Resilience Requires Transition (Itch #4)

When busy rescuing others or looking for others to rescue us, we miss the opportunity to renew ourselves.

Rescue is Not Resilience (Itch #3)

Rescue embodies resilience only when the rescuer takes action the rescued can’t do for themselves (and wants).

Choices to Enable Our Emergency Response-Ability (Itch #2)

Six ideas and eight suggestions to improve a community’s ability to be proactive, responsive and response-ABLE as the scales of emergencies grow.

Scales of Emergency Response (Itch #1)

I had an “allergic reaction” this summer to some language people around me are using to invite climate action: “be a first responder.” And so, I sit and write as a means to scratch the itch. What I found: As the scale of emergency grows, the ability of community to be proactive, responsive and response-ABLE becomes imperative.

Civic Practice, Be the Best Citizen You Can BeBeth SandersSeptember 2, 2021First Responder, work, Civic Practice, Climate, EmergencyComment

“I Never Imagined You Know So Little”

6 questions to ask at any time in your career, in Beth’s address delivered to the Master of City Planning graduates at the University of Manitoba, June 2021.

Civic Practice, Be the Best Citizen You Can BeBeth SandersJune 24, 2021Graduation, workComment

Social Habitat Competencies

Let’s release the binary ways we define city planning practice and grow our relationship skills (for the official and unofficial planners out there)

Civic PracticeBeth SandersMay 28, 2021Social Habitat, Relationship, APPIComment

Cities and Citizens are Perpetually Unfinished

Nine practices to see, acknowledge and respond to our uneasy world.

Civic PracticeBeth SandersMay 21, 2021Civic Practice, TransitionComment

The Older Person I Want To Be

As Mother’s Day approaches, I want to be more aware of how my behaviour erodes the growth of younger people in my life, especially when I am feeling challenged, hurt, or left behind.

Be the Best Citizen You Can Be, Civic PracticeBeth SandersMay 7, 2021Civic Practice, Third Act, GenerationsComment

What I Asked the Mayor

I put this question to Alberta's big city mayors Don Iveson and Naheed Nenshi, last week: What do you now know about your city that you didn’t know before you were mayor?

Civic PracticeBeth SandersApril 19, 2021Simple question, MayorComment

Care Out in the Open

Protection feeds my fear of other humans. Being neighbourly feeds my desire to connect with other humans

Prescribe AND Enable

In my quest to figure out how planners and everyone else in the city can work better together, I’ve learned the magic of finding the minimal critical structure that enables new possibilities.

Art of Hosting, Civic Practice, My WorkBeth SandersMarch 24, 2021Art of Hosting, Facilitation, city makingComment

Let’s Exercise Our Inquiry Muscles

Improving our cities requires us to be in a better relationship with ourselves: our intentions, actions, and the consequences of our actions.

Civic Practice, Art of HostingBeth SandersMarch 12, 2021Inquiry, improvement, Feedback, feedback loops, IntentionComment

City Making With Women

How a speaking engagement shifted from “city building for women” to “city making and women.”

Civic Practice, City MakingBeth SandersFebruary 16, 2021city making, city building, city caring Comments

City Life is Recalibrating

Should you cast your vote based on who your city government needs to be, or who you want them to be?

Civic PracticeBeth SandersFebruary 8, 2021cities, Citizens, Integral City Voices, business, community organizations, community, electionComment

Cities: A Practice of Mutual Agency

Mutual agency fosters sovereignty in self and others and enables a generosity that seeds our regenerative future.

Civic Practice, WorkBeth SandersJanuary 25, 2021nest city, agency, mutual agency, work, Civic PracticeComment

8 Ways I Engage in City Life

Choose when to be oblivious, a spectator or an active part of efforts to improve. (Note: You don’t have to be everything at once.)

Start Meetings with Good Listening

Most meetings involve getting to the meeting, having the meeting and then leaving. We pay little attention to how we arrive or how we leave; we zip in and out. This business as usual practice minimizes our attention to the topic and people at the meetings we attend and what we can accomplish.

Civic PracticeBeth SandersDecember 2, 2020check-in, circle, Community, engagement, Art of Hosting, FacilitationComment

Sovereignty is Necessarily Disruptive

What I did not say to her: when you exercise your sovereignty he is not going to like it. He will find the new you disturbing and destructive to his sense of self and he will do everything he can to claw you back into that place that is unhealthy for you–-even while telling you he loves you and supports you.

Civic Practice, Art of Hosting, Cities as Survival SkillBeth SandersOctober 28, 2020Power, Sovereignty, Harm, Power imbalanceComment

Are We Aiming to Fix or Improve?

The energetic pattern of a gathering, both in how we design them ahead of time, or the dynamics during the gathering, need our constant attention. One of the ways I keep an eye on things is to ask: are we aiming to fix or improve?

Consuming Consumption

Here’s what I experience: when I use economic goods with a fixation that feeds my cravings and compulsions, I create the conditions for my own wasting away. I experience a pull away from self; I distract myself from myself.

Cities as Survival Skill, Civic PracticeBeth SandersOctober 23, 2020cities, citizens, work, consumption, consumeComment

Nine practices to see, acknowledge and respond to our uneasy world.

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