Hi #smartcommunity friends! And welcome to our second #mobilitymay episode. In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast I have fantastic talk with Dan Hendry. Dan strives toward promoting sustainable initiatives for the Limestone District School Board & Loyalist Township and involves himself in many community-based projects. He is a social innovator, facilitator, mentor, and communicator and focuses his energy and efforts on making Kingston in Ontario, Canada, a sustainable, liveable & Smart City. Dan starts off by telling us about his background in sustainability and his current work specifically in transit based projects, what a Smart Community is to Dan, and his passion for sustainability, innovation and leaving the world a better place. Dan then tells us about his amazing work teaching teens how to ride city transit and linking the school and transit systems together, and we then discuss the value of that education for people and the community. We then talk about the importance of normalising the concept of transit and different transit behaviours, before Dan explains how data helps him to educate in the projects he works on, as well as the web of benefits that data helps to visualise. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trend of the climate change crisis and the need to take action on this issue. As always, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• Dan’s background in sustainability and current work, specifically in transit based projects
• What a Smart Community means to Dan
• His passion for sustainability, innovation and leaving the world a better place 
• Dan’s amazing work teaching teens how to ride city transit, and linking the school and the transit systems together 
• The value that teaching people how to use city transit brings to people and the community 
• The importance of normalising the concept of transit and different transit behaviours 
• How data helps Dan to educate in the projects he works on, and the web of benefits that data helps to visualise 
• The emerging trend of the climate change crisis and taking action on this issue 

Quotes: 

“[Smart Communities] is that combination of tech, people policy, and [the ability to] continually adapt and utilise these things.”

“We have to do things smarter, maybe the earth wasn’t just made for us, maybe other animals matter, other species matter. When we’re seeing decline in the biosphere and different extinction rates [it makes me] think that we have maybe not built everything the way we could have or should have.”

“My passion is sustainability, innovation, making things better, the best we can with the knowledge that we have, and not being scared of that. I’m really driven by not just change, [but] if it makes sense, let’s do it. But really [driven by] sustainability and leaving the world in a better place”

“Diversity is king in the natural world, a diverse system is a strong system. And when I think of Smart Communities, making sure we get a lot of voices there to make sure we have better systems [so communities are] more reflective of the group that we’re serving.”

“Since 2012, I’ve been teaching and training grade nine [students] how to ride city transit for free. So they get it for free all through the summer. And I bring out things and point out things like volunteer work they can do, or their first date or getting to school, it’s about a to b, it’s not about a bus, it’s about a to be freedom, involvement [in the] community.”

“[Data] helps us tell the story, analyse it, look at it in different ways. And that’s really helped us, because I can talk to different people in different ways. So [for example] if we’re talking about health, I can say, you’re more likely to get your daily physical activity, I think it’s about 64% more likely, if you take transit.”

“The climate crisis is something that should be in every conversation. We have [about] 7.78 billion people, we’re mammals, we require food, water, clean food and water [that is] not polluted. And the size of the biosphere says it wasn’t made just for us.”

Links: 

Dan’s TEDx talk – Throwing our Car Culture Under the Bus 

Dan’s Website 

Connect:

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Dan via LinkedIn or Twitter 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community  

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital