Perry Goldsmith (President) & Theresa Beenken (Vice President)
I’ve just returned from a great trip out to Vancouver to meet with our head office team. I lived in Vancouver for 8 years working for both the Contemporary Communications division of the company and then the NSB, and enjoy every opportunity to return.
Every time I fly back into the city, it’s a reminder of how beautiful it is – the mountains, the water, the green, green grass and trees. This time of year is especially lovely as the flowers are fully in bloom and the morning air is so fresh.
While I was there some of the team went to see Larry Beasley speak. Larry is world renowned for his focus on building sustainable cities and helping Vancouver attain top tier status as such.
I noticed the influence of his work as we travelled the city for meetings – Roof gardens, green walls, welcoming sidewalks, protection of those incredible mountain views…all these things and more make Vancouver a loveable liveable city.
Beasley understands the value of language and imagery in making his case. Here are some key takeaways from Beasley’s approach to developing sustainable cities that I believe have value for building great organizations from a human perspective as well:
- The form has got to suit the people, the environment, the circumstances, the tradition. You have to think of the city as a body – everything has to work well together.
- You want as many linkages as possible – you want many connections. Smart cities will find a way to express themselves through great cultural institutions linking up with a network of world culture. It is with your cultural works that you have the most vivid opportunity to use the magic of design to make the truly expressive, provocative and evocative statements about your city and its people.
- You need: diversity, intensity, vibrancy and humanism. Development intensity brings things close together; the right balance of activities and uses means the whole arrangement is mutually supportive; and community infrastructure, along with a good dose of amenities, glues everything together and makes the place liveable.
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Success is dependent upon peoples’ individual commitment and dedication to the place; their investment; their contribution; their passion. Tomorrow’s urbanism will be about happiness and contentment, the challenge of ideas as people come face-to-face with one another, the nurturing that comes as different types of people become acquainted, the economic dynamism that is the inevitable result of our concourse together.
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Dream about success and share it with others to make it happen. “I can think of no better way to think about the future than to dream about it, and then to share those dreams; otherwise you stay within very constrained limits. And so I commend to you today to dream wildly: to go beyond, to try to push beyond the obvious and to let your mind soar like the great birds in the wind.”
– Larry Beasley
Larry Beasley
Tags: connections, Contemporary Communications, diversity, environment, humanisn, intensity, Larry Beasley, National Speakers Bureau, NSB, Perry Goldsmith, Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Organizations, Theresa Beenken, Vancouver, vibrancy
