Editorial Notes: The September, "End of Summer" posting of the Communities in Transition Information Resource

by hans peter meyer, editor

Welcome to the September issue of the CIT Information Resource!

Food

It's appropriate that "food" should be at the top of our posts this "harvest" issue. There's a growing "foodie" culture, at least a part of which is focused on "local" and "organic." We are beginning to realize that Big Food, like so many Big things, isn't always looking out for the best interests of communities. In what has almost become a regular column, George Penfold weighs in with timely insights on the realities of harvest: What does it mean when communities or regions say they want to be self-reliant as food producers? What are the challenges to this "motherhood" topic? George's questions should be asked of every region and community that announces its intention to be Canada's next "Provence" or "Tuscany."

Green Values Vancouver Island
What does it mean to a region when huge tracts of land are moving towards development? This is one the questions Tim Pringle addresses in his current article, an overview of one of the big conservation, real estate, and governance opportunities (and challenges) in BC: the question concerning the future of the highly attractive EN Land Grant lands on the east coast of Vancouver Island.

CIT Project Summary - the Lake Windermere Project
CIT is also about on-the-ground projects addressing issues that affect the day-to-day health and quality of life in BC communities. An overview of the past 12 months or so of CIT grants is provided, as well as a summary of the four-year Healthy Water, Healthy Communities – Lake Windermere project. As project coordinator Heather Leschied indicates, long time residents in the Lake Windermere region are starting to weigh the costs and benefits of amenity-related development, and "are seeing that this has long-term implications for the aquatic health of the system." Foundation project funding through the CIT program is helping to establish baseline scientific data that is then feeding into public education, as well as local and provincial government policy.

BC Land Summit coverage continues
We continue our coverage of one of the significant gatherings of land use practitioners in the province, the May 2009 BC Land Summit. In this issue we include an interview with social researcher Angus McAllister, whose work on "solving for similarity" is helping to shape some new and positive ways of building and re-building communities and neighbourhoods.

Gaining Ground Summit: Resilient Cities, October 20-22
Finally, we conclude this end of summer issue with a look ahead to the upcoming Gaining Ground Summit: Resilient Cities (GGRC09). We interview Gene Miller, the visionary behind the Gaining Ground Summit series on what GG is, and why it's important today. As an aside, it's important to note that while Resilient Cities may be about "cities," the lessons and methodologies apply equally to small communities: in the face of significant and common challenges (ie. climate change), we are all called on to be imaginative, informed, and ready to try new ways of working together, new ways of looking at our resources and our challenges. As Gene suggests, there is a "note of hope and optimism" sounded by the GGSummit series. Something most BC communities – and citizens – would likely enjoy hearing.

Stepping into Social Media at CIT
About half a year ago CIT stepped into the "social media" world with this blog. The CIT Information Resource is now taking some additional steps into other forms of social media. We've just set up a Facebook page, as well as Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube accounts. There's not much at any of these accounts – yet. We encourage you to share your words and images with us. Tag your posts with "#CIT" or "#CITinfoResource" (and, if you're at GGRC09, please tag everything with #GGRC09). That helps us share some of the many inspiring things that are happening, either directly through the CIT program or through the agency of our partners.

Why are we taking these steps? We're hoping that they'll become very useful tools for sharing the insights, knowledge, and experience of creating healthy, thriving neighbourhoods, communities, and regions. For example, most of us can't regularly travel from Vanderhoof or Castlegar or Cumberland to be at gatherings in Vancouver, Victoria – or Prince George. GGRC09 is going to be great. Many of us won't be able to make it due to financial, familial, or work constraints. With "on site" and "live" postings, however, as well as after-the-fact postings of blogs, photographs, and vidoes, we can tap into these events, share our observations and stories, and give these kinds of events a "longer tail" than a 2-3 day event usually has.

What can you do? Please check out and contribute to our social media resources. Leave comments on our blog posts. Send us links to project and event posts – pics, videos, blogs, tweets, etc. We'll be sharing stories about communities in transition, about people making a difference. Help us be more effective in what we do, so that we can be more effective in helping you. Join us online!

Use and share these resources
One of the hallmarks of the Real Estate Foundation's 22+ years is collaboration and sharing of resources. We actively encourage the reproduction of CIT Information Resource articles and materials for non-profit educational purposes. In return, we ask that you please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

– 30 –

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website for non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.