For a profession that exists to look after the public interest and the common good, Urban Planning can find itself paralyzed in a constant tug of war between dealing with the legacies of past urban status quos and implementing the promise of better futures. Futures, in plural, that are incrementally paved with good intentions like those of their predecessors. These are contested and unguaranteed futures that may sprout a plethora of unforeseen inequities as experienced by many city dwellers today. Is the profession crippled by its own balancing act or is there a stance Urban Planning can take towards making clear which urban matters matter the most? Let’s dive in.

Why Hasn’t Urban Planning Solved All Social Inequities?

I think this is a fair question to ask, after all, didn’t this conversation start in the 1960s already? The short answer is: The profession hasn’t solved all social inequities because it hasn’t assimilated the differences between a) how Urban Planning has contributed to the creation and perpetuation of social inequities, with b) how it continues to contribute and c) how it can address that contribution.

The longer answer can take us to many places. For instance, the Urban Planning profession as a whole might seem like a scapegoat of sorts, a catch-all mechanism, where no culprit can be found accountable. In this case, when speaking about the profession I’m referencing the everyday planning practitioner, not the institutions. You know, the practitioners drafting a plan, report, or a regulation, dealing with a client or a public inquiry, or finding themselves wondering about implementing change in their communities. These are the practitioners who are contributing the most to the creation or perpetuation of urban social inequities, but in a way, they can do the most to counter that.

Others might ask, should Planning be dedicated to solving all social inequities? I agree with the feeling behind that question, one cannot blame Urban Planning for everything that cities are experiencing. However, that is not an excuse for inaction. A better framing could suggest Planning to be dedicated to addressing social inequities experienced in cities instead. After all, is not about drawing one-to-one causations and solutions, but acknowledging the need to address in a comprehensive manner the pool of contributions made by practitioners who have biases and a limited understanding. We only know what we think we know, and that creates blind spots in everyday work.

Urban Planners are constantly navigating a pluralism of ideologies, depending on the city that you work in and if you are in the private or public sector you will encounter different traces of political and cultural inclinations that are indicatives of the current status quo. While navigating these and one’s ideologies, Planners encounter the dilemma of looking after the public interest without confusing it with public opinion. The former might strive to care for the welfare or well-being of the general public and society, the latter might drive decision-making and policy directions to benefit just a few. Not realizing the distinction between the two is just one case in which initiatives or policies with good intentions might go off the rails.

Additionally, Urban Planners might find themselves disengaged or powerless to implement change after working in the intricated structures of bureaucracies and power dynamics that exist in city councils, city administration, real estate associations, and civic organizations. Therefore, planning processes should be carefully curated and designed with multiple points of reflection so that there’s a higher chance to learn and adjust throughout implementation and not at the end of milestones. It’s only when we have control of our work, and not our work controlling us, that we can innovate and shift direction to more equitable outcomes.

So, what can be done? How can we take a stance on the way we work? Well, as you’ve probably guessed at this point there are indeed a lot of people out there currently working on bringing urban social justice through urban planning or other means. However, not everyone has the knowledge or privilege to do so, and in the spirit of making a positive contribution to the profession, I want to share the framework I’ve learned and re-adjusted with you. I believe it can help you too.

An Intent Was Made

I worked for the last two and a half years on Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw Renewal, a project striving to overhaul, simplify, and streamline how Edmonton regulates its land use. In 2020, the project was among one of the first pilot projects implementing the Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) framework in the City of Edmonton. This framework was originally created in the 2000s by the Government of Canada’s Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) department and found its way in 2017 through City Council’s motion (CR4189) to provide GBA+ training and implementation to administration. The implementation made its way in 2019 with the release of “The Art of Inclusion”, the City of Edmonton’s diversity and inclusion framework, which would later direct the application of GBA+ across all initiatives prepared by the city.

GBA+ is an analytical tool used to assess the potential impacts of policies, programs, services, and other initiatives on diverse groups of women, men, and people with other gender identities. The "plus" highlights that this type of analysis goes beyond gender and includes the examination of a range of other intersecting identity factors (such as age, sexual orientation, disability, education, language, geography, culture, and income).

