Integrated Community Sustainability Planning

1. Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Chris Ling Post-Doctoral Scholar Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development Royal Roads University

2. Integrated Community Sustainability Plans for Canadian Municipalities The development of a template to support integrated community sustainability planning

3. What is the template about? • Engagement • Reconciliation • Dynamics • Guidance • Integration • Tools and Techniques

4. Principles • Governance: proactive planning rather than reactive planning • Inclusion: early and full engagement of the community • Integration: linking sustainability and planning policy • Scale: moving beyond municipal boundaries and short term policies

5. The stepwise approach • Engage with the community • Understanding the place • Creating a plan • Implementation

6. Creating a planframeworks for development and change • What is the community vision? • Timeframe: long-term vision linked to short term cycles and goals • Scale: links to neighbouring jurisdictions, nested systems

7. Questions to consider • Are municipalities able to deliver integrated planning? • What barriers are there? • Does this template contain the right ideas, priorities and foci?

8. Two Case Studies • Prince George – medium sized industrial city • Queen Charlotte Village – Small rural community, recently incorporated

10. Prince George • Planned on starting ICSP process Winter 2007/2008 • Held up by ice jam • Now again on hold due to mill fires • Unlikely to advance significantly until after elections • Strategic and long-term planning: hampered by short-term crises and political concerns.

11. Positive signs • ICSP will be a major operating document for the City • Comprehensive multi-sectoral and inter-disciplinary approach • Degree to which plan will be overridden by significant and current political concerns

12. Concerns • What will the time scale for visioning be – currently undefined? • Is developing as a summary document of pre-existing policies - will the necessary cross sectoral linkages be created? • What will be the community engagement process? • Strategic and long-term planning of any sort always hampered by short-term crises and political concerns.

13. Queen Charlotte Village • Incorporated in 2006 • Need for control • Poor relationship with Regional District • Need for planning to address challenges • First order of business was Official Community Plan (OCP) – land use planning. • Then ICSP – started in spring 2007

14. QCV: Community engagement • Set up volunteer planning committee using open recruitment of volunteers from village. • Limited use of engagement after that – single survey on walkability. • Fear of town meetings – unproductive , confrontational. • Lack of knowledge of other more constructive and inclusive engagement methods.

15. QCV: Understanding the place • Poor legacy of data from Regional District • Knowledge based on assumption and local experience, quality mixed and sporadic in topic. • Dependant on natural resources and tourism outside their immediate control and jurisdiction and ultimately knowledge [Provincial Government prevented the inclusions of a wider boundary due to fear of development]

16. QCV: Governance • Village has 0 bylaws • Enforcement and implementation are going to be a major challenge

17. QCV: Integration • OCP and ICSP are seen as parallel and the senior operating documents for the village – although the integration between them has yet to be observed • Topics within plans largely dictated by the personal interests of the members of the advisory planning committee and council. These are not holistic (lack of understanding of the place?)

18. QCV: Scale • Working relationships with adjacent First Nations and other island municipalities and communities poor. • Boundaries very restrictive • Limited influence over Forestry and Tourism • Temporal scale yet to be decided

19. QCV: Concerns • The ICSP may become focused on personal agenda and concerns • Lack of working relationships with neighbours could reduce effectiveness and scope • Ideas and visions mainly based on developments outside village control

20. QCV: The Postive • Genuine desire to fully and constructively engage the community (the ‘fully’ is easy, the ‘constructively’ hard) • APC made up of diverse and motivated individuals • Recognition that this stuff is vital for the community

21. Conclusions for the Template • The template is most useful for smaller communities • It has material of use for most community sizes • Still requires outside assistance for the process, but increases the informed control exerted by even small communities • The general structure is relevant for ICSP planning in reality • Some of the detail may be more or less relevant – may depend on community size and personality

22. Questions for ICSPs in BC • Scale: Do smaller communities have the impact on and control over sufficient resources to provide a sustainable future? • Capacity: Do communities have the capacity internally to plan for sustainability? • What should/is the relationship between OCP and ICSP and do either of them really have sufficient impact on the development of communities