2007 was a very busy time for travel and speaking engagements. Living part-time in Vancouver enabled me to travel more easily in the Northern Hemisphere. I spent most of March speaking, doing research and conducting workshops in Minneapolis, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Durham and Glasgow. At Durham University, I participated in a colloquium on “Faith and Spirituality in the City” and I am delighted that my writing has taken a new turn in this direction. I returned to Europe in July for a conference in Spain and meetings with my new publisher, Earthscan, in London. In September I was again in Europe, keynoting a planning conference in Antwerp, giving lectures in Leuven and Brussels, as well as three public lectures in Stockholm.

A highlight of that trip was a visit to colleague and friend Cathy Wilkinson and her family in Luleå, in Swedish Lapland. Luleå, at 65˚ North Latitude, is only a few kilometres from the Arctic Circle. It has a population of about 70,000 and its port is (during the ice-free months) one of Sweden's largest export harbours. Fortunately, it was still only September when I visited. We had great walks through the forest and some wonderful discussions of planning in Melbourne (their home town) and adaptation to cold climates (I was born on a minus 52˚ Fahrenheit day in a Canadian mining town).

In November 2007, I spent a week as a visiting scholar at the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, in New York. My lectures and classes primarily focussed on community engagement. I was hosted by colleagues John Forester and Ann Forsyth, who has been a friend since 1983. Global climate change meant, as with Sweden and Boston, which I subsequently visited, that the autumn weather was mild and many trees had yet to lose their leaves. A very worrying sign.

Intergenerational workplaces
An important 2007 conference was the Western Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Masterclass for Small Business in Perth in February. My keynote topic was “When Generations Collide at Work: Strategies for working effectively in today's intergenerational workplaces”. I am eager to undertake more work in this area, as I believe that many conflicts in today’s workplaces could be resolved if managers better understood the working styles of the different generations represented among their employees.

In July, I paid my first visit to Spain to participate in an international summer school in architecture and planning at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander. I delivered two lectures: "On Fire and Alive: Heart-Centred and Creative Approaches to Community Engagement in Planning and Design" and "Children Knowing/Loving/Protecting Nature: Why Community Engagement, Planning and Design Should Support the Biophilia Hypothesis".

I also visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and was appalled at the lack of disability accessibility and the poor site planning in this iconic building designed by a fellow Canadian.

Kitchen Table Sustainability
In September I travelled to Europe again, to present workshops in Stockholm for the Swedish Planners Association and deliver a keynote address to the 2007 Congress of the International Association of Community and Regional Planners (ISOCARP) in Antwerp (see www.isocarp.org), as well as conducting workshops and giving lectures in other locations in Belgium.

My ISOCARP paper was entitled: “Kitchen Table Sustainability: Tested recipes for bringing the sustainability debate down to Earth”. This paper introduces concepts in my new co-authored book, Kitchen Table Sustainability. We argue that a critical step in creating a sustainable society is the adoption of a participatory, community-driven approach. Kitchen Table Sustainability aims to open the door so that the theory and practice of sustainability can enter the experience of the “everyday” and be released from the exclusive provinces of experts: planners, bureaucrats, scientists, intergovernmental panels, roundtables, cabinet tables and board tables.

Asia Pacific Cities Summit
In September I presented a paper in Brisbane to the Asia Pacific Cities Summit (see www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/apcs). This international conference brought delegates from our region to discuss urban issues of concern. My topic was “Urban Nature for Everyone: The Value of Natural Places in Cities for Tourists and Local People”. My paper was prepared with the assistance of Catherine Zhou, a Chinese-born postgraduate student at the University of British Columbia.

Cathy and I argued that much of the current sustainability debate focuses on “distant” Nature but ignores “near” Nature. Reviewing a wide body of research in environmental psychology, our paper explores the value of natural places in cities for residents, workers, and visitors. Research reveals that Nature has qualities that greatly enhance personal and community safety, wellbeing and health. Designing natural places that fit the specific needs of different groups can dramatically increase their satisfaction with their time spent in cities.

Click here for my conference PowerPoint
and/or speaker's notes.

The topic of the research is “Understanding Vancouver’s Inner City Housing: An Adventure in Multifaceted Post-Occupancy Evaluation.” In the first term, fifteen students developed methods to be used to evaluate housing in Vancouver’s inner city False Creek North neighbourhoods.

My participation in this project was generously funded by two Vancouver developers: Concord Pacific Developments (see www.concordpacific.com) and Hillside Developments (see www.hillside.ca).

Summer intensive
A highly successful summer intensive in Vancouver in June focused on the parks, plazas, playgrounds and other public spaces in False Creek North, as well as lessons learned from the earlier development of False Creek South. In this work I was assisted by several generous colleagues, including planner and criminologist, Greg Saville, of Alternation Consulting (www.alternation.ca) and Adjunct Professor, University of New Haven Other lecturers included post-occupancy evaluation specialist, Professor Jacqueline Vischer, Professeure titulaire, Groupe de recherche sur les environnements de travail at the University of Montréal (see www.gret.umontreal.ca), Vancouver-based architect-planner David Ellis and Pieter Rutgers of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (see www.vancouver.ca/parks). In the third term, which began in September 2007, my students began conducting evaluations of components of the housing developments. This research is continuing into 2008 under Larry Beasley’s direction.

Our house is currently under construction:  foundations poured, sub-floor constructed and two gigantic rainwater tanks and a Biolytix water management tank delivered. The wall frames are up, decking completed and we are waiting for the rain to stop so that the roof can go on.
We hope to move in by mid-2008.