The 16th Annual Urban Film Festival is taking place on the eveing Friday, Nov. 3 at Vancouver Island University (VIU).

Matthew Bowes, a professor of geography and global studies, says that the film festival's vision is to educate and inspire.

“Our vision here is really to educate, inspire people to promote sustainable cities,” he said. “We are showcasing the possibilities of walkable, accessible, car-free urban centres. The mission of this is to really spotlight those dynamic stories, from all sorts of diverse and different perspectives, and pressing challenges of urban life.”

The film festival is a class assignment for community planning students on community engagement.

“A lot of planning when we do, Official Community Plan, or a neighborhood plan or something like that. A lot of it is about engaging the community and dialogue to see what they think and what they want,” said Bowes. “We're using this as a really practical community engagement exercise. There are many different types of community engagement that we can do. An urban planning film festival is not typically one of them.”

Nanaimo city councilor Tyler Brown is the keynote speaker at the festival. CHLY spoke with him about the challenges, and opportunities, to make Nanaimo more walkable.

“I think oftentimes, when we think about these things, it can be a little bit of an oversimplification, when we're coming from a critical perspective, oh, we just need to change the zoning to allow this type of development here,” he said. “However, when it comes to actually facilitating development, you need to make sure that your sewer capacity is in the ground and your mains can handle the increased amount of density.”

One thing that the province of British Columbia is doing is legislation that would legalize secondary suites and allow up to four units on single-family lots in most municipalities and up to six units on lots near transit routes with frequent service.

Coun. Brown says while he supports the idea, it does pose some problems for municipalities.

“I think the intention is good, they're wanting to respond and provide housing for people,” he said. “Now, the devil is always in the details. I think Nanaimo and many other municipalities that have been trying to tackle these issues already have gone to the province and said, ‘hey, you know what, whether we agree or don't agree with some of this approach, there's a responsible way to do this and an irresponsible way to do this.’ And the responsible way is one is the infrastructure there.”

To hear the full interview with Coun. Brown play the audio file at the top of the story.

For more information on the film festival go to viu.ca.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.