What’s Next – Why I’m Obsessed with My Community: Part 5

This is Part 5 of a 5* part series of posts about my thoughts on the urban design of our community.

• Part 1. An Introduction
• Part 2. Oops, All Cars
• *A Tangent About Cars
• Part 3. Isolation and the Status Quo
• Part 4. Finally, Why I’m Obsessed With My Community
• Part 5. What’s Next?

How Can We Do This?

The community association has started work on a public roadmap for local activities, community events, and advocacy: Community Activities – Annual Roadmap. This is a set of living documents that aim to catalogue and plan out everything we want to do as a community for the next year and beyond. We value your feedback and ideas for the roadmap and for things that we don’t know about that are already happening in the community.

Our city councillor, Laura Dudas, is very attentive to the needs and wants of the community, and I’m sure she would love to hear from you about what you value about this place and what you’d like to see. The community association absolutely also values your feedback, and if you’re willing to put some energy in to making things happen in our community, we would love for you to get involved. Check out the Community Association Starter Kit for some ideas and ways to jump right in: CA Engagement Starter Kit. We have a new Outreach Committee looking at the best ways to connect with residents and engage people in our shared goal of continuing to make this a great place to live. Volunteer if you are interested.

What’s Next

In a suburban neighbourhood in 2025, reaching out to a group of people who might be interested in this kind of conversation is going to be a ton of work. That being said, I suspect it is possible, and I’d like to try to put in that work, because I think it’s worth it. I am extremely willing to believe that even if you might not personally know anybody in the community who is interested and willing to put effort into in making our places better and more resilient, there are lots of us out there. If this sounds like you or someone you know, please reach out at [email protected] and join the conversation.

I’d like to start by planning regular meetups, some in person and some via our community forum, to have these conversations and talk through how we see our community evolving and what we can do to keep up with it. We have shared our community roadmap on the website and encourage you to check that out to keep up with everything we’ve got going on. Stay tuned (or follow up with me via email) for more about this if you’re interested.