October 14, 2014

How does a community deal with historic marginalization?  In London Ontario, “don’t go east of Adelaide” is a phrase ingrained in people’s minds and hearts.  At the University of Western Ontario, staff and students at student services actually take a map of London and draw a line down Adelaide street and tell their students not to go there!  One city has done a fabulous job of changing that:  http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/how-to-attract-artists-to-a-down-and-out-neighborhood/380894/

What I’d like to know:  who are the individual that got the “buy-in” from all the key stakeholders to begin this process.  The Old East Village in London has also done a great job, but still hasn’t been able to get all key stakeholders to engage!  Every city in North America seems to have a neighbourhood or two which it has marginalized.  We need to get rid of the “us and them” and change this!