A critical evaluation of the public consultation process in sustainable urban development A Case Study of the Public Consultation on the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES) for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in Montreal, Canada.
Audrée Paquette
Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University Master’s Thesis in Urban and Regional Planning, 30 HECs Spring term 2020 Supervisor: Andrew Byerley
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to critically analyse how existing structures of public consultation articulate with the aim of achieving sustainable city development. Empirically, this study analysed the impact of public consultation on decision-making of the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES) for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in the city of Montréal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with people involved in this project and the perceptions and experiences of both processes expressed by the interviewees constitute the results of this study. The research further draws on theories of participatory democracy and urban political ecology.
The study shows that the consultation process was transparent, flexible and open as there was a real willingness from all actors involved to get the best outcomes possible for the area. There was also a shared vision and agreement on what sustainability would mean and implicate for the neighborhood. However, once the consultations were over, communication between the South West borough and the population in regard to the project’s development seemed to have gradually diminished to nothing. As there is a clear imbalance between the first and the final stage of the public consultation process in term of collaboration and interaction, perhaps considering a legally-binding agreement that would cover the entire process could be a pertinent solution.
This paper fulfils a societal and academic function as it add some clarity and contribute to further discussion on the impact that public participation might have on public decision- making and on sustainable development.
Keywords Public consultation, consultation process, sustainability, sustainable development, participatory democracy, participation, local knowledge, citizen expertise.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to take the opportunity to thank every person who agreed to participate in this project. The engagement and commitment of the residents and local organisations of the areas of St-Henri, Ville Émard and Côte St-Paul, as well as the representatives from the South West borough, truly amazed me. I am very grateful to all those who took the time to share their views and opinions on the process of the public consultation during the PDUES-Turcot although it occurred a few years ago.
I would also like to thank my supervisor Andrew Byerley at the Stockholm University for agreeing to supervise this project and for giving me important and much appreciated advice and feedback throughout this process.
Finally, a special thank you goes to Élise Naud, Luc Doray and Dominique Ollivier as well as all the incredible personnel from the OCPM in Montreal whose warm welcoming and hospitality allowed for this project to happen. I would like to thank you for the generosity of your time in thoroughly explaining how public consultation works, I really have learned a lot during this short stay. Merci!
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Table of Contents Introduction ...... 4 Problem...... 5 Aim of the study ...... 7 Research questions ...... 7 Limitations of the Study ...... 8 The Case ...... 8 Theoretical framework ...... 9 Participatory Democracy ...... 9 Urban Political Ecology ...... 11 Literature review ...... 13 Public Participation ...... 13 Sustainable development ...... 16 Methodology ...... 19 Case study ...... 19 Data Collection ...... 20 Data Transcription ...... 22 Ethical considerations ...... 22 Contextual background ...... 23 Public consultation in Montreal ...... 23 The Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (OCPM) ...... 24 The planning area for the PDUES-Turcot ...... 25 Design of the consultations for the PDUES-Turcot ...... 28 Results ...... 35 Consultation process ...... 35 Project implementation process ...... 38 Analysis and discussion...... 43 Citizen expert ...... 43 Political strategy ...... 45 Sustainability and Sustainable Development ...... 46 Conclusion ...... 49 Litterature ...... 51 Appendix ...... 58 List interviewee ...... 58 Interview Guide ...... 59
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Introduction
This chapter begins with an overview of the rise of sustainable cities and the role of public consultations in sustainable city development. It is followed by a discussion of the problem in question and the purpose of this study. Finally, the limitations of the study will be mentioned and explained briefly.
Sustainability, which includes challenges of how to minimize the ecological footprint of humanity and how to promote citizens well-being is currently one of the most important global issues. Since the number of people living within cities is projected to rise to 5 billion people by 2030, it is important that efficient urban planning and management practices are in place to deal with the challenges brought by urbanization (United Nations 2020). There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for everyone in a way that continues to create jobs and prosperity without straining land and resources (Ibid). The concept of sustainability is somewhat complex and although the definition of sustainability varies, it is often divided into three dimensions; social, environmental and economical. Previous research in the field has highlighted the challenges in treating all dimensions equally and the complexity in creating a perfect balance. One of the most widespread definitions of sustainable development was made by the World Commission on Environment and Development explaining this term as “a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987: p.15). Sustainable development is indeed about maintaining healthy ecosystems and reducing negative human impact by balancing present and forward thinking in a social, economical and environmental manner. The consequential impacts of human activities originated from population increase and rapid urbanization are increasing exponentially and causing great deal of environmental, social, and economic challenges both at global and local scales. In such a situation, establishment of sustainable cities, through sustainable urban development practices, is seen as a potential remedy to combat these challenges (Yigitcanlar & Kamruzzaman 2015: p. 14677). In the process of sustainable city development, citizens have become an important factor in order to understand what is best for the city to become sustainable. Over the past fifty years, the arrival of new social movements which claim more and more place on the political scene, and the growing public dissatisfaction towards political institutions have contributed to a redefinition of new forms of public management where democratic approaches are being promoted (Laforest 2000: p.27). In response to these pressures, governments have committed to review their political decision-making mechanisms by instituting new public spaces intended to promote consultation and leading to an increasing participation of social actors to the political process (Graham & Phillips 2008: p.260). Indeed, the practice of public consultation as a form of citizen participation has been spreading for several decades around the world. This transformation of relations between the State and civil society through consultation mechanisms has direct effects on democracy. As citizens constitute an important force when it comes to determining direction and pace of the transformation towards a sustainable society, it can be debated whether or not decision-makers of cities design their strategies in accordance to the citizen’s desire. Without engaging citizens in sustainable development, cities risk being developed into something that is not necessarily desired by the
4 citizens (WWF 2013: p.11). Citizen participation is therefore needed as all decisions made by them, directly or indirectly, impact the city. Calls from public and private actors, associations and citizens have contributed to the possibility for people to express themselves in many areas, particularly with regard to sustainable development, environmental protection and urban policies (Citego 2013). Despite the development of alternative forms of participation, consultation continues to be the most common way to involve citizens in decision-making processes in local land use and environmental planning. Taking part in public consultation gives the opportunity to learn more about projects, a certain neighbourhood, how urban planning works and to share and hear different points of view from other people, businesses and organisations about a city’s future development.