The goal of GBA+ is to reduce inequities and ensure equality of outcomes for diverse communities. The framework can be simplified into three concepts: Social Inequities, Identity Factors, and Equity Measures. GBA+ prompts you to research and engage to identify social inequities for your project while considering the intersection of identity factors to prevent groups from being excluded so that you can design, implement, and evaluate equity measures that can address inequities that may impact diverse groups. The challenge was to translate that framework into Urban Planning terms. The result of that exercise was the Zoning Bylaw Renewal GBA+ & Equity Toolkit; an adaptation of the GBA+ method into the planning process of writing regulations. The five social inequities that urban planning contributes to and how to address them come from that experience.

The Five Social Inequities

The way we write, design, and implement programs, plans, policies, or regulations can create barriers and impacts over time on vulnerable and marginalized populations. These negative externalities can be both unintentional and intentional and while sometimes unpredictable we can call them historical because we can find records of their impacts in peer-reviewed research, literature, or stories of lived experiences. Historical Negative Externalities or HNEs are the main social inequities that Urban Planning contributes to, and they can be divided into five categories: Unaffordability, Inaccessibility, Social Fragmentation, Climate Emergency, and Health Risk Factors.

The HNE of Unaffordability references the unaffordability of rentals, ownership, and development of real estate in cities.

Examples include:

Decline of Home Ownership • Informal Rental Housing • ‘Roommateships’ • Informal Household Businesses • Houseless Camps • Gentrification/Displacement • Missing Middle

Possible land-use causes include:

Parking Minimums • Restrictive Land Use Regulations in High-Demand or Old Areas • Lack of Diverse Housing Options • Single-Family Zoning • Greenbelts or Protected Natural Areas • Heritage Designations • Direct Control Zones • Complicated Zoning Bylaws • FAR, Setbacks, Height, and Density Restrictions • Low Fire Flow Capacity • High Permit Fees   

The HNE of Inaccessibility references the ableism in developments or the lack of access to jobs, civic services, transportation, commerce, amenities, and open spaces.

Examples include:

Disabling Buildings • Disabling Open Spaces • Lack of Civic Services in Old Neighbourhoods • Limitations for Public Facilities and Infrastructure • Lack of Open Spaces in Dense Areas • Lack of Community Amenities in Apartment Buildings • Limited Commercial Business

Possible land-use causes include:

Lack of Accessibility Regulations • Hostile Furniture • Lack of Sidewalks • Physical and Visual Barriers • Restrictive Land Use Regulations in High-Demand or Old Areas • Single-Use Zoning • Lack of Amenity Regulations • Unthoughtful Landscape Regulations

The HNE of Social Fragmentation references perceived insecurity, loss of heritage, and the lack of reconciliation, public engagement, and inclusion in planning processes.

Examples include:

Perceived Insecurity Close to Businesses, Open Spaces, Vacant Lots, etc. • Disrespect of Indigenous Heritage • Lack of Notifications to Renters • Lack of Public Engagement in Private Developments • Oversurveillance • Discriminatory Uses & Definitions

Possible land-use causes:

Redlining • Lack of Public Engagement • Signs Regulations • Single-Use Zoning • Noise Control Regulations • Street Lighting Regulations • Exclusionary Zoning • CPTED • Overregulation

The HNE of Climate Emergency references the development contributions and unpreparedness for future climate change.

Examples include:

Urban Heat Island Effect • Water Contamination • Water Scarcity • GHG emissions • Food Desserts • Loss of Farmlands • Habitat Destruction, Fragmentation, and Degradation • Landfill • Trash Incineration

Possible land-use causes:

Inefficient Land-Use Patterns • Low-Density Zoning • Impermeable Surfaces • Parking Regulations • Urban expansion

The HNE of Health Risk Factors references the development contributions to the aggravation of health risk factors.

Examples include:

Noise • Light Pollution • Air Pollution • Car-Dependency • Weather Hazards • Sun Shadowing

Possible land-use causes:

Lack of Noise Control Regulations • Lack of Light Regulations • Inefficient Land-Use Patterns • Lack of Inclusive Design • Lack of Winter Design • Lack of Public Realm Regulations

Designing Equity Measures

Equity Measures are processes, systems, or actions that remove inequalities or barriers to inclusion and increase equality of outcomes. Not to be confused with Equity Outcomes where these are the aspirational goals we want to achieve through Equity Measures. One can think that affordability is the measure we need to address unaffordability, but that is the goal, not the measure. Equity Measures in Urban Planning can take the form of policies, programs, services, plans, or zoning regulations.

