North America's First Slow City

The small village meets the prerequisites of the slow city movement: pedestrian walkways, no big box or chain stores, a population of less than 50 thousand.

"A village in British Columbia has scored a North American first by becoming something called a Cittaslow, or Slow City. A Slow City is an offshoot of the Slow Food movement; it's a sort of quiet resistance to fast lane, drive-thru homogenization. The seaside town of Cowichan Bay, north of Victoria on Vancouver Island, doesn't have a single fast food restaurant in sight. As Don Genova reports, the villagers want to keep it that way."