Views from the Edge

Conversations from the Edge

Welcome to the CRC blog, where we discuss bleeding edge issues around sustainable community development. The term ‘bleeding edge’ connotes the idea of our failure to somehow or other convince the publics about the urgency of responding to climate change now, and that we need to better communicate the principles and practises of sustainable development to the wider publics. So, yes it takes courage to be 'at the edge', and sometimes one 'bleeds' a lot, but let's start the conversation now. I encourage our students and former students to use this blog and share what they are learning out in the real world.   Ann

The Rainbow Bridge

I have been rather silent lately, as I lost a cherished friend on Wednesday, November 7, 2012, our beloved older dog, Yazar. As an academic I often wonder about the fine line between my professional and personal lives, and hesitate to write anything about the latter.

Patterns of Our Footsteps - The Urban Tsunami

In light of Ann Dale’s (Principle Investigator of Community Research Connections) recent book release, Urban Sustainability: Reconnecting Space and Place, this month’s Patterns of Our Footsteps illuminates why this topic is becoming increasingly more important to Canadians. The figure below displays trends in population growth in both rural and urban areas of Canada over the last 150 years.

Patterns of Our Footsteps - Addressing the Trends, Overcoming Inertia

We have recently released, Inertia, an animated video, the first in the Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3) series. This animation illuminates the political gridlock produced from the debate on the human impacts of climate change. A recent study conducted by Insightrix Research Inc.

Picture Framing Continued

I am back on my beloved campus at Royal Roads, it really is such a beautiful place here. Place matters very much to me, as I believe it matters to most people, and the diversity of scholarship here makes for some wonderful conversations. In our Live Chat last week on the climate adaptation and mitigation project, we talked about the importance of language, rather than 'carbon neutral' which could be perceived as not moving forward, 'climate positive' policies may be seen as more action oriented.

Patterns of our Footsteps - Where's our next meal coming from?

Last week, we released our Action Agenda on Rethinking Growth and Prosperity, a report containing 10 key actions for Canadian leaders and decision-makers to transform our current economic system to more sustainable development pathways. One of the ten actions called for the development and implementation of policies designed to stimulate re-localization innovations to increase community resilience to exogenous shocks.

The Holy Grail--Next Steps

My research/practitioner team just met over the weekend in Kingsburgh, Nova Scotia to discuss what we thought we should be doing over the next year. Kingsburgh is a very beautiful place, an old fishing village about an hour and a half from Halifax, with very reasonable accommodation right on the ocean, a magical part of this country. It exemplifies some of our problems, however, as many of the old fishing homes have been beautifully renovated and there are huge seasonal homes ranging from 2.5 million to 5 million dollars.

Reclaiming City Spaces

I can’t believe it is Labour Day Weekend, the summer flew by. When I was a young girl, a summer seemed to last forever, and the older I get, it now seems as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. My research agenda has looked at the characteristics of place, scale, limits and diversity, and now we are going to look at the question of time, how our perceptions of time shape place and how we move through spaces. And time may also be cultural, so stay tuned this year as we explore temporality.

Patterns of our Footsteps - Spending more on drugs but feeling no different

The line graph in the figure below shows that Canadians’ personal expenditure on pharmaceuticals, hospital fees, and health services has almost doubled in the last two decades. However, as can be seen with the area graphs, the percentages of Canadians that considered themselves healthy have remain unchanged. We must then ask, what drives this increase in spending? What have we been paying for?

The Good Society--Renewing the Urban Landscape

Some exciting stuff is happening on the ground, demonstrating how to reconcile the ecological, social and economic imperatives for sustainable urban development. SOLEfood’s new downtown Vancouver site grows food, jobs and greens the city at the same time.

What Frames the Picture?

Following about my last post, it is critically important how an issue is framed, how it is constructed so influences our opinions, as shown in this TEDTalks on whether or not we are over medicalized.