This article is written by Anthea Foyer, Culture Planner for the City of Mississauga

"Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe." Arundhati Roy

Bureaucratic practices are often anathema to creative processes, yet supporting communities throughout the Covid-19 pandemic has required both quick action and imaginative thinking.

With this has come the chance for public servants to change lives for the better, especially within cities. If we’re ever to co-create the cities we dream of living in, we have to take that chance now.

This will require asking provocative questions, many of which below are part of a larger conversation based on first asking what is right for your community, and then how this can be achieved with the community.

What if we co-create the future with the public?

“Strategic foresight” refers to the discipline of mapping out possible futures based on past, current and probable indicators. It allows for a variety of urban planning activities, including guiding the creation of public policy, planning for the future through strategies focussing on social, environmental and economic conditions, and preparing for adverse conditions, or issues that may arise.

Along with these internal activities, strategic foresight is also a useful tool for community engagement, co-creation and education. It allows us to collectively envisage the cities we want to live in. Often when we get bogged down in the minutiae of everyday life, we forget to look up and discuss aspirations for our neighbourhoods. Envisioning a better tomorrow frees people to be more creative today. Such visions allow us to compare where we want to be with where we are.

Most cities will find they are already successfully delivering on visions for the future in some areas, but can use improvement in others. Some ideas will come out of left field and completely surprise everyone. Most cities will find disparity across their municipality and should use this as an opportunity to work towards a safer, more beautiful, and more livable city for all residents.

The crucial first step however is to conceptualise a better tomorrow based on what we know now.

What if we take climate change as seriously as Covid-19?

In recent years, communities across the globe have made it known that they want their governments to take climate change seriously. Between 2019 and February 2020, over 1,400 local governments in 28 countries have made climate emergency declarations.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, local and federal governments have had to reassess how they work. Many have pivoted incredibly quickly, much to the joy of those among us who work in government innovation.

Many cities contain anomalies that oddly become the reason we love them.

What would it look like if we were to treat the climate crisis in the same way? What if every business plan has a section on climate change mitigation? What if every procurement auction required companies to include environmental strategies in their proposals? What if planning applications would not be accepted without environmental considerations? What if every environmental team was moved to the City Manager’s office? Or what if there were weekly environmental updates directly from government officials, with environmental scientists there to back them up with data? We have now seen what a global response can look like. It is time to step up and take climate change seriously.

What if we reimagine public spaces?

For many years I have said my dream job title would be “Chief Unplanner”. Planning obviously has an important role in cities, particularly in huge infrastructure projects, but often this can be taken to extremes. Many of the cities contain anomalies that oddly become the reason we love them. They create a special vibe unique to that place and to the people that live there.

Covid-19 has created an unusual situation in which unplanning has happened very quickly. Sidewalks and streets have become open-air restaurants. Transportation has shifted with more people walking, using bikes, scooters and other micromobile modes of transport. Parks and waterfronts have been re-discovered, while food is being grown in public spaces and being distributed to people who need it.

If we start with the premise that all neighbourhoods should be joyful, beautiful, safe, and healthy for their residents, then we have a simple clear vision to strive for. If such neighbourhoods are a co-creation of experts in the fields of accessibility, civic trust, anti-racism, gender equality, reconciliation, senior living, as well as mental and physical health, then we avoid making the diminishing middle class the norm and everyone else the exception.

From here we add the visions of landscape designers, public artists, historians, futurists, and city planners to build communities that reflect the culture and aspirations of a city. This is a golden moment to seriously think about how our public spaces are designed – who they are designed for and with.

What if we had a more fluid relationship between the public and their government?

I am often amazed at the dedication and passion of community members. People engage in a variety of ways, from helping out their neighbours with childcare, supporting faith institutions, to volunteering at food banks and supporting non-profits.

The will to help out is there, but too often it is missing as part of local government. The ‘why’ of this is discussed often and at length, but truth be told, we simply have not created a culture where this is normalised beyond very specific types of engagement activities.

A more porous system...would enable the public to understand what cities do and why they make the decisions they make.

As community members, we are quick to speak up about our rights in society but not our responsibilities, and we often believe our accountability stops at voting once every few years.

A cultural shift is needed. Everyone should feel personally and politically responsible for their community. In order for this to happen, governments need to look to new models of integration and co-creation with their citizens.

Many cities have fantastic teams working on community engagement and often have hundreds of engagements each year. However these depend on the same hierarchical structures that often place more emphasis on internal processes than on expert or community knowledge.

Re-thinking the process of when the public is brought in, along with examining why, and most importantly, what expertise they bring, is vital. While city staff are experts in how to build a bridge, or how a park can best be designed to be beautiful and useful, residents know the people who live there, their cultures and histories, as well as the problems their neighbourhoods face and what they want for their futures.

Finding new ways to combine government and public expertise would help build public trust. A more porous system, both externally and internally, would enable the public to understand what cities do and why they make the decisions they make. There are many models we can look to for examples of alternative governing structures, such as indigenous governance, co-operative movements, digital teams and healthcare models.

All this will take a hell of a lot of heavy lifting, make no mistake. But there has never been a more perfect time to spark our collective public imagination and build the cities we all want to be part of. — Anthea Foyer

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