While hiking last week on the West Coast Trail, on the western edge of Canada’s Vancouver Island, my brother and I came upon a derelict and abandoned donkey engine. We stopped to marvel at its existence at the edge of civilization.
Long before foreign sailing ships reached the coast 200 years ago, the Huu-ay-aht, Ditidaht and Pacheedaht lived on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Our trail map reports that as trade increased, “many sailing ships met a tragic fate navigating in these unfamiliar and hazardous waters. Sailors soon referred to this coastline as the ‘Graveyard of the Pacific’.”
One of the derelicts of the times is the donkey engine, which took part in the work to establish communication between villages and new lighthouses – a telegraph line that also became a trail for shipwreck victims and their rescuers.
So what does a donkey engine on a remote trail have to do with city making?
Think of it this way – when we need something to improve life for self and others, we organize for it. And in the process, we change the shape of the places that are involved. One the west coast, when the shore became a graveyard, people recognized that action needed to be taken. They took action, built lighthouses, a telegraph line and a trail. And they left a story behind.
The donkey engine, if nothing else, stands out as a physical marker of the trail’s original purpose. When its job was done, it was left where it stood.
Decades later, the purpose of the trail is different. The users of the trail are explorers of a different kind – not shipwreck victims and their rescuers now, but hikers exploring the beauty and challenge of the terrain. (And their rescue from time to time!)
The very purpose we build structure for – any part of a city – changes over time. And that is part of the city’s story too, only we see it in many more layers. We really do shape our landscape, and we also shape the stories we tell ourselves about our cities and the places we explore.
What is your favourite layer of story in your city?
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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:
North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, April 27, 2013
I knew three years ago that a transition was coming for me in April/May 2013. In 2010 I was elected my my professional planner colleagues to serve one year as president-elect, then two as president, for my professional organization – the Alberta Professional Planners Institute. Our AGM was last week and I have officially handed the reins over to our next president. And I have picked up a new set of reins; as past president, I am on the board of the Canadian Institute of Planners for two years. Knowing this transition was coming, I stepped down as president of my community league.
The nature of the transition is clear and unclear. I have shed my two “presidential” roles and took on a new board. The other transitions I am less clear on. Two significant pieces of contract work are concluding and I don’t know what will come next to help pay the bills. As I look at my schedule for the coming weeks, I see that I have created space for myself to make a transition of some kind. My antennae are work!
Last week, I spent a day with David Whyte, reflecting on my work and where it is going. A big realization came to me: Lost? Let the city find you. On my way to spend a day with a group of women exploring their personal leadership, from the inside to the outside, the ice flows in the river have firmly caught my attention. Just when I think spring’s work is done, when life is flowing freely, a jam I never knew was there releases. I don’t see the jam, just the ice and the debris it carries. The smooth surface of the river’s spring flow is now a torrent, a rush I only noticed with the ice. There’s some inner work to notice what is flowing in and through me, and how to ride the release safely, or how to boldly grow the self.
Today, I have gathered with 40 other circle practitioners to explore our work creating the social containers our world needs at this time. For me, the social habitat is a critical aspect of making cities that serve citizens – and citizens that serve cities. While the gathering is work related, it is equally about my personal social habitat and my approach to myself and my work. My operating principle remains the same: nourish self, others and place.
I have no idea what will come next, but I choose to spend time where I feel nourished, where I can nourish others and the places we live, work and play. I choose to nourish my/our social, physical habitats and my/our economic life. This is ultimately what will enable me to ride the river, and whatever she throws at me.
What ideas and practices support you in your life’s journey?
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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:
I spent Saturday with a group of women exploring their leadership by connecting their inner dreams and desires to outer action: Inside Outside Leadership. Our time together allowed us to tend to our “self”, a practice that unearths passion and desires and dreams. It reveals our senses of direction, our path, even if only a wee spot of solid ground on which to take new steps.
This is work that lifts the veil of our Higher Self, allowing our work, where we spend our time and energy, to best serve self, others and places. This is an essential part of how we make cities (and homes, neighbourhoods, organizations, countries, etc) that serve citizens well – by being good citizens that tune into our drive to thrive.
Boldly grow your Highest Self, and you grow a better world.
As we left the company of each other, we offered our individual intentions to our circle. Here’s the shape they took as a collective intention:
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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:
I signed up to spend the day listening to David Whyte, a writer of prose and poetry I greatly admire. I chose to spend the day sitting and listening, which is a very hard thing for me to do. I do not sit and listen well to anyone who speaks for an hour, let alone a day.
So I chose to simply sit. And listen. And play and doodle and draw while I was listening, to engage in parallel play, and see what would come to me.
Many things did come.
Here is one.
David Whyte was exploring our relationship to the unknown, and in particular, the invitation we send out into the unknown. His invitation (to us) is to let the world speak to us on its own terms. He read David Wagoner‘s poem, Lost:
In reflecting on Lost, David Whyte remarked the forest is everywhere. It’s in the forest, of course, but it is equally in our workplaces, our families, and our cities.
I left this note for myself:
This is an essential part of the city making exchange: the more we pursue the work that fills us with passion, the more the city offers opportunities for us to follow our passion.
The city helps us find ourselves.
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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:
Last week, I asked, “What do you do to create city life?” The relationship between city and citizens is a mesh of transactions that offers each of us opportunities to meet our basic needs. When our basic needs are met, this relationship also offers us opportunities to choose to explore our passions, and in doing so, we inevitably create new ways of thinking, making and doing: new work. Our new work holds with it the possibility of destroying or enhancing our habitat – our cities.
Follow your passion and the city changes itself.
