November 2010

November 2010

Connecting the Youth

If you want to get a pulse of the future, just talk to the youth. This was another positive step in connecting inspiring ideas to the Inspiration Lakeview vision.

City of Mississauga staff from the Strategic Community Initiatives division led 350+ secondary students from Cawthra Park’s LEAP Program (Leaders Empowering All People), John Cabot’s Green Team, Port Credit and St. Paul's through a wide ranging presentation about the potential for waterfront development in Lakeview. Then we turned the tables – and turned the ideas over to the youth.

After many, many, many conversations, we asked the youth to write it all down. Their ideas, their dreams and their reality, not ours – and how they would get behind their waterfront.

It’s All About the Ideas

Students from St. Paul's Catholic High School went so far as to model their ideas and dreams for Lakeview. Mr. Mondelli's grade 11 and 12 class produced models to show what they wanted to see on the site.

We received 100s of postcards from the students depicting their ideas that covered everything from: affordable condominiums, environmentally-friendly mini malls with distinct food outlets, underwater art displays, markets for locally-grown food, open spaces for theatre and music, an interactive boardwalk, wind-activated sculptures, a skate boarding park, a statue in the water affording all with a panoramic view of the City culminating with four windmills out in the water to represent a change in environment – from the “Four Sisters", the towers of the former power plant to the four windmills of the future.

They too, got behind their waterfront.