Problem Tracks Other Concepts Planning Examples

Concepts and Ideas towards Improving Our Community

When we buy or rent a home, we have a choice of accepting the limitations we buy or rent into, or use the time we live there to improving our home environment to better suit our lives in that environment. We need to balance our need for better lives with our ability to improve those lives, to come up with a desire and decision to do so - or not. If we plan to live in a location for a few decades, then the sooner we start improving our community, the longer we will be able to enjoy those improvements. If we only plan to be there a year or two, then perhaps we may choose to stay with the status quo. Either way, ideas and concepts that promote improvement open the possibility and can eventually benefit us all.

Problem Tracks - Based on Concepts and Ideas Submitted by Members of the Community

This section is dedicated to improving and changing our community based on problems identified by people inside our community. The City has various mechanisms to encourage contributions (ideas) from all of us; for example, emailing our councillor being one such mechanism, or dialing 311. However the City does not yet have a means of associating each suggestion with existing City programs and tracking whether and how each suggestion is contributing to improving our lives. Nor does the City keep a repository of suggestions received, organized into tracks of improvement. This subsection intends to fill that gap in our ability to communicate.

Concepts and ideas received to-date are:

• Create a town center for Hunt Club (community level).
• Improving the Hunt Club Mall on McCarthy Rd. - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Create points of interest throughout Hunt Club (community level).
• Creating a point of interest along Uplands Drive - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Make it easier to supply goods to, and move people (community level).
• Build a footpath from Cahill West to the South Keys rail/transitway Station - submitted by Alan Asselstine.
• Have true community-based health care in Hunt Club (community level).
• Rethink city policies to establish a stronger ideological foundation for the urban community (municipal level).
• City election platform suggestions - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Empower us to communicate and get involved at our own pace (municipal level).
• Create a really useful light rail transit system (municipal level).
• Making light rail useful to the inner city dweller - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Light rail transit directly into Hunt Club - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Conquering the strip mall by LRT - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Create villages of interest throughout the City (municipal level).
• Suggestions re a policy towards creating more ethnic/minority villages in Ottawa - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Update or abolish the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board) (provincial level).
• Role of the Ontario Municipal Board in our lives - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Abolish the Ontario Municipal Board - submitted by John Sankey.
• Improve the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (federal level).
• Improvements to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - submitted by Peter Vasdi.
• Sharpen our senses to pollution (federal level).
• Sharpening our senses to pollution - submitted by Peter Vasdi.

Other Concepts

These are concepts and ideas from outside of Ottawa.

Building Our Own Village

Comfortable Walk Model

Nice Things to Look at Model

Recycling Construction Materials

The Bent Nail, in Victoria, B.C., is another community resource created by the Victoria Street Community Association (VSA). The Bent Nail is located at:
870 Devonshire Rd., Victoria, B.C., V9A 4T6,
(phone) 250-386-2332, (fax) 250-386-4500.

Bent Nail also has other locations, such as in Abbottsford, B.C.

It recycles building materials (bricks, cabinets, carpets, doors, counter tops, staircases and railings, sinks, wood, shingles, etc.) thereby minimizing garbage and waste and maximizing reuse. They also provide employment opportunities and a chance to prove themselves for people who have been out of the workforce for a while. The efforts survives on donations.

Planning Examples - Ecovillage at Ithaca, New York State, U.S.A.

EcoVillage at Ithaca, Inc. is a not-for-profit foundation, formed to envision and actualize a more sustainable kind of neighborhood development, by creating a model village on a site in the Town of Ithaca, NY. A related organization, EV/CRESP is a project of Cornell University's Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy, and serves as the educational arm of the EcoVillage project. The EVI site is 176 acres of fields, woods, and wetlands, about two miles west of downtown Ithaca, NY.