I'm going to start off this blog by saying that I hope that this doesn't come off as just a bunch of my thoughts scrambled together.
I want to talk about downtown communities. Not any certain city in particular, but just simply downtown of any city. Perhaps I have just thought of this most recently as I'm living in a downtown "community" for the first time.
We have been speaking in my sustainability class about measuring how sustainable a community is. I find that downtown of any city is a strange place to consider a community and here is why. When you think of any downtown, think of the people you see there when you're walking through. You see people of all walks of life. You see people of all different races. Of all different ages. Of all different interests. Mostly I believe this is because downtown has a lot to offer to everyone from shops, restaurants, offices, shelters,churches, clubs, libraries and schools to name a few.
The downtown of any city is the perfect mix of everything the city or town has to offer. So how could you measure how sustainable a downtown community is when it has so much. Perhaps it needs to be measured in a smaller scale.
I think of where I live and I can hardly consider it a community for many reasons I won't bother to discuss. However I think of my building alone and start to wonder how my building couldn't be considered a community all on its own. How can anyone really define a community when there are so many communities of all kinds, everywhere. If I were to measure how sustainable my community (i.e. downtown) is compared to all of Victoria. I would be that you would see results that vary greatly. Especially given how cities measure their sustainability.
Unfortunately that's all I have for now and I'm hoping that I can shine a little more light on this and make some more sense of it!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Heritage Building Conservation
Most tourism sites for the City of Victoria, BC list the same things; good restaurants, nice hotels, fun activities and beautiful sites to see. When deciding if Victoria was really the right place for me there was something I noticed that immediately stole my heart. You might notice that these sites have a tendency to boast about Victoria’s abundance of heritage architecture. Rightly so. In my opinion.
Not long after moving here I noticed that Victoria, in fact, does have a lot of heritage architecture. Living in the downtown area I see lots of old architecture, but I have also seen something that’s not always common in other cities. In downtown Victoria there are two buildings in particular that have caught my attention. These buildings are old heritage buildings that are being rebuilt on the inside while the old exterior of the building is being maintained the way it is.
The preservation and construction of these buildings is funded by the Victoria Civic Heritage Trust which was established in 1989. This organization was established with a mission of promoting heritage preservation. They do this by sharing some of the cost of restoring the building through grant programs. There is another organization that funds the preservation of heritage houses through the same system. This organization is the Victoria Heritage Foundation.
Since land development has such detrimental effects on the environment this is possibly one of the best solutions, given that the buildings are available and suitable for the project in mind. In a sense it’s like these buildings are being recycled. Preserving them not only maintains their beauty, but saves yet another block of land from being developed on. Less building materials are needed as well which prevents the need for more consumption. This is one act of sustainability that I have noticed within my community. It is not often noticed, but these companies should be praised for their efforts to sustain what already exists.
For more information on the two organizations named above please see www.heritagevictoria.org
Heritage Organizations. (n.d.). Victoria civic heritage trust and Victoria heritage foundation. Retrieved January 13, 2008 from www.heritagevictoria.org
Not long after moving here I noticed that Victoria, in fact, does have a lot of heritage architecture. Living in the downtown area I see lots of old architecture, but I have also seen something that’s not always common in other cities. In downtown Victoria there are two buildings in particular that have caught my attention. These buildings are old heritage buildings that are being rebuilt on the inside while the old exterior of the building is being maintained the way it is.
The preservation and construction of these buildings is funded by the Victoria Civic Heritage Trust which was established in 1989. This organization was established with a mission of promoting heritage preservation. They do this by sharing some of the cost of restoring the building through grant programs. There is another organization that funds the preservation of heritage houses through the same system. This organization is the Victoria Heritage Foundation.
Since land development has such detrimental effects on the environment this is possibly one of the best solutions, given that the buildings are available and suitable for the project in mind. In a sense it’s like these buildings are being recycled. Preserving them not only maintains their beauty, but saves yet another block of land from being developed on. Less building materials are needed as well which prevents the need for more consumption. This is one act of sustainability that I have noticed within my community. It is not often noticed, but these companies should be praised for their efforts to sustain what already exists.
For more information on the two organizations named above please see www.heritagevictoria.org
Heritage Organizations. (n.d.). Victoria civic heritage trust and Victoria heritage foundation. Retrieved January 13, 2008 from www.heritagevictoria.org
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