While Halifax council debated the Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness, Matt Whitman was on a Chinese travel junket

Arguably, the proposed Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes wilderness park is the single most important issue faced by the current city council.

For one, it’s a huge piece of land; the proposed park comes in at 4,152.9 acres — about 25 per cent larger than the Halifax peninsula. It is majestic territory, complete with a seven lake canoe loop; a granite outcrop (Blue Mountain) that overlooks the harbour, the ocean, and St. Margarets Bay; an astonishing assortment of wetlands and wildlife; and, aside from an old quarry on the very edge of the property, completely undeveloped.

Protecting the park is what people in government call a “legacy project” — a wilderness park will serve not just current city residents but also our children, our grandchildren and all future generations. Besides that, there’s an incalculable benefit to wildlife and ecosystems that support it. The mundane day-to-day business of government — filling potholes, running rec programs, funding police and fire — are important, but from a long view look fairly inconsequential in comparison to the potential of the park.

Still, while protecting the park may seem like a no brainer, it’s not a done deal. Most of the land within the proposed park boundaries is owned by the city and provincial governments, but about a third of it — 1,279.7 acres — is owned by 15 private land holders. The bulk of that private land, 854.6 acres, is owned by just three large development companies: the Annapolis Group, Gateway Materials Limited, and B.D. Stevens Limited.

I’ve covered the issue extensively here, but the short of it is that it’s a battle over money: just how much should, and will, the city pay for the private land? Plenty of people have opinions on this — over 1400 people submitted written communications to the city, far more than I’ve ever seen for any other issue facing council — almost all arguing for protection of the property. On the other hand, councillor Reg Rankin had put forward a motion to council that, if passed, would have started the development process for the private land.

Rankin’s motion came to council today, at council’s first meeting after the summer break. The motion was literally a life-or-death moment for the proposed park: if the land moved forward for development, the full park would be lost, forever.

While the proposed park will serve the entire community, protecting it is particularly important to those neighbourhoods directly adjoining it. The proposed park is entirely within the boundaries of Council District 12, represented by Rankin, but the neighbourhood most affected by the park (or by development of the land) is Kingswood, which is represented by District 13 councillor Matt Whitman. The trail to the top of Blue Mountain starts in Kingswood. The streets of Kingswood, lined by multi-million dollar homes, dead end into the wilderness. People in Kingswood regularly hike and paddle through the wilderness near their homes.

It’s not at all hyperbole to say that the Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes issue discussed at council today was the most important issue facing Matt Whitman during his entire tenure as councillor.

So where was Whitman today?

China.

That’s right, on the day of the most important vote of his council career, Matt Whitman went on a junket to Yinchuan, China, 10,708 kilometres and a 20-hour plane ride away from Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes.

Whitman is at something called TM Forum Smart City InFocus 2016, which is a three-day conference about “smart cities.” I wish I could tell you more, but when I google the conference all I get is a bunch of sites filled with buzzwords. Here’s a press release that is reprinted on 20 or so of the top google results:

There is nowhere better to discuss these key themes than in the City of Yinchuan which has addressed all of these topics and has become a leading smart city in China. The City of Yinchuan is serving as a model to other cities on a global scale on how to transform to become “smart,” not only in terms of infrastructure but also in creating and delivering new smart services and talking advantage of the economic development that comes with it.

One of the keys to success in creating a smart city in Yinchuan was the local government’s vision and understanding of the role that big data and a cloud platform played in transforming its infrastructure and services. Indeed, Yinchuan’s big data cloud platform can be seen as the brain of the smart city. Taking “two libraries and two platforms” as the core of the infrastructure, Yinchuan was able to create an urban database which stored information of the city’s population, economy, buildings and infrastructure, and spatial geographic information.

Yinchuan has also created an urban industry application database and subject library that looks at transportation, education and government public services. Data sharing between these platforms and from the big data cloud platform has transformed the city from a passive and reactive government to one which utilizes, processes, and analyses big data to make informed decisions and has turned the mode of government to one which is active and can provide smart and intelligent services for its citizens.

In 2015, Yinchuan Smart City and ZTEsoft were recognized for their exceptional development and acceleration of smart city potential by China’s National Pilot Smart City, the number one smart city in the world. Their work is enabled by ZTEsoft’s ZSmart products, which are based on TM Forum’s Frameworx™ suite of digital business best practices and standards and being used to enable innovation through intelligent data analytics.

Beyond the hope of selling some software, if there’s a meaningful sentence in there, I’m unaware of it. ZTEsoft, incidentally, is a Chinese software firm hoping to “cash in on the multi-billion opportunity in government’s smart cities initiative.”

I’m not entirely discounting the concept of smart cities (although, come on), but there is nothing, nothing at all, that Whitman can learn in China that will be of any help whatsoever in Halifax. For one, as a “small” Chinese city — with a population of two million— Yinchuan has nothing in common with Halifax. Let’s hope not anyway: the degree to which Yinchuan can collect data is antithetical to a free society.

I’ve been googling around for a concrete example of how, exactly, Yinchuan uses data, but I can’t find one. Even the conference program is vague, not just about data but also about what’s going on at the conference. See the whole program here; the gist of it:

The three-day event will begin on Wednesday 7th September with an optional smart city tour of Yinchuan followed by the official start of the event with the VIP dinner.

Thursday 8th September will see delegates attend the first day of the Smart City conference and there will be networking dinners held in the evening. Delegates will also get the opportunity to experience first hand TM Forum’s proof-of- concept Catalysts during the networking breaks.

Friday 9th September will see delegates attend the second day of the Smart City InFocus conference, experience Catalyst projects, and provide a unique opportunity to visit the Smart City Industrial Park.

Saturday 10th September will see delegates departing to the airport for a safe trip home.