Documentation
Many links to texts, documents and articles of interest regarding the 5th Citizen Summit thematics are provided under each section, in order to understand more throughly the numerous issues the city of Montreal and its citizens are facing.
THE 6 CITIZEN SUMMIT THEMATICS
1) Environment; 2) Social justice, inclusion et citizenship; 3) Urban planning; 4) Economy; 5) Culture; 6) Democracy
1) ENVIRONMENT
The Centre for City Ecology (CCE) is a Toronto based think tank largely influenced by the writings and activism of Jane Jacobs. CCE administers and sponsors Jane’s Walk in Canada and internationally.
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to reshaping cities, towns and villages for long term health of human and natural systems. Our goals include returning healthy biodiversity to the heart of our cities, agriculture to gardens and the streets, and convenience and pleasure to walking, bicycling and transit. We visualize a future in which waterways in neighborhood environments and prosperous downtown centers are opened for curious children, fish, frogs and dragonflies. We work to build thriving neighborhood centers while reversing sprawl development, to build whole cities based on human needs and “access by proximity” rather than cities built in the current pattern of automobile driven excess, wasteful consumption and the destruction of the biosphere.
2) SOCIAL JUSTICE, INCLUSION ET CITIZENSHIP
• Montreal, a racism-free zone
Participate in the fight against racial discrimination and social exclusion by signing the petition. This fall, the petition will be presented to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO as a demonstration of our desire to fight against racism. Each individual commitment helps to make Montréal a racism-free zone.
• Let the people decide, by Josh Lerner
Josh Lerner, a leading North American expert on the Participatory Budget gives readers a useful background on what is happening in Canada. He is a Canadian completing his Ph.D, at the New School of Social Research in New York.
3) URBAN PLANNING
• Plan de transport de Montréal 2008
• Charte du piéton de Montréal
Planning Action is a Toronto-based non-profit, non-governmental urban planning and design organization. It is a group of urban planners, architects and activists who work with diverse communities of Toronto and strive to promote social and environmental justice, to democratize planning practices to foster greater participation and control over the creation and maintenance of the city. We can find publications and a lot of information about this group and their actions on their Web Site.
Imagine a plaza or town square bustling with people who are greeting each other, buying, selling, and exchanging ideas. For everyone striving to make public spaces better, PPS is that town square. Our vision is to act as the central hub of the global Placemaking movement, connecting people to ideas, expertise, and partners who share a passion for creating vital places.
Since 1975, we have worked in more than 2,000 communities in 26 countries around the world, helping people turn their public spaces into vital community places, with programs, uses, and people-friendly settings that build local value and serve community needs.
Parachuting cats into Borneo — Stopping the waste of people — Curitiba’s web of solutions — Faster travel without freeways — Subways on the surface — Simple, fast, fun, and cheap — When garbage isn’t garbage — No hunger pangs — A place for living — A symbol of the possible
4) ECONOMY
• Imaginer - Réaliser Montréal 2025
• Progressive Public Water Management in Europe
The experiences of Amsterdam, Grenoble and Vienna, among many others, show that progressive and efficient public water delivery companies in Europe can serve as models against the current trend of privatisation. Even good practices have to be adapted and developed further, however, as needs, priorities and circumstances may change.
NEF is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates
real economic well-being. We aim to improve quality of life by promoting
innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic,
environment and social issues. We work in partnership and put people and
the planet first.
Nombreuses publications disponibles sur leur site Internet telles:
Green Well Fair: Three economies for social justice
We cannot adequately address either the financial crisis or climate change
if our society is unequal and divided. In this pamphlet, nef calls for a
modern welfare system that can meet the challenges of environmental and
economic meltdown.
Seven principles for measuring what matters: A guide to effective public
policy-making
The seven principles in this report set out nef’s vision of what
government decision-making should look like if it is to be focused on
bringing about a more just and sustainable society – one that promotes
real well-being for all, in the most comprehensive sense.
• WSF has had a prophetic voice
Walden Bello has attended every World Social Forum. He is a senior analyst at Focus on Global South, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition and a professor at the University of the Philippines.As the WSF was winding down in Belem in Brazil, Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo spoke with Bello about his thoughts on this year's meeting.
• It is time to aim beyond capitalism
The World Social Forum has an urgent and crucial task: battling the social democratic response to the global crisis of capitalism now under way, and push for a democratic control of economy and state, says Walden Bello.
• New international financial institutions for a new global financial architecture, by Marcos Arruda
The labour movement’s response to the economic crisis.
The globalisation from above is met by a politicising or democratisation through globalisation from below channelled by transnational networks of social ...
5) CULTURE
6) DEMOCRACY
• Podcast: Dimitri Roussopoulos on the Military, Environment and Democracy!, by Dimitri Roussopoulos
All militarization has environmental consequences. All of which have little to do with democracy.
The other day, Montreal economist, writer, publisher and social ecologist, Dimitri Roussopoulos, took M/S on an amble through the four categories of militarization and environment, and its most undemocratic nature.
• The Right to the City, by David Harvey
Examining the link between urbanization and capitalism, David Harvey suggests we view Haussmann’s reshaping of Paris and today’s explosive growth of cities as responses to systemic crises of accumulation—and issues a call to democratize the power to shape the urban experience.
• Why Participatory Democracy Matters - And Movements Matter to Participatory Democracy, by Hilary Wainright
Hilary Wainright, editor of « Red Pepper » in England and member of the Transnational Institute, which plays an important role in the World Social Forum, wrote an exceptional article on participatory democracy and its meaning. She clears up confusion, especially vis a vis those who use the idea too loosely.
• Participatory Democracy, by Dimitri Roussopoulos
First published as a testament to the legacy of the concept made popular by the New Left of the 1960s, and with the perspective of the intervening decades, this book opens up the way for re-examining just what is involved in democratizing democracy. With its emphasis on citizen participation, here, presented in one volume are the best arguments for participatory democracy written by some of the most relevant contributors to the debate, both in an historic, and in a contemporary, sense.
• Public Place, by Dimitri Roussopoulos
Our cities drive citizens into privacy. Behind the closed doors of the home, the family, dog, domestic chores, television takes over and wraps us all away from our society. Yet the real world takes over once we step outside our front door. There are forces at work which determine every moment of our lives. What can we do?
• WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Challenging Empires, Second Edition
This comprehensive volume provides a glimpse into the wide-ranging discussions, debates and arguments which have gone into making the World Social Forum (WSF) one of the more prominent platforms of alternative ideas and practices in the present world. Building on the First Edition (published in India by the Viveka Foundation, New Delhi in 2004), this Second Edition has been revised and updated to include coverage of those Social Forums that took place as recent as the summer of 2007.
-- OTHER IMPORTANT LINKS --
VoteToronto is an independent, non-partisan community organization that is committed to protecting and enhancing Toronto’s quality of life and long term sustainability, by making political processes transparent, encouraging high quality, un-corruptible candidates to run for political office on a progressive, community-based platform, and holding politicians at all 3 levels continuously accountable for the long term good health of Toronto and its residents. Read more about VoteToronto and what we stand for in the About VoteToronto section.
Other interesting links are available on the website French page.
