Category: You Are a City Maker

Every building builds your city

 

Every time a building is built, we are shaping our city, whether its the new garage on your block, or Calgary’s new landmark library. The site and the architects, Snohetta of Norway, have been chosen; they are now in design mode to figure out what shape the new building will take, and how, potentially, how it will add to Calgary’s East Village neighbourhood and the city as a whole.

The influence on Calgary will, of course, be a physical change. It will have more than 50% more floor space than the current central library it will replace, around the corner. As a destination, it will change the physical travel patterns in the city. It will also reinforce use of Calgary’s CTrain: it will be built right over the line.

The new building will also change the social landscape in Calgary. Here’s what library board chair Janet Hutchinson said to Jason Markusoff, of Post Media: “In the age of Google, Calgary’s libraries have never been so busy. Calgarians want public places of learning, innovation and collaboration where everyone belongs.” By building a building, we build a place for learning, innovation and collaboration.

And we also add to our identity. Socially, having such a place will change the psyche of Calgary. So, too, will the ultimate design of the building. The foreign architects have noted the natural landscape surrounding this site and they are inspired. Snohetta architect Craig Dykers imagines a building that captures the chinook arch, or the way the snow moves across the landscape.

The building will be an artistic understanding of Calgary’s place.

The library board, the architect, the East Village development agency are all city builders.

And so are you as you build that garage,

or landscape your yard,

or start a community garden,

or build a new strip mall.

How do you build your city?

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This post is part of a series of posts that offer bits of the book I am working on. Here are some plot helpers for Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities:

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Citizens are city makers

 

I am learning about what I am writing while I am writing. While I sit here, I shape what I write and in return my writing is shaping me and what I write next. Its the same endless loop, on a grander scale, at work in our cities too.

Last week, as I wrapped up my exploration of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange last week, I sent off my latest newsletter, The Nest City News, declaring that you are a city maker. The 4 principles and 6 practices for city making that emerged on the Nest City Blog last week found a new home and audience. And the words “you are a city maker” stood out loud and clear, for readers and for me too.  How I think of this chapter has simplified to these words: you are a city maker.

As I head into my exploration of Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice, I realize that my working title for this chapter needs to adjust too. If you are a city maker, then any discussion of civic practice is truly about this: be the best citizen you can be.

Everyone of us have a hand in the creation and recreation of our cities. The posts that follow offer some ideas and practices to help you be the best citizen you can be – for your self and your city. To start, off the top of your head,

What do you do to be the best citizen you can be? 

 

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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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10 principles/practices for city-making

 

My mom told me last week about two loons on the lake after the ice started to melt. When the wind picked up, the ice blew toward the shore, leaving less and less water around them. She learned that they need open water for their runway, to allow take off. The slushy ice that crept toward them made take-off impossibly exhausting. They couldn’t do it.

The city-making exchange is a similar exchange: we are all species interacting with our habitat. In our case, there is one key difference – we are making the habitat that we are using for our evolutionary runway. And we need to build the right runway, one that gives us energy, not depletes. That gives us lift.

We make the cities that serve as our runways.

Over the course of the last several weeks I have been exploring The City Making Exchange, Chapter 8 of the book I am working on: Nest City. (For a recap of where I’ve been on the blog, visit The plot for part 3.)  – the relationship between where we want to go (destination) and our personal, individual and collective, journeys.

Here are the highlights The City-Making Exchange, the relationship between where we want to go (destination) and our personal, individual and collective journeys, in the form of principles and practices for life and work in the city.

4 principles

  1. The purpose of cities is to allow us to reach our fullest potential. City making is driven by our impulse to create the conditions for each and all of us to survive and thrive – as individuals, families, neighbourhoods, organizations, nations, our species and our planet.
  2. Everyone, everywhere is creating city life. There is an endless city-citizen transaction.
  3. When we follow passion, the city changes itself to serve us better. Follow your passion to change your city. As we trust in and pursue our passions our cities regenerate. Further, the city gives us opportunities to pursue our passion; the city helps us find ourselves and in doing so we regenerate ourselves and our city habitat.  
  4. We tell the stories that shape our cities. We shape the stories we tell ourselves and each other about our cities – at every scale of time and geography. Our landscape shapes us and we shape our landscape. Are we telling the stories we want and need to tell?