In a quick scan of local media, here are some examples of folks following their passion, and in doing so are reshaping cities and their ecoregions (links are to other websites for more information):
Danny and Miranda Turner are opening the door to organic foods. They created the Organic Box, an organic grocery-delivery company in Edmonton. They are connecting Edmontonians with local food producers that need a direct-to-market access channel that lasts 12 months a year.
Parishioners vote to save church. In rural Alberta, Spaca Moskalyk Ukranian Catholic Church was built in 1924 and is in poor shape. Cliff Moroziuk is leading efforts to preserve the church that was slated to be destroyed in a controlled burn. A symbol of his community’s heritage is still standing.
Residents got their first glimpse Monday of the new Abbotsfield Recreation Centre. Behind the scenes are various City employees, consulting engineers and architects, landscape architects and planners to make the facility a reality.
Political scientist Jim Lightbody is chasing his passion for how city governments work – particularly when it comes to regional infighting and whether satellite cities pay their fair share.
Scott McKeen, former Edmonton Journal columnist, is the City of Edmonton’s first blogger-in-residence. He’s following his passion to understand what happens at city hall, and will help his readers gain insight into how city hall works – and serves citizens. Here’s his first blog, Fast and furious on Edmonton streets.
In the end, we have to trust in our ability, and others’, to create new work and to do good work with that new work.
Where do you see people changing your city? What are your favourites?
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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:
As part of how I relate to my city, I participate in a community of practice with fellow citizens. We explore what it means – and what it takes – to be a citizen offering our full potential to the world. Each of us, in our way, is helping shape our city with our work in every moment every day.
Here is my harvest from our gathering last night. We were exploring Parker Palmer’s work on seasons.
Sprouts in Edmonton, April 17, 2013
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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:
something transacted; especially: an exchange or transfer of goods, services, or funds
the often published record of the meeting of a society or association
an act, process or instance of transacting
a communicative action or activity involving two parties or things that reciprocally affect or influence each other
Transact (Merriam-Webster):
to carry on or conduct to a conclusion or settement (dictionary.com)
to carry on business
to carry on the operation or management of: do
to carry on business
The webs of transactions across a city are everywhere and at every scale. They may appear small, such as a the payment I make to my dentist, but when I take a step back I can see all the choices I have for a dentist across my city and all the transactions that took place for my dentist to become a dentist and set up her clinic. She needed to grow up, housed, and fed and schooled. She needed to acquire a specialized education. She needed to find staff to work with her and she needed to find a building and furnish it with basic furniture, but also the specialized equipment she uses in her practice. And all that equipment needed to be created and delivered. My simple transaction is simply one end of a huge web of webs: a meshwork.
So where does the citizen fit into this?
A single citizen is in many places all at once in this meshwork. Take my dentist for example. Laura offers specific services to her clients and that is one of her transactions, but like every other citizen, she also needs shelter and food and she makes regular transactions on that front. She also has a family who enjoys life in the city. They play sports, take in the arts and enjoy the latest in movies and video games. People everywhere are creating these opportunities for them in their work.
Everyone, everywhere, is creating city life.
What do you do to create city life?
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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:
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:
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:
Last week, as I was playing the role of MC at a gathering of 170 city officials and the development/building community I found myself with a decision: read the poem I just wrote or sit on it.
We had just spent the afternoon talking about all the initiatives where people who usually bang each other’s heads have started to work together. It’s certainly a work in progress. Relationships have started where there were none. Understanding of each others’ priorities, and the worlds in which each other works has begun. And a sense of the different roles that city hall and the business community play – and the legitimacy of those roles – is also emerging.
As I enjoyed 7 fellow Edmontonians and their Pecha Kucha presentations, some of their words jumped out at me and I found myself organizing them, making meaning of what they were collectively offering us, the audience. As MC, I had one final duty: thank them and pass the microphone over to the last speaker who would thank all participants. I squirmed in anticipation: would I read and share the poem, or leave it in my notebook.
A four letter word kept popping up all day: RISK. I chose to risk it.
Here is what I heard Todd Babiak, Michael Walters, Tai Viola, Ray Watkins, Nancy Domijan, Simon O’Byrne and Tegan Martin Drysdale say (their words, my assembly into a poem):
I offered myself and what I see. That’s what we do to make our cities as good as they can be.
Where are you stretching beyond your comfort zone to pursue what you love to 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:
Tonight I conclude my work as president of my neighbourhood association, Glenora Community League. And as I do so, I am reminded that our work as volunteers is as important as our paid work – it all shapes our individual, family, neighbourhood and city lives. It even changes our planet.
All kinds of work matter because the work we do creates our cities. Very simply, when a city starts, we create work using a resource (coal, water, fishing, farming) in a particular setting. A settlement starts where the natural habitat provides us what we need. Our work, then physically changes that place. From there we see new ways to think, make and do new things, always driven by a desire to improve the habitats we build for ourselves. And as the work diversifies and recombines, and as more people migrate to cities to pursue work, these settlements become cities.
Today, as we continue to pursue the work we are passionate about, we evolve our selves and our cities. This is a survival skill, yet building our cities is a quest to do much more than survive. We work to thrive, and as we each do so we create the conditions for everyone to thrive for our individual work accumulates into the city habitats we now live in. We are building the nests we need.
Volunteering to maintain and create places for neighbours to gather is work. Helping your child with homework is work. Feeding your family is work. Pursuing your passion in nanotechnology is work. Writing stories is work. Making art is work. Cleaning the school is work. Building a home is work. Planting a garden is work. Fundraising for homeless shelters is work.
All work shapes our cities
All work matters.
How do you shape your city to meet your needs?
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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:
