With financial support from Infrastructure Canada, the Centre for Urban Research and Education is studying the City of Ottawa’s pilot Neighbourhood Planning Initiative as a case study. The purpose of the study is to examine the roles of municipal government and voluntary organizations in promoting and facilitating community participation in decisions about local infrastructure. As part of this study, we have developed a research approach, undertaken many roles and activities and have attempted to document and disseminate our collective learning.
Research Approach
The Centre for Urban Research and Education’s approach to the Neighbourhood Planning Initiative case study involves several key questions, issues and priorities.
Questions
CURE set out to address the following overarching questions as part of our case study on the City of Ottawa’s Neighbourhood Planning Initiative:
- How do local governments and communities build decision-making capacity and facilitate learning?
- What is the substantive and symbolic value of community engagement?
- How is the tension between engagement, learning and project momentum managed?
- Can infrastructure provide a model for civic engagement in other areas of local decision-making?
Issues
Building on these questions, CURE is exploring a number of case-study issues:
- Degree of community involvement
- Power and control
- Representation and accountability
- Desirability of outcomes from the pilot
- Community capacity/resilience
- Civic engagement
- Utility to planners
- Horizontality (City)
- Sustainability
Priorities
Our approach to this case study on the Neighbourhood Planning Initiative is to:
- Learn something, develop relationships, and to help solve problems.
- Emphasize the participation and influence “local knowledge”. Local knowledge” emphasizes people’s assets, needs and capacities based on their experiences or understanding of a ‘place’ or ‘community’.
- Acknowledge that complex challenges cannot be solved with a few people, looking at a few issues. Engaging communities, cities and Councillors can result in more useful and relevant research findings and lead to more effective planning and policies.
- Aspire to make the research process as positive as possible so that, in the long-term, all stakeholders can contribute to social change and to building stronger communities.