Bothered by the Courier headline
Dear Editor: The Daily Courier must become a partner in solutions finding.
We are in a new century of city building in Kelowna. This requires that our local media develop stories and language that encourage collective thinking and engagement in decision making in order to help this great city advance.
We are experiencing population growth, real estate expansion, and greater congestion on our roads than previous decades, possibly combined. This is a challenge that city staff and council have been forced to wrestle with and the sooner they find solutions, the less complicated and costly these will be.
I take grave offence to the type of sensational reporting found in Ron Seymour’s “Kelowna declares war on your car” (Courier, Nov. 27). The headline alone encourages people to get defensive, to claim a right to the roads and costly infrastructure that is rightfully theirs as taxpayers.
Well, as someone who is interested in reducing congestion on our roads; who is interested in more efficient and diverse modes of transportation; and who values more integration between transportation and land use in decision making about our future city, I for one (and likely on behalf of many) demand greater nuance, sensitivity, and overall sophistication in reporting on these complex matters. If even a brief Google search was done on transportation and cities, Ron would have found that other cities across Canada and the world are advancing diverse modes of transport around and across cities and regions.
This is the reality of 21st-century city building. City staff worldwide are proactively building best practices and finding creative solutions that are not only reducing congestion, but are also building connectivity, affordability, and the business case for more complete and healthy neighbourhoods and communities.
Please Daily Courier, do your due diligence in advancing the discourse around these important issues at this sensitive time. Play the role you need to be playing — reporting in a neutral and unbiased manner, so that we can all resolve to look for opportunities that encourage and accelerate Kelowna’s transition into the realities of the 21st century or at least support those that are. Alison Shaw Kelowna