In Montreal, Canada, public consultations are an important part of the urban decision-making process. It is the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (OCPM) that is responsible for holding public consultations on many major urban projects. In 2018, more than 24 450 people participated in the Offices’s consultation activities either in person or online, and more than 2225 opinions were presented orally or in writing (OCPM 2019). The Office is the only city consultations that do not involve elected officials, city employees or companies that do business with the city as it was created specifically for the purpose of having a neutral and independent body to lead certain public consultations in Montreal. Public consultations play an important role in shaping communities and are a crucial part of the democratic process as they improve urban planning initiatives using public input and expertise.
Problem
Today more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and the future of humanity is undoubtedly urban (McLaren & Agyeman 2015). As urban areas are the centre of economic development where sustainability is a critical concern, achieving prosperity in urban development is almost impossible without considering the sustainability in urban development (Parris & kates 2003). Sustainable urban development requires major changes in attitude and approach on the part of local authorities, urban planners and the local population. It is always difficult to modify deeply rooted habitseneral and the change in behaviour can only be achieved through persuasion and motivation (Enyedi 2004: p. 14-15). This in turn means that the public must have the right of participation and co-determination (Ibid), and in that sense, public participation is necessary to achieve urban sustainable development. The concept of sustainable cities has brought the need for rethinking of sustainable urban development practices, and public consultation is one of those practices that is gaining more and more in popularity. Scholars and practitioners, however, do not have a general consensus about what the term sustainability means which leads to an uncertainty in clearly determining what is to be sustained and developed and for what extent of time (Yigitcanlar & Kamruzzaman 2015: p. 14679). Yet, as sustainability and sustainable development appears to be confusing and vague, the outcomes of public participation on sustainable projects run the risk of not being very specific and thereby ineffective.
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Although there are many ways in which Montrealer’s can feel that they can influence the future development of the city, many residents have expressed their concern on the lack of feedback and thereby of transparency from the city once the public consultation has occurred. Indeed, there is a difficulty for citizens to measure the impact of their participation in consultations and to follow up afterwards and understand how a project evolves. A lot of big and important decisions keep being made in a project, even after a public consultation has occurred since urban development projects often last many years. Politics change and sometimes, especially after new elections, past decisions can be revisited and projects can consequently be prioritised differently. It can also be difficult to find and to understand information on ongoing projects as decisions relating to them are not always organized together in one place or are using technical jargon. The OCPM does not have official follow- up1 mechanisms as it is not part of its mandate as determined by the Montreal’s City Charter. Once the public consultation is over, the Office produces a detailed report that includes recommendations that highlight the community’s concerns and help elected officials and others in power to make informed decisions. In that sense, this report represents one of the most useful tools for follow-up that can have an impact on those with decision-making power. However, the city officials are not obligated to make decisions in accordance to the OCPM’s report and the recommendations it contains, neither are they obligated to provide any explication on their final decisions. As mentioned in the OCPM’s annual report from 2018: “We underscore the difficulty that citizens have in measuring the impact of their participation in Office consultations outside of the public reports of the OCPM, as well as their difficulty in tracing the actions of the administration following the submission of those reports. For the time being, the process is somewhat random and varies according to the departments or boroughs involved. The issue has yet to be resolved to ensure that consultations are fair, equitable and productive for all parties concerned, and to ensure that retroaction becomes an intrinsic part of the consultation process" (OCPM 2019).
Finally, this persisting lack of follow up could influence the willingness to participate in future public consultation which would thereby impact the democratic process in urban planning. Furthermore, this vagueness around the meaning of sustainability could influence the outcomes of public participation on sustainable projects as it runs the risk of not being very specific and thereby ineffective.
1 A follow-up means that the public is kept informed about decisions affecting a project, about what next steps are to be expected and about how community concerns and recommendations from the public consultation have been taken into consideration in the final project (OCPM 2016).
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Aim of the study
Since global local governments are becoming more active in pursuing environmental sustainability initiatives (Hawkins & Wang 2012: p.7), understanding the participation mechanisms that is used by communities is critical for improving the management and success of sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to critically analyse how existing structures of public consultation articulate with the aim of achieving sustainable city development. In particular, this study is interested in exploring the critical role of interaction between citizens and institutions. Empirically, this study analyses the impact of public consultation on decision-making of the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES) for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in the city of Montréal. Since more work is needed to better articulate what sustainability means and to determinate a clearer set of relationships between decision makers, their organizations and the influences they exert on public participation, this study investigates the possibilities and challenges of participatory decision-making processes. Many scholars within social science and other fields of study have come to conclusions that there is a shortage of quality research evidence about public participation and its effects (Abelson & Gauvin 2006: p. 4). Even reviews from international public participation activities have noted this evaluation gap, claiming that “there is a striking imbalance between the amount of time, money and energy that governments in OECD countries invest in engaging citizens and civil society in public decision making and the amount of attention they pay to evaluating the effectiveness and impact of such efforts.” (OECD 2005). Considering this widespread agreement about the need for more evaluative evidence, this study can add some clarity and contribute to further discussion on the impact that public participation might have on public decision-making and on sustainable development. This paper fulfils thus a social and academic function as it discusses the future of sustainable urban development in Montreal and in other cities around the world.
