Slowing down

While I am in Europe this summer I will be taking a class titled Cities, Regions and Firms: The Role of the Global Business Environment and Local Economies. The second class I’m taking is titled Sustainability and Cities and will focus on the Slow Food and Slow Cities movements with a class project in a nearby town.

While both of these courses will be interesting, I’m most excited about learning more about Slow Cities (a.k.a. Cittaslow) and how the towns are choosing to approach each point in the charter. While it is great to learn about how larger urban areas work; I am really interested to learn how smaller towns are benefiting from having a thoughtful plan put into place.

From the Australian Cittaslow website (the official site is in Italian!) here are some of the main tenants of the Cittaslow movement.

A Cittaslow is one where the community chooses to:

• implement an environmental policy which nurtures the distinctive features of that town or city and its surrounding area, and focuses on recycling & recovery;
• put in place infrastructure with a focus on environmentally-friendly use of land;
• preserve the history of a region, the important buildings and historical locations and making sure they are identified, protected and maintained;
• encourage the use of technology that will improve the quality of air and life in the city;
• support the production and consumption of organic foodstuffs;
• protect and promote products which have their roots in tradition and reflect a local way of doing things;
• encourage learning about food and where it comes from;
• encourage a spirit of genuine hospitality towards guests of the town or city.

It seems like a good balance of preserving the past and taking advantage of current technology and I can’t wait to experience it in person.

Now, I just need to figure out how to slow myself down.