To design Equity Measures there are three principles that come to mind: Build Empathy, Build Trust, and Build Understanding. Building Empathy is about creating the conditions to bring as many perspectives as possible to have a comprehensive, representative and transformational learning experience. Building Trust is about creating the conditions for City Council, stakeholders, and other decision-makers, to validate planners’ recommendations and proposed directions. Building Understanding is not about simplification and minimalization. It's about organization and clarification. It is about seeing relationships. Making the complex clear.

Building Empathy involves having an intersectional lens in the research and analysis stages of the design of a project. This includes having meaningful public engagement (more on this in another post), applying a case-by-case approach to acknowledge as many lived experiences as possible, doing comprehensive literature reviews, and having data that can be easily segregated in multiple identity factors. Building empathy helps prevent the sprout of apathy in a planning process.

Building Trust involves being transparent throughout the process of decision-making that comes while designing the equity measure. Transparency is sometimes the strongest quality a project can have. This includes setting checks and balances, constants updates/reports, writing truthful and well-funded planning rationales, and having data that is open for anyone to analyze and provide their own conclusions. Building trust helps prevent the sprout of speculation in a planning process.

Building Understanding involves having clear communication across the project. This includes having a consistent narrative, knowing your audiences, implementing a User Interface and User Experience approach on how equity measures are presented, and having data that is organized through visualizations, diagrams, illustrations, or maps that can help others connect the dots. Building understanding helps prevent the sprout of polarization in a planning process.

No Silver Bullet

This multidimensional approach implies that there is no one silver bullet in terms of a policy or regulation that can solve one or all inequities. For instance, when thinking about addressing unaffordability there are a variety of regulations and economic indicators that could help reduce the cost of construction, promote mixed-income developments, protect tenants from displacements, use the available space on a site more efficiently, promote diverse housing types, or more mixed-use zones that Urban Planners could recommend.

The right mix of solutions will come from the engagement of building empathy to learn about current needs and lived experiences, from the act of building trust to justify innovations and tough decisions, and from the effort of building understanding to communicate clearly to multiple audiences.

Whichever solutions come out of the process they are not going to guarantee fully the aspired outcomes. That’s why is so essential to know how to monitor policies and make amendments as needed, but that is a post for another day.

On July 16, 2020, Paths for People proposed to the City of Edmonton to postpone the renewal of 105 Avenue between 109 and 116 Streets. The current design and project plan are deeply flawed, making the updated street far less safe for people walking, rolling, cycling and driving.

In this interview, we talked with Dave Buchanan, Chair of Paths for People, to know more about the story behind this initiative.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Urban Narratifs: Why is it important to postpone the renewal of 105 Avenue?

Dave Buchanan: I think we need to pause this project on 105 Ave because the design is flawed. The design for this street is going to have bike lanes on both sides of the street but the bike lanes on this section are not going to be protected, there is going to be no physical barrier between the bicycles and the cars and that just makes the design unsafe. The City’s policy with bike lanes is ‘all ages, all abilities’ and once you take out the physical barrier, there are lots of people who are not going to feel comfortable riding their bikes on this part of the avenue. With parked cars on the south side of 105 Avenue, bicycles are going to have to navigate between moving and parked vehicles with no physical barrier protection on either side. It’s not safe.

There are lots of people who are not going to feel comfortable riding their bikes on this part of the avenue.

UN: How did this idea come about?

DB: Paths for People has been concerned about this design for a while now, and we tried to talk to the City of Edmonton, with Administration, to try to persuade them to change the design, but the message we got from Administration was ‘it’s too late, the timeline to the project had already begun, we are committed to it, and that there was no way stop it.’

We decided that we needed to take this fight to the public, to the media, and when COVID came along, we realized that it wasn’t just a matter of fixing the design flaw with 105 Ave, but the timing with COVID made it an opportunity for the city to save some money as well. So it seems like these two problems (the lack of public resources and the design flaws of 105 Ave) can be tackled together by pausing the renewal of 105 Avenue.

