Our January Open Meeting looked at home energy and retrofit from a YoCo standpoint – thinking both of the existing communities around the site and the potential new buildings which will be there.

What can we all do right now to make our own homes more comfortable and more affordable to heat?

What are the processes and skills involved and how might we explore beyond what we can individually do, to think about the kind of jobs which home energy and retrofit might create?

And how might this point to the sort of homes which should be built on York Central, and who builds them?

YoCo’s Community Plan for York Central responds to the extensive My York Central engagement with the local community, which emphasises a local economy which is based upon Community Wealth Building and a community made through exchange. What do these terms mean, though, and how are these ideas connected? How might this version of York Central differ from other visions of commercial development on York Central?

What mix of activities and environment creates life in cities? What economic framework enables citizens to take part in creating the living heart of their own city?

By Jane Hustwit, YoCo

Growing up in the 1950s, I adored classic American musicals. My favourite was South Pacific. One phrase from that has never left me: “If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”

Why am I thinking about this now? Because I watched a remarkable documentary recently called “Planet Local: A Quiet Revolution”. This viewing was a happy three-way coincidence, involving at its heart, radical thoughts and actions designed to redress the balance between global and local in our modern lives.

It started with York’s splendid York Festival of Ideas…

The power of collective action - Imelda Havers reports on the recent ten-day “Together we Can” online summit led by the Transition Together network. This is the latest iteration of the Transition Towns movement set up some years ago to get momentum and ideas around creating sustainable, resilient towns and neighbourhoods. From humble beginnings it is now a worldwide movement, and the summit was both celebration and think-do forum for grass roots systemic change to meet the challenges of social and economic inequality and climate change….

How do we start with the local community and expertise from here and elsewhere in the city, and create a place where people really live, work, learn, and play together, and where we make the most of the connections between these varied activities…

How do we think about places in a really holistic way – not simply about homes or workplaces or public space, but about how the places in which we live our lives – cities and neighbourhoods – accommodate the activities we want and provide the quality of surroundings which help make our lives rich…