Research questions
In order to achieve the aim of this study, the following questions will be in focus.
1-How are the results of public consultations integrated in the decision-making process of urban planning initiatives in the city of Montreal?
2-How does the need to work with the Sustainable Development Goals2 influence the potential to incorporate the results of public consultation in decision making?
2 Sustainable Development Goals nr 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (United Nations 2020).
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Limitations of the Study
As with the majority of studies, the results and the design of the current study have to be seen in light of some limitations. Indeed, due to limitations in time and financial support, the scope of the study consisted of only one specific public consultation project. The number of interviewees was also limited for the same reasons and it is a small subset out of the thousands of people who participated in this consultation project that participated in this study. To be eligible to participate in the study, participants had to be previously involved in the consultation activities offered during the consultation process of the PDUES. The literature review has been limited to researches among the field of public consultation and sustainable development as those topics consist of the study’s main core interests. The study will not be looking at specific actions mentioned in the PDUES and verify if they have been realized or not. It won’t either compare the recommendations from the OCPM versus what is written in the action plan of the PDUES-report. The age and gender of the participants has not been considered as it did not deem relevant to the purpose of the study.
The Case
The case study that this study will be examining is a public consultation held by the OCPM on the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan, known by its French acronym PDUES, for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in the South West borough of the city of Montreal. The Turcot Interchange is one of the busiest exchanges in Quebec province and a very important traffic corridor that connects the airport to downtown Montreal. The interchange that showed signs of deterioration had to be rebuilt and some section of highway had to be relocated.
Figure 1: Aerial View of the Turcot Interchange
Source 1: Transports Québec 2020 Since the reconstruction and relocation would lead to new unexploited areas in the South West borough that would need to be planned for, city officials took the opportunity to ask the population how they would like to improve their neighborhood, and did so by mandating the OCPM to hold a public consultation. More information about the specific case study will be provided under the chapter Contextual Background.
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Theoretical framework
This section constitutes the theoretical framework that guides and shapes this research project. By attempting to increase the knowledge of public consultation in sustainable city development and the critical role that the interaction between citizens and institutions plays, the theory in this study addresses primarily the perspective of citizens (participatory democracy) as well as institutional and environmental perspectives (urban political ecology) in the planning of sustainable cities. Participatory Democracy
Within the broader concept of sustainable development lies the idea of participatory democracy, a theory that addresses the importance of letting citizens have the opportunity to take part in the decision-making process. A participatory democracy approach suggests that administrative decisions will be more acceptable to the citizens if they are made through a collaborative process that builds community and shared understanding (Moote et al. 1997: p. 878). According to Pateman (2012) participatory democratic theory is about changes that will make our own social and political life more democratic and provide opportunities for individuals to participate in decision-making in their everyday lives as well as in the wider political system. The capacities, skills and characteristics of individuals are interrelated with forms of authority structures and it is when individuals interact within democratic authority structures that participation is possible (Pateman 2012: p.10). Since this study is investigating the possibilities and challenges of participatory decision-making processes in the context of public consultation, this theory is of interest as it addresses the interaction between citizens and officials with a power of decisions.
One of the early works on participation is Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969) which is a theoretical model to define what participation stands for and can achieve. She argues that the concept of citizen participation is achieved by citizen power and elaborates on the concept by illustrating levels and with that degrees of citizen participation (i.e. citizen power). According to her theory, participation is an important democratic aspect which can only be fulfilled through the increased power of the citizen (Arnstein 1969: p. 216). She also points out that there is a critical difference between going through the “empty ritual” of participation and having the real power needed to affect the outcome of the process, highlighting the fundamental argument that participation without redistribution of power is an empty process for the powerless. It maintains the status quo because it allows the powerholders to claim that all sides were considered but makes it possible for only some of those on one side to benefit (Ibid). Arnstein’s ladder has been criticized by many researchers such as Tritter and McCallum’s (2006) arguing that her view of participation is assumed to be hierarchical in nature with citizen control considered as the goal of participation. This assumption does not always correspond with participants’ own reasons for engaging in decision-making processes and fails thereby to recognise that for some users, participation itself may be a goal (Tritter & McCallum 2006: p. 156). Collins and Ison (2006) also have criticized Arnstein’s ladder arguing that “the notion of participation is both devoid of context and in situations when the nature of the issue is highly contested or undefined, the ladder provides few insights into how participation might be progressed as a collective process between all of the stakeholders involved” (Collins and Ison 2006: p. 5). By emphasizing the
9 concept of power within the participation process, Arnstein’s ladder is useful for this study when analysing the power relations in the process of public consultation.
