Sunday, March 6, Vancouver closed the public consultation phase. During nine months, everyone in the world equipped with an internet connection could contribute to the project of Vancouver Greenest City on the website talkgreenvancouver.com. Since June 2010, this site has been explaining precisely the 10 long-term goals adopted by the City Council of Vancouver, that you know very well now :

1.Green economy 2.Climate leadership 3.Green buildings 4.Green transportation 5.Zero waste 6.Access to nature 7.Lighter footprint 8.Clean water 9.Clean air 10.Local food

On this website, about 3 000 users put marks (one to four stars) to the proposed concrete actions, commented them but also proposed new ideas. 95 ideas were posted online and about 30 of them have been chosen to be on the Final Action Plan that will have to be approved in late spring by the city council (which has already approved the 10 goals on January). But this was not the only way for the different urban actors to involve. The phase of public consultation began with a "Pecha Kucha" (powerpoint presentations of five slides) event, where everyone could come and present his ideas for a greener city of Vancouver.

Then, many events were organized during the whole phase of public consultation. About 3 700 people participated. I took part in the last events, during the last days before they close the phase of public consultation. The first one was a workshop about the Zero Waste long-term goal. About 40 people, almost exclusively professionnals from the waste management sector, discussed about the concrete actions proposed by the city, in groups of 7 or 8 people. The new ideas were comunicated to everybody. The second "small" event was a "webinar" (from "web" and "seminar"), which is to say a web conference. Two people in charge from the Greenest City team (Amanda Mitchell and a colleague of hers) explained the 10 long-term goals during half an hour, and then we could ask any questions.

Finally, on saturday march 5th, an "unconference" was organized as last event of the phase of public consultation. They called it "unconference" because the 200 participants became active. After a speech of the Mayor of Vancouver, Mr Greg Robertson, volunteers could propose a topic of debate and talking concerning sustainable development in Vancouver (so not only about the actions already proposed). These volunteers were mostly managers of start-ups but also inhabitants, students or other professionnals. They had slots of about 30 minutes to animate the talking, by groups (6 or 7 debates were happeing at the same time). I had never seen so much enthusiasm. Many projects (creation of a dictionary of green terms in several languages, creation of games encouraging people to be eco-friendly, projects of actions in neighbourhoods...) were exhibited and their initiators could find people to help, advise, or just ideas to revive them. I saw more exchanges of visiting cards than there are fast foods in Vancouver...

These public consultations have several interests, among which the most important is to attract businesses and help their development by creating a network of green companies. The goal is also to convince inhabitants of Vancouver, to get closer with them (we must not forget that there are municipal elections at the end of the year). And, generally speaking, these events enable the municipality to communicate on the project. I think that it is one of their best assets : they communicate very well and know how to explain the merits of their approach.

They are just realizing a survey about who participates to the public consultation. For now, they don’t really know who participates to the events. But they try to reach every range of the population, especially by considering people who don’t speak english. Radio and television are used and they also have "cultural ambassadors". Actually, they found out that the worries from lower classes are the same as the other classes, like safety.

To reach every range of the population, they chose to go online because it enables people to participate from home without moving. People can participate at any time of the day, it’s not just one day at one time when people may not be available. "About the public consultation, it was all about going where the people are. And people are on facebook and twitter", twitter "is an amazing tool" according to Amanda, who manages the Greenest City accounts of facebook and twitter. "Our problem is more that too many people want to help and get involved and we don’t know what to do with them" she says, proud. The web tools also humanized the city thanks to feedbacks : they could ask people what they thought about an event or anything, and people appreciate that. Eventually, they use web tools to reach younger people because "it will be their city", while they still use classic way of communication like mails to reach the older part of the inhabitants. A model of communication that could be diffused...

See you soon, Be green, Ben