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A new book aims to empower citizens to ask more intelligent questions and think more critically about how municipal governments spend tax dollars on the services and public infrastructure that make up our day-to-day lives.
You’ll Pay For This, the debut book from writer Michel Durand-Wood, is the first in a series of books called The City Project that examines infrastructure spending and funding using relatable, often funny analogies to help make sense of an oftentimes confusing topic.
“It’s not shocking that most people have no idea,” says Durand-Wood about the public’s general ignorance on the state of funding for critical infrastructure. “They don’t necessarily understand it. But it’s important to remember that we’re not customers of the city – we're co-owners of it. We all sort of own it together as a co-operative to provide services to us. And so, as a co-owner, it is kind of our responsibility to understand at least the top-level financial direction we’re heading in.”
A resident of Winnipeg’s Elmwood neighbourhood, Durand-Wood first felt that sense of responsibility in 2007 when the community centre in his neighbourhood closed. “It had me asking questions about why we can’t afford the things we used to be able to afford,” he says. “And then, once you start thinking about it that way, you kind of see that [in] a lot of discussions we’re having as a city around anything.”
“We’re having these conversations without really a good sense of how we’re going to pay for any of it,” he continues, “not only how we’re going to pay for it now, but how we’re going to pay for it tomorrow and the day after... essentially forever. Because that’s what a city is. A city doesn’t have an end date, just we have to be able to continue to pay for the stuff we have for our kids, for our grandkids, for every generation after that.”
Durand-Wood started having these conversations on his blog Dear Winnipeg, but is now branching out with The City Project, a planned collection of books written by several different authors addressing different aspects of how to make cities more sustainable and ensuring that it serves future generations.
“We like to simplify things and pretend that things can be merely complicated,” says Durand-Wood. “If we understand all the parts, we can plan and tinker and make things go the way we want. But a city is more like an ecosystem. It’s a human habitat. And so, it’s really highly complex with so many relationships, so many different things that we don’t necessarily understand completely how they work together. And so, for the people who want to understand how cities work, there are so many different aspects to consider.”
You’ll Pay For This gets its official release on May 31 with a celebration at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location at 7pm. More information can be found at their website.