The lack of public resources and the design flaws of 105 Ave can be tackled together by pausing the renewal of 105 Avenue.

UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?

DB: I think the response on social media has been pretty positive so far about the idea of pausing. Some attention in the conventional media, the newspapers, and social media but at this point we are trying to get some deeper traction, to try to get people in positions of political power to do something about this.

UN: What needs to happen next?

DB: Next we need to get some City Councilors to be talking about this, to the point where they can discuss our proposal. See the merits of pausing the project, saving some money in the short term, fixing the design so that when it gets built it can be good for everyone and not just for some of the users of the street. Getting some political traction, that is the next step.

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On June 23, 2020, the Oliver Community League called on the City of Edmonton to change the name of the neighbourhood. This initiative presents itself as a precedent for systemic change in the City. The way we name a neighbourhood matters. As our perception and understanding of colonialism change and adapt through time, it is important to reflect back to the colonial origins and meaning of the names that populate our public spaces.

In this interview, we talked with Hunter Cardinal, Director of Story at Naheyawin and resident of the Oliver Neighbourhood, to know more about the story behind this initiative.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Urban Narratifs: Why is it important to change the name of the Oliver neighbourhood?

Hunter Cardinal: I think now more than ever we as a community need an idea and a value to gather and rally around, something that reflects who we are. What we are finding is that the name, the person, and the actions that it is associated with don’t reflect what is at the core of this community. This is one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Edmonton, and I think it is also one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in the city. Having a name that reflects that should be our goal.

I think now more than ever we as a community need an idea and a value to gather and rally around, something that reflects who we are.

UN: How did this idea come about?

HC: This idea isn't actually new, it's been around for quite a while. Most notably during Canada 150, residents in the Oliver community brought up several times that this name needed to go and that we should be having a conversation about it. Now, of course, that was during Canada 150 where we as Canadians, not just as Oliver residents, were starting to really examine our history and take ownership like that.

UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?

HC: The reception has been fantastic. There's been a really wonderful conversation that has been started, that is important and also very thoughtful and intelligent. A lot of people did not know that this community was actually named after someone and if they did know that it was named after Frank Oliver, they actually didn’t know the full history of what he did. So that’s been very interesting. Of course, once they hear about that, they jump already to the question of ‘yeah, of course, the name will need to change because those actions don’t reflect who we are today.’ The question then becomes ‘what should we have this name be? What do we want to have this community be named after? And who are we today?’

Frank Oliver’s actions don’t reflect who we are today.

UN: What needs to happen next?

HC: We want to have this conversation continued and then find a name that would reflect who we are as a community. So we are calling on the City to help lead an inclusive consultation process that is indigenous-led that involves the communities that Frank Oliver affected and that also allows us as a community to decide the name that we want to be named after. Afterwards, we're going to ask that the City implement the name that is brought forward through this consultation process.

Lastly, we recognize that societies that have a colonial history like Canada are struggling to reconcile their past. We knew that we needed new tools and processes and ways of thinking about naming. We were inspired by our indigenous ancestors’ thoughts, ways of being, and ways of thinking about naming to create such tools and processes. We included indigenous governance principles to help inform a new process and to build that identity as a community. Specifically, we were inspired by indigenous governance principles that talk about ‘renewal’, that talk about making space for people and also places to change. So we thought that instead of creating a one-and-done process for naming, that we would end up creating a cyclical process.

A cyclical process where, once in a generation, communities would gather, reflect, and think about who they are, the spirit of their home, and the community that they want to be. The process can take either a path of celebrating the name that they have or perhaps a path of having a conversation about renaming where they can have an opportunity to really figure out who they want to be today, who they are today and also who they want to be in the future.

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On July 11, 2020, the ‘Rainbow Road’ mural was revealed on Spur Line Alley in Old Strathcona. The mural has been getting a lot of coverage and attention on social media for its unique use of colours becoming an attraction for the area.

In this interview, we talked with Amos Kajner-Nonnekes, Principal Founder, DESIGN, et cetera., to know more about the story behind this initiative.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Urban Narratifs: Why was it important to design Rainbow Road?

