No small task to envision my community in the future

Last week I was called upon to do some homework that I thought I would share because the assignment was to write a vision for the community in which I live. No small task.

In 20 or 50 years, I asked myself, will our collective children look back and judge us on the quality of the community we fashioned? Well, I can tell you my kids are already.

I spent my teen years in a subdivision called Whitehaven. It was as White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant as the name conveys. And just as dull.

Smalltown Nova Scotia called to me because it wasn’t predominantly white, vinyl-clad, featureless housing. But what do we want the communities of this province to exemplify as we move into this dawning century?

Talk about vision and you hear so many buzzwords. There’s vibrant, sustainable, dynamic, harmonious and diverse. Sound fiscal policies also seem to be tops on the websites I cruised from Port Aransas, Texas to Hull, Mass.

Those whom we elect never fail to pay lip service to both historic and environmental heritage. There’s room for maintaining the character of a community, but how do you dictate open-mindedness, responsiveness to ordinary citizens and true capitalism without greed?

High-profile planner Andres Duany of Miami, a man known as the father of "new urbanism," has gathered kudos for a movement that embraces old-fashioned town design. He pushes plans for communities where people can walk from home to shops and offices, houses with front porches to encourage social interaction, and residences above stores.

That’s design on paper, but how do you plan for a community where children really matter, where every five-year-old is ready to start school and has a genuine chance to succeed? How do you dictate the kind of social justice where all citizens are so self-sufficient that they can give back to the community?

In her last book, Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs described how the five pillars of society, especially community and family, are showing signs of decay. She blamed sprawl for separating people and warned we can avoid downfall "by tenaciously retaining the underlying values responsible for the culture's nature and success."

Jacobs argued that planning has to take into account the subtleties of the knowledge possessed only by residents. She coined the term "locality knowledge,� praised “networks of trust� and called on her readers to think of neighbourhoods as a whole.

I would agree that traditionally planners have been unaware of the fibres that hold positive communities together. Jacobs likely defined the term “social capital� back in the 1960s when describing these small-scale, informal societal structures. Trust a woman.

Sure I want to conserve, renew ecological resources and live in harmony with nature, but most of all my vision is for a community where family matters and citizens find the amazing intangible sense of balance and belonging.

That means a town where neighbours joke with each other, pocket gardens are maintained by volunteers and service clubs hold testimonial dinners for local garbagemen.