Many theorists have adopted the idea of decentralization as being beneficial implying that decision-making at the local level creates better conditions for counteracting power concentration, while promoting a more deliberative and participatory democracy. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that the local actors, through their dependence on the local natural resources, would be more likely to take into account the long-term sustainable development. By decentralizing decision-making, it gives people a greater opportunity to influence their lives and to make real choices (Phillips 1996, Stoker 1996, Barber 1984). Local knowledge about the surroundings is assumed to be better used in a decentralized democracy, resulting in better decisions being taken and with implementation processes being more effective (De-Shalit 2004: p. 138.). On the other hand, decisions taken in a centrally controlled process are accused of being too general; local differences are not entirely taken into account and the decisions end up not fitting any place at all (Ekström et al. 2004). It has indeed been debated by many theorists that a local decision-making is preferred to centralized one because it has better pre-conditions for making relevant and sensible decisions, at the same time as the local decision-makers are more likely to have greater opportunities to implement the decisions (Phillips 1996, Stoker 1996, Barber 1984). As participants in public consultations often are local residents, organisations and companies, the notion of local decision-making and the idea of decentralization becomes very pertinent and contribute to the study’s analysis.
Local knowledge has also been addressed by James Scott, a political scholar who engaged in his book Seeing like a State, with the conceptualisation of two types of knowledge: metis- a contextual, practical and flexible knowledge and techne – a technical and universal knowledge. Practicality and environment are two important keywords he uses to define metis, as being a “wide array of practical skills and acquired intelligence in responding to a constantly changing natural and human environment, obtained through practice” (Scott 1998: p. 521-526). Local knowledge can also be shared and expressed by NIMBY- or “Not In My Backyard” -protesters who often present alternative forms of scientific evidence that are gathered from the field from local actors and residents about their environment as they experimented it. Thus, NIMBY-protests can create a venue for local knowledge to be introduced into public discourse and into policy-making processes (Hager & Haddad 2015: p.207). Even though NIMBY-activists are quite pluralistic in their strategies and objectives, these groups are united in a number of basic ways. ‘‘Regardless of their demographic traits, NIMBY-battles share common characteristics: Nearly all begin with the frustrated fear of people seeing their quality of life threatened’’ (Piller 1991: p. 12). Such a fear was also expressed by the residents living nearby the Turcot Interchange that lead to a street demonstration in Montreal back in 2009. Indeed, many residents from the area took to the streets in protest of the rebuilding project, expressing their worries about the environmental impact of the project, about the increased traffic and elevated greenhouse emissions (Le Devoir 2009). Similarly to Nimby-activists, many participants in public consultations like the PDUES, often fear that they will be negatively affected by the proposed changes in their immediate surroundings which triggers their participation and engagement as they want to express themselves and debate about their concerns.
Community members, being Nimby-protesters or not, share the fact that they can bring to the decision process a different kind of rationality, one that has often escaped the analytical nets of technical experts (Fischer 2000: p.131). In an attempt to show the value of open
10 participatory communications, Elliot (1984) found that public officials and technical experts most often focused on the technical aspects of a decision, whereas community members tended to be preoccupied with identifying environmental health risks and safety procedures needed to mitigate potential dangers from negative consequences for the community. Interestingly, his study also showed that community participants were even inclined to approve of less technical solutions if its managers adequately stressed effective and quick responses to both immediate and future problems (Elliot 1984: p. 410). Such results reveal that citizens are not necessarily against technical data and that they might accept it as long as they are presented and debated in an open democratic process, which has led many authors to conclude that open participatory decisions are the only way around Nimby (Fischer 2000: p.130). Plough and Krimsky (1987) contrast the concept of technical rationality with the idea of cultural rationality, explaining that technical rationality is a “mind-set that puts its faith in empirical evidence and scientific method that relies on expert judgments in making policy decisions”. In contrast, cultural rationality “is more inclined to personal and familiar experiences, focusing on the opinions of social and peer groups rather than depersonalized technical calculations” (Plough & Krimsky 1987: p. 8). According to Fischer (2000: p. 131, 139), cultural rationality is a different kind of knowledge that is fundamental to citizen decision-making and the key to success in overcoming nimby.
As the interviews focused on the participants’ experiences and opinions about the public consultation process of the project PDUES-Turcot and the decision-making resulting from it, it is mostly a cultural rationality that was provided as it is the people’s own knowledge and experience of the neighborhood that was expressed. Participatory democracy is a process of collective decision making that has the potential to move neighborhoods like the one around the PDUES-Turcot, towards the democratic ideals of popular control and political equality.
Urban Political Ecology
Since the industrial revolution, cities have been the engines of socioeconomic development but also the centers of major environmental problems (Wu 2014: p.209). Many studies have shown that our urban ecosystems and landscapes are on an unsustainable path and that global sustainability depends critically on cities. Urban ecology was originally developed as part of the Chicago school of sociology or human ecology with key players who defined urban ecology as “the study of the relationship between people and their urban environment” (Park et al. 1925). During the past 50 years, global urbanization has not only accelerated its pace in terms of urban population and the built environment, but also taken new developmental forms such as the domestication of ecosystems, landscapes, and even the biosphere, thus accelerating the arrival of the Anthropocene3 epoch (Wu 2014: p.210). It is vitally important to recognize that rapid global urbanization is the main driver of the Anthropocene, and the inexorable increase in fossil energy use and its associated environmental problems (Swyngedouw & Kaika 2014: p.462). The field of urban political ecology provides the theoretical starting point through which the urban and the natural environments are understood, while seeing urban planning as one of the many processes that create these environments. Urban political ecology can thus play a key role in the transition toward sustainability (Wu 2014: p.209). In that sense, urban political ecology gives interesting inputs
3 The Anthropocene is a defined geological epoch whereby human action is the primary driver of environmental change.
11 when analysing the decision-making process during public consultation of sustainable project such as the PDUES.
