The Planning City

6.0 Conclusions and Future Directions

This survey of Canadian and international urban planning practice has identified areas of commonality as well as divergence in the complexity and scale of planning challenges, and the capacity to respond. We can draw several conclusions from this review of urban planning practices.

Urban Sustainability: Understood, but Elusive

It is clear that sustainability is a goal that is embraced and sought by cities in Canada and overseas. It is also clear that sustainability is an elusive goal for many cities, particularly in the developing world where basic needs must be met before contemplating true sustainability.

Similar Urban Sustainability Challenges

Cities around the world must contend with the local impacts of global economic trends, such as protectionism, free trade, and globalization generally. Social issues such as health, disease, literacy and safety are common to cities in Canada and overseas. Environmental issues such as potable water, waste management and air pollution are increasingly complex and require immediate attention.

The Issues and Solutions are Linked

The review demonstrates that social, economic and environmental issues and solutions are inextricably linked; it is not possible to address one to the exclusion of the others when planning cities. Issues and solutions are inter-connected and must be integrated. Further, political jurisdictions are usually quite arbitrary and have little relationship to ecosystem, societal or economic sustainability.

Beyond Government to Governance

We cannot rely on the public sector by itself to address these complex challenges. The advent of intra- and inter-sectoral partnerships and the application of their combined resources represent a realistic response to the sustainability challenges. Other forms of partnerships can include a range of disciplines and stakeholders, from residents, to scientists, to senior government decision makers. It should also be noted that communities – local governments and citizens - are setting the agenda and acting from the “bottom-up” to achieve home-grown urban sustainability solutions when senior government s cannot (or choose not to) act.

Capacity-Building is Essential

While the challenges are significant, many cities have made very substantial efforts to achieve urban sustainability. The principles of urban sustainability are well understood. What seems to be lacking is adequate resources and institutional capacity, including sustained political will and commitment. The local contexts for achieving environmental sustainability vary tremendously between urban regions in OECD and developing countries. One important issue is the absence of effective institutional systems necessary to enforce a culture of good planning, especially in many cities in the developing world.

Collaboration, Empowerment and Integration

Finally, we can identify three over-arching themes associated with the response to planning and management by practitioners in Canada and internationally. Planning practice has made progress towards integration on three main fronts: 1) collaboration 2) empowerment through knowledge and 3) integrative planning: policy and implementation.

6.1 Collaboration

The cases and experienced discussed in this paper demonstrate that collaboration is a leading and rather fundamental trend when planning sustainable cities. We define collaboration in this context as having three related and complementary elements: partnerships and strategic alliances; participation; and consultation and outreach.

Partnerships and strategic alliances have arisen as a response to several issues associated with the inability of single agencies to cope with complex problems. Instead, it is understood that joint efforts hold the promise of synergies as well as more efficient and effective responses. The classic model has been that of the business experience, where partnerships and alliance are well-established. More recently, we see similar arrangements occurring between public sector agencies (e.g. Alberta municipalities), between public and private sector organizations, and between public, private and not-for-profit bodies coalescing around an issue of mutual interest. The possibilities and permutations are endless. The chances for success are high provided there are mutual benefits to be gained, and power and resources, as well as benefits, are equally shared among the partners.

Participation is a fundamental part of sustainability decision-making. In North America, there have been expectations of participation by the public in urban planning processes since the late 1960s. Most important, we see a decided shift away from technically-driven decision-making processes, to approaches that are more inclusive. Instead of elite-oriented processes, we see much more room for consultation and meaningful participation. This is a pattern that has evolved over the past 30-35 years in North America. Urban planning issues affect multiple publics with multiple and diverse interests and positions. Planning decision-making must respect and involve, in a meaningful fashion, these stakeholders. Enlightened planners understand that participation upstream in planning processes leads to better decisions supported by consensus.

There is a continuum of participation models and styles, starting at one end with processes that are essentially information sessions with minimal opportunity for meaningful participation by the public, to full and meaningful participation by the public at the other end of the continuum. Sustainability encourages something closer to the latter end of the continuum, on the assumption that a rich and robust dialogue with multiple stakeholders will enhance our understanding of complex urban issues, provide insights regarding solution possibilities, and generate buy-in to implementation decisions.

