One week from today, Ottawa will play host to the world, during Mayor Chiarelli's "smart growth" summit that kicks off for five days from June 14th to the 18th. An impressive collection of experts will offer up their differing visions for sustainable community development. And kudos to the organizers for finding a balance between seminar style speeches for the assembled cast of international experts and plenary discussions, moderated by city councillors, with appropriate citizen and interest group involvement.

Now before this begins to sound much more like a paid advertisement for the City of Ottawa, readers should remember that this summit provides a once in a generation chance for Ottawans to have an impact on the "official plan" that will guide city development for years to come. The official plan will come before council later this fall and will incorporate some of the ideas forwarded at next week's growth summit.

The city has invited the public to participate in plenary sessions, live during the summit via a webcast as well as in pre-summit meetings that are taking place right now. (Call your councillor at 580-2400 to find out about your potential participation before and during the summit.)

City staff have scoured the continent and beyond to find a mix of speakers for this summit. Included on this list is Sir Peter Hall, a world-renowned planning expert, former member of the U.K. Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force and a founding director or Regeneration London, a not-for-profit company dedicated to furthering Britain's urban renaissance.

Another international figure scheduled to speak is Andrew Duany, a "new urbanist" architect and planned community guru who is a vigorous defender of his ideas against rampaging urban sprawl. From the big apple, Alex Marshall, influential journalist and author of How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken will also attend. Other noted speakers include Judith Maxwell from Canadian Policy Research Networks, former B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt, Mike Burton from Metro Oregon, Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray, and Richard Florida, Director of the Centre for Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University.

No doubt there will be a plethora of visionary ideas discussed given the noted qualifications of many of the invited speakers. But a closer examination of this list reveals an apparent government intervention, and dare we say it, somewhat left wing bias. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with left-of-centre views, but the smart growth organizers could have included more of a pro-business or right-of-centre focus as they canvassed the globe for conference speakers.

So it's up to delegates and the public participants to interject this perspective in their plenary and/or on-line interventions. In the midst of the sessions devoted to public transit, sustaining rural village life, looking at Ottawa's social needs, housing or the arts & culture town halls, participants should keep in mind that residential and commercial ratepayers are taxed to the limit and any solutions proposed can not have adverse effects on the property tax base (read: tax hikes).

In addition, any solutions that advocate different taxing powers for cities should be mindful of the current constitutional straightjacket (cities have limited revenue raising powers) in which Canadian cites are currently trapped. Houdini-like strategies for escaping this straightjacket must accompany any grandiose schemes for brownfields development, public transit initiatives or mixed-use community developments.

Finally, participants - and most notably, many of our interventionist city concillors - must come to the reality that smart growth plans will only work if the private sector and industry in this city are wholly on board with Ottawa's official plan. Especially as the city realizes that private finance initiatives will increasingly become the funding source for many public infrastructure initiatives from community centres to new roads to libraries as senior orders of government, not just Queen's Park, but Ottawa as well, continue to slam the door shut on public funding for these initiatives.

So while the summit definitely has a bias, citizens can and should counterbalance this bias through the explicit recognition that economic development will continue. Growth is inevitable to a certain extent and Ottawa's diverse and thriving private sector has a key role to play in shaping Ottawa's future. It is these private sector companies, large and small, that create our wealth which is then redistributed by various levels of government.