Mt. Pleasant Community Projects Ongoing

Dear SCG Members and Working Group Leaders;

1) Social Coordinating Group

It time again for our monthly Social Coordinating Group meeting - Native Education College (285 5th East Ave).

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Regular SCG Meeting #4

The Agenda: basically we will be hearing back from the four working groups on what they have been doing since April 8th. As SCG members you will be asked to comment on possible ways that you can help the working groups overcome any outstanding issues and concerns so that they can continue to move forward to develop and implement the local action plans. We have some new community faces coming out this time!

Pizza and refreshments will be served again, so if you have any allergies please let me know that when you RSVP back so that I can better meet your needs. Thank you. (please include your phone number).

2. Neighbourhood Clean Up

May 10, Saturday, 9:00 am to 12:00 Noon

A small, but very dedicated, group (Carolina Group) is hosting their annual neighbourhood clean up (10 years plus), and we are all welcome. Please let me know if you need more information. Hope to see some of you out this Saturday. Dana's cell 318-7460 (604). We are meeting up at Carolina and 11th Ave E.

3. Community announcements - of the Social kind

If you have an announcement(s) about an event or program that relates to the work that the SCG is doing and you want to share it with others please let me know. I am posting events to the Mount Pleasant community site to better keep us all in touch (an earlier suggestion made at a SCG meeting). http://www.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cpp/mountpleasant/social/index.htm and look under "Spotlight"

That's it for now

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Dear Mount Pleasant CLG members,

Hi, everyone. We have scheduled our fifth meeting of the Mount Pleasant CLG for:

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Native Education College
285 East 5th Ave. (at Scotia St.)

Since our last meeting, we have completed Shopping Area Workshop (SAW) #1, with over 50 people in attendance. Participants divided themselves into groups according to the existing shopping area in Mount Pleasant they wished to discuss:

1. Uptown (Main: 7th to 16th; Broadway: Ontario to Guelph; Kingsway: 7th to 12th )
2. Broadway West (Ontario to Yukon)
3. Broadway/Fraser (Guelph to Prince Albert)

Following a site visit to the shopping areas, ‘creative sessions’ were held, facilitated by urban designers, to find out key concerns and aspirations held by workshop participants. Posters with potential options/directions and maps were used to encourage discussion and record people’s ideas. We are mailing you a draft transcript of the workshop (i.e., posters with comments, along with photographs of the maps produced by the groups).

Our CLG meeting will review SAW #1 results, and introduce the tasks for SAW #2 (taking place on May 25th; attached is a poster advertising the event). These tasks involve using criteria suggested by workshop participants, along with criteria contained in City policy, to begin evaluating the options which emerged from SAW #1. The CLG meeting will also touch on our preparation for the residential workshops beginning in the fall, the consultancy for a land use and urban design study of Main St. (2nd to 7th), and the work being done by the Social Coordinating Group.

If you are unable to attend this meeting, please call Angela Ko at 604.871.6598 and let her know. Thank you in advance for coming to the meeting.

Yours truly,

Peter Burch
Planner
Mount Pleasant Community Planning Program (MPCPP)

Mount Pleasant | The City of Vancouver | Planning Our Future

The City of Vancouver has launched a number of initiatives aimed toward creating a better future for everyone in Vancouver. Most likely it is the presence of City Hall in Mount Pleasant that has Mount Pleasant as the Vancouver guinea pig with these collaborative steps with the Mount Pleasant community.

The City of Vancouver Mount Pleasant Community Planning Group has established the Mount Pleasant Community Liaison Group which meets regularly to share information about the various working groups and the progress being made, as well as issues and concerns of the local community.

Other Working Groups include the Mount Pleasant Heritage Working Group, and the Social Coordinating Group. The Heritage Working Group is in active discussion with the City of Vancouver over what constitutes Heritage, and the Mount Pleasant community is the framework from which tangible conversation stems. Rather than focusing solely upon physical structures and architecture, the conversations expand to include history of culture, the evolution and heritage of the working class neighbourhood, and the gathering places both current and of old, to name a few.

Angelo Ko from the City of Vancouver's Mount Pleasant Community Planning Program informs us that Local Historian and Author, Bruce Macdonald is leading a Walking Tour of Mount Pleasant organized by Proximity Arts on Sunday, February 10 and Saturday, February 16 at 2 p.m. For details of the tour and registration, please visit www.proximityarts.com. If you have any questions, please send email to info(at)proximityarts.com.

The Social Coordinating Group is focusing their efforts on Social Action to address the issues of homelessness, drug addiction, the four pillars program, harm reduction, and involving community members and organizations in creating, developing, and implementing successful strategies.

While no system is perfect, and this effort may seem fraught with errors or seem in vain at times, it is the slow wheels of change that drive progress and always have. Our voices matter now more than ever as we reach forward to an uncertain future, in particular according to many experts, including Vancouver's own Dr. David Suzuki. These warning signals are the catalyst for the City of Vancouver's launch of EcoDensity: A strategy of significant proportion that a municipality can implement to reduce the municipal ecological footprint.

More can be found in the discussion forums related to these various topics, and a variety of links to various participating sources. Lend your voice here online, or at the meetings. It's time we got involved.