Communities in Transition Information Resource: March 2010

Monday, March 22, 2010

Welcome to the March postings of the CIT Information Resource

What's happening in land use and conservation in BC's non-metro communities?  

That's one of the questions that we're addressing with Communities in Transition Information Resource. We're also trying to connect a number of projects and people working on ways to enhance sustainability and quality of life in BC's non-metro communities.

Communities in Transition is a signature program at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. It was initiated in 2004 by the Governors of the Foundation as a way to focus some funding on the land-related challenges faced by rural and small town communities. Over its 22 years the Foundation has awarded 1500 grants for initiatives and projects in communities in BC. Of the 533 grants made since 2004, 10% have been for CIT projects that engage CIT partners and offer replicable services and deliverables in non-metro areas across the province, from Fort St. John to Campbell River.

These projects represent a wealth of knowledge and expertise, not only for the communities affected, but for any and all other communities that can tap into what is happing through CIT. The Foundation is able to extend the reach of this knowledge and expertise by recirculating it through CITinfoResource via our blog, Facebook, and Twitter posts.

The March 2010 posts  
Not all of what happens in our posts is about non-metro BC, however. For example, this month we've got the Foundation's Executive Director, Karin Kirkpatrick, talking about her decision to park her car and use public transit. Karin also talks about how her choices in metro Vancouver are different than those in a rural community, and about the Foundation's keen interest in innovative approaches to land use and transportation issues in these more challenging contexts.

As part of our commitment to extending the "life" and "reach" of real-time events we're posting Mark Holland's Resilient Cities Manifesto, his summary address to the October 2009 Gaining Ground Resilient Cities summit, as well as a followup audio interview with Mark about the Resilient Cities Manifesto and why it is significant. The Real Estate Foundation of BC makes significant investments in conferences like the Gaining Ground summits and the 2009 BC Land Summit. They're important resources for land use practitioners throughout BC. Through interviews and reports (before and after the event), key themes and ideas are re-presented from a variety of perspectives on land use, development, and conservation. CITinfoResource helps these ideas and perspectives reach a broader audience than the 100s who can actually attend the events. Ever wonder what a planner from Cumberland took in at the BC Land Summit? Or what a city councillor from Kelowna or a land trust activist from the Comox Valley brought home from Resilient Cities? These are a handful of examples of how CITinfoResource.com is linking non-metro resources across BC.

Among these resources are the Regional Innovation Chairs (RICs) located in a number of BC's post-secondary institutions. One of these is Dr. John Church, BC's RIC in Cattle Industry Sustainability (Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops). We have an audio post with John talking about his current work and the challenges facing meat producers and BC's grasslands. The Real Estate Foundation of BC has contributed to several RIC endowments, including the Chair at TRU. The work being done by John, by Dr. Nicole Vaugeois (in sustainability tourism at Vancouver Island University – read about it here), and George Penfold (in community economic development at Selkirk College in Castlegar – read his post on BC's rural policy here) is viewed by the Governors of the Foundation as a long-term investment in a range of sustainable land uses in BC.

The Governors have also identified key areas of the province as worthy of special programs. One of these is a high-growth and development part of Vancouver Island. Kim Stephens is Program Coordinator for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for BC. He's also very active in the Convening for Action Vancouver Island initiative that has received Foundation support. In this posting of CITinfoResource Kim writes about the February 2010 Bowker Creek Forum and why it's an important part of water and land use sustainability on Vancouver Island.

Staff CIT project reviews are a regular part of the CITinfoResource postings. This month we feature two innovative First Nations' Comprehensive Community Planning projects, one at Musqueam in the greater Vancouver region, the other at Sliammon north of Powell River. Addressing a range of complex land use, social, and economic issues and involving innovative engagement processes, these projects are, as one participant put it, helping these communities prepare for the "day after treaty."