Amos Kajner-Nonnekes: Old Strathcona is very significant in the city because it is where you find this kind of hidden gems. The stroll down Whyte Avenue is the quintessential Edmonton experience. You don’t really go down Whyte Avenue with a specific goal in mind, you kind of go down and see what you can, and stumble upon these hidden gems. So when someone comes around the street expecting to see a dirty car driving space on this alleyway and instead finds themselves in front of this magnificent pop of colour, we want them to think ‘this is so Old Strathcona.’ This project is so Whyte Avenue, it adds such a colourful pop of vibrancy to the area, and it really highlights some of our underutilized space here.

UN: How did this idea come about?

AKN: The Old Strathcona Business Association reached out to us about two or three weeks ago to help them with the openings of lanes to pedestrians that they were doing. So they opened this lane on Whyte Avenue, and they reached out to us and said ‘How do we make this a people-friendly space? Cause it looks like a construction zone right now. It’s not very friendly to pedestrians. How do we really create some benefit from having this space?’ We came back and said ‘let’s do a little bit of a placemaking exercise, let’s really engage people in the area, make it safer, and make it people-friendly, and inject some vibrancy and life in it.’

Part of that idea was to work on Spur Line Alley because it already had been painted a couple of years ago, but it was also crumbling and was kind of dirty. We have all these alley businesses popping out now and this space was kind of underutilized. So they said ‘what can you do in Spur Line Alley, that might bring some life back to it?’ And the first thing that came into our minds was ‘let’s throw out some paint, let’s throw out as many popping colours as we can and really inject some life into the space.’ And so apart of the other installations we did on Whyte Avenue to open it up, we ended up including this space to try to create a holistic placemaking exercise of Whyte Avenue.

UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?

AKN: People have loved it. We were here for about 36 hours of painting or about three days. We had a fence and people were already sneaking in to take Instagram photos. We had to say ‘sorry there is wet paint in the ground, you can’t really come in.’ But after we opened the alley it has been all over social media, which some people might write off as the ‘Instagram or whatever’ but people are really excited to come down to Whyte Avenue to see this mural and all of the art murals that Whyte Avenue has to offer. People are excited to experience all of this kind of culture and vibrancy here.

Right now, especially when businesses really need some people in their stores and some cash injections, this is a great initiative to bring people down. As they are in the area, they linger, spend some money, and discover all these businesses and all this new art culture that is on Whyte Avenue that they might not have seen before. So people have been ecstatic about it, I’ve seen it from people all over Instagram where they are taking photos with it. Which makes me so happy. People are engaging with it and really thinking that this space is as cool as I think it is.

UN: What needs to happen next?

We need to really focus on some of the underutilized spaces in our city.

AKN: I think we need to really focus on some of the underutilized spaces in our city. It is not always about creating brand new buildings or spaces. Sometimes we just have to look at the space that we have and do some low cost and really high impact initiatives to transform that space. I mean, this used to be a dirty alleyway and now it is really injected with some life, and people are here, people are engaging with the space, they are really exploring Old Strathcona. We have a lot of these spaces in the city that if we put a little bit of creativity, and maybe throw down a little bit of paint, to make them places where people want to be, I think businesses are going to thrive. People are going to have a better time in the area and overall is going to be better for our city.

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On June 25, 2020, the Old Strathcona Business Association opened Whyte Ave to pedestrians. This is a major breakthrough for the use of public space in one of the most important mains streets in Edmonton.

In this interview we talked with Cherie Klassen, Executive Director, Old Strathcona Business Association, to know more about the story behind this initiative.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Urban Narratifs: Why was it important to open Whyte Ave to pedestrians?

Cherie Klassen: In the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, we became really aware of how many people were starting to come to Whyte Avenue when we started to reopen and we were concerned about crowding as one of our first priorities. But we also saw a real benefit in creating a more walkable and enhanced space that would be more welcoming for people to come back. At the end of the day, as the Business Association our main motivation is to support businesses and to support them in surviving and we know from tons of research across the world that when you make an inviting public space and you make more space for pedestrians that more people will be attracted to your area and ultimately spend more money and more time. So we looked at it with two lenses ‘public safety’ first and foremost meaning wider sidewalks so people can physically distance but also just creating a ‘welcoming space’ having some tables for people to sit at so that they could linger, hang out, and feel welcomed to come back.