Urban political ecology asks questions about who produces what kind of socio-ecological configurations and for whom (Heynen et al. 2016: p.2). Considering that cities are produced through socio-ecological processes, attention has to be paid to the political processes through which particular socio-environmental urban conditions are made (Ibid). Firmly opposed to environmental injustice, a political ecology approach is committed to help in bringing a better world through contesting the reproduction of socionatural inequalities (Lotus 2012) as well as capturing the potentials through which cities might be remade in fairer, more democratic ways. But in order to make cities better places to live, it is important to grasp the relationships that had influence on those injustices and seek to change them (Ibid). This builds on much longer tradition and extensive debates within urban theory where the concept of the urban has been questioned, one of them being David Harvey (1996) who stated in his article Cities or urbanization? “The thing we call a city is the outcome of a process we call urbanization” where he argues that the focus should not be on the city as the primary object of analysis but on the process of urbanisation as it produces, sustains and dissolves individual cities in historically and geographically specific ways (Harvey 1996: p.50). Harvey (2010) also interrogated the limitations of geographic disciplines and their consequent failure to understand some of the most pressing problems affecting many cities worldwide. Indeed, he became concerned with issues of social injustice and the nature of the capitalist system itself. Harvey’s interest in the historical aspects of neoliberalism with its political agenda of privatizations and deregulations influences his writing of social tensions in cities. This can be seen in his account of the global impact of the neoliberal state where he argues on the accumulation by dispossession that has constituted a key displacement process (Harvey 2004: p.60). By using legal and illegal methods to allocate wealth and costs adversely along dominant power structures in society, the process has served to restore class power through commodification and privatization of land and the conversion of property rights into exclusively private property rights (Harvey 2004: p.63). As Montreal and the South West borough are facing the challenges of population growth, social injustice is, likewise Harvey, an aspect that has been highly considered, and in the final PDUES, “social development” is among 6 main action strategies that are intended to be prioritised.
Following Harvey’s analysis, Swyngedouw and Kaika (2000) write that “the environment of the city (both social and physical) is the result of a historical geographical process of the urbanization of nature” and describe the city as a process of continuous socioecological change (p.569). Swyngedouw (1996) elaborated the need for an urban political ecology that would rethink the co-production of the society-nature opposition in general (Swyngedouw 1996: p.65). According to Heynen et al. (2006), the process of urbanization is one of the principal causes behind many environmental issues and the place where socio-environmental problems are mostly experienced. The increasing dependence of capital accumulation on nature continues to grow and it is in urban areas that this accelerating transformation of nature becomes most noticeable in both its physical form and in its socio-ecological consequences (Heynen et al. 2006: p.3).
Urban political ecologists insist that urban changes must recognize ecological limits and that rather then privileging a growth economy, new urban thinking must integrate economic, economic, social and environmental priorities (Davidson & Gleeson 2016: p.417). Urban political ecologists are concerned that the overstated belief in technology is insufficient to
12 progress in urban sustainability and lacks theorization about power relations that produce uneven socio-natural urban environments (Ibid).
Considering the potential clash of tension in urban planning between this neo-liberal capitalism with cities who want to compete on a global scale and the Sustainable Development Goals that has to be achieved, this study reflects on what happens in the interface of sustainability and public consultation and how it impacts the decisions being made. Although urban political theory is not the main focus in this study, it is relevant since it examines a relational approach to the complex political, economic, ecological and social processes that bring uneven urban environments. Similarly to urban political ecology, this study is also paying attention to the process through which particular socio-environmental urban conditions are made. Literature review
This literature review aims to introduce what other academic researches within the social science field have written on the topic of public participation and sustainable development in an urban context. This section highlights some of the common elements and general results from those researches in order to situate this study in a broader academic perspective. Public Participation
The term public participation has been defined extensively by different scholars and Creighton is being one of them who defined it as “the process by which public concerns, needs and values are incorporated into governmental and corporate decision making” (Creighton 2005: p.7). Public participation has also been defined in a broader way to include citizens making decisions on issues of public concern directly and in ways that are largely independent of government (Fung and Wright, 2001; Boyte, 2004). Cornwall is one of many researchers who has addressed the importance of having a real understanding of the term ‘participation’ meaning that its definition and interpretation can vary significantly between different actors. Indeed, she argues that this vagueness about what participation means has to be clarified if the call for more participation is to realize its democratizing promise (Cornwall 2008: p. 269). This vagueness on what participation means and implies will be discussed later on in the results section as it is something that has been brought up during some of the interviews conducted for this study.
Fung (2006) is another academic who addressed the term participation as he introduces three dimensions of participation. The first dimension is about who participates, with focus being put on how the selection of participants occur, who is eligible and whether or not participants are representative of the population. The second dimension concerns how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and the third dimension explains how participation influences the public official’s decision-making. These three dimensions describe an institutional design space in which any particular mechanism of public decision can be located (Fung 2006: p.66). Those three dimensions will be touched upon when analysing the consultation and decision-making process of the project PDUES.
The context in which public participation occurs is also important and it is vital to pay closer attention to who is participating, in what processes or decisions the participants are involved in and for whose benefit (Cornwall 2008: p. 275). Rowe and Frewer (2004) have also
13 emphasized the importance of context and effectiveness as their study often focus on defining effective public participation by establishing mechanism that works best in which situation and why. “Unless there is a clear definition of what it means for a participation exercise to be effective, there will be no theoretical benchmark against which performance may be assessed” (Rowe and Frewer, 2004: p. 517). Indeed, the concept of what is a successful or effective public participation process depends on whose perspective is being considered and what that perspective implies (Abelson & Gauvin 2006: p. 6-7). Another essential element in an effective public participation is transparency, as only a well-informed public can effectively take part and actively contribute to public decision-making (De Stefano et al. 2012: p. 220). The term “public” in public participation often refers to “individuals acting both in their roles as citizens and as formal representatives of collective interested and affected parties i.e. people, groups or organizations that may experience benefit or harm and choose to become informed or involved in the decision process” (NRC 1996). In this study, the usage of the term “public” will be in accordance to the latter definition.