6 practices

  1. Pursue your passion. It takes practice to follow your passion, so find people who share your passion and spend time with them. In ways you can’t imagine, they will support you. They are  your collaborators to help you – and the city – make more work you love. Serving the city well means to boldly grow the self.
  2. Focus on what matters. We can easily be distracted from what we truly care about. Two examples: when caught in fight drama, the thrill of a fight overrides what’s really important, or the “I haven’t been asked” trap that coaxes you into thinking you need another’s permission to follow the yearning in your soul.
  3. Jump in. Your contributions matter, to both your personal development and that of your city. Its worth risking an exchange with your city, because all kinds of work matter. Just as our work builds on those who have come before us, the cities to come  need our work to build upon as well.
  4. Invite conflict, while nourishing self, others and places. The city-making exchange is full of conflict, full of value clashes, but conflict is what is needed for our growth and this is a necessary dance that is largely meaningful, even if it doesn’t feel good. Things get ugly and confusing, so make sure you nourish self, others and the places we inhabit. (Hot tip – feeling good is not a steady state. It comes and goes.)
  5. Adjust structures along the way. Every aspect of city life needs structures that meet our needs. The trick is knowing structural purpose, when creating, adjusting or jettisoning structures. Our journey requires structure that meets our needs in each context in which we find ourselves, and our changing social, physical and economic habitats.
  6. Know who your city wants to be and where it wants to go. The city-making exchange means noticing the direction we wish to go in and our relationship with that direction, how we’ll get there, and who we’ll be along the way. Here’s a wee example of what happened in my city – the Awesome Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Edmonton workshops.

Just as loons need the right kind of runway (they did eventually make it), we need runways that don’t tire us too.

Where are you pursuing your passion in your city?

Under what conditions do you get lift-off?

 

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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:

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Beware “I haven’t been asked” trap

 

He’s our poet – but you might not know it: Parliament’s official wordsmith bemoans lack of meaningful work. That’s the headline that stood out for me this morning in today’s Edmonton Journal. The issue: Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate, Fred Wah, “has been asked to write just one poem during his two-year term.”

Reporter Randy Boswell tells us that “Canada’s national poet has warned that the taxpayer-funded position risks becoming ‘homogenized and diluted’ and expressed frustration that during his two-year term in Ottawa he’s been asked to produce just one work – a ‘mediocre’ poem about the Queen’s diamond jubilee…”

Here’s what Wah said to Boswell: “I wish that my government had asked me to write poetry about immigration policy, about Idle No More, about Canada’s complicity in the Middle East, the Enbridge pipeline… I haven’t been asked to do any of those things.” I read sadness and disappointment in Wah’s words. He would love to offer more, but he hasn’t been asked.

He’s fallen into the “I haven’t been asked” trap.

When we wait to be asked, we disengage ourselves from the work we really want to be doing. By waiting to be asked, Wah is not feeding his own writing – and his soul – by exploring his passions and desires. By lingering in this trap, he might be missing that he has been asked. The official “ask” of Wah, according to section 75.1 of the Parliament Act of Canada, is to write poetry:

The poet laureate may:

  1. write poetry, especially for use in Parliament on occasions of state;
  2. sponsor poetry readings;
  3. give advice to the Parliamentary Librarian regarding the collection of the Library and acquisitions to enrich its cultural holdings; and
  4. perform such other related duties as are requested by either Speaker or the Parliamentary Librarian.

That first point is significant: the poet laureate may write poetry. He is not required to write only for occasions of state, or only at the request of either Speaker, or on specific subjects. Simply: the poet laureate may write. According to the Parliament of Canada website, his position enjoys great freedom: “The poet laureate is free to determine his or her specific activities within these parameters.” In his official position, he has the freedom to write, yet it is not  choosing to write.

Choose what you want to do.

If you wait to be asked, you might not ever do it. You might not ever feel that you have been your true self. You might not ever offer all you have to offer the world around you. Meaningful work is what we make for ourselves, not what others make for us.

Wah’s trap is familiar to me. I have found myself waiting to be asked on many occasions. Sometimes for years. None of us are immune to this and I do not hold any disregard for Wah. We all make these traps for ourselves; it is the human condition. What they really are is a threshold to cross – and the struggle to make the decision to cross it.

Jump in.

Thresholds are a natural part of our individual and collective learning journeys. They help us reach the places we wish to go. The struggles we experience at such thresholds are powering us up to be better citizens – and create better cities.

Wah has many things to offer the world in his writing. He offers a lot in speaking up about waiting to be asked. My ask of Wah is this – write about whatever moves you. Write to make the world a better place. Boldly grow your Highest Self to grow a better world.

Follow your passion to change your city

And Parliament too, it seems.

If you weren’t waiting to be asked, what would YOU do?

 

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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:

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Beware ‘fight drama’

 

There seems to be a lot of drama in city life. There’s the kind that fills our theatres and tells us wonderful stories about ourselves, helps us see ourselves. This kind of drama spreads insight, reveals our culture, challenges priorities, questions assumptions and can simply entertain.

There’s another kind of drama that shields us from insight and awareness. I call it ‘fight drama’.

