Opinion: City politicians should sharpen their focus on the next generation
There's a byelection coming up in April, and municipal candidates have been conspicuously absent from youth-focused spaces.
By HILARY ANGUS
While casting a federal ballot can feel like screaming into a void, participating in municipal politics feels like your voice is actually being heard. But young people are not showing up to city hall in droves.
“Cities rarely hear from young people,” said Rowan Gentleman-Sylvester, the executive director of CityHive, a Vancouver-based organization that runs programs to engage youth in municipal politics.
In the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, voter turnout was 33.3 per cent, according to city data. In byelections, turnout is even lower – the 2017 Vancouver byelection saw only 10.9 per cent of eligible voters show up to the polls.
With another byelection coming up on April 5, it would be encouraging – but unfortunately surprising – to see those numbers surge.
Pundits often rely on tired tropes about youth apathy, but putting the blame on young people ignores the real issue: cities are not doing enough to engage youth in city-shaping.
Gentleman-Sylvester said young people face several barriers to civic engagement: They’re not taught about municipal politics in high school, they’re often balancing school with multiple jobs and family obligations, and they’re often living in a new city, moving often, and figuring out who they are as people.
“That’s a lot to put on someone,” she said, and then turn around and say they also need to teach themselves about city hall procedures, fill out a survey, and register to speak at city council, or their opinion will not be heard.
Gentleman-Sylvester said municipalities very rarely approach youth seeking their input “in ways that feel relevant and meaningful.”
Municipal politics bring it home
Civic engagement, though it maintains a dull reputation, affects our lives in way that can be much more noticeable than federal politics.
“You can often see the impacts of your actions and your involvement in a much more immediate term,” said Gentleman-Sylvester.
Those impacts can be tangible. It’s the condition of the sidewalks in your neighbourhood, the biodiversity in your local parks and whether or not there is rain shelter at your bus stop.
And yet, the methods cities employ to engage residents with politics – tedious surveys, council meetings, development town halls – are not resonating with young people, so they’re not showing up.
If local governments are serious about increasing voter turnout and building future-looking cities, they need to be proactive in seeking young people’s input regularly, so when election time rolls around they feel like they have a stake in the game.
Communication is key
Nathan Pachal was elected as mayor of Langley City at the age of 39, after already serving seven years on city council.
Pachal said the changing media landscape has had a significant impact on voter turnout in municipal elections over the years, especially among young people.
“How many local newspapers exist today?” he said. “What’s the circulation and who’s covering the nuances of local government where we don’t necessarily have parties, right?”
Pachal said provincial and federal politics, having fewer candidates and long-standing parties, are easier to make voting decisions around.
Municipal politics, by contrast, often involve 10-20 candidates with unfamiliar parties or no parties at all, and the onus falls on individual voters to try to understand the stakes.
“Democracy can be challenging at the local level, and it does take research,” Pachal said. “If I’m just being blunt, people are busy and it’s hard to research.”
If we want young people to have a say in their cities, we need to learn how to communicate on the platforms they’re already using.
Outreach and organization
The barriers young people face in getting involved with municipal politics are significant, and it should not be on them to learn how to navigate an onerous system.
At the risk of sounding trite, young people are the future, so it seems obvious that they should be consulted when making decisions about said future.
But for those consultations to be meaningful, city planners and politicians need to meet young people where they are: at their workplaces, in their schools, on transit, on social media.
That could look like youth-specific outreach campaigns, more candidates visiting schools and college campuses, or simply more targeted social media campaigns.
Youth engagement cannot be just a box-ticking exercise, it needs to be a robust strategy.
We need to develop communication and engagement strategies that demystify municipal procedures so the whole thing feels less, well, procedural.