Community Sustainability Planning
Community Conversation Begins
On Second Draft Of The Plan
A public meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 10, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Portsmouth Olympic Harbour (Press Lounge) at 53 Yonge St., where the second draft of Sustainable Kingston: Designing Our Community's Future...Together will be presented to the public.
The community's Sustainable Kingston website will be collecting comments on the second draft of the Sustainable Kingston plan from March 10 to March 24. The second draft is now available for download and review 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. The second draft of the plan was developed with extensive community input — and with the intention of having the community own the plan. Once the Plan is finalized in the spring of 2010, the proposed community ownership model will be based on having organizations and individuals commit to a community partnership or citizen's commitment.
- Partners support Sustainable Kingston by demonstrating a shared vision of sustainability; by signing an endorsement agreement; and by contributing actions to the online tool at www.sustainablekingston.ca.
- The citizen's commitment, which will also be posted on the Sustainable Kingston website, offers a list of 10 actions that anyone can take to demonstrate they are committed 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). The final draft of Sustainable Kingston will be completed this spring.
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.