There are times, in danger, when we need to put up a fight. When a flood threatens our homes, we fight. When a plant closes and we lose our livelihood, we fight. When the well-being of our loved-ones is at stake, we fight. When something we believe in is threatened, we fight. Often, the fight is needed as we battle for the improvements we need in life. There are other times when we are in fight mode without even knowing why, caught the momentum, the drama.

I have been caught in the drama.

When I returned from travelling at the end of May, I plugged back into my community and a meeting with the City about the physical infrastructure renewal that will be undertaking in our neighbourhood. My neighbours are upset about our choices for new streetlights and I plugged into their fight. I was attracted to the momentum of being a part of something, especially with my neighbours. I was attracted to the energy generated by a fight and I wanted to be included, and contribute.

I realize now that the fight isn’t mine.

The fight, and its energy, means a lot to some of my neighbours. They are stepping up to declare what they want their neighbourhood to look like. They are actively working to shape our part of the city. By doing something about what they care about, they are contributing to the city-making exchange.

I have a choice about where to put my energy.

Fighting for the sake of fighting is fight drama. It shrouds the real issues. It hides what really matters. It helps us pretend that something matters when it doesn’t. It allows us to hide what we really want. The danger in drama is that it is distracts us from what we really want, and it keeps us in a downward spiral away from our fullest potential.

There are things to fight for and we must, at every turn, confirm if we are fighting for what we want, or caught in the momentum of fight drama. As a citizen, I have a responsibility to notice if I am actually in the fight I want to be in, or caught in the drama. I owe it to myself and my city.

I choose to put my energy where it matters. To me.

What matters to you? What are you really fighting for?

 

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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:

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Know structural purpose

 

In the May 15, 2013 edition of Nest City News, I wrote about knowing the purpose for the structures we create for ourselves. If for nothing other than the most practical of reasons, if we don’t know what a structure is for, it won’t do what we want it to.

We have a two-way relationship with the structures we create for ourselves. Just as we create them to serve us, they create us as well. Last month, when I went back to hike the West Coast Trail on the western edge of Canada’s Vancouver Island, I noticed key structures placed on the trail to assist our travel over difficult terrain. Ladders help hikers climb ascent and descend the valleys. Cable cars and bridges help hikers cross waterways. Boardwalks help hikers traverse boggy areas. Yet due to disrepair, the boardwalks have strayed from their original purpose:

Scott by deteriorating boardwalk

This boardwalk, put in place to aid travel, is now a hazard. It is slippery and uneven. It is ready to harm the traveller, but what can we do with structures like this?

I noticed five patterns in hikers’ behaviour on the trail:
  1. Walk on it. Not noticing the danger, we risk harm and carry on. This can be conscious and unconscious.
  2. Walk on it carefully, making careful choices about how to use the structure to our benefit while minimizing risk of injury.
  3. Walk beside it, making a new and safer path. Sometimes this means trudging through the mud and meeting the real obstacle face-to-face.
  4. Throw it aside, removing the danger for self and other. It’s pieces might also be useful serving other purposes.
  5. Walk on it to destroy it to a point where there is no structure left – and no hazard. Simply aid in its slow destruction. The risk is injury along the way.

All five patterns have a role to play in our relationships with the structures we live with every day. Each is appropriate in its own way, in its own context.

As I reflect on this specific trail, and our rescue off the trail two years ago after a boardwalk fall and broken leg, the first pattern was not our practice. And in the push to complete the hike we walked on boardwalks carefully and beside them – we did not throw any aside to make the path safer for others behind us. I have to admit we were caught in the momentum of the moment and our immediate task.
Everyday we are in relationship with structure. Structure can take the form of the protocols of family life, the policies in our workplaces, the design of our cities or the laws that govern our expectations of each other as we live increasingly together in cities.

In just the right balance, there is enough chaos to evoke collective wisdom, and enough order to discover wise action. Choosing the right kind – and amount – of structure is a BIG decision that has everything to do with knowing purpose.

Helpful questions to ask of any structure:

  1. What purpose needs to be served by the structure?
  2. What is the minimal structure needed to serve that purpose?

AND specific to any existing structure:

  1. What purpose needs to be served by the structure now?
  2. Does the structure, as it has changed over time, serve today’s purpose? (If no, go to the questions above.)

 

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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:

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I set myself to learn by your going

 

“I set myself to learn by your going,” are the words of David Whyte in a poem dedicated to the memory of John O’Donohue, “The Wave.”  These words invigorate me, in that they describe my travels in Ireland last month, in some of John O’Donohue’s favourite places.

A few years ago, as I worked writing a myriad of things of interest to me, I struggled to make sense of what I was assembling until I read  read John O’Donohue’s blessing, “For the Time of Necessary Decision.” I saw at last the shape my writing was wanting to take. I could see the arc for Nest City. The relief I felt at being able to see my own writing left me with a great affinity for O’Donohue and his work. Even though we have never met I wonder at how his work has supported mine, and how the work that preceded his, supports mine as well.

