By David Dyck

First community summit will address Vancouverites’ growing “isolation” from each other

A crowd of approximately 250 people gathered last week at the Westbank Woodward’s Atrium in downtown Vancouver for the launch of the SFU Public Square. The new initiative is part of SFU’s President Petter’s “engaged university” strategic vision.

September’s first annual Community Summit will tackle what Petter described as “isolation and disconnection” between Vancouverites as its first topic. According to Petter, the public square will include a public forum at the Orpheum, a youth camp, a mayors roundtable, and a film festival, among other things.

“As a community, as a society, it seems that we don’t get together often enough these days. Blame it on the car, blame it on the suberbs, blame it on the myriad options we now have to distract and entertain ourselves. It seems that in our enthusiasm to find the ever better ways to go it alone, we’ve lost some of the institutions and practices that are essential for us to work together,” said Petter in an address to the audience.

Petter referenced research from the Vancouver Foundation, in a report entitled “Connections and Engagement, a survey of metro Vancouver” released last week. “Building on that research, the summit will seek to stimulate public interest and encourage discussion and build strategies that promote action on isolation and disconnection in the urban environment,” said Petter, stating that he hoped it would bring people together to “answer the very problem it seeks to address.”

“I think that there have been many times in our own province that it’s been easy to fall back on positional politics rather than doing the really hard work of listening and collaborating together to find solutions,” said Shauna Sylvester, the executive director of the SFU public square.

Also present for the event was the President and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation, Faye Wightman. Wightman spoke of some of the survey’s findings, including the fact that 70 per cent of those polled have never had a neighbor over to their house, or that two thirds of participants do not have a close friend outside of their ethnic group.

“People told us that they increasingly feel that they are living in silos, separated from each other by language, by age, by culture, by ethnicity, by income, and sometimes by geography. . . . A retreat into ethnic enclaves and increasing civil malaise and indifference,” said Wightman. “This isolation and disconnection hurts us personally and it hurts our community. How can we possibly address the complex issues that we’re facing in our community like homelessness and poverty if we’re isolated, disconnected, and indifferent?” she asked.

The survey, which polled 3,841 people across metro Vancouver, also found that fewer people are engaging in neighborhood and community activities, and that it is difficult to establish new friendships, especially for those living in basement suites or apartments.

SFU student Jenni Rempel attended the announcement with her Semester in Dialogue class of approximately 20 students as well as their teaching team.

“I think SFU was already a really community engaged university so now we’re just taking another step and making that clearer and more accessible for people, which I think is cool,” Rempel told The Peak.