Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP)
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Video: Canada's Most Sustainable City
The short video above, created by the City and the International City Management Association, looks at the many sustainable aspects of Kingston and the steps being taken to fulfill the vision of becoming Canada's most sustainable city.
Sustainable Kingston Plan
The Sustainable Kingston Plan provides the framework, background and rationale to support the vision: Kingston — Canada's Most Sustainable City.
The Sustainable Kingston website has been created to host the plan and display examples of actions that Community Partners are taking to build a more sustainable community.
The Sustainable Kingston Plan is available for download at right and includes more detail on:
- community-ownership of the Plan,
- proposed governance of a Sustainable Kingston organization, and
- initial steps for implementation.
COMMUNITY OWNED
Sustainable Kingston is everyone's plan. It has been developed with extensive community input — and with the intention of having the community own the plan. The Sustainable Kingston Plan proposes a community ownership model supported by organizations and individuals that become community partners or make citizen's commitments.
- Community Partners support Sustainable Kingston by demonstrating a shared vision of sustainability; by endorsing the Plan; and by contributing information about actions they are taking to the online Community Action Inventory at www.sustainablekingston.ca.
- Through the citizen's commitment, Kingstonians may support the Sustainable Kingston Plan by demonstrating their own endorsement of the Plan and their intention to contribute to moving Kingston toward as sustainable future.
This community-wide effort is lead by the FOCUS Kingston Steering Committee. The community-developed Sustainable Kingston plan builds on Sustainability Summit Results (at right).
Those just coming to the table may wish to sign up on the City's Sustainability email list.
OVERVIEW OF ICSP PROJECT
Based on the extensive input provided by enthusiastic participants of 2009's Sustainability Summit, the "Results" document (downloadable at right) presents goals, guiding principles and themes incorporating a four-pillar model of sustainability. Those pillars include: Cultural Vitality, Economic Health, Environmental Responsibility and Social Equity. The Summit and its Results document established a basis for the first draft of the ICSP.
The creation of an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) is intended to help Kingston, collectively, do things better. The development of this guiding document, which will support Kingston as it moves toward greater sustainability over the next generation, is the current objective of FOCUS Kingston Steering Committee working with the City's Sustainability and Growth group.
Even as the ICSP process got underway, the vision of making Kingston Canada's most sustainable city was already being pursued in 2008 by community partners, including Queen's University staff and students who have completed significant work on sustainable residential development [PDF: 6.4MB] , and the other leading Kingston organizations who joined the City in signing the SEE Green Kingston Protocol encouraging sustainable purchasing practices.
FOCUS Kingston was initiated after amalgamation in 1998 and identified 12 priorities for the new City of Kingston. These priorities helped guide City efforts and were the basis for the development of the Group of Seven projects, all but two of which are now complete.
Given the great progress on these projects, and the emerging focus on sustainability and ways to harmonize various aspects of community efforts, in 2006 FOCUS Kingston decided to undertake a new cycle of community strategic planning. It has since developed and is now working with FOCUS's vision and mission statements.
As valuable as the end ICSP document is the forging of relationships between community players involved in constructing the resulting plan. FOCUS Kingston brought together a number of such players at this spring's Community Sustainability Charrette, which also included a public presentation by Sustainability expert Bob Willard.