Initiatives to increase citizen participation have made substantial progress and public participation requirements have been embedded in virtually every important piece of environmental legislation in the United States and Canada since the 1970s (Creighton 2005: p.1). However, the vagueness in what public consultation actually implies was already expressed by Dion in 1973, when elaborating on the increasing number of consultative councils in the Canadian political system: “Institutionalists as well as behaviourists ignore the politics of consultation, the former because they see the politics of consultation as not being part of the official channels of decision-making, and the latter because they see them simply as a supplementary means of action of the interest-groups. As a result of the neglect and imprecision among specialists it is not surprising to find that the concept of political consultation is extremely vague” (Dion 1973: p. 232-233). Beyond the vagueness of public consultation’s impact and implication, its shared perception of consultation as being excluded from the decision-making is something that is still being looked into almost fifty years later, this current study being an example. Participation has become a key consideration in the discourses and practices of environmental policymaking at both local and international levels (Collins & Ison 2006: p.2). Participation “has never been so widespread and so far-reaching as today, however, the new system of governance is largely one of organizations, by organizations and for organizations” (European Commission 2000: p. 9). Discussions about public participation have become especially intense in the last decades and a growing literature has offered theory to define and justify public participation, to propose tools and strategies for participation and to examine what happens within the participation processes (NRC 2008). Within the policymaking arenas and research agendas, attention has focussed mostly on developing better techniques, processes and mechanisms for participation, but lacking in engaging with notions and epistemologies of participation (OECD, 2001). This in turn can affect how participation is practiced as there is a risk for practitioners and researchers of using tools, practices and techniques inappropriately with undesirable consequences for policy development and policy outcomes (Collins & Ison 2006: p. 2). Many practitioners of participatory methodologies from around the world have shared their field experiences and conceptual reflections on participatory processes in the series Participatory learning and action (Wakeford & Singh 2008). In those compiled studies, many authors describe how citizen participation could be disempowering for those with the
14 least power. They imply indeed that the already marginalized people can become more marginalized by the actual way that the participatory processes often are organized. They argue that despite the popularity of citizen participation, it has had little impact on the mainstream political decision-making and lacking such impact, the participation could thereby be considered as simply a reinforcement of existing knowledge-validating and decision-making structures (Wakeford & Singh 2008: p.7). Overall, there is a failure of participation as deriving from a combination of structural issues within powerful organisations as well as a misuse of participation techniques in order to advance particular agendas. Public deliberation has also, in many occasions, received some bad press for example because deliberation is often seen as an interminable process with little or no consensus (Kock & Villadsen 2012: p. 199). There is also a scepticism about whether or not decision-makers genuinely want the advice from the citizens and that consultation is rather a public relation strategy and an administrative tool used by those in power to make public consultations look like an evidence-based policymaking. To avoid disrupting the business-as- usual, organisations may adopt one of the broad strategies which is to facilitate a genuine participatory process and then to develop a means of ignoring or suppressing the outcomes that do not suit its agenda (Wakeford & Singh 2008: p.7). What these practitioners have experienced and concluded is relevant to the discussions in this study as they reflect on participatory processes and decision-making structures in the same way as this study does. Declining sense of community is an increasing concern from our modern society with most urban and suburban development tending to be relatively generic, with little sense of place, history, or cultural distinctiveness (Wheeler 2004: p. 9-19). Putnam has documented a long- term decline in citizen participation in community groups and social institutions. This trend has troubling implications for the health of our democracy and Putnam believes that this decline of “social capital” is at least partly related to the physical nature of our cities and towns and the solution, he believes lies in working “to create new structures and policies to facilitate renewed civic engagement” (Putnam 2000: p.403). The declining sense of community can lead to a declining participation in public consultation as people get less and less engaged in the future decisions of their neighborhood (Ibid). In this case study, the declining sense of community is an issue that has been lifted up by many and increasing the connectivity between the two neighborhoods St-Henri and Côte-St-Paul could be a way of solving it.
The report from the National Research Council (2008) achieved by a working panel that includes researchers with expertise in environmental policy & assessment, public participation, decision making and other related fields, aimed at providing an overall assessment of the merits and failings of participation to practitioners in the field. The report came to the conclusion that “When done well, public participation improves the quality and legitimacy of a decision and builds the capacity of all involved to engage in the policy process. It can lead to better results in terms of environmental quality and other social objectives. It also can enhance trust and understanding among parties. Achieving these results depends on using practices that address difficulties that specific aspects of the context can present” (NRC 2008: p.2). Indeed, the importance of efficient and transparent public participation practices for the democratic process is something that many researchers and practitioners agree on.
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When reviewing some of the existing literature on the topics of public participation, it often questions the definitions and the types of participations that are being used, by whom and for which purposes. However, there seems to exist a shortage of research evidence about the effects of public participation on urban development. In that sense, this study contributes to further discussion on the impact of public participation as it takes a deeper look at decision- making process that results from public consultation.