We close this posting of CITinfoResource with an audio interview with long-time Invermere realtor and past-Chair of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, Barry Brown-John. Barry is familiar with the industry perspective on land; as a Governor with the Foundation he's become an advocate for sustainable approaches that will benefit the long-term health of the real estate industry. In this interview he talks about the real estate market, sustainability, the Kootenays, and his experiences with the Gaining Ground series of summits.

Changes at CITinfoResource.com

Within the coming months long-awaited changes in the Real Estate Foundation of BC website will begin to show up as changes to CITinfoResource.com. In the meantime, we're moving to more regular postings, rather than releasing 5-8 posts every 2 months. We'll still be providing a 6-times-a-year compendium of recents posts (like this one you're reading), but the workflow of producing (and reading or listening to) CITinfoResource posts will be spread out over several weeks.

Some posts to look forward to in coming weeks:

George Penfold (audio) on the March 2010 BC rural development conference in Port Hardy,
Tim Pringle (audio) responding to Kim Fowler's February 2010 exploration of "performance vs. regulatory" approaches to sustainability, and
the second in a series of video interviews with Gaining Ground wunderkind Gene Miller (the first one is posted here).

We think that posting more regularly will make our material more useful. Let us know what you think!

Please share these resources

Social media like our blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts make it easy to achieve one of our goals: circulating interesting, information, sometimes challenging material to land use practitioners across BC. If you're on Facebook or Twitter, please add us to your lists – and please reTweet and share items that you find interesting and engaging.

We also hope to see your comments and "letters to the editor." Not only do these enrich the conversation; they let others know about your experience, knowledge, and interests, all of which can make the difference to someone working on a project in a community half-way across the province from you.

As I said in the opening, collaboration and sharing of resources are keys to the success of both the Real Estate Foundation of BC and of the many projects and organizations that have received Foundation support over 22+ years. The reproduction of CIT Information Resource articles and materials for non-profit educational purposes is an extension of this approach. In return, we ask that you please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

hanspetermeyer

Editor,

CITinfoResource 

– 30 –

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2010. 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

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Transit Girl: Karin Kirkpatrick talks about the transition to transit

Karin Kirkpatrick is the Executive Officer at the Real Estate Foundation of BC, a position she assumed in November 2008. She describes her role as "working closely with the Board, with staff, and with a number of NGO’s and government groups to try and prioritize how best the Foundation’s funding can be used." She adds that the majority of that funding goes towards projects that support responsible sustainable land use planning.

CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer interviewed Karin in February 2010. A few weeks before, Karin parked her car and started using public transit. She also decided to post regularly (as "Transit Girl") on Facebook about her experiences, making the switch from private car to public transit.

hpm: I'm interested in your decisions, to park your car and to begin posting as Transit Girl. What motivated you to do these things?

Karin: I’ve always wanted to be able to park my car, but I've always found excuses to stop me from doing that. I guess the Olympics forced my hand. I knew it was going to be a nightmare to try and get into my parking downtown, so I thought “You know what? This is the chance. Let’s just try and see how this goes.”

I started posting about it because – well I guess it’s like being a recovered smoker who’s discovered something that now seems really easy, and you want to just tell everybody else about it. So, I started having some fun by writing about it.

hpm: Are there many transit options where you live?

Karin: I live on the North shore, so there are lots of transit options from there to where I work in downtown Vancouver. With my car it's just a short drive over the Lions Gate bridge and come downtown.

hpm: What is the cost, in terms of time and dollars, for you to use your car to commute?

Karin: Well, there is the extra insurance to drive to work every day. It’s probably $300 for monthly parking downtown. And there are all the associated costs with the wear and tear of your car, and the gasoline that you are consuming.

hpm: How long would it take to get back and forth?

Karin: It would only take ten minutes, which becomes an issue in two conflicting ways. First, it's pathetic that I would drive that short distance with all the costs associated. Second, it is a struggle to rationalize the difference in time between using my car and using transit: when you hold it in your mind that time is money, well, it’s just another excuse for getting into the car.

hpm: What type of transit have you been using, and how long does it take you to get to work using transit?

