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September 3^rd, 2013

I don't often repost, but this article is critical reading for researchers, decision-makers, policy-makers, practitioners and civil society. From the Standford Social Innovation Review.

By Amy Luers, Carl Pope, & David Kroodsma | 8 | Aug. 19, 2013

A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen profiled the Hope Garden in Ottawa, run by a group of volunteers, that provides food for the Shepherds of Good Hope’s soup kitchen. This year, they provided 847 pounds of vegetables to the soup kitchen, last year, the volunteers provided 8,689 pounds of vegetables and herbs.

Listen to Malcolm Gladwell talk about important insights from the food marketing industry. You may want to listen very closely to the last line. But I have a question, what has all this choice done to us, how much choice is enough?

A few years ago Lenore Newman and I wrote an article called In Praise of Mundane Nature, in Alternatives Magazine (2009). In this project led by the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, young children were given cameras to go out and capture small-scale nature, little nature and mundane nature. Check out the children’s photographs on their cities.

We have yet to mobilize meaningful social action on many key environmental issues, especially climate change action. Perhaps the time is ‘ripe’ to employ the fun theory to the way we communicate, especially our research outcomes and community engagement. For example, in one of our MC³ case studies, Eagle Island, Tarah Stafford used fun as an engagement technique and successfully mobilized her community around energy efficiency.

The figure below displays the changes in Canadian age demographics over the last forty years, showing that the median age has increased from 26.2 in 1971 to 40 in 2012. The graph shows overall increases in populations of people age 40 and above, where the population of younger adults (20 to 39) has levelled and numbers of youth and infants (19 and less) have decreased. We can clearly see our population is aging, but what does this mean for future Canadian communities?

This is a must read article by Warren Buffett's son, change is blowing in the wind.

Recently read an article in the Globe and Mail, about housing and seniors in Vancouver. The article talks about the coming crunch in senior housing. A colleague of mine, Patrick Condon at UBC states there will be a 250-per-cent increase in people over 65 living in the city of Vancouver, and then discusses the critical need for new housing units and the type of proposed new developments.

CBC’s the fifth estate has launched an interactive tool that allows patients to rate the quality of care in their own hospitals. Although online ratings are not perfect, they are transparent, capture stories directly and are a good indicator of the quality of care at a particular institution.