How To Take a Holistic Approach to City Building, With Craig Cassar

Craig Cassar is a first-term city councilor in Hamilton, Ontario. Prior to serving in public office, he acquired nearly 25 years of private sector leadership experience. Craig is a believer in the Strong Towns philosophy of city building, an advocate for active and public transportation, and a passionate environmentalist.

Today, Craig and Tiffany discusses the challenges Hamilton faces and the progress the city has made. They also talk about the importance of a holistic approach to city building, including creating synergy between urbanism and environmentalism.

• Click here for a computer-generated transcript.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 0:00

  Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. I'm your host. Tiffany Owens Reed. I'm a writer for Strong Towns and, on this show, I get to talk to ordinary people who are putting Strong Towns principles into action in the community where they live. This phrase I say on every show you know, putting strong towns principles into action in the community where you live. It's not a one size fits all process. It's absolutely essential that you take your local context into account and let the particularities of your place shape how you advocate and what you advocate for. That can sometimes make it pretty challenging to figure out how exactly to help your community become a strong town, but it's also a chance to be more creative about how to move the conversation forward. Today's guest is navigating the ascension and his town of Hamilton, Ontario, a context that is different from what most of our listeners are familiar with given that it's a Canadian context and not an American context, and that difference brings unique challenges to his work, advocating for his town to become stronger because of the relationship between Canadian cities and Canadian provinces. We're going to talk about that in this show. Craig Cassar is a first time City Council in Hamilton, Ontario, representing ward 12. Prior to serving in public office, he had acquired nearly 25 years of private sector leadership experience. He's a believer in the strong town's philosophy to city building as a regular bike commuter. He's an advocate for active and public transportation, seeing those seeing that approach to transportation as a critical part of helping cities become financially sustainable, low carbon, healthy and vibrant communities. He's also a passionate environmentalist, volunteering with the Hamilton butterfly Way Project and the Royal Botanical Gardens and Hamilton nationalist Club, where, over the years, he has removed 1000s of invasive trees, plants and shrubs. So we'll talk a little bit about how he sees these two worlds, the synergy between these two worlds, the urbanism world and the environmentalism side on in this conversation. But for now, Craig, I'm just delighted to welcome you to the show. Welcome to the bottom up Revolution

  Craig Cassar 2:12

  podcast. Thank you very much. Tiffany, very happy to be here. So to kick

  Tiffany Owens Reed 2:17

  things off, can you share a little bit about I've kind of hinted at this in the intro. You know, you had this 25 years of experience in the private sector, and now you're serving and the public sector serving and city leadership. Can you share a little bit about that journey and how you came to take on this responsibility and take on this role in your town? Yeah,

  Craig Cassar 2:36

  well, it probably started really early as a kid. I played a lot of civilization in SimCity. So maybe that's for the city

  Tiffany Owens Reed 2:43

  building. You're not the first one. You're not the first one to start it there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure

  Craig Cassar 2:48

  I believe that. But yeah, a long time in the private sector wasn't really paying much attention to municipal issues, federal, definitely provincial and international. I would pay attention to but during the pandemic, a lot more time at home, as most of us were cooped up and doing zoom meetings, I had time in the mornings and evenings to get out more in the community. I started cleaning up trash because, you know, that really bothered me, that the community was being neglected in that way. And I was always very much involved in interested in environmental issues and climate and got involved in a local organization called Stop sprawl, which was advocating against an urban Boundary Expansion in Hamilton. So that was kind of my gateway into municipal politics. And as that went along, the election cycle got underway, and talking to my new friends, I said, Well, who's going to run for council, and everyone, sort of, you know, disappeared into the corners and the shadows, and I was left standing there, decided that, you know, I have a lot of transferable skills, and, you know, I want to do something different. I want to contribute. So that's kind of how it happened. I

  Tiffany Owens Reed 3:55

  want to ask you a little bit about your work with stop sprawl. Was that? What was it like getting involved with that movement. Was that new for you? Had you heard of these phrases before, like sprawl or car dependence or anything like that? What was it like, kind of getting getting involved there as someone who wasn't, who wasn't necessarily coming from, like, an urbanist background?

