What goals do we need in order to achieve your vision for the City 10-20 years from now? Include up to five goal statements.

Reduce costs of Police department by shifting mental health problems of citizens to mental health professionals. Form a coalition of professionals to deal with mentally ill street people. Police need to catch criminals not deal with the paper work of mentally ill people.
Increase population density downtown.
Make riverfront a destination of shops and places to eat.
New concert hall
Build a major grocery store downtown !!!!! so you can get dry goods.

Yes I saw the CTV News video clip
and I give the city of London the green light
and I would like to see the Street KIPPS LANE get rename
to Damien Warner Avenue,I hope the purposal gets Approve very soon.

Move Goal: To have a convenient & efficient, environmentally-friendly multi-modal transportation system.

Green Goal: To promote environmental literacy to increase innovation & adoption of green initiatives among all residents and businesses.

Prosper Goal: To create an economic environment that encourages innovation and retains a high percentage of Western University & Fanshawe College graduates.

Live Goal: To remove barriers to residents' engagement in their meaningfull activities.

Grow Goal: To protect proximity of services and green space in urban development.

Create more 'uncut' where simple beneficial plants promote the health of our plants and trees.

Workshop-in-a-box:
Prioritize transportation method (platinum level cycling certification).
Mixed-use neighbourhoods (live/work), more types of businesses in the area, sense of community, encourage small stores (discourage big-box).
Create an environment that attract job creators.
Stop dumping raw sewage into Thames River.
30 % anarual area cover and 40% urban canopy cover.
Remove tax incentives for vacant commercial properties.
Designated zone for bikes.
Small commercial centre in each community.
More brownfield developments.
Establish better routes for bus.
Create incentives for energy efficient homes.
Spaces for Youth.
Develop river banks naturally.
Recognize culture and the arts as an economic driver and essential quality of life.

Workshop-in-a-box:
Zero based budgeting on actual needs.
Set aside funding for a ring road.
Invest in public transit.
Invest in multi-passenger lanes to improve movement.
Better zoning policies.
Celebrate London.
Promote 401 corridor.
Utilize student community and their hours.
Encourage residential building downtown.
Improve City of London website.
Public/private partnerships.

Live: We have to start thinking in terms of sustainability for all facets of life. Garbage collection could be twice a month coupled with a proper recycling program and green-bin solution. Unrecylable Packaging needs to be returned to the store/retailer who sold it, so that they in turn return it to the manufacturer. This worked in Germany: now packaging is all recyclable and has reduced costs for producers, consumers, and governments. More local shops and pedestrian walkways (i.e. Dundas from Talbot to Colborne) would increase enjoyment of the city. Look at Calgary's 8th Street or various European capital cities for thriving pedestrian areas that were former roads.

Move: The LTC is trash right now; needs to be completely scrapped and started from scratch. Continuous loops around major roadways (with transfers at intersections) with large busses and smaller busses going into subdivisions (where needed) is much more cost-effective. High-speed rail from Windsor to Quebec City would be ideal, making London a 1-hour trip to Toronto and the U.S. border. All of this would reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips. More bike lanes are also needed. (Hamilton Road east of Wellington currently under construction: why are there going to be large concrete barriers in the middle, which is room that could have been used for bike lanes?)

Green: Stop burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power for energy. Conservation efforts through renewable thermal (solar and geothermal) and using renewable electricity (solar and wind), in combination with hydro-electric from Ontario and imports from Manitoba and Quebec can sustain us.

Grow: No more urban sprawl!! It's as simple as that. We need that prime farm land for food production. Need to go back to the 100-acre farm (and make it affordable with help from provincial/federal governments) to have sustainable, local food production. Intensify the downtown core and other centres (for example, the dying malls like Westmount) with high-rises, while preserving our architectural heritage and history. (e.g. don't tear down 199 Queens Ave: it can be built into the new building with some innovation) Put condo/apartment building on top of malls to make the shops sustainable.

Prosper: Encourage local businesses by going to them first for government contracts. Encourage citizens to engage with local businesses before seeking outside the city. Local businesses are the engine, and when they suffer, we enter the type of recession we are in now, with mega-corps keeping billions in their bank accounts and out of the economy, and small business struggles to stay afloat.

JOBS = CARING = GROWTH

If there where more jobs available people wouldn't have to worry about next meal, paycheck or how going to pay the bills. With this stress lifted I am sure more Londoners would get involved in the community they live in!
Ban all temp. agencies so people have chances at real stable employment. Too many people being caught up in the 3 month cycle and out of work. People will worry about themselves and their neighbors before the city!

All city core businesses and residences should be required to adhere to the blue box recycle program.

Why is there no blue box program for the core area ?

bike or walk

million tree challenge

Less car use more biking

Lots of comments about rejecting urban sprawl. How about this... London should set a goal that the average COMMUTE is less than 30 minutes. This can be accomplished by limiting the size of the city combined with a more efficient transportation system.

