Consulting & Training Services
The clunkiness of answering “Why does representation matter?”
In getting ready for my webinar for the Planning Institute of BC on our equity audit findings, I re-read a participant comment from the project’s engagement that questioned why representation in planning is important, and why investing in this work matters.
In this sociopolitical climate and economic downturn, these are loud questions we’ve been hearing around justice, equity, decolonization, diversity, and inclusion (JEDDI) work, but are struggling collectively to answer directly.
I find it difficult to address this in words, and instead, this is where stories are more impactful.
Stories and lessons from Hogan’s Alley and Chinatown Walking Tour
Last week, our RADIUS team, along with valued collaborators and partners, had the good fortune of doing the Hogan’s Alley and Chinatown Walking Tour in Vancouver, a collaborative offering delivered by our friends, Hogan’s Alley Society and hua foundation.
The tour—and its stops and stories—was as much about history as it was about the present and future of these neighbourhoods, and I would say for our city and society. It was an experiential way of seeing how planners, policy-makers, and decision makers can impact communities. Who gets to make decisions around investing—and not investing— in a business, in a neighbourhood, in communities? Who gets to define what a vibrant community looks like, versus naming it a “slum”? Who gets to decide what urban renewal should look like? Who gets to decide the locations and routes for infrastructure projects?
For Hogan’s Alley, these decisions resulted in decades of underinvestment. The building of the Viaduct from the late 1960s to early 1970s led to the displacement of Vancouver’s Black community and destruction of a space that once offered physical and psychological safety, entrepreneurship opportunities and patronage, and a sense of belonging. Community and Chinatown members, organized as the ‘Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association’ (SPOTA), rallied together against City planners and stopped further phases of freeway development and ‘urban renewal’, instead rehabilitating and investing in new parks, housing, and a community centre in Strathcona.
This is a real example of community-informed decisions that benefit community, and why representation in the planning profession, and decision-making more broadly, matters.
Fast forward many decades later. As a recent member of hua foundation’s board, I remember watching Hogan’s Alley Society and hua foundation build and strengthen their relationship. Over time, they co-located office space as the Coshare Collective, and offered joint events and programming. Through this, they’ve linked histories and futures that have commonly been isolated, but are now shared. This is what solidarity and an abundant mindset can look like in practice, rather than competing, dividing, and conquering.
From stories to action
This walking tour experience has brought much clarity to me lately, especially as I’m getting tired of the various JEDI/DEI/EDI/JEDDI combinations of acronyms, the loud anti-EDI rhetoric, and complicated, academic jargon.
Instead, our team has started simplifying and describing equity and our work as: These problems are hard, and solutions aren’t working. Those closest to the problem should be closest to the solution. That’s why this matters.
These stories from the walking tour are guiding lights in how we want to work at RADIUS, enabling those closest to the problem to co-create the solutions and systems change we want to see. This includes our recent work on:
The Crossing Collective
The Crossing Collective is a new initiative in partnership with Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association (HxBIA) and Hessey Consulting + Architecture. It aims to support the growth of Indigenous, Black, migrant, refugee, and other equity-deserving food entrepreneurs through an incubator pathway into vacant commercial spaces in Hastings Crossing. Hastings Crossing sits at the intersection of Chinatown, Strathcona, Hogan's Alley, the Downtown Eastside, and surrounding neighbourhoods.
The initiative recognizes that these communities have experienced decades of displacement, exclusion from economic opportunity, and loss of culturally significant commercial spaces. The Crossing Collective seeks to support the reclamation of space, economic opportunity, and community power by creating more equitable pathways into business ownership and long-term commercial tenancy. We are currently conducting an engagement and feasibility study to design a community-informed incubator, physical brick-and-mortar space, commercial leasing support, and partnerships and referral pathways to support these entrepreneurs.
The Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH)
BEKH is a continuing initiative in partnership with Black Entrepreneurs & Businesses of Canada Society (BEBC Society) aiming to understand the conditions and factors needed to increase readiness of Black entrepreneurs and institutional decision-makers (funders, public sector decision-makers and procurement professionals) to secure funding and procurement contracts. It dives deeper into why there are many programs supporting Black entrepreneurs, yet enduring low uptake, awareness, and results.
We are examining the role of curated mentorship programs, trauma-informed facilitation and content, anti-bias training, relationships, and trust. Building on our three-year-research report and the Black Entrepreneurship and Research Symposia held in 2025 and 2026, RADIUS continues to collaborate with and learn from Black-led community organizations and changemakers, inform more inclusive policies and practices to address barriers for Black entrepreneurs, and build anti-bias capacity among decision-makers.
The Migrant Systems Change Leadership Certificate
With our sixth cohort recently launched this fall, we’re working alongside migrant leaders to build collective power and equip them with the tools and frameworks to develop or advance initiatives that promote justice, belonging, and systemic change within their organizations, sectors, and communities. The cohort gathered in person at Wildfires Literary Lounge, where they planted the seeds for the work to come. We’re so excited to see what this brilliant cohort of racialized migrants will imagine, build, and transform in the coming months.
These stories are also examples of leadership and innovative problem-solving, like listening to and learning from community, and pivoting and co-creating solutions to meet their needs and their organizations’ mandates. These are the competencies RADIUS is trying to grow among civic, economic, and planning decision-makers today, including:
Sharing our equity audit findings conducted for the Planning Institute of BC to increase recruitment and representation in the planning profession at a webinar and Board and staff sessions
Presenting on Positionality, Accountability, and Allyship in Community-Based Research at the upcoming Canadian Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment in Higher Education conference. We’ll also be sharing our work in the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, how we balance working with community organizations from within an academic institution, and our Participatory Grantmaking Initiative.
Continuing our inclusive leadership training program and trauma-informed practices sessions with City of Burnaby managers, staff, and union representatives
Redesigning a decision-making and evaluation framework and guides for more community-oriented facility portfolio investments for the City of Calgary
Building capacity on equity-centered design for Healthy Aging Alberta to support meeting the needs, agency, dignity, and wellbeing of Alberta’s growing aging demographic
These are just a few of many answers to the question 'why does representation matter?'
If you are still uncertain, then I highly recommend going on the Hogan’s Alley and Chinatown walking tour and experiencing the sights, sounds, and stories for yourself.