Choose the city you want

 

As citizens we spend a lot of time talking about what we don’t want, what we don’t like about our cities. Our government isn’t good enough. There is too much poverty. We are causing great environmental damage. Our economic systems are collapsing. We pay too many taxes. The potholes are not fixed.

When we pay attention to what’s wrong, we get more of what’s wrong. When it comes to our cities, it is time to pay attention to what we want. It’s time to choose the city we want.

There’s a municipal election coming in Alberta on October 21, 2013 – are you telling candidates what’s wrong, or what you love about your city and want more of?

What makes you feel alive in your city?

What city do you choose?

Choose it. Name it. Once you do, we’re on our way to having it.  

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. 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:

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4 thoughts on “Choose the city you want”

  1. What we wanted was a corner of our community developed. What we are going to end up with will be a painful experience that will test the very nature of the residents surrounding the project of sky line. The city promised a TOD site we accepted this as a reality. Will it become reality of a legacy or a reminder of what goes wrong when civic planners and councilors are fed lines to believe in a reality that ends up costing the tax payors.

    What amazes me me is that even when other projects have been in the ground later than skyline the other projects are way ahead of this project!

    1. It’s a dicey thing for city council to make decisions based on whether they feel they are “fed lines” or not. I can imagine that they made decisions based on the proposal – they do not evaluate the business plan behind it. That’s a whole other realm of evaluation for city planners/administration/council to perform.

      What we need is a business community that has the skills to pull of what it says (and gets approval) to pull off.

      The hard work is certainly to come – what enforcement will the city need to engage in to make sure site actually develops now?

      What can we do as citizens to help the development go on to be what we want it to be?

  2. So what do we choose if we have a choice ? Get out and vote for a person that will make effective change on how things will be done in the future not just give platitudes to the masses!

    1. Absolutely exercise your vote, everyone.

      And find out what candidates are really going to do for our city. We need to know what we want, tell candidates clearly what we want (which we don’t usually do), and expect that they tell us clearly and simply what they are going to do to make what we want come to pass.

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