While this more advanced and inclusive model of participation is generally well-established in most of Canada, the United States and Western Europe, we see varying levels of participation in the developing world. This is a reflection of established cultural tradition and expectations as they are reflected in decision-making roles and powers. Generally speaking, a complete approach to sustainability implies that the community and its residents and stakeholders have the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to decision-making processes.

This takes us to the third and related point in this discussion: consultation and outreach . It is necessary but not sufficient to make opportunities available for stakeholders. Traditionally, urban planners have met statutory requirements to advertise a planning issue and hold a public meeting to discuss it. While meeting legislated requirements, this approach clearly falls short of meaningful consultation. This traditional strategy seems to have been replaced by more comprehensive consultation programs in response to expectations of accountability and transparency in government decision-making.

Further, we argue here that a more aggressive strategy is required to reach out to marginalized and disenfranchised members of our communities. These people may be immigrants with a limited command of the language; people who are afraid of, distrust or simply have no experience with authority figures, urban planning and sustainability planning; and people who are uncomfortable with or cannot easily access public consultation processes. Planners in Canada's large metropolitan, multi-cultural cities have years of experience in outreach programs that include multilingual staff and information published in several languages. The use of advanced communications tools, such as internet-based information and feedback sites, will improve consultation processes. Other complementary strategies can include facilitated workshops, design charrettes, visioning exercises, advisory committees, and joint community-city task forces on sustainability issues.

While these are important and valid responses, the real challenge lies in establishing and maintaining a continuous relationship based on trust and mutual respect and mutual learning between planners and diverse publics – transactive planning, as Friedmann (1973) would call it, shared decision-making and collaborative planning, as Healey (1998) terms this process. Urban planners need to avoid episodic contacts with stakeholders that are project-based. Instead, we call for a sustained community presence through kitchen meetings, neighbourhood site offices, and “walking the beat” by planners.

6.2 Empowerment through Knowledge

In the previous sub-section, we established the need for meaningful participation in urban sustainability planning activities. Here, we explore how planners and stakeholders – indeed, anybody with an interest in urban sustainability – can become empowered. The key to empowerment lies in enhanced access to and use of information. We consider empowerment through knowledge generated and communicated by three means: use of new technology, research, and monitoring and evaluation.

New technologies , particularly the internet, have been used as important tools for outreach, education, receiving community feedback on planning issues and proposals, and for researching urban trends. Technology has also been an important component of tracking and managing data through database software, geo-referenced analytical systems such as GIS, and automated permitting systems, to name a few. These tools are empowering because they provide wide, fast and generally unobstructed access to information sources. If managed properly, information consumers can become knowledgeable citizens and thus better equipped to challenge, as well support, urban sustainability planning initiatives.

There is rarely a lack of information on sustainability and urban planning matters generally. However, there are issues of equity of access to the technology that must be addressed; contrary to conventional wisdom, we are not all wired to the internet. Many community residents cannot afford or lack the levels of literacy required to use these advanced information technologies. We therefore must address the bifurcation between the information technology “haves and have-nots” in our communities. Further, while there is plenty of information, there is a need to selectively interpret, order and place into context this information. There is also the very real problem of misinformation leading to misunderstandings, faulty assumptions, and inappropriate decisions. Clearly, research programs are enhanced by information-supportive technologies. Urban planners can scan reams of information, reports and data with minimal cost or time delays. Planners and stakeholders can access information on best practices, innovations, and problems encountered when planning sustainable communities. Information can be exchanged, and the knowledge base enhanced through continuing research efforts that build upon related work.

Finally, we see increased interest in monitoring and evaluation of urban sustainability efforts. Monitoring refers to the regular and continuous tracking of trends and patterns that are based on a foundation of indicators – quantitative data and qualitative information. Evaluation comprises the assessment and analysis of these trends with the intent of determining progress (or otherwise) in policy, program or project activities. Cities want to know whether and how sustainable their development is. Sustainability reporting has received considerable attention over the past decade with models developed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, in association with Environment Canada (Sustainable Communities Indicators Program), the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Quality of Life Reporting System, and the path-breaking research by Maclaren (1996a, 1996b) on sustainability indicators. At the municipal level, we see innovative work in Canadian cities such as Hamilton (Vision 2020), Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. The challenge is to integrate monitoring and evaluation processes as fundamental elements of sustainable urban planning.