5800 years ago a neolithic (New Stone Age) civilization lived on The Burren, on Ireland’s west coast. This early subsistence farming civilization has left its mark in the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb. As the interpretive panels state on the site, “they are enduring reminders of sacred spaces.” I can feel the pull of people before me, in a land I have never lived in, yet a land that is a part of me in my relationship with humanity and our common journey.

Even when we can’t begin to imagine it, our work shapes our world. The work of farmers to house their dead still stands 5800 years later, when their impermanent homes are long gone. They left their awe in the world with O’Donohue, who in turn has left his awe in the world with us, the likes of David Whyte and I and innumerable others.

It seems in place and with others, we set ourselves to learning, and we do this with our great learning partners who travel with us, before us, and ever mindful of those who will travel after us. Many of these travellers we will never meet, even those in our lifetime, but that does not mean we do not travel and learn together. We most certainly do.

I set myself to learn by John O’Donohue’s going, and David Whyte too. Thanks to them both for sharing their love and their work. It shapes our world, how we see it, and most personally, it also shapes me.

 

Whose “going” do you follow in your learning?

 

For the Time of Necessary Decision

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Further Reading

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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:

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Our cities need us


Nest City News Overall Small

When you follow your passion in your work to make the world a better place, you create the force that generates and regenerates our cities. You are what our cities need. We are what our cities need. A Habitat Manifesto explains why.

I have just published the latest edition of the Nest City News – A Habitat Manifesto. The special feature of this newsletter is a link to what has come of the first series of posts from the Nest City Blog. As its own publication now in draft form, A Habitat Manifesto explores our evolutionary impulse to build, organize and thrive in cities. I am inviting folks to review this document before formal publication.

Only subscribers have the first chance to explore A Habitat Manifesto and explicitly feed and nourish each other in our work for cities and citizens.

Leave your name and email address to the right to stay in touch.

 

 

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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:

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The bear and the boor

 

At the beginning of May, danger ran away from me. At the end of May, danger stood in my face. The first was a bear, the second was a boor.

May has been wonderful and horrible. I have been exploring new places and people, and as with any new terrain, whether on the outside to be seen, or on the inside of me, unseen even to me, the world can be full of beauty and anxiety.

On May 9, as my brother and I began our final hike to finish Canada’s West Coast Trail, our eyes caught the movement of a black shape scampering up the shore ahead of us, up into the woods and away from us. The bear saw us first and, startled, ran away. We were left on high alert – the bear we (might have) imagined each night on our trek, sniffing around our tent was visible. We had reason to have bear spray and knives on the ready. (The likely truth is, much smaller and more curious creatures were exploring our campsite at night. Not the bear that ran away.)

On May 26, my 12-year-old son was desperate to bear the holiday-weekend queues to ride the London Eye, the large ferris wheel aside the River Thames in London. After 20 minutes of standing in line to buy tickets, on the home stretch, a man cut in line ahead of people who had a 15 minute wait ahead of them. I stepped in to say this was wrong. There was a quick exchange between us, a few people behind me slipped in front of him and he was successful. Everyone behind us was oblivious.

After ticket purchase is the queue for the ride itself. After being in this line for 10 minutes, he cut in again. 10 minutes later, at a switchback in the line, he jumped ahead again. As my knees rattled and my belly turned, I confronted him. His responses: “I was in the wrong line.” “I need to join my family.” His words, “It’s not what it looks like,” gave me an opening to settle myself down.

I offered this: “It doesn’t look good.”

We agreed on that.

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In the heart of the city, in the throngs of people, I felt like a bear on the attack. Not curious about why he needed to jump the queue, but needing to say that everyone is having to wait a long time and it is not OK – or right – to jump ahead of people.

I’m still not sure who the boor is. It is equally me – I took him to task each of the three times I saw him jump the queue. No one else did. No one else seemed to care. Perhaps it is the Canadian rule-follower in me.

Our cities are full of beauty and anxiety. Whether the cut-in-man is the boor, or me, we do represent the challenge of living together in cities. As frustrated he was with me, he looked back at me at one point, across the switchback, and smiled. Could have been a smile to say, “look at me, here I am,” or “suck it up, lady.” Or simply, “hey, this is city life.”

While our values clashed, we remained calm and perhaps we both realized that this is just a ride we are waiting in line for. A reminder that the purpose of cities is to create the conditions for conflict.

Here’s the rub. After all his efforts to jump ahead, and my efforts to get him “in line,” he was only one car ahead of us.

Any value clashes in your city life recently?

Bear tracks on beach

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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:

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