A group of Jasper residents gathered at the Activity Centre Nov. 5 to help form a vision for their town.

Consultants left the session with workbooks, completed by the approximately 75 participants, containing input about visual cues, physical locations and Jasper’s community vision statement.

Elisa Campbell, director of the Design Centre for Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, started off the evening with a presentation on how to ensure that people will still be happy to live in Jasper “20, 30 and 40 years down the road.”

It’s important to consider each of the three pillars of society – environmental, social, and economic factors – but what’s better is to make decisions in ways that positively affect all of these areas at once. “Sustainability is when you get that win-win-win,” Campbell said. “It’s integration. For instance, what can we do on the environment side that benefits the economy and social issues?”

At this early stage in Jasper’s planning process, the town is looking at visions, principles and themes. Later will come goals, objectives, indicators, strategies and actions. Campbell also introduced “lenses”, or categories into which issues fall, such as land-use, efficient resource use and recreation, culture and well-being.

Following Campbell’s presentation, participants were divided into groups which rotated through three stages.? The first stage was vision and principles, in which everyone was asked to comment on the town’s present vision statement.

The second was asset mapping, where participants wrote about locations in town that are either positively or negatively significant. They also showed their top three most significant places using stickers on a map.

The third stage was visual cues, in which members looked at photos of places in Jasper or elsewhere, designed to prompt a discussion of the key challenges facing Jasper.

Attendees filled out a workbook at each stage.

Working group chairman Ron Hooper said he was pleased to note this was the first sustainability planning session for about a quarter of the people in attendance.

“The feedback I’ve received is that people arrived, were engaged challenged to provide information,” he said. “There was frustration expressed with the workbook on visual cues, people would have liked to have an architect explain to them what was in some of the photos.”

Participant input will be taken into consideration when the Working Group plans future initiatives. “As indicated, we’re trying a variety of techniques,” Hooper said. “We’ll be sitting down and doing a review of what sessions to do again.”

The next workshop is currently set for Nov. 25 but the date may be changed to avoid a conflict with a local fundraiser. The updated schedule will be announced as the date approaches.