6.3 Integrated Planning

This takes us to the third part of the urban sustainability planning triad: integrated planning. In this paper, we have demonstrated that sustainability cannot be dealt with in a piece-meal fashion. Sustainable urban planning requires multi-pronged approaches that are based on an understanding of the complex and dynamic inter-relationships between social, economic and environmental systems.

Planners have made progress towards integrated planning in several ways. Starting with problem definition, as evidenced in approaches to housing and homelessness, brownfield site development and land use intensification, planners define problems in terms that simultaneously address more than one issue. By defining the problem in such as way that recognizes the inter-sectoral relationships between the factors contributing to the problem, solutions are more easily crafted in ways that simultaneously address different factors. The Province of Ontario, City of Cambridge, and cities of Vancouver, Montreal and Quebec City are leaders in this regard.

For example, the traditional approach to homelessness that only addresses emergency food and shelter provision has been grossly inadequate. However, by considering the economic factors at play in the provision of affordable housing, an effective homelessness planning strategies includes both social and economic supports for the homeless and economic and policy tools and incentives to develop physical affordable housing infrastructure. The examples from Saskatoon and Winnipeg come to mind here.

Integrated planning in this context also calls for the coordination and of different disciplines, professions, and organizations. As the cases in this paper demonstrate, the individual and cumulative impacts of economic, societal and environmental issues require collaboration and meaningful integration of efforts. This can be supported through organizational structures such as project-based teams, staff secondments and exchanges, and cross-appointments among organizations. Examples here include the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) from South Africa, the Integrated Urban Community Planning and Development Project in Port of Spain, Trinidad, watershed planning in Ontario, and the Vancouver Region Growth management initiative, among many others.

Further, integrated planning means ensuring that sustainability issues, in all their complexity and richness, are considered at the outset of planning and decision-making processes. This trend has already been introduced through the discussion of the definition of “environment.”

Environment, in some planning and management processes, is now defined to include the biophysical, social and economic elements, thereby allowing for conceptual integration. This has been achieved by “up-streaming” or moving consideration of environmental matters earlier in the decision-making process. Public involvement processes are also being implemented earlier and throughout the planning and management processes. This ensures that integration has a better chance of occurring through early consideration of alternatives and before decisions are made and become entrenched.

Recent conceptual developments around sustainability illustrate this move toward integration. Gibson (2000) has developed seven principles of sustainability to guide practical applications. These include: integrity, sufficiency and opportunity, efficiency, democracy and civility, precaution and long-term integration. The Sustainable Europe project uses a model that “defines sustainability as consisting of four dimensions: social, economic, environmental and institutional (institutional includes not only organizations but also mechanisms and orientations). This is described as the prism of sustainability” (Spangenberg 2004).

Finally, we note that urban planners have started to make the critical transition from thinking about sustainability, to implementation and action. Planners are learning about sustainability by facilitating, monitoring and evaluating policies, programs and projects that bring the concept of sustainability to life. They are learning through experimentation.

6.4 Findings

In this paper, we have identified the importance of three themes when considering and acting upon urban sustainability: collaboration, empowerment and integration. We turn now to what requires attention to support sustainability.

Collaboration

Identify and make room for stakeholders with an interest in, and whose interests may be affected by, urban sustainability planning
Establish and maintain partnerships and strategic alliances, on a multi-sectoral basis, to address complex sustainability challenges
Create and implement, on a consistent basis, consultation programs that provide opportunities for meaningful participation in decision-making processes
Reach out to community stakeholders who are marginalized or disenfranchised, yet have perspectives to offer and information to share about planning issues

Empowerment

Make communications technologies easily accessible to community stakeholders
Make research findings more accessible and easily exchanged. For example, national statistical data should be more affordable
Educate and orient stakeholders and decision-makers about the concepts of sustainability and sustainable urbanization
Integrate monitoring and evaluation as a fundamental part of sustainability decision-making processes

Integration

Acknowledge the inter-relationships that exist between economic, societal, environmental and institutional variables
Incorporate sustainability issues and objectives upstream in decision-making processes
Further efforts to research inter-relationships to better understand agents, mechanisms and processes that work
Design organizational structures to facilitate integration of different disciplines, professions, and actors.

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