We know from tons of research across the world that when you make an inviting public space and you make more space for pedestrians that more people will be attracted to your area and ultimately spend more money and more time.

UN: How did this idea come about?

CK: It was really our idea at the Business Association, but it was not an original idea. We looked at how other main streets and interesting cities with big commercial districts and a lot of walkability were adapting during the COVID 19 pandemic. We really just took the page from other cities across the world. We saw that these cities were closing down their main streets and making them open for pedestrians meaning more space for patios. So it came from some of those ideas and also to the City's expanded sidewalk patios permits.

We worked with the City and advocated to relax patio permits so that our businesses could have more space outside. Our businesses are operating at less capacity, so expanding out the sidewalks onto the roadways is another way to also support them. So it was kind of a dual purpose we created extra space for patrons in public but also created extra space for businesses so it was a win-win. We've always known that having more space for people in a highly walkable pedestrian-focused area it's good for business.

UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?

CK: When we first launched the expanded sidewalks for May long weekend we were really concerned about the high traffic volumes and wanted to have more people to have more space. At that time it was just an empty space. It actually didn't take off very well when we first executed it because we just had this extra lane with nothing on it and people didn’t know what to do.

As soon as we put down tables and spaces for people and beautified it and made it really obvious that this was a space for people and not cars within five minutes of putting down our patio tables people were like ‘Can I sit here?’ ‘Can I eat my ice cream here?’ It was an immediate change in behaviour, so we've heard a pretty overwhelming positive response. It quickly shifted from ‘you reduced parking, reduced traffic and created congestion’ to ‘oh this is a great interesting space’ and we even won over some of our businesses that were skeptical about it. It has really shifted everyone's mindset where spaces for people create spaces that become way more attractive and welcoming. It has been way more positive since we made that shift.

We've always known that having more space for people in a highly walkable pedestrian-focused area it's good for business.

UN: What needs to happen next?

CK: I think we need to make it permanent. *Laughs* So we are having these discussions now with our board and with some of our businesses on how can we make this permanent. I’ve already planted the seed with the City and said ‘I think we need to start talking about how we can make this permanent and make it bigger’ those are the next steps I think.

The other piece, from our businesses and our board perspective, is that we need to pandemic-proof our area. Having more space for people so that they can spread out is going to be really important for the revitalization of our businesses. We need to make it attractive, we know that people feel safer outside and so all of these urban planning principles that we've known for years seem to be really heightened and present. For us, it's about the survival of our Business District and revitalization and coming back after the pandemic.

We need to make the area really attractive so that we can recover at the end of the day and make this space really attractive to people. So the next steps are that we need to make it permanent we need to make more of it. We plan to do a few more pilot projects and we want to use the pandemic as an opportunity to test things that we wanted for years and prove the case that we can actually do this.

We want to use the pandemic as an opportunity to test things that we wanted for years and prove the case that we can actually do this.

I’ve had a handful of businesses already saying ‘This can’t go away, we need to keep this permanent, and how do we reimagine these spaces in the winter’ ‘how do we reimagine streets that largely tend to be close down in the summertime for festivals in 83rd Avenue?’ A lot of people have started to talk about how do we make public spaces like McIntyre Park that we are in today more attractive, more welcoming for people. All of these things are back on the table again and I just want to test as many of them as possible so that we can prove to all of our stakeholders that this is what we need permanently.

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Welcome to Urban Narratifs!

Urban Narratifs are everywhere. They are constantly changing the direction of our local politics, our built environment, and even our own decisions. Should you live there? Do you actually need a car? What moves you and what's important to you? All Narratifs.

Well, we cut through the noise and elevate those stories that are leading and advocating for change in their communities. We are tipping the balance here.

That's Urban Narratifs.

What to expect?

You can expect to get access to independent stories from the perspectives of those who are leading and advocating for change in their communities. Each story will tell you the importance of each groundbreaking initiative, its methods, the lessons learned, and their direction.

Yes, Urban Narratifs is hyper-local. We’re currently based in Edmonton, AB.

Why?

Sometimes meaningful stories can get lost through the 24-hours news cycle. We cherry-pick those stories that are making a difference in shaping the way cities are perceived and elevate them by giving a platform to those behind the story to speak at their own terms.

As we love to say:

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