Some of the links from my friend's email are –to me, anyway– just...inspirational. Take a look:
I especially loved this paragraph:
In December, we met with the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association, which is facing many development pressures. They told us that their main take-away from City Builder Camp was the focus on “how to get from NIMBY to YIMBY” and that this has affected their approach since September. They also deeply appreciated the opportunity to have such a positive and productive conversation with architects, planners, and developers as they shared their insights with CWNA at City Builder Camp. Thank you to our panel members for making this possible!
And this video about the St. James Town community.
uFORchange
Five Good Ideas
Including this event.
So; can you imagine this degree of engagement in Hamilton? I'm not asking this question out of naïveté, or dismissing what's in place right now. I am aware of many of the efforts underway, the various associations and umbrella organizations. But it sure seems to be that there's a more advanced form of 'proaction' extant with our neighbours around the lake, as opposed to the opinion proffered by someone in Hamilton recently that "The problem as I see is people here have gotten into a mode where they would much rather complain than do something about things that bother them..."
Surely we're better than that.
And we are, as the above commenter continues with an actual suggestion:
"It would be good to skip (this entire crowd) –way too much negative energy there– and approach the neighbourhood organizations and community groups directly to jump start a real solutions driven community engagement, which does not have any political axe to grind, and does not start or end with a premise of teaching politicians/staff a lesson for supposed lapses on their parts."
Can you imagine...?
M Adrian Brassington
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