Karin: I’m taking the bus and sometimes I’m taking the Seabus. It depends where I’m coming from. Using the regular bus, it’s probably about twenty minutes to get downtown. Added to that is a 10 minute walk on both sides of that. So, I have gone from maybe ten minutes out of my garage to maybe forty minutes with transit, door-to-door.

hpm: Is there an upside to using transit?

Karin: There is a huge upside. And it’s not just the cost: It’s my physical health. This is "accidental exercise." I can’t say that I’ve regularly exercised for twenty minutes a day before this. Also, I'm walking more downtown. It’s embarrassing to say, but if I had a meeting that was on the other side of downtown, sometimes I would actually drive my car and park it in another parkade. But now I can’t do that. I am walking. So the amount of walking I’m doing has increased dramatically – and it makes me want to walk more and be outside more!

hpm: We are in the middle of the Olympics, so obviously traffic and congestion downtown is crazier than it normally is and yesterday you took your daughter to a hockey game via transit. What was that experience like?

Karin: That transit experience was fun. We got on a bus on the North Shore and we came downtown and hopped off. We walked around and looked at the flame, and then got on the Sky Train which dropped us off at Stadium station in Chinatown. From there we were able to walk a couple of blocks and get into the venue. My daughter had fun with that, and I felt like a tourist in my own city. When I went down into the terminal for the Expo line and the Millennium line I realized I’d never been there before. I’ve travelled all over the world and I’ve taken taxis and transit all over Asia, and I have a much better sense of what those terminals look like than I ever did in Vancouver. It was kind of fun because it was new.

hpm: So your experiences as Transit Girl are familiarizing you with the City's transit highlights you'll be trading your position at the Foundation for one as a transit tour guide?

Karin: That's it: I’ll be Transit Girl the transit tour guide. But it is true Hans, that I’m seeing places in my city that I’ve never seen before. When you are walking and when you are taking the bus you are looking around and noticing. Cruising by a store you think, “Wow, I’ve never actually looked in the window of this place before." And I actually stop enroute on the way home and I’ll buy a few groceries to take home. This is in contrast to before, when I would drive straight from the underground parking downtown to my house, and then if I decided I needed groceries I’d get back in my car and drive to the grocery store and drive home again. But now, because I’m already out and I feel way more connected to the community around me, I am actually stopping and doing those things enroute. It’s not just the transit to and from work; in general, I’m using my car less.

hpm: You live in an urban area where there are a number of transit options, but I’m interviewing you as part of the work that I do with the Communities in Transition program. Our focus is non-metro areas. For example, I live in the Comox Valley. We have a bus system, but we certainly don’t have a subway, SkyTrain, or even a ferry shuttle between Courtenay, Comox, and Royston. Like most non-metro BC communities, our transit opitions are much more limited than what you've been experiencing. Can you tell me what you are doing as the Executive Director with the Foundation that connect your experiences as Transit Girl with things happening in small communities.

Karin: You’ve got to make it easy for people to get out of their cars, and that’s been my excuse: It’s always been "too far to walk." I can only imagine in a rural community, where there isn't an extensive or convenient transit structure, that "too far to walk" is both an easy and legitimate excuse. The distance you have to go to access transit is just not realistic.

Where I live, a bus comes every ten minutes. If you are in a smaller community where you are not supported with transit, it's a lot of effort to plan things out, to get where you need to get, and sometimes you can’t get there.

The answer? At the Foundation we think it's important look encourage others to look carefully at how they are planning communities, to be constantly looking at the sprawl that isn’t supported in the initial planning and finding ways to respond to that, to be asking of new developments, “What is the transit plan here? How can we make this a place where people don’t need to drive their cars? What kind of things can we do to be more creative about how we are putting public transit in?”

hpm: Does the Foundation look at applications from non-metro communities that deal with transit and transportation issues?

