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The purpose of this paper is to identify the value of the arts play in public spaces in replicating a contemporary commons.

The study is an exploratory investigation which uses a case study of cultural events in public parks – the Vancouver Parks Board’s fieldhouse residency program (2012-2015). The study uses content analysis of the social media sites created for these projects to identify how the sites and the cultural events were valued by stakeholders and participants.

The paper finds that, in combination, the park events and the social media discussion of them function as a form of the commons, in which new urban communities are formed or defined around specific common social interests.

The paper finds that, in combination, the park events and the reflective engagement prompted by the social media discussion of them function as a form of the commons, in which new urban communities are formed or defined around specific common social interests.

It is anticipated that cultural programs will increasingly interact with common public places.

The study supports the increased use of and recognition of public places as culturally significant.

The study aims to encourage the expansion of arts and cultural policy and programs to incorporate common public places.

A global pandemic, non-occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a completely preventable public health problem, which receives limited air time. This study has dual purposes: to contribute to scholarly literature that puts non-occupational NIHL on the global priority map and to effect change in the City of Vancouver's policies toward noise.

Experts in public health and hearing health were contacted in addition to a scoping literature search on PubMed. Information pertaining to both developed and developing countries was obtained, and comparison was made to Canada where possible. The authors met with elected officials at the City of Vancouver to inform them of the win–win aspects of policies that promoted better hearing.

Non-occupational NIHL is an underappreciated issue in Canada and many other countries, as seen by the lack of epidemiological data and public health initiatives. Other countries, such as Australia, have more robust research and public health programs, but most of the world lags behind. Better hearing health is possible through targeted campaigns addressing root causes of non-occupational, recreational noise – positive associations with loud noise. By redefining social norms so that soft to moderate sounds are associated with positive values and loud sounds are negatively attributed, the societies will prevent leisure NIHL. The authors recommend widespread national all-age campaigns that benefit from successful public health campaigns of the past, such as smoking cessation, safety belts and others. Soft Sounds are Healthy (SSH) is a suggested name for a campaign that would take many years, ample resources and sophisticated understanding of behavior change to be effective.

A gap exists in the collection of non-occupational NIHL data. Creating indicators and regularly collecting data is a high priority for most nations. Beyond data collection, prevention of non-occupational NIHL ought to be a high priority. Studies in each region would propel understanding, partly to discern the cultural factors that would predispose the general population to change favorable attitudes toward loud sounds to associations of moderate sounds with positivity. Evaluations of these campaigns would then follow.

Everyday life for many people around the world, particularly in cities, is loud. Traffic, construction, loudspeakers, music and other loud sounds abound. Many people have adapted to these loud soundscapes, and others suffer from the lack of peace and quiet. Changing cultural attitudes toward loud sound will improve human and animal health, lessen the burden on healthcare systems and positively impact the economy.

Industries that create loud technologies and machinery ought to be required to find ways to soften noise. Regulatory mechanisms that are enforced by law and fines ought to be in place. When governments take up the banner of hearing health, they will help to set a new tone toward loud sounds as undesirable, and this will partially address the root causes of the problem of non-occupational NIHL.

Very little public health literature addresses NIHL. It is a relatively ignored health problem. This project aims to spurn public health campaigns, offering our own infographic with a possible title of Soft Sounds are Healthy (SSH) or Soft Sounds are Sexy (SSS). The study also aimed to influence city officials in the authors’ home, Vancouver, and they were able to do this.

This paper aims to present an interpretive case study in education for sustainability (EfS) that applies VanWynsberghe and Herman’s (2015, 2016) adaptive education as pedagogy. Dewey’s theory of behaviour change is applied to educative experiences based on habit disruption and real-world learning, leading to creativity in the formation of new habits. The programme presented inverts dominant conceptions of knowledge to design innovative sustainability pedagogy. Instead knowledge resides alongside experience, cases, intuition, advice, experimentation and dialogue in the individual and collective effort to address daily sustainability challenges.

The paper reports on the outcomes of an interpretive case study (Merriam, 1998) of a higher education programme in sustainability pedagogy. It presents a series of reflections by instructors and participants in discussing the programme’s relationship with the core themes of habit, disruption, creative action and dialogue framed within the five features of adaptive education: stakeholders, real-world learning, off campus, transdisciplinarity and non-traditional rewards.

