Last fall, I co-hosted two workshops with The Natural Step Canada to engage multiple generations in a discussion on what makes a neighbourhood awesome. Here is a link to the summary report, full of Edmonton’s local knowledge.
The workshops were experiments. Rather than a conventional format where the experts send information to participants, we designed workshops that allowed the participants to design neighbourhoods and then notice the characteristics of what they built. They found their own sustainability principles and you can find them, along with a description and photos of the process, in the link above.
It was a fun couple of days, stepping back from the glorification of busy, to explore what is alive and well in us, and what we have to offer our city. By naming it, it will come into being. And as usual, time for big questions to surface is time well spent too. Like this one:
Are cities – more like the Titanic or an iPhone?
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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
- My decision to share the book while I am working on it
- The overall structure of Nest City’s three parts
- A summary of Part 1 – City Patterns, Concluding City Patterns
- A summary of Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence, Focus, learn and Emerge
- The plot for Part 3 – City Nestworks
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