Dear Colleagues and Friends of Gaining Ground,

As you may know, The 2011 Gaining Ground conference, Massive Collaboration—Stories That Bind Us, is cancelled; but other Gaining Ground events and program options are flowing in to replace the conference as we have known it.

The reasons for the first news won’t surprise you: the economy is troubled (funders and sponsors are more constrained by diminished budgets) and at the same time the market is increasingly competitive (attendees with limited time/capacity/money are facing an exploding array of sustainability-related events to choose from).

Last, sustainability has moved—even in the short six-year/seven-conference history of Gaining Ground—from an outlier to a mainstream/practitioner concern; and frankly, it may be time for a different class of events—not to mention the staggering trade in information online—to inform and inspire people.…which thought brings me to the three program initiatives we are currently planning.

Ecological City-Making
Through the good offices of BCIT School of Construction and Environment (another longstanding Gaining Ground sponsor and partner), and BUILDEX Vancouver, Gaining Ground has created a one-day conference/workshop embedded in BUILDEX Vancouver, Canada’s pre-eminent construction/development/design industry trade show at the Vancouver Convention Centre West on February 8/9, 2012. These two 1.5 hour workshops will feature keynote presentations by two of the most important thinker-practitioners in urban sustainability: Richard Register of EcoCities and John Knott of the Noisette Project and CityCraft. Their presentations will be directed to interested members of the Buildex audience and to Metro-area practitioners and industry partners in a number of relevant fields. Please visit http://www.buildexvancouver.com/register.htm

V-2—Vancouver Beyond Vancouverism
We are currently in the process of creating a workshop for policy, economic development, business, organization, community, and academic leaders to work out a strategy to assist Vancouver to emerge as North America’s leading urban sustainability living laboratory.

Vancouver, during the decades of Vancouverism—that remarkable urban design creative release—became the place for the study of the best new expression of North American urbanism. Over the years, the intellectual pilgrimage has been extraordinary and the impacts, including financial, have been enormous.

V-2 argues that it’s now time for Vancouver to extend and amplify the arc of Vancouverism beyond urban design and planning into deep green urbanism; and that North America is looking for an exemplar, a champion city, to consolidate the possibilities and practices of one-planet urbanism. A discussion paper on this subject, written by Gaining Ground former conference moderator Rob Abbot and me, follows this note. V-2 will be hosted and sponsored in part by the Real Estate Foundation of BC and, we are hopeful, the Vancouver Economic Development Commission and others. Read the discussion paper.

Massive Collaboration: Stories That Bind Us The Book
Everyone who has read the 2011 Gaining Ground conference title, Massive Collaboration, gets it. Urgencies of every kind—environmental, economic, social, political, climate—are intensifying. More and more people are recognizing that the ecological agenda is, in fact, a social justice/social equity agenda—across the planet and across time and generations to come.

It had been the intention of the now-cancelled 2011 Gaining Ground conference to explore the complex subject of social narrative, and to try to develop strategies and tools for expanding the culture of mutuality and common purpose.

The conference planning team believes that the topic is crucial, and that if we can’t have a conference, we can still hold the conversation. So we are planning a ‘book’—likely, an online expression—that will gather the thoughts, in text and spoken presentation, of many of the extraordinary speakers who were originally intended to enrich the conference.

If you are interested in any or all of the above events or initiatives, or if you wish to bring other matters to our attention, we invite you to contact:

Gene Miller, Director of the Centre for Urban Innovation, 250-514-2525 gene@gaininggroundsummit.com or info@gaininggroundsummit.com

Nikki Smorodin, Manager, Conference Relations, 250-858-4600 nikki@gaininggroundsummit.com.

You may also want to visit this website for updated event activity.

With gratitude for your interest in this work,

Gene Miller