Sustainable development
The concept of sustainability has great idealistic and rhetorical value, but it is not very tangible to most people as it is difficult to define and measure. Swyngedouw & Kaika (2014) has indeed expressed their scepticism when reflecting on the negative consequences of using the term sustainability, meaning that
“this term has become an “empty signifier” that has neither intellectual coherence nor political substance. It has now become consensually accepted as the normative ideal that might permit societies as we know them to continue a while longer without engendering significant socio-political change” (Swyngedouw & Kaika 2014: p. 467).
They are thus highlighting the risk of using a term that gives the impression that “business is being taken cared of” while in reality, no specific and concrete actions are deriving from it.
In many cities, the concept of sustainable communities “is about the relationship between the physical environment and the people who populate it, and this view places great importance on the function of civil society—the institutions and social processes that influence how residents interact (or don’t interact) with each other” (Portney 2005: p. 583). Sustainable cities efforts are interesting because of the role city residents play in defining what is meant by sustainability and the kinds of policies and programs pursued as a result of this definition (Ibid). As the concept of sustainability has received greater attention around the world, academics have begun to examine how this concept articulates with the participatory processes in the development of sustainability programs of local governments (Agyeman & Evans 1995; Selman & Parker 1997). Results from these studies suggest that residents’ participation is an essential element in the successful pursuit of sustainability and environmental protection. Hawkins & Wang (2012) have pointed out the importance of understanding the participation mechanisms used by communities in order to improve the management and the success of sustainable development (Hawkins & Wang 2012: p.7). This relationship between political and civic participation and the pursuit of sustainability has also been explored by Portney & Barry (2010) when looking at different American cities. In their article, they concluded that residents of cities that seem to take sustainability most seriously do participate more and that cities that pursue explicit sustainability policies are more participatory places (Portney & Barry 2010: p.132). Early adopters of sustainable cities initiatives in the U.S. such as Seattle and Portland, just to name a few, tended to conceptualize their sustainable cities efforts as broad-based participatory processes. Indeed, they would provide a forum for residents to express their views on what it means for their city to be sustainable and a mechanism to gradually raise the collective consciousness of the resident population to understand how attitudes and behavior would need to change to
16 achieve sustainability goals (Portney 2005: p. 583). By providing a forum, i.e. a public consultation, for the residents to express their views on how their neighborhood could be sustainable, the South West borough also shows their belief in participatory processes as a way to achieve a sustainable neighborhood. The idea that the pursuit of sustainability is very closely linked to civic engagement can be summarized by Shutkin (2003) who writes: “The civic elements in a community— the education system, the rates of poverty and unemployment, the level of political participation—and the physical environment are thus reciprocating conditions … the human forces of production, reproduction, and consciousness within the liberal-capitalist system shape and reshape the physical environment, while the environment itself influences and constrains those same forces” (Shutkin 2003: p. 47). Reflections on the concept of sustainability and on global development emerged already in the 1970s in response to a dramatic growth (Wheeler 2004: p.19), with Goldsmith et al. (1972) who started being critical of the industrial society, stating that
“The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. Radical change is both necessary and inevitable because the present increases in human numbers and per capita consumption, by disrupting ecosystems and depleting resources, are undermining the very foundations of survival” (Goldsmith et al. 1972: p.3-4).
Other researchers such as Meadows et al. (1972) modeled trends in global population growth, pollution and resource consumption to discover that the human system would be crashing in the mid-twenty-first century (Meadows et al. 1972: p.191). Twenty years later, Meadows and colleagues reviewed their model and found that their basic predictions still are accurate. Indeed, they warned that the human population had reached a situation of “overshoot in terms of resource limits and would need to consider taking acute and strong action to correct those unsustainable trends” (Meadows et. al 1992: p.128). The global and unceasing quest for the planet’s limited resources is a indeed a major driving force of our modern society. As a result, the planet’s capacity to sustain its increasing global population has weakened, and several cities are facing acute problems (Mannberg 2006: p. 3). The concept of sustainability has developed into managing not only environmental aspects but also economical, cultural and social ones as a response to these problems, and in that sense, the public consultation on the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES)- Turcot can be seen as a way of managing sustainability in the city of Montreal. One of the main challenges of the twenty-first century will be to bring about more sustainable human communities and the planning field can play a central role in meeting this goal since “it deals with how communities, regions and nations are built and run, including how they relate to natural ecosystems” (Wheeler 2004: p. 1). To meet these requirements of sustainable development, city planning is changing focus from being rational and target-oriented into being increasingly concerned with the planning process itself (Mannberg 2006: p.4). The evolving planning discourse has been called “the communicative turn” by Healey (1997), a planning form that initiates and maintains well-functioning collaboration and communication
17 between a large number of stakeholders, including the planner himself in his local setting and social surrounding. Many studies have mentioned the benefits of mixed land-use development towards creating sustainable environment with the objectives of economic vitality, social equity, and environmental quality. (Grant 2002: p. 73). Achieving compact and mixed-use neighborhoods is often seen as a sustainable goal since it reduces urban sprawl and consequently the distances people need to travel to go to schools, shops, workplaces and recreational places (Wheeler 2004: p. 186). As Jane Jacobs pointed out already in 1961 in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “fine-grain mixing of diverse uses creates vibrant and successful neighborhoods”. As urban development continued ever since, its impacts grew more evident and her comments seemed persuasive as it became desirable strategies (Grant 2002: p.72). However, Grant’s experience in Canadian cities with mixed use shows some sign of discouragement since efforts to mix uses have not stopped the loss of economic vitality for most cities. Indeed, mixed use districts have been shown to become more segregated by class the and affordability has not improved with land that is consumed at a rapid rate (Grant 2002: p.80). Achieving compact and mixed-use neighborhoods and preserving historic buildings from the industrial era represents two main aspects that were demanded by many participants of the PDUES-Turcot as a way of promoting economical, social and environmental sustainability. In recent years, historic preservation has also dominated conversations around sustainability and environmental responsibility, recognizing that existing buildings are greener and more environmentally friendly when compared to demolition and new construction (Preservation Leadership Forum). Indeed, older buildings are a key component to creating successful cities and neighborhoods since historical heritage creates economically vital, socially equitable and resilient neighborhoods (Ibid). According to Jacobs (1961), planners have often failed to understand the benefits and potential of older urban neighborhoods, which often contained dense social networks as well as historic buildings. This is however not the case for the planners in the South West borough who made sure to include “Culture and heritage” as one of the six main action themes mentioned in the PDUES. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a requirement for sustainable development providing a global action plan for peace and prosperity is a way of putting some clarity in this great sustainable challenge. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with Goal nr 11 which is highlighting the need for efficient urban planning and management practices in order to deal with the challenges brought by urbanization (United Nations 2020). How this goal is being applied in practice may vary greatly in different cities and countries in the world, but it remains a reference that should always be prioritised in future urban development projects. The literature review has shown that public participation articulates with sustainable development with the idea that the pursuit of sustainability is closely linked to civic engagement. Indeed, many scholars has concluded that there is a positive correlation between an increased public participation and successful sustainable cities. The problem remains however in how the term sustainability is being defined by the different actors involved in order to measure and assess its achievement. The ambition of having an Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange is a way for the
18 city of Montreal and the South West borough to show their belief in democratic processes as well as their intention on being a part of this global sustainable agreement. Methodology
This chapter presents the research strategy for this study, including the selected case study, the data collection, the data transcription as well as the ethical considerations for the study.
Case study
The choice of which method to employ is dependent upon the nature of the research problem (Noor 2008: p. 1602). Case study is considered to be one of the most appropriate method for assessing processes of public participation, mostly due to its sensitivity to the wider sociopolitical context (Conrad et al. 2011: p.764). Case studies are well suited for proposing factors that matter in public participation and are valuable for understanding the nuances of public participation processes and the ways that such processes develop over time (NRC 2008: p.25). Some critics have however expressed that one of the challenges of case studies are the lacking scientific rigour as they do not address generalizability beyond the sample investigated (Bryman 2012: 69-70). Furthermore, case study as a research strategy have traditionally been viewed as lacking objectivity when compared with other social research methods (Rowley 2002: p.16). Another common critics is that case studies are not readily codified which makes it difficult to assess general hypotheses that can hold across a variety of cases or to evaluate systematically the plausibility of explanations that differ from those coming from case studies (NRC 2008: p.25). However, despite this scepticism about case studies, they are widely used because they offer insights that might not be achieved with other approaches (Rowley 2002: p.16). Case studies are concerned with how and why things happen allowing the investigation of contextual realities and of the differences between what was planned and what actually occurred (Anderson 1993: p.160). Flyvbjerg (2006) examined in his article five of the most common misunderstandings that are often perceived when looking at case studies as a research method. He argues that “case knowledge is central to human learning” and that researchers who wish to develop there own skills need to use context-dependent examples in their work as they are at the very heart of expert activity (Flyvbjerg 2006: p. 222-223). He also adds that “if people merely operate at a theoretical level, they remain at the beginner level of looking at the world they live in” (Ibid).
Based on the desire to collect empirical data to closely investigate, describe and understand how existing structures of public consultation articulate with the aim of achieving sustainable city development, case study as a qualitative research method was deemed the appropriate method relied on for this research. The case study that this study will be examining is a public consultation held by the OCPM on the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan, for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in the South West borough of the city of Montreal. The Turcot Interchange is one of the busiest exchanges in Quebec province and a very important traffic corridor that connects the airport to downtown Montreal and carries more than 300,000 vehicles daily (Transports Québec 2020). The interchange who opened in 1967 began to show signs of deterioration, leading to the public announcement of the
19 reconstruction project. The project involves rebuilding of four major interchanges and sections of three highways, relocating a section of highway and Canadian National Railway railroad tracks, adding bike path and dedicated lanes for modal transport (Road Traffic Technology). Since the reconstruction and relocation would lead to new unexploited areas in the South West borough that would need to be planned for, city officials took the opportunity to ask the population how they would like to improve their neighborhood, and did so by mandating the OCPM to hold a public consultation.
There are many reasons why this specific public consultation was chosen, out of the approx. 150 consultation projects that the OCPM as organised since its creation in 2002 (OCPM 2018b). First of all, it was important to look at a consultation project that had already occurred and was finalised in order to analyse its process from start to finish, which means that ongoing consultations were not qualified for the purposes of this study. Another important aspect was that the project preferably had ended not too many years ago as the chance to remember the different process of the consultation would still be relatively fresh in the mind of the persons involved and interviewed for this study. The project PDUES-Turcot was also interesting as it included two phases: an upstream phase and a downstream phase as well as many different consultation activities leading to a longer process than traditional public consultations normally are. The first consultation, or the upstream phase, was a consultation that invited the population to reflect on actual and future vision of an area located in the South West borough of Montreal.
The result of this first upstream consultation, compiled in a report from the OCPM, became the source material that helped the South West borough in formulating a preliminary version of an Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES). This preliminary report would then be the source material for the second consultation, or the downstream phase, in where the population was invited