  Craig Cassar 4:14

  Yeah, it was all brand new. My wife and I have a family, a young family, kids growing up, we were focused on them. Weren't really paying attention to what was going around in our cities. We drove everywhere. So totally new terms. It was eye opening. I realized the connection between climate, which I understood well, and urbanism and how land use and sprawling has a big impact. So it just kind of clicked together really easily for me, and as I started to campaign when I was running for council, I heard someone say, well, noone should be running for this position as a city builder, unless you've read city or 10 city building books. And I thought, Oh, I have a weakness there. So I went and did some research, and one of the top five books I found was strong town. Okay? And I read that, and then just everything made so much sense, and it got me really excited about what was possible in a leadership role in city building.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 5:09

  Okay? This is a great segue, because I want to ask you next to just give us a little bit of context about your city, about your town. Maybe you can start with sort of the suburban side, like the built environment side, and how that might be similar to what people are used to seeing in the US. But then maybe you can also share a little bit about kind of how local government is set up, and what would you say are some differences that might be helpful for our audience to understand who are not coming from a Canadian background?

  Craig Cassar 5:38

  Yeah, definitely. Well, Hamilton is a mid sized city. It's about 600,000 people, just south of Toronto, along Lake Ontario. It's a post industrial city. It's known as Steel City, or the hammer those are the nicknames, and it it grew, just like many American cities did in 1800s 1900s and a lot of industry, which is now changing as we go and get into industry and into a lot of other things, in terms of arts, medical innovation. But the Old City was nestled under the Niagara Escarpment. So the Niagara scarment is 800,000 kilometers. Runs from New York, up through Northern Ontario, or into Ontario. And it's, it creates sort of a mountain in Hamilton. It's maybe only 150 meters, but the city started down below, and as it grew, it went up the escarpment. And that's where suburbia began. And it's on the mountain. We call it. It's mostly car dependent sprawl. Strodes and, you know, shopping centers where you have to drive to. So you had this hollowing out of the downtown core in the lower city as the more affluent people were on the mountain. And it kind of created this sprawl out from the mountain in a southward direction. And that's kind of where we are now. So that's kind of the geographical setup. And then if you want me to talk to a little bit about political and how we're set up here, it's a ward based system, so each counselor represents a specific geographical area. There's 15 of us plus a mayor. I think maybe the biggest difference in Canada versus the US is municipal governments are not constitutionally recognized. It's independent orders of government. They're called what we say is creatures of the province. So we take our existence depends on the province. They created us, and the province is equivalent to a state. So all our powers are given to us through provincial legislation, and they can add or take away. So we also, from a financial point of view, our primary source of revenue is just property taxes. We don't have opportunity for sales tax. We do have some provincial government transfers, and we're not allowed to run deficits for operating so that may be a little bit different than in the US. And then the other thing I would add is, in most places in Canada, certainly in in Ontario and Hamilton, councilors are elected on a non partisan basis, so they're independent, not associated directly with the political party. So those are some of the highlights.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 8:14

  Okay, that's helpful. Thank you for walking us through that. Um, can you tell us a little bit about, you know. So you're new to this, this, this whole urbanism side of things, as you're working your way down the list of those books and reading strong towns and deciding to what, deciding to run, what were you noticing about Hamilton and what? What were you seeing as opportunities, as things as like, specific challenges or opportunities for Hamilton to start moving in a more resilient, more strong direction,

  Craig Cassar 8:44

  I saw a huge opportunity to actually learn and implement best practices that were out there. I've been reading books, watching videos, hearing people talk, and there was this great progressive movement, I would call it in many cities and in North America, certainly around the world, and I saw within our council and our leadership at the time, we were stuck in the 70s, just doing the same old thing, not really understanding the fundamentals, the financial impact. And I sort of have a financial capability from my previous life, and I would I understood that, you know, there's a connection here. Everything's connected, right? You don't just look at one issue. Everything in a city is connected, whether it's transportation or housing or place making or environment, and all these things can feed off each other or contradict each other if they're, you know, work against each other if you don't manage them properly. So that's what I kind of saw. And I thought, wow, there's got to be a better way to do this. And, you know, I think having a lot of transferable skills and leadership, I saw it as an opportunity to to jump in and help lead.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 9:52

  So would you say that your voice has has been mainly focused on, on, like, the financial side, kind of helping reorient. Decision making around more sustainable like municipal practices. How would you how would you describe, kind of, maybe, like the angle, or what you've been focused on?