Karin: What we are doing is not necessarily specific to smaller communities but we believe it will have a benefit to them. In general terms, the Foundation is supporting and conducting research to identify economic and social values of good public transit and the impact that it has on the community. That is very broad, but we are trying to show that it is not just your carbon footprint you are reducing when you choose public transit, but it also makes for better communities where people are aware of each other and there is more social interaction. There is research that we are funding that we think will influence community planners in communities large and small, urban and rural.

Transit is important to us and it is on the radar. Even before I got on the bus I was a high supporter of transit. I personally have no issue with extra gas tax, and no issue with extra parking tax. I myself understand the importance of these measures. The irony is that even though I understood the importance and value of public transit, I was still not using it.

hpm: Was this because of your role at the Foundation or were you already heading in this direction?

Karin: I think I was already headed in this direction, I was very conscious of it. Also, I have a seven year old daughter who came home from grade 1 earlier this year and asked me to make her a "zero waste lunch." That was a very hard thing to do. So there was an "influence from below," in terms of the changes we have to make in our lives.

Another factor is a "mobility issue" I have related to a broken leg and a broken back. For me, this was a big concern: What will it be like, getting on a bus. I can’t stand for long period of time, but because I don’t have a cane or anything obvious, people don’t accommodate me when I’m on the bus in terms of sitting. These were huge reasons for me, as to why I couldn’t take public transit. Happily, these haven’t been issues at all and I just need to make sure I get on at stops when I am always going to get a seat and I plan it out.

I think this current transit experience is another example of "influence from below" from my daughter. I’m aware that if she can think about this, then I should be able to think about and act on this as well.

hpm: You’re comments on mobility are important also given the aging population in our communities, and particularly in communities with limited transit options. Let's talk about how someone with a good transit-related land use project makes an application to the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Where would I go to find out more information from the Foundation about that process?

Karin: Start by going to our website. We're updating the site, and there's going to be some new information. Our priorities have changed as well, but I’ll come back to that and tell you about the kind of applications you should be submitting, but our website is www.refbc.com. There is a section about grants and grant applicantions and the kinds of things that we are looking for in the grants.

In terms of our priorities, we are now specifically looking at projects that are going to be innovative. I know that's a big word that can be described in different ways. We are encouraging non-profits, municipalities, and communities to come up with different ways to solve some of those same problems. If you're challenge is transportation, we'd like to see a unique approach to that issue. It may be something that's been tried in larger communities, but never in a small community. We're also very interested in projects that could be replicated or modeled for other small communities. That would be very attractive to us in terms of grants.

And yes, we are very interested in transit, transit infrastructure, and how that can support a changing demographic in a small communities as well, because as you say, people are aging and there are going to be mobility issues. Things will be changing in our communities. Some things we've taken for granted – our mobility, for example – are going to become more difficult. We're going to find people who are living in a house that is far from services, and suddenly they can’t drive anymore. What kind of things can be put in place to make sure that those people don’t necessarily have to move out of their home, just because they don’t have access to transit?

hpm: Thank you very much for taking this call this morning. As Transit Girl, do you have any closing comments? Are you going to keep posting?

Karin: Here's a closing comment on transportation in the Vancouver area: We have so much water access, and I think we can certainly look at other ways, without building bridges and creating more car passenger access, of getting people around the Lower Mainland. There was a ferry that had been going from Bowen Island to the foot of 14th in West Vancouver, and then dropping people at the foot of Bute here downtown, and then going around to Granville Island. I was really excited about that. Unfortunately, due to some challenges related to parking among other things, it's been discontinued.

As far as Transit Girl goes, I am actually having fun on transit. Even on those bad days, when there is a big line up and I’m standing out in the rain, I’m still feeling really good about what I’m doing. It gives me exercise, and something to harass my driving friends about.

