How can we nurture an ethic of caring for Nature in the planning profession? How can we give direct voice to Nature in community engagement processes? How can Nature be present in our deliberations about housing and planning matters? Join Wendy Sarkissian in her keynote address as she shares with us her exploration of the roots of her environmental ethic and her concerns about suburban development. Wendy spent her formative years in the 1940s and 1950s in North Vancouver in a raw new suburb originally cleared for an airport. Surrounded by a barren social and environmental milieu, she found little comfort.
The forest in the neighbouring Capilano Indian Reservation provided Wendy with solace and an anchor in the natural world. Through these experiences, Wendy acquired a deep concern for the alienation and loneliness she encountered in suburbia and cherishes the memories of the forest in an almost shamanic way, as a place she could revisit at will.
Wendy will discuss some of the challenges of the sustainability debate, including the radical responses often demanded when seeking sustainability, along with new means of alignment and attunement with the natural world. Remembering how the voice of Nature soothed her as a child and how later it helped her self address critical ethical issues as a planner, Wendy now asks how we can give voice to” the softest voices” of nonhuman or greater-than-human Nature in the planning of communities and suburbs. Her memoir, mid-life initiatory journey and some innovative community engagement processes resulting from her explorations may provide food for thought – or even guidance – for others in planning and the land professions. |
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