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Local Motives - A pilot program of regional appropriate economies

Carolyn Butts and Hans Honegger, partners in Bon Eco, are prime movers behind the Local Motives program.

The Local Motives program is currently centered on the Stone Mills Municipality of Lennox and Addington County in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Bon Eco a commercial establishment in the town of Tamworth, located in the Stone Mills Municipality.

Quality of life has much to do with how we inhabit a place and relate to each other. By studying the human component - settlement, heritage, demographics, immigration, relationships, conflicts and competitions - the objective is to discover how to make communities work again.

Traditionally, growth has been approached using retail ('downtown') oriented strategies. In a more holistic approach, communities are strengthened by undertaking regional cultural and economic development, aimed at achieving sustainable living.

Susan Gardner in Chapter Six of the excellent book entitled Stepping Up to the Climate Change Challenge: Perspectives on Local Government Leadership, Policy and Practice in Canada^[1], suggests that ‘cultural sustainability’, embracing “...such things like arts, history and heritage” is “...perhaps most accurately described as our community value system.”

She continues with: “It’s been suggested that without considering our culture as an integral part of the sustainability equation – by determining and defining community values – we are unable to understand and address the sustainability issues around the three other pillars. The bottom line is that if we don’t know what [are], in fact, the community values, we don’t know what is worth sustaining."

References

1. ↑ Municipal Knowledge Series, published by Municipal World (2008), ISBN-10: 0-919779-86-0, co-edited with David Noble