's my, my idea of making myself known and making myself heard and
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 11:26
being that strong citizen in your place, that person that takes ownership of your neighborhood, of your community, and that sense of shared pride and shared ownership of it with other people that are equally committed and really grappling with the real needs. But also I love the way that you described it, like being committed to doing much of the work that others before you have also done in order to make your place a space where people can have a good life in a prospering community. With that as we close, what is something that gives you hope
Saeed Vahid 11:58
Absolutely? Yeah, the one point that I'm really happy about is that I can tell you majority of the group now, we have had 20 people who have registered in the group, and we had the second meeting yesterday, and so the majority of them are young. They are they are 20 something young people who are starting their lives coming out of university, looking into housing, looking into their way of you know, going around their work and looking into the possible ways of transportation. So these people are very passionate and very welcoming our strong turn ideas. Whenever we talk about the issues, they are very welcoming those ideas, and that's very hopeful, because they are the people who are gonna be be here and build this, this town, and be in the positions of power and decision making and all of that. So seeing that decision makers of tomorrow are these people who are already immersed in strong town ideas, makes me really hopeful that we will make this change. This is gonna happen. It's not gonna be fast and soon, but it is, for sure, is gonna happen, and we can, we can make all these changes and make the life much better.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 13:35
Yeah, I love that, and that certainly makes me hopeful for Richmond Hill. If you'd like to learn more about strong Richmond Hill, go to strong. Rh.ca, that's the website that said and his team have set up. And please do continue to find moments for yourself, to find hope in your community, looking around at the things you already have, even as you grapple with many of the challenges that you face, stepping forward, as Saeed has, with wisdom, with insight, but also with that energy that is matched then by the energy of others that get together and say, we're going to take pride and ownership in our place and continue to help but to become stronger with that. Thank you so much for listening to this. Bottom up short, have a great day. Take care and take care of your places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Strong Richmond Hill (site).
Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn).
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