A little bit of this and that

Because the man travels a lot

The City of Chicago Department of Public Health’s ongoing awareness ad campaign “BURNED” aims to counter Big Tobacco’s message and empower Chicago youth to make healthier choices.   Residents can follow the “BURNED” movement on social media with hashtag #NoMoreMenthol

If Savanna animals took the Paris Métro.

By Brent Toderian and Jillian Glover

With cities seeking to involve diverse voices in city-making to get beyond “the usual suspects,” Vancouver urbanists Brent Toderian and Jillian Glover examine how cities in their region are finding new ways to increase civic participation.

Originally published on The Planetizen

Credit / West End Mural

As more people choose to live in cities, local governments find themselves facing increasingly complex issues in city-making. Demands for affordable housing and public transit, tensions around gentrification and density, even connecting the dots between city planning and climate change, are just some of the more high-profile critical conversations our cities need. Solutions can come from many places, but smart cities realize that engaging the broad public in the city-making process leads to better answers and a deeper public ownership of our future.

Faced with this knowledge, cities are struggling to develop new and innovative community engagement methods, including those that embrace new technologies, social media, and collaborative design methods, to better bring the public into conversations on the future of city life. Let’s face it—not all of our engagement in recent decades has been very engaging!

This article’s authors have looked across Metro Vancouver (a region known internationally for its public consultation) for recent best practices and lessons in better community engagement. While some new methods are bringing key services online, others are as simple as changing the location of council meetings or getting people walking and talking in their neighbourhoods. All of these lessons involve moving beyond traditional consultation practices that cities have relied on for decades.

Although lessons can come in many forms, and these don’t necessarily represent the “best,” here are ten lessons from Metro Vancouver that we found particularly worth sharing.

Cappadocia - Nevşehir Province, Turkey

Located in the Central Anatolian region of Turkey, Cappadocia is an area where entire cities have been carved into rock.

An area with history so abundant and far reaching as to render entire centuries as footnotes at first glance, the landscape appears as an abandoned alien desert with fields that look like waves frozen in time, and rocky spikes and spires protruding from the landscape like some sort of meringue set in stone.

However on further exploration through small, winding paths, beautifully-carved homes and churches are waiting to be discovered.

The rock formations that make up Cappadocia were created by volcanic eruptions, erosion, and wind. Over three million years ago a volcanic eruption deposited a blanket of ash across the 1500 square mile landscape which formed into a soft rock. This rock, slowly eaten away by wind and time, has created some spectacular forms. But the human history of the area is as compelling as the geological one.