Resilient Cities and Regenerative Regions

A manifesto of consciousness, commitment and action.

editor's note: The following post is the summary address given at the 2009 Gaining Ground Resilient Cities summit by noted sustainability planner and practitioner Mark Holland. Mark was invited to summarize and comment on the preceeding 2 days of presentations. What follows is his inspired – and inspiring – response to the challenges and gifts of the 600 or so gathered for this event. CITinfoResource thanks Mark for allowing us to repost here. It is also posted as a PDF for download at the GGRC09 site.

by Mark Holland

We hereby now accept that human beings are an urban species and that cities are now our true home. And as such, we will embrace our cities and focus our attention to change them however necessary to not only provide us all with a good quality of life, but to deliver that life within the carrying capacity of our planet – we will create one-planet cities.

While we acknowledge that we are an urban species, we acknowledge likewise that we are a fully integrated part of the natural systems of our planet and that we are entirely dependent on the health of the world’s ecosystems for all our needs.

We acknowledge that we have undertaken two centuries of industrial and population expansion following a flawed model of our world and we now acknowledge the realities of the 21^st century that we have created including:

·   That our actions are causing climate change emissions to increase at rates never before seen or modeled and this will cause our climate to change significantly this century even with radical action, and catastrophically without it;
·   That the inexpensive energy supplies that we have used to build our current society and economy will end in this century and thereby force change in every aspect of our cities;
·   That our world’s potable water supplies are decreasing at unprecedented rates in urban and agricultural watersheds thereby changing forever our cities and food-baskets;
·   That we have disrupted our planet’s ecosystems to a such a point that they are in a rapid state of change and collapse in a manner that is serious and unpredictable;
·   That we have been exhausting the non-renewable resources of the planet and depositing waste and toxins at unprecedented rates due to our past outdated economic models of materials management;
·   That our global food supply is in significant threat from the impending peaks of fossil fuels, water supply and soil degradation;
·   That the impending global migration from countries heavier hit from these disruptions will change our entire concept of cities as billions more become urbanized in a steadily decreasing number of metropolitan regions;
·   That the significant shift in demographics in our countries will force change in our cities physically, socially and economically and in particular, ruling many of our models of how we take care of each other obsolete;
·   That our political systems are currently inadequate and under-resourced to respond to the primary areas of market and government failure and compromised in their ability to effectively lead the envisioning, coordination, mobilization and decision-making processes required to deliver a culture of stewardship and become sustainable;
·   That the health of individuals and families in our communities are suffering from an inestimable and growing array of stresses that exceed our social infrastructure’s ability to respond;
·   That our education systems in their current forms are entirely inadequate to empower us collectively with the knowledge and ingenuity that we need to grapple with the challenges we face;
·   That our media and information industry is inadequate in its current form to support a rapid and effective dissemination of information that will trigger emotions, understandings and motivation to make significant change;
·   That our current economy and its corporate members are built on principles that are blind to the constraints of the planet and our communities; and
·   That the belief that the economy will be relatively stable and reliable in its current state over the next century is erroneous.

In acknowledgement of this reality as the new context for our cities, we commit in all our actions from here on, to envisioning, communicating, and creating resilient cities that will deliver a great quality of life for all generations within the constraints of the planet that we are borrowing from our grandchildren.

Which brings us to the principles and perspectives we need to forge a path forward:

Inherent in this commitment is the recognition of the following principles that underpin our thinking around resilient cities including:

· That the future is not inevitable, but rather that it is created by us day by day – that we are the authors of our future;

· That no one is in charge, and therefore that we all are in charge;

· That we are not moving from a past state to a future one, we are moving from a past state to one of continuous unfolding and unstoppable change – and therefore, our concept of cities, communities, economy, and ourselves must be reframed as a dance of relentless and rapid evolution – that change is the new normal;

· That at the heart of resilience lies the capacity to regenerate and as such, we must preserve the integrity of our earth’s ecosystems and utilize them as blueprints for our cities;

· That because cities change slowly, our decisions today define not only tomorrow but the day after tomorrow, and the day after that.

· That in the face of the inability to know the future, we must adopt a deep ethic of planning, education and engagement to ensure we are aware, thoughtful and agile to meet the future we are both consciously and unconsciously creating;

· That the roots of the transformation that we need lie in our deepest places because emotions lead to thoughts, which lead to stories, which lead to motivations, which lead to actions, which build cities;

· That everything is connected and that the dispassionate karma of the earth offers a reaction for every one of our actions;

· That we must transform our cities from a parasitic to a symbiotic relationship with our all other species in the world;

· That we can never truly understand all implications of our actions and that as such, we must adopt an ethic of “learning cities” – of living laboratories in which we hope to succeed, but plan to fail, and then to try again;

· That we must pause in our work to build our Towers of Babel, and return to the ground and learn to speak each other’s language – or we must certainly fragment and disperse and divided we will fall;

· That the scale of change we need can only be realized when we work together to coauthor a future that fits us all;

· That we must strive for ‘firsts’ in everything as the only mandate possible to deliver the learning and change at the scale we need to meet the challenges that call our names; and

· That in fact, we aren’t building cities, we are building communities and as such, our cities do not exist for themselves, they are emergent outcomes of decisions we make to provide homes and lives for ourselves, our families and each other. In this context, we must never forget that we must design cities to be positive and healing places for our children. And furthermore, because there is no “social out there” any more than there is an ecological “out there”, we must confront our fears and work to heal those who have been hurt or have hurt us - for pain is a virus that is passed on until it is confronted and healed – and while in action, it hurts all species.

Which brings us to the need for a new blueprint for a resilient city:

In the context of the 21^st century reality and these principles, we now embrace a new blueprint for our cities:

· Our neighbourhoods will hereby be complete, offering us choice in where we work, live, play, learn, shop and pray;

· Our transportation systems will maximize exchange and minimize travel, they will deliver access for all of us at all stages of our lives with a complete absence of carbon and will be built first and foremost around us - people - walking, meeting each other, experiencing beauty and engaging the other species with whom we share our landscapes. We will travel under our own power, under the suns power and we will travel together;

· Our buildings will be plants, generating their own sustenance and giving back to our city, providing light, life and sunshine to us all, for our buildings are our civilization’s collective skin;

· The land within our cities will be a profound cacophony of the celebration and cosmic dance of the lives of other species by our design, they will make us physically and spiritually healthy, they will provide us with food, and they will be a stage on which we come to know each other’s power and creativity;

· The pumps, pipes and wires of our cities that supply us with energy and water and deal with our waste will be designed to be like the earth herself where everything is regenerated and there is no such thing as waste;

· Our cities will provide food, clothing, a home, education, health care and a good quality life for every person, no matter what gifts, gaps or wounds they have;

· Our cities will inspire us with art and the expressions of who are and will answer implicitly the question – what in fact we are trying to sustain?; and

· Our economy will be built on the shoulders of inspired corporate citizens, creative entrepreneurs and a vision that draws all self-interested individuals and organizations to not only compete, but cooperate for the benefit of us – one and all. To create wealth within the natural income of our planet, and to increase our social, natural and economic capital accounts.

In order to implement this blueprint, everyone has roles and responsibilities:

While we innately know we are a “we” – we also accept that we do nothing as a “we.” It is an “I” who acts or at most, a small “us.” And even then, all “us’s” are animated, organized and lead by an “I.”

In this context, we all have responsibilities individually, in our roles, in creating our collective resilient future. In our roles, there is no one else to pass the responsibility on to.

· As elected city leaders:

o We will accept our responsibility to be students, decision makers, arbitrators, gatekeepers, motivators, teachers, and risk takers, on behalf of all our citizens. We will be fearless but careful, bold but honest.

· As those who work in our city governments:

o We will honour our responsibility to not let the aging ink of dog-eared and faded regulations constrain our souls, but will use our skills and the letters of our laws to make real the dream of a regenerative society; We will not hide from the expressions of both ignorance and wisdom from our neighbours, but will engage in dialogue to teach and be taught . We will not let the failures of courage of those who must make hard decisions, define what our minds and souls believe is possible. We will expose who we are in the public discussion to build a common ground of humanity with those whom we serve, and at the same time we will protect who we are from those who would project anger that they received those who may have abused authority in the past – so we may serve tomorrow without yesterday’s pain.

· For those of us who create wealth in our businesses:

o We will embrace our responsibility to not only create wealth for ourselves and our shareholders, but to also infuse the tasks and lives of our employees and colleagues with meaning. We will relentlessly add value and provide goods and services that meet both the physical and spiritual needs of our customers. We will lead our suppliers and competitors forward – inspiring and asking of them increasing levels of sustainability. We will commit to create lasting wealth and make the planet and our communities healthier and more resilient as we do so.

· For those of us in the academy:

o We will honour the significant investment our society makes in us and commit to relentlessly leading the research and reframing of our world views to empower the minds and hearts of all to understand and reach for true sustainability. We will not only speak to those who pay us, but will actively engage the minds of all citizens in our communities and economy. And we will commit to being the sensors who report on our planet and to being the strategists of symbiosis.

· For those of us in the world of organizations:

o We will be both insiders and outsiders at the same time – working “with” our communities, and leading them forward simultaneously. For every place we call others out, we will discipline ourselves to provide a viable alternative. We will honour the significant responsibility and risk those in our governments and businesses face and with compassion and discipline, we will tell the truth in a story that all can understand and remember – and be inspired by. And often, we won’t wait. We’ll just do it because we can.

And finally, as we bring our “we” and all things down to ourselves as individuals we find that all things begin within ourselves. And therefore, with a sobering but exciting knowing that I do not truly know how to proceed, I will begin with commitments to try.

As a resident and co-author of a resilient city and regenerative region, I commit to the following:

· I will embrace my responsibility as an author of the future and of my city;

· I will confront my comforting illusions – but will not believe all those who would feed me news that might prey on my anxieties;

· I will accept my disillusionment with all institutions and leaders, but will not take leave my responsibility and become embittered;

· I will learn from whomever I can - but will never devolve my responsibility to be the author of my city to any teacher, no matter how gracious their words or beautiful their pictures;

· I will engage my peers and declare our generation’s responsibility - but I will share my successes and failures equally;

· I will accept that I must live in this world, but will commit to slowing to look beyond the fog of overwork, lack of sleep, gridlock, shopping, and the apparent race with others in everything to nowhere in particular – to find my quality of life within my earth’s allowance;

· And I will be grateful;

· I will breathe deep, I will smile at the rain, I will soak in the sun, and I will teach my children the songs of the birds who live in our neighbourhood;

· I will eat and drink the abundance of my region, and will share my abundance with those who work to maintain that land’s capacity;

· In addition, I will share my abundance with many others in a manner that empowers them to create more of their own;

· I will ask of myself the courage to see the challenges that give me fear through the eyes of those whose job it is to deal with them and I will be a compassionate, engaged and disciplined citizen;

· And I will be grateful;

· I will open to the pain that I cause in the world through my ignorance and fear and the distance I seem to have from my internal dignity and nobility, and I will feel the pain, shock and injustice of participating in the death of so many, if only by accident – and then I will move past that grief to the restless serenity of my responsibility – to my planet, to my community, to my family, and to myself;

· And in that spontaneous map that comes from that honesty, I will find my “well”, the source of my regeneration and I will personally become resilient;

· And I will be grateful.

And finally, I will acknowledge that I do not understand the universe enough to yet proclaim that “its over” and as a resident of a resilient city and regenerative region I will have faith in you and I will have faith in myself that we can do this – that we can change.

October 22, 2009