Meanwhile, 750 miles down the road...

I loves me some serendipity.

This week, Mayor Bratina responded to The Hamiltonian's 'Perspectives Virtual Panel: On The Best Place to Raise a Child' by referencing a Bloomberg Businessweek article noting Virginia Beach, VA as one of the best cities in which to raise a child. (Truthfully, some wires have gotten crossed; I can't find the article the mayor cited; this one is 'America's 50 Best Cities'.) The city has certain commonalities with Hamilton; here's its Wikipedia page.

But I'm not posting this op-ed to flog one of the cities I'm currently visiting. This post is about a local VA Beach issue that should resonate with Hamiltonians. Here are the opening paragraphs of the Virginia Pilot article 'Virginia Beach hunts for best use for preserved land':

For more than a decade, city officials, conservationists and nature lovers have coveted the last major swath of undeveloped land along the Lynnhaven River, a 117-acre plot called Pleasure House Point.

They cringed when developers announced plans to build 1,000 homes and condos on the environmentally sensitive site, sighed with relief when the project - known as Indigo Dunes - failed, and celebrated when the City Council in March agreed to buy the site for $13 million.

Now they've got to decide what to do with it.

Here's a great aerial map of the area from the Pilot article.


Here's the City of Virginia Beach's site page for the area, known as 'Pleasure House Point'.


And finally, here's a wiki for the Pleasure House Point Stakeholders.

I wonder sometimes about the potential of the Internet's capacity to share. Specifically as it relates to governance and community activism. 

There is no accomplishment in re-inventing the wheel over and over again. In fact, great leaps forward tend to take what's already been learned and utilizing it. 

Is this what happens as a matter of course at City Hall?

Perhaps more importantly, is this what happens within community activism?

I probably need to clarify: I'm not talking about the odd councillor having the initiative to learn about other cities around the world, to glean independently from the experiences of their councils, and to try to inform the general day-to-day activity of their colleagues at 71 Main Street West with this acquired wisdom. I'm talking about a protracted strategy of networking, I suppose. Looking past Hamilton's borders for insight and innovation. 

And I'm not talking about the handful(s) of energized community activists in Hamilton who make the most of the resources at their fingertips, the efforts of whom anyone at the margins of involvement are aware. I'm talking about something far more concerted, something that would, to put a fine point on it, have a Hamilton Neighbourhood Associations entity hooking up with corresponding organizations in Ontario, across Canada, throughout North America...and the world. 


Many other online participants' primary frustration seems fuelled by an 'Us vs Them' mentality. (Though I'm sure this would anger its supporters, I even see this in the push for term limits, and I certainly see it in casual references to the current Council.) My frustration lies with the unacknowledged and/or under-utilized potential of what has come to be known as 'the commons'.


This newspaper article and the issue it focuses on points up how, in some communities, the concept behind 'the commons' is more readily being tapped into. 


Don't you think it's high time for Hamilton to take its place amongst these communities?






M Adrian Brassington