The (Dis?)connected North: Persistent Regionalism in Northern British Columbia */le Nord-Connecte Ou Non? le Regionalisme Persistant Au Nord De la Colombie-Britannique *

This paper recounts findings drawn from extensive community-based research conducted across northern British Columbia designed to find out what ideas northerners have for improving economic development opportunities where they live. Findings illustrate that despite many marginal attempts at promoting regional development across BC, northerners maintain a resilient willingness, and recognize a strong economic imperative, to collaborate across the region. The paper outlines a variety of motivating forces compelling regional development and presents a series of seven principles, drawn from the community-based research, to guide the structure and intent of regionalist initiatives in northern BC. RESUMES Cet article present des resultats d'une recherche d'envergure a base communautaire du nord de la Colombie-Britannique, qui fut entreprise afin de reveler les idees des citoyens et citoyennes de ces regions pour ameliorer les occasions economiques ou ils habitant. Les resultats demontrent que malgre de nombreuses tentatives marginales de promouvoir le developpement regional a travers la Colombie-Britannique, les residents du nord maintiennent une volonte resilient et reconnaissent une imperative economique importante de collaborer dans la region. Nous presentons une variete de forces motivantes qui interpellent un developpement regionale et presentons sept principes, tires de la recherche a base communautaire, qui permettent d'orienter la structure et les objectifs des initiatives regionales au nord de la C.-B. *********** In recent years, northern British Columbia (BC) has experienced rapid changes in the stability and composition of its economy. The region is responding to multiple pressures, such as the softwood lumber dispute, the mountain pine beetle epidemic, and shifting directions in provincial policy. These pressures are affecting BC during a time of economic resource restructuring. But at the same rime, northern BC is experiencing booms in mining and oil and gas sectors, and is buoyed by a sense of comparative, if temporary, intra-provincial regional equity not seen since the 1980s (Finlayson 2005). This paper is the result of ongoing research, started in 2003, to address community and regional development issues in northern BC. Our starting point, the Northern BC Economic Development Vision and Strategy Project, was designed to find out what ideas northerners themselves had for improving economic development opportunities where they live. In general terms, we organized the project to answer a simple question: If people in northern BC were going to devise a vision and plan for economic renewal, and a structure to manage that renewal, how would they do it? Too often governments have imposed processes or plans on the region, and for too long, people in northern BC participated in those processes only to have key recommendations or outcomes changed or rejected. This legacy has created a good deal of skepticism about economic planning processes, and reinforced a view that the region and its communities are essentially on their own. In contrast, current economic challenges and opportunities have also created a great impatience to get on with the task of creating a plan to renew the economic strength and communities of the region. Drawing from the Project, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to understand why despite stated frustrations with past regional development efforts, regional approaches to development emerged as a strong theme from the research; and second, to provide a synthesis of guiding principles for future regional development work in northern BC which may then inform other jurisdictions. A third, and more literature-oriented purpose, is to respond to a general critique of new regionalism: that it is too abstract and lacking in bottom-up representation (Lovering 1999; Barnes et al 2000). In the following section, we provide a brief overview of the Project's process as well as the socio-economic context for northern BC. …

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