The conference has ended, the booths have been taken down, the speakers are heading home. All that remains are the reflections, the calls to action, the manifestos.
Stephen Rees has written a lengthy piece on the GCAT recommendations released at the conference, particularly around public spaces and public transit.
Volunteer Corey Burger’s account of Day One, particularly the afternoon session we were both at around ethical purchasing. No mention of BOB, the SPP, or the CBA….
Moura Quayle has written an account of her participation in the conference and surrounding events. She also concentrates on the release of the GCAT report.
Guttersnipe has a roundup of the first day’s major speakers including the mayors of both Portland and Vancouver plus Paul Hawken and someone from one of Oregon’s most famous companies, Nike.
The conference also had an official blog on WordPress.com which includes a lot of the comments that were made on Twitter.
PlanningPool.com had a couple posts including this summation of the keynote given by Paul Hawken, sustainability visionary, on day one.
Translink scored an interview with a speaker from New York’s Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Kahn.
One last account of Day One, by Kristina on Therapy for my Sustainable Soul.
That’s enough for now, more reflective pieces will undoubtedly emerge. Hopefully all the talk leads to some action, the Green Inner-city Cluster is committed to bringing urban agriculture to the inner-city of Vancouver and will soon put out an official call for support.
Followup on the ethical purchasing workshop – Corey Burger said,
November 12, 2009 at 8:17 am
[...] Greening the Inner-City has picked up on my blog post on the ethical purchasing workshop. He correctly takes me to task for not mentioning the Community Benefits Agreement that was put in place as part of the Olympic Village construction. It had some truly amazing results, training more people than originally planned with a great retention rate. It is a good example of where a city can leverage a large amount of money into large benefits for not only the local community but also the businesses, as they are getting more trained construction workers which are always needed in this part of the world, bust or no bust. [...]