The linked article (http://persquaremile.com/2012/08/22/commute-time/) is pretty persuasive. When people decide where to work and where to live they seem to be setting 30 minutes as the appropriate commute time.

London needs to establish Noise Level Standards to be considered in the development and expansion of the road network and the land use (zoning) along those roadways.

Folks may not realize the amount of 24/7 noise associated with major thoroughfares like Highbury, 401, 402, Richmond North, Oxford, Wellington South, Wonderland, Fanshawe Park Rd, etc. We need much bigger buffers between residential development and these roads just to accommodate the noise created by today's traffic.

I'm not sure whether there are standards in the Official Plan but when I think about the idea of expanding Fanshawe to 6 lanes I feel sorry for the folks living in those neighbourhoods.

London should build on the "Beck" heritage by leading in the development of Electric Car Charging Infrastructure and converting a potion of the City's fleet to electricity. We already have propane powered police cars and natural gas powered buses. We could work with parking lot owners, hospitals, Western, Fanshawe, etc. to set up charging stations for public use. I see no reason why we have to wait for Toronto to start down this road.

Here's an article about changes happening elsewhere. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/03/03/technology-better-place.html

And in case you were unaware - Sir Adam Beck (June 20, 1857 – August 15, 1925) was Mayor of London and a hydroelectricity advocate who founded the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.

In recent months there has been considerable press time paid to London’s role in agribusiness. But just as the city is emerging as a centre of this kind of activity, it can serve as a centre in many other ways, too.

London is the largest centre within an economic trading region of more than one million people. The city is a central clearing house for many social and health services. Despite this concentration, no reliable daily public transit services have been established between the city and its outlying communities. Areas like the Niagara Region and Chatham-Kent have acknowledged that it is crucial to provide regional transportation service. For London, it could mean a huge boost to the local economy and a consolidation of a regional identity for the area that’s wedged between two Great Lakes, and area that could potentially become the Greater London Area.

With regular public transit it becomes easy for skilled workers to live in Grand Bend and commute to London. A broader region provides many more attractions to draw future residents: access to world-class beaches and environmentally significant areas, for example, would appeal to both younger and older demographics. Easy access to a broader base of employment opportunity – and to consumers – would draw both employees and businesses alike. With a superb public transit system, artists, writers and musicians, who have been shown time and again to be key participants in revitalizing communities, would have a choice of affordable, appropriate living and working space. Providing a way for these creative people to easily connect with each other and to the facilities and institutions that represent them would help to create that critical mass needed to ensure a lively, vital arts community. For new bio-chemical businesses in Sarnia a regional public transit system would mean the possibility of developing internship or co-operative programs that would be feasible for those studying at Fanshawe and the University of Western Ontario to access. Conversely, such transport would provide a way for new agri-business within the city to be able to access workers living on-farm, not only keeping dollars earned within the local economy but keeping them sector specific and creating greater security for family farm-based ventures. A regional transportation system would make it possible for tourists to choose London as a well rounded holiday destination that provides access to area beaches and some of Canada’s best theatre.

Enhancing transit within the city by working out rail transport on existing lines at key travel times during the day would also create efficiencies and improve access for the city’s residents. It could be as simple as identifying four main stops along either the CP or CN railway system as urban stops and deploying bus services around those hubs.

A regional governing authority would likely need to also be developed to reflect the interests of the region. That in itself would be a daunting task. But those efforts do not have to come first to develop regional transit. Perhaps developing something like a regional transit system may be the way for our area municipalities to determine what sort of formal structure eventually needs to be put in place.

One of your questions is what makes a healthy city. Community engagement, is my thought. And to obtain this engagement there’s a need for better transitions between first, second and third spaces. For instance, many of the city’s community arenas are isolated from either commercial districts that offer diverse services or residential districts. The ice pad at the Western Fair is a good example of this, or the city’s soccer parks. Where are the areas where people can gather after a game or before? Where is the library that a parent can slip into while their child is at hockey practice? The coffee shop? Where are the community centres that nestle into neighbourhoods? They happen in some areas of the city but not in enough.

As for walking and biking, more barriers need to be removed between downtown and the river and the surrounding neighbourhoods. And where are the public greenhouses that could provide some great interior public space in the colder months?

While it is good to see London’s public art program begin to take shape, there have been many poorly conceived projects that seem to have been conducted with enthusiasm but with little sense of what makes for world class art. The metal trees in the city’s downtown, for example, are an embarrassment. The murals in Covent Garden Market should be removed. There have been some examples where the process worked – the mural on Citi Plaza’s on King Street is an example of a positive location. But where is the city’s sculpture garden where work can be displayed and changed throughout the year?

The development of the hospital lands will be key to encouraging the vitality of the city’s centre for future generations. But perhaps simply looking at residential development isn’t the answer. Is there a way that the city could work with UWO and/or Fanshawe to look at developing those lands to address the future needs of these very important institutions?

London's retail space allowance should be lowered to a sustainable 40 sq. ft. per capita to take into account the trend to on-line shopping, sustainable forms (not big box), accommodations for public transit, etc.