Through this examination, the authors found that adaptive education offered a pedagogy that simultaneously addressed the need for increased sustainability knowledge, whilst inverting its dominance. As a long-term project, the extent of the programme’s impact will be evident beyond the programme’s completion.

This interpretive case study is analysed through high-level conceptual and theoretical aspects of the pedagogy rather than the particularities of the case. By putting the centrality of knowledge into question, the authors are advocating for a more experimental role for higher education in its teaching and learning. These questions are broadly applicable.

There are research, learning and social benefits to this programme. Adaptive education builds capacity for future leaders and educators of sustainability.

The paper concludes with a discussion for further theorizing and research on adaptive education and EfS in higher education. This research will contribute to broader discussions of the evolving role of education in sustainability.

We conducted a narrative analysis of a collective narrative comprising inscriptions left on the locally famed “Apology Wall,” written by thousands of community members in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot. In considering the Apology Wall as an “evocative object,” this study emphasized the significance of material objects as meaning-making devices. Interpretation of themes was conducted through a constructivist lens, specifically guided by literature concerning meaning-making following negative life events. Results bolstered the significance of the Wall as a sense-making device that provided a forum for the community to collectively share positive emotional expression, construct solidarity and collective identity, and express desires for restoration. By studying this collective narrative, the study not only illuminated how those affected constructed meaning after the Vancouver sports riot, but it also contributes to the literature on how communities, in general, make early sense of and respond to destructive events.

This paper describes the sustainability partnership between the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia (UBC) and, in particular, the co-curricular Greenest City Scholars graduate student internship program, which has been developed by the two organizations. Through the program, UBC graduate students work on projects at the City that help to advance sustainability targets. The paper aims to explore the successes, challenges and lessons learned from the program.

This case study uses literature and document review, observations, program participant evaluation surveys and project impact survey feedback.

The Greenest City Scholars program model has contributed to the sustainability goals at UBC and the City of Vancouver and has supported the partnership between the two organizations. The program has grown over its five-year history and is considered to be a central part of the partnership. Breadth of student participants from across the university and high participation from City departments have been achieved. The model is now being adapted to be delivered within other partnerships.

The experiences presented in this case study can help other higher education institutions understand how a co-curricular graduate student work experience program could help to bolster their own sustainability partnerships.

This paper makes a contribution by providing insight into the use of a graduate student program to advance the goals of a university–community sustainability partnership.

This chapter is about the politics of surveillance and more specifically about the politics of siting public closed circuit television (CCTV) systems within urban neighborhoods. Through an exploration of political contests waged around attempts by local police to install public surveillance systems in the City of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and Granville Mall districts, we argue that the success of public surveillance proposals is hardly inevitable. Instead, a combination of local factors play vital roles in variously supporting or constraining such attempts. Although this present chapter can be read as providing a useful counterpoint to the dominance of accounts about such developments in Great Britain, where public CCTV is a routine fact of daily urban life, we conclude on a cautionary note: with the current proliferation of public and private forms of surveillance throughout urban spaces, surveillance analysts risk missing the forest for the trees if we only concentrate on the fate of one surveillance tool or tactic.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

In concert with an ambitious national agenda that emphasizes free trade and globalization, lncheon Metropolitan City is taking the first steps toward reinventing itself to become a twenty-first century “Pentaport” with integrated Seaport, Airport, Technoport, Business Port, and Leisure Port components. The lncheon Pentaport transformation-projected to be complete by 2020-will entail significant industrial, sociological, and institutional modification. Leisure Port objectives can be achieved through responsible planning attuned to the ideal of sustainable development and by empirical studies of lncheon tourism and leisure dynamics. International benchmarks of leisure port success are found in Sydney, Australia; Vancouver, Canada; and San Diego, USA, among seven other cosmopolitan cities. Growth estimations for coastal ferry passengers; beach use; recreational vessels and yachts in the lncheon region are encouraging. lncheon Leisure Port development of ten amenity destinations will require equal and multidisciplinary attention to questions of tourism design and tourism impacts. Important issues will concern environmental quality, clean shipping practices, the proper balance of modem and traditional amenities and attractions, trade-offs of cultural homogeneity and cultural diversity, and creative destination branding and marketing, among others.