Farewell

Throughout this course I have been blogging about concepts taught in this course as well as interesting issues that arise from class discussions and seminar activities. I’ve noticed that throughout my blogs I’ve always complained about this and criticized that but without looking at the positive aspects of these issues. I had a negative attitude towards a lot of the issues because as soon as I would see a problem with it I would start to look for the other problems and find that there are many problems! I would focus so much on these problems that I wouldn’t even notice the achievements or other positive outcomes.

Apart from the knowledge I gained from this course, this course has taught me to look at issues through different frames. The blogging experience helped with this as well. Mentality, background, beliefs, etc all contribute to the development of a person’s frame of mind and how they view things. With my mentality I personally did not enjoy some concepts taught in this course though I had to learn about them whether I liked it or not and I actually started to especially open my mind to these concepts that I didn’t like. I kept questioning these concepts/issues to try and find a way to “like” them or at least bear them. This made me become more critical and also more accepting to issues that I personally may not agree with. Being critical has indeed opened my eyes and has allowed me to have new perspectives yet I still constantly question things and don’t necessarily “believe” or “accept” them. As you will see in all my previous posts I asked many questions and will probably continue to always ask questions. What can I do I’m just a curious person!

I feel like I do not have any major reoccurring themes in my blogs. Maybe just the concept of health in itself is the main reoccurring theme throughout my blogs... ok, and the criticism of Canadian policies! I feel like in every blog I had a different theme like Canadian healthcare reform, or the knowledge levels of Canadians, or the misinterpretations of the definition of health. Going back and reading my blogs made me think of how judgemental I was towards issues that I may not have completely understood. I have indeed opened my eyes now to why things are the way they are. There are positive and negative aspects to everything and I have to learn to see both areas and not just focus on one.

Before I end this last blog i would like to talk about my blogging experience. On the first day of this course when we were told we have to blog I was not looking forward to it at all! I’ve never blogged and I just never had an interest in blogging, I never imagined I would ever blog. I have to say though this has been one of my favourite experiences in a course. I mean come on; we get to write whatever is on our mind (as long as it relates to the course). I thought I wouldn’t have anything to write about in my blogs but as soon as I would start a sentence I kept going on and on and found that I would be done the blog within 10 minutes! Overall I think blogging has been a great experience and I might actually want to create my own blog in the future. Perhaps a blog that has recipes of traditional dishes from the country I come from with pictures and information about the ingredients used. By the way this might be weird but I always take pictures on my phone of food that I make. Finally, I’d like to thank you all for reading to my blogs!

Community doodling??

Throughout this course I have been ranting in my blogs about the concepts we have learned and always looking at the negative aspects of them such as the problems associated with the Canadian healthcare system. As this is my last blog, I will demonstrate to you that I’m not THAT fussy and I will address an issue I learned about this week with a positive outlook.

In this week of this course we learned about healthy human development. Healthy human development is not achieved if people eat their vegetables everyday but rather many aspects of their everyday lives including their quality of life. Quality of life means for a person to have not only a healthy well being but also the well being of their societies.

An interesting concept that was discussed in class that reflects quality of life is the community design charette. I’ve never heard of this before but what happens is that members of the community get together and actually construct an image of what they want their communities to look like. They actually draw what they want to change in their community, for example, if in the community there is a certain landscape that consists of an empty green space, the members of the community can draw a park in that area to make this space useful to the members of the community.

I think this an amazing idea! I mean members of the community can actually say, or shall I say draw, what they want in their community. I think this is a great way for the people of the community to have their voices heard. Also, actually having a physical representation (that people can look at) that shows exactly what will be changed is more effective for members of the community so they can know exactly what will happen rather than have a written document on a paper that may not be descriptive and therefore people might not fully understand it and accept it.

When creating community design charettes, different members work on different aspects such as housing, infrastructure, neighbourhoods, and transportation. These different categories are a balance of social, cultural, and residential needs that synergistically affect quality of life. These charettes also provide a great representation of the community since the community members are the ones who dictate the changes that need to be made in their communities. As Jane Jacobs said in the clip watched in seminar, people are living sedentary lifestyles today. If communities make efforts to provide more access to parks, sidewalks, bike routes, supermarkets, etc., members of the community can perhaps have an increased quality of life and ultimately healthy development.

As Jane Jacobs said: "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."