The Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health has added a new member to its team.
Leith Deacon is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph dealing with Rural Planning and Development. He joins Gateway as their new Research Chair of Rural Resiliency.
Deacon explains rather than using the old definition of resiliency as a way to bounce back, he sees it as a recognition of new opportunities and moving forward and evolving.
He says to do that, there are four key areas he believes a community should focus on.
“First would be social resiliency, ensuring that all of your social planning, social services, that social safety net, are all adequate and appropriate for the community. The second would be economic resiliency and that would be getting into your small business, your downtown economic opportunities,” said Deacon.
“The third is environmental resiliency, ensuring that your green space, accessibility to nature, clean water, all of that stuff is appropriate and adequate for the area. And the final, ensuring that proper policy and plans are in place to ensure whatever it is you're trying to achieve is possible,” added Deacon.
And he suggests a community can have the best of intentions in trying to create a green community, but if they don't have policy in place to enable that, it won't happen.
