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Posted Jan. 11/07
Think of the best neighbourhood you’ve lived in or visited. Chances are it had locally owned businesses, easy-to-access public transit and bike paths, pride in its heritage, thriving art and culture, well-lit sidewalks in good repair, and a character of its own.
- Chris Stoney chairs the Centre for Urban Research and Education. (Photo: Chris Strangemore)
Across Canada, the best practices of cities show that a place-based and collaborative approach to city planning — one that breaks through the isolation of jurisdictions and city departments and involves neighbourhood stakeholders in determining the future of their own neighbourhood — results in engaged, thriving and sound communities.
In Ottawa, a pilot project on neighbourhood planning was launched in 2006. The city wants to work collaboratively, internally and externally, to address the complexities in the physical, social and economic development of a city.
An Ottawa neighbourhood of 7,900 people of diverse incomes, ethnicities and cultures was chosen as the first of three communities — one urban, one rural, one suburban — for the project. With its diverse land uses, well-organized community and business organizations, and major road reconstruction work planned, the Hintonburg neighbourhood was an ideal place for the City of Ottawa to begin a collaborative approach to community planning of land use, infrastructure investments and services.
The Centre for Voluntary Sector Research and Development (CVSRD) — a partnership of the voluntary sector, Carleton’s Faculty of Public Affairs and the University of Ottawa — together with Carleton’s Centre for Urban Research and Education (CURE), is providing independent research to assist and evaluate the neighbourhood planning initiative. Funded by Infrastructure Canada, the Carleton project is seen as unbiased by city staff and community stakeholders.
- Paula Speevak Sladowski, managing director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Research and Development
“We are examining the role of community governance and involvement in local infrastructure,” says Paula Speevak Sladowski, managing director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Research and Development, “but how the city works across departments is also an important factor — is it a holistic approach?”
CVSRD and CURE have collected baseline data through online surveys on the perceptions of city employees to assess their interest and support in working collaboratively with each other and external stakeholders. Surveys of Hintonburg stakeholders — among them residents, service providers, business owners and non-resident users of services — measured perceptions of past planning, the relationship with the city, neighbourhood issues and future planning.
Students conducted research on the latest thinking and successful projects, gathering information, tools and resources to help with the neighbourhood planning project. The resulting papers cover strategies of city engagement, municipal planning structures, the history of the City of Ottawa’s community engagement, and evaluation tools and models. In addition to helping the city, these papers can be added to the repository of tools and resources that Speevak Sladowski hopes to make available to others.
“This project creates a community of practice of which networking and information sharing are a large part,” she says. “A public web site in the future would facilitate that.”
Through the surveys and a design evaluation workshop held with stakeholders, Speevak Sladowski has already identified the city’s needs for special outreach efforts to engage citizens who normally don’t participate in town hall meetings. The voices and needs of youth, isolated seniors, new Canadians and transient residents need to be heard and considered in neighbourhood planning.
“We’ve identified 12 groups of stakeholders from whom the city needs input for neighbourhood planning,” she says. “Through the evaluation process, we will be able to see the value of community input, and what difference it makes in the infrastructure outcomes.”
Chris Stoney, MA/89, chair of CURE, is particularly interested in how the city’s collaborative approach will affect local democracy. Since Ottawa sees neighbourhood involvement as a keystone of urban engagement, it is important to investigate whether it improves decisions about infrastructure and how effective a system it is.
“When cities create neighbourhood planning committees, they need to ask whether they are more effective than elected bodies,” he says. “There need to be mechanisms for selecting its members and for disbanding it when necessary.”
By tracking the city’s ability to engage citizens and the resulting effect on decisions of land use and infrastructure, the study, which wraps up in March 2008, will provide data and best practices to Infrastructure Canada.
“It is satisfying for Carleton to contribute to its own community. It’s part of our role as a citizen of the city,” says Speevak Sladowski. “If our work can also inform the planning and community involvement in other cities, so much the better.
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Fast fact…
The Centre for Voluntary Sector Research and Development encourages original and applied research on governance, management, policy, and emerging issues in the voluntary sector. It promotes and undertakes collaborative research and learning, encouraging closer cooperation between the research community and the voluntary sector.
The Centre for Urban Research and Education was started two years ago to bring together faculty and students with an interest in municipal issues and provide opportunity for collaboration of specialists on a project-by-project basis. The multidisciplinary network includes members from public policy and administration, political science, geography, journalism and communications, and the Sprott School of Business.