  Craig Cassar 10:09

  Yeah, well, I came in with a little bit of an activist background environmentalism, wanting to talk about climate. I quickly found out that if you want to get people to listen, you can't bang that drum on all those other issues which many people will see as frivolous and not important. They're not the here and now. So what I do is I couch anything to do with urbanism or environmentalism in a financial context, because everyone cares about money. The number one thing I hear as a counselor, well, the two are traffic and my property taxes are too high. So everyone cares about money. We can all relate to that. You know, prices have gone up significantly through COVID and beyond. So money is important to people, and so speaking that language is is the most effective.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 10:56

  Yeah, I find that that can definitely be like a common ground that people can come together around in a more neutral framework for talking about shared challenges. What is the financial condition of Hamilton right now? Would you say like, as you're as you're kind of looking at everything?

  Craig Cassar 11:10

  Well, as I read, you know, strong tone articles, I see it's very similar financially. You know, you can say bankrupt. I mean, we have a $5.2 billion infrastructure funding gap over 10 years. So those are huge numbers, and it was billion with a B, of course. So we've just kind of gone along and not really understood it very short term. What's this year's budget? How do we keep this budget increased to, you know, maybe 2% is kind of historically, what the target seems to have been and not looking at the bigger implications, and now we're dealing with them.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 11:45

  Are there any other challenges that you'd like to touch on that you've that you've noticed in your town? Because what I what I'd like to talk about next is, is kind of, you know, it's one thing to identify the challenges, but it's another thing to identify, how do you move forward in a productive way towards solutions? But before we get there anything else you'd like to touch on that you're seeing in Hamilton.

  Craig Cassar 12:04

  Well, the single declining term, I would say, for this term of Council, which is about two and a half years in, is housing and homelessness exacerbated by the pandemic and the extreme cost of living increase we've seen homelessness has been a problem. Is Hamilton is not as wealthy as surrounding cities, being a working class city around our steel mills historically, so our homelessness challenge is significant. We've had up to 250 people living on the streets, and maybe 1200 homeless, and eight or maybe 8000 people, roughly, in core housing need, meaning that, you know, they're not in the right size housing for them, or they can't afford it. It's beyond their financial capabilities. So And coupled with that, that housing has become unaffordable. You know, housing is financialized. That's one of the things I've learned through research and understanding what are the core of these issues? Housing is financialized. We have so many investors. The condo market is basically driven by investors looking to make a profit. So you have low income, you have high rising, rising cost of living, and then housing that's out of reach, and also it's historically, we've just built single family, single detached homes, and those are just generally more expensive, so you have not the right amount of supply, not enough supply, and costs that are, you know, way out there, and people cannot afford to live

  Tiffany Owens Reed 13:33

  in the city. So one thing we talked about in our chat before recording a couple of weeks ago, it was really insightful and interesting to hear a little bit about the political context you're working in in Canada, specifically thinking about, sort of the provincial layer of government. Can you walk us through sort of as you're looking at these challenges, if you're looking if it's the infrastructure funding gap, or if it's a home unit homelessness, or the commodification of housing and the rigidity around allowing people to build the type of housing that's needed. Like, how do you think about those? Or, Can you maybe, like, explain for our listeners how the organization of government kind of makes it just, what does that represent? Like, what is the challenge that represents as you start to think about what could be possible solutions?

  Craig Cassar 14:21

  Well, a colleague of mine says the federal government has all the money, the provincial government has all the power, and the municipal government has all the problems. And that's that's truly what it feels like. So the crux of it here is the province is responsible for housing on paper, and as we've had to invest a lot more in home and housing all across the spectrum from homelessness services to shelters to subsidized housing and all the way up to market housing. The province really hasn't kept up with funding at all, so we've had to invest a lot more. And of course, just like every municipality in Ontario, we'd be advocating. Meeting. We need a new municipal structure here, but that hasn't happened, so we're left to deal with it on our own. And in addition to not getting the funding that we need, there's also changes happening in the Planning Act and how development can happen. So there's more or there's responsibility and decision making authority being taken away from the municipality. Some of it is positive in terms of mandating fourplexes, for example, which is something that Hamilton was willing to do and was already doing. But some of it is very difficult, where, when we make a decision on a planning file, the provincial government has set up this appeal body called the Ontario land tribunal, which a developer can appeal to and generally, developers will win those appeals because of the way that's been structured and the appointees on there. So you have a city where we're trying to do the right things and try to build a city that is good for people, and we can't make the final decision. So it's really frustrating.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 15:58

  Yeah, that sounds really frustrating. We'll talk a little bit later about how you navigate those frustrations. But before we talk about that, can you share a little bit about what you've seen on the ground in terms of like any progress, or what you would consider wins related to any of those issues you told us about that you consider to be like signs of hope, kind of helping move in a more resilient direction?

  Craig Cassar 16:21

  Well, the community is generally anchored in the way things have always been done in car culture. Everyone has a backyard, a front yard, and that's what everybody wants. And so we've had, as we were talking about earlier, this push to expand the urban boundaries. And where I got involved in 2021 that battle was won. Council voted against it. We're up against that again now, where the provincial government has loosened the response or loosened, I guess, legislation so that developers can appeal directly to expand the urban boundary. And just this week, we had two more applications to add something like 3000 acres to our city, onto prime farmland. Council voted unanimously to deny it, which was excellent. However, we know that there's an appeal process here, so we're still going to have to deal with that. So that's a small win, but it's the people speaking up, right? And that's really, really important, and that fits with the whole bottom up revolution. Theme here is we hear from a lot of people who care about their community and speak passionately and intelligently on these topics. So that is a win in and of itself, and that's part of, I think, our future success, because as a municipal government, we don't have the power we need other people to speak up as well. Yeah,

  Tiffany Owens Reed 17:43

  that's really interesting to hear that. Because I was just wondering in my head. I was thinking like, yeah, what it what does it look like to be hopeful and to have an idea of what it could look like for a town working in these constraints to become more resilient? And I was just wondering if you feel like it's more of an education challenge. I'm trying to, like, kind of help people rethink the status quo, like you said, you know, they've been kind of stuck in this way of doing things since the 70s. Do you feel like it's more like educational like, if more people just start to understand, they can start to ask for something better? Do you feel like it's, it's more just like, we just really need municipal perform. Like, how do you kind of think through that?

  Craig Cassar 18:26

  Yeah, I wish there was an easy answer to that. I think education helps. But there's a big part of the population, probably the most vocal and well equipped part of the population, that's comfortable and just wants to live the way they live because it's good for them. It's opened my eyes in this role is understanding the demographics and and very different life, lives that people have, low income, marginalized people, and we need to govern for everybody, right? So when we're thinking about transportation, we can't just think about cars. We are in this long process is probably going to end up being a couple decades before it's done. Of installing light rail in Hamilton, so a tram, street cars, you know, different names, and that has generated a lot of motion positive because people who understand that what that can do for a city get behind it, but huge opposition from others who may not live in that part of the city or don't understand why we would invest money in that. But that's the key, is investment and educating people on the value of investment. Yes, it's spending money, but there's a multiplier effect from good transportation projects, from good place making from making a place more vibrant, so more businesses can thrive, for people can enjoy themselves. So it's telling our story is part of the education. And I think generally, we don't do a good job of telling the story on where we're going. You know, showing the entire map rather than the block run. You know, at this moment. In time?

  Tiffany Owens Reed 20:00

  Yeah, I think that's a big part of it is kind of helping, helping cast a new vision, tell a new story, of like, this is where we've been, this is where we want to go, and this, these are the types of decisions we need to think about in order to bridge that gap. Are there any other wins that you think are signs of hope, or that you you look at as, I don't know, just indicators that maybe we're starting to turn

  Craig Cassar 20:23

  the ship. Yeah. I mean, just within policy, within the city, there's several are rezoning projects underway. We've just changed the low density residential zones, as I mentioned earlier, to allow four plexes and access accessory dwelling units, or secondary dwelling units, granny flats. They have many names. We're working on mid rise zoning changes to allow mid rise in places that today would just be single detached homes along transit corridors, which is important about important to fill the missing middle of housing. We've changed our parking minimums, eliminating in some parts of the city because of transit availability. We're expanding, investing in our transit so that people have better choices than just a car. So there are things happening, both grassroots in the community and also at City Hall.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 21:15

  You've mentioned transportation a couple times. Can you tell a little bit about how you personally pivoted from driving to bike commuting or using public transportation as part of this whole journey?

  Craig Cassar 21:25

  Yeah, definitely. By my old job, I used to have to drive to another city, so cycling was not an option. But as I started campaigning and I was just moving around the city to get to appointments or to go canvassing, I said, Well, you know, I can just ride. I like to be active. I'm a runner. I have a bike. I don't get the cycle all that often, but, you know, a bike opens up so much more territory than just being on foot. So I started riding everywhere, and now I'm riding to city hall 12 months a year. And yeah, it snows a lot. Sometimes it can get cold, but just dress appropriately, and I find it so much better experience. You know, I meet people on the trails, on the streets, I get home, or I get to work and feeling better. You know, it's an opportunity to distress de stress, rather than, you know, being or succumbing to road rage, yeah, traffic so, yeah, it's just a great way to get around. And, you know, I recognize I'm fortunate enough to be capable to do that, but I'm going to do that as long as I can. Yeah,

  Tiffany Owens Reed 22:25

  puddle power, right? Okay, let's talk about the environmental side to all of this. Because I think we had had an interesting kind of conversation when, when we, when we first were talking about the podcast, about the synergy you see between your environmental interests, but also this new side, this new urban interest and serving on city council. How do you describe the synergy between those two

  Craig Cassar 22:47

  worlds? Well, the environment is, is where we live. We need to take care of it. Cities are also where we live. We need to take care of them and build them properly. So when you look at it that way, they're basically the same thing. I think historically, we've, in our minds, in our society, said the city is here and nature is over there, somewhere. You know, we're going to go up to the cottage, we're going to go out into nature, and we're going to drive there because it's somewhere else. But, I mean, in order to make a place livable, the environment needs to be something that we can enjoy and that is healthy for us. So one of the things that I I've gotten involved in, in one of the many groups, is Hamilton butterfly Way Project, part of the David Suzuki Foundation, which is a national volunteer initiative, and it's bringing nature into the city via native plants to support pollinators, because we have, we're going through the sixth grade extinction as well, in terms of the number of plants and our animals that are on planet earth, and the quantities are declining. And this is initiative to bring into the city, to make a city more enjoyable, healthier, and to allow life other than human life to thrive as well. So I think, you know, climate action, environmentalism and good urbanism overlap quite a bit, and you can't really do one really well without focusing on the others.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 24:17

  Yeah, I think there's something to that. I don't know if you've read any of Lewis mumford's book, The city in history. I'm going to say this, and then you're going to look up the book and realize it's like a gnome, and you're going to be like, Wow, did Tiffany actually read that? So I'm here to tell you I have not finished it. It's a very long foot. But as you're reading through his different sections, he kind of is just walking you through, like, sort of this, like, urbanist history, going through different cities, and it's really interesting. It's it's great. But I think one thing that becomes really clear when you think about the industrial American city is that complete break between nature and the city, right? And when you have that historical context, you realize how abnormal that is. That wasn't that wasn't the case. Space for for like, 1000s of years to have, such as partly because of food supply, right? So historically, you would have a much more synergistic and CO dependent relationship between the countryside and the city, or just between nature in general in the city. But then you get to sort of this industrial era and the in the US, or just Western city, I guess. And it's interesting when you combine that history with then reading about the history of suburbia and how everyone was like, we have the most brilliant original idea ever. Let's put people back in nature. But it's, it's not, it doesn't come across as this idea of restoring synergy. It almost treats nature as a commodity of like, let's go to that thing out there to like, you know, refresh ourselves and then go back and, you know, so just an interesting siloization, I guess, or like, fracture of nature and the city that I don't know, just when you're explaining that just kind of reminded me of, I think it's a symptom of so Many other issues too. If everything be kind of cut off and isolated as its own problem, and what you were saying earlier about like, no, no, if you're thinking about cities, you have to start to think of them in this more ecological sense. Or what's the word like ecosystem, where all these things have to work together, and I feel like figuring out how to restore that sort of holistic thinking, rather than that siloization framework is part of the answer to so many of the problems our cities are facing.

  Craig Cassar 26:31

  Yeah, and in Hamilton, we've recognized that too. So I put that under the column of winds as we've just approved a biodiversity strategy, we've approved an urban forest strategy to restore our tree canopy to 40% by 2050, wow. And you know, all those have benefits beyond the nature that they bring cooling effect, de stressing, you know, dealing with storm water, you know, it's just understanding things holistically, which I think is really, really important for decision makers and leaders or community members to make sure their leaders understand all these things are part of what makes a great city, and you cannot really be successful without being good at all of them.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 27:12

  Okay, so Craig, I want to ask you. I'm going to kind of combine two questions. One, as you think about the future, either of just the rest of your term, or just the future in general. What do you think it would take for a city working and the context that you've described to us, which I know we barely touched the tip of the iceberg about kind of understanding how provincial government works and all of that. But what do you think when you think about like, okay, you know, here's what the here's what a positive future could look like. What do you think that would look like? And I guess the other question I want to ask is like as you think about that vision, but also the challenges, how do you stay motivated in your role in city government?

  Craig Cassar 27:51

  Well, I think cities are only successful if they're centered around people. And that can mean many different things, but you have to start with centering it around people, and not just where they live, not just how they get around, not just where they work or what they do, but how all those things fit together, whether that's being able to walk to school safely. And you know, in our community, I work with a group that is trying to get their vision is to get kids, to 100% of kids, to walk or roll to school every day, and set up an environment that is successful and enables people, rather than cars, having employment within the city and being able to get to it, having a good transit system so people don't have To drive. Because, you know, cars have been great for for people, and they're necessary, and in the foreseeable future, we'll need them, we'll use them. I have a car. My wife uses them most of the time, but centering everything around cars and their needs has been unsuccessful. It's created a lot of challenges which are too deep to get into right now. So centering everything around people is, I think, how we have to approach it and figure out what that means in each unique context.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 29:10

  Yeah, mentioned this idea in our off the record chat, or just our non recorded chat, this idea of the role that smaller groups can play in helping advance more like stronger, helping advance the city in a more resilient direction. Can Can you, can you share a little bit about that?

  Craig Cassar 29:28

  Yeah, I think that's so important. Because the city, at least in Hamilton's case, and probably a lot of larger cities cases, is this huge entity. You know, a corporation has lots of money, does lots of things, you have lots of experts, but they're not the best suited to connect with the community, to implement things within the community, at the neighborhood level. And I think that's where we get successful when we're working at the neighborhood level. So there's a couple organizations that stand down Hamilton. One is psycho Hamilton, and there are, as the name would imply, all about psycho. And active transportation real quick. Example, earlier this year, there was a threat to city of Hamilton's Bike Share budget. We have a pretty good bike share and growing bike share system. There was some talk that maybe that money would not be approved going forward. So they organize themselves in an excellent way. Got people together, and they came and delegated to City Hall, and it was so impactful, because they brought their experiences and and convinced everyone that, well, we need to continue this. And they're also out there in the community, helping people, even people who can't cycle their Cycling Without Age group. So they do a lot, and similar groups do a lot in the organized in the city. And there's also something called the daily school route, like I was mentioning, to get kids to walk and roll to school, and they can be much more nimble and react more quickly. And they can do different things and build different relationships than the city can, because they're not governed the same way a city is. They can move more quickly. So I think it's really smart for Hamilton and for any city, to understand what they do really well, but engage with the groups that can do things differently, and then define those roles clearly so you can get the most and you're you're working, you know, together, rather than

  Tiffany Owens Reed 31:14

  opposition. I think that really touches to the bottom up nature of the strong towns, ethos of kind of helping see the value of like, there is a place for, you know, local government, and I guess what people would call more like, top down, or more like, I don't know official ways of doing things, but I think what you're getting at with this insight is so, just so valuable. I feel like it's one of those things that could just fly over, under the radar, but I've thought about it since you mentioned it in that first chat. And I was like, I think this is really, you're really onto something, not just for your town, but just for so many cities. It's like, you know, why keep waiting for the government to get it? You know? Like, maybe, maybe the type of change you want to see happen is like seven neighbors working together just on your block, right? And that's way more effective than waiting for the official study and the report and the committee and the blah, blah, blah, whatever else has to happen. And I think there's something so so right in that approach. Okay, we're about to wrap up here. I wanted to give you a chance, though, to touch on the motivation question. What keeps you motivated as you kind of work, work upstream, I think would be a good way of putting it to kind of help your town move in a more resilient direction.

  Craig Cassar 32:36

  I'm just really motivated by the future. I have kids, and I want them to have a world and a city that's going to be something they can be happy in, because that's the bottom line, is happiness. We don't really talk about that a lot in government and in urbanism, necessarily, but it's about happiness. So, you know, there's an expression, the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago, and the second best time is today. So we are 50 years ago for a whole lot of people. So, so that's what I'm thinking of, is, what are the things we can do today? They're going to help us today to be as happy as possible, to be successful, but are setting up the future, and then we're not compromising the future. So, and there are very often very different paths we can take at the municipal level, at all levels of government, and for thinking about 50 years ahead, or, as our indigenous friends would say, you know, seven generations ahead, which is even further out. Of course, you know, we're going to be making better decisions, rather than just being selfish about what's the best today. So so at this stage in my life, that's what I'm motivated for. Motivated by I don't I'm not desire anything else for myself personally. It's how do I make life better for my kids and everyone else's

  Tiffany Owens Reed 33:51

  kids? Yeah, that long term thinking is so representative. I think if one of the biggest differences that need to happen in order for us to really shift the paradigm about how we think about cities in general. You know, how can we thinking about future generations rather than our immediate comfort or what's convenient for us right now? Okay, Craig, I would I ask this at the end of every episode, but I would love it if you could share a little bit about your neighborhood. What do you love about it? And what are a couple places that you like to recommend people check out if they come visit to get a slice of local life.

  Craig Cassar 34:25

  Okay, yeah, I can share two places. So I represent the town of anchor, the former town of Ancaster. It's amalgamated into the City of Hamilton, and from our downtown core in Ancaster, there's access to the Dundas valley trail system. So this is beautiful forested area, 40 kilometers of trails. It's along the Niagara Escarpment. Parts of it I mentioned earlier these the Niagara scarment and Hamilton is known as the City of waterfalls because of that escarpment and the drop in the streams and creeks running over it, we have over 100 waterfalls. Trails, and two of them you can access via the trails from Ancaster, Tiffany falls, which is probably one of the most popular and appropriate for our podcast and our conversation today, and then also shaver falls, so it's one of the, like I said, over 100 waterfalls that are beautiful. They're very big tourist attractions, and you can get to them hiking through a beautiful conservation area. So so that's one. And then if I talk about another part of Hamilton, I'll talk about James Street North. This used to it's downtown. Used to be a one way street with three or four lanes. So basically, a highway 20 plus years ago was converted to two way and sin, and at the time it was, you know, nothing was happening there where weren't a lot of businesses, weren't a lot of people. Now it's converted into this vibrant, thriving commercial district with arts and culture. And once a month through the spring and into the fall, there's something called Art Crawl, where the actual streets close down to cars and open up to people, and vendors can just bring their tables and their wares and and sell them, and musicians set up along the street, and it's just sort of organized chaos. And it's there's the streets are packed. You may not have elbow room. You're hearing two different pieces of music coming from different directions in the street, and it's just a really fantastic, vibrant space that I think is the epitome of what, you know, a great city is. It's bringing people together, allowing businesses and arts and culture to thrive. So so I would highly recommend that if anyone comes to Hamilton, look up the art crawl, and then in September, it's on steroids. It's super crawl bigger. Yeah. So, so lots going on the art and culture sector in Hamilton.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 36:47

  Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing this with us, and thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your insights and story with us if you're listening to this, thank you for joining us for another episode. We do have a link in our show notes where you can nominate someone in your community who you think would be a great fit for the show. That's how we learned about Craig. That's how we learned about many of our guests. So if there's someone who comes to mind who you think represents the bottom up revolution approach, please let us know. I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• Craig Cassar (site)

• Local Recommendations:

  • Tiffany Falls

  • Dundas Valley Trail System

  • James Street North Art Crawl

• Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram)

• Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean or via RSS.

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