Time to build our cities differently
Community design and development runs much deeper than appearances
If you live in a Canadian city, it is part of your life.
A new apartment complex going up across the street, renovations happening the block over, banging and clanging through the day into the night. But while all of us are affected by the seemingly endless barrage of building, community design and development across Canada is a worryingly closed process.
What is the problem?
For one, our cities are being built according to the interests of the wealthiest. Not only do developers have an oversized influence in shaping our communities based on their own economic interests, participation in public consultations on development is greatest among high-income residents.
Accordingly, only one in 10 community members feel that local development reflects what they want, with the majority believing it instead reflects the wishes of developers and big money.
Particularly lacking are the voices of visible minorities, Indigenous persons and younger Canadians, all of whom participate in community planning at lower rates than the general population, and are less likely to see their cultures in the community.
While some may think of community design and development primarily as issues of esthetics and annoyances, it runs much deeper. The building of physical spaces is a start point for the building of relationships and bridging gaps in society.
If built environments fail to reflect the people living there, all attempts at relationship building are jeopardized. The message sent is that one is an outsider, whose identity and culture are not worth considering in local decision-making.
If society’s goals include reconciliation and creating enduring attachments to our cities and neighbourhoods, existing processes for community design are inconsistent with what we aim to achieve. And the damage is not just to people and relationships.
The weaker someone’s connection to an area, the less likely they are to care for the local environment. This contributes to street disorder, like litter and graffiti, which in turn lead to increased criminality and community degradation.
Most of us can agree that we do not want this, but we are setting ourselves up for it when only a few have a say in community design and development. So, what needs to be done? The first measure is for you: get involved.
Notices of community consultations and city council meetings are available on your city’s website. Be prepared with the points you want to make and evidence to support them.
It takes energy and initiative, but you must at least speak out to be heard, and currently most Canadians do not provide their input on local development.
The second is for community organizations: mobilize and organize.
Community organizations can play a critical role by activating their networks and providing tools — like letter of support templates, fact sheets, and shareable graphics — to empower community members.
This maintains engagement as planning drags on, generates discussion, and educates the local population, which is particularly important when a lack of information is a main reason given for not participating in development consultations.
The third is for policy and process makers: mix it up. Public participation is bureaucratic, standardized, and inflexible, done more as a formality than to fully engage the community.
Planning should include proactive outreach to organizations and individual actors seldom involved in the design process, rather than just passive notifications that only attract the usual players.
Building our cities is the starting point for building so much more. Unless the process is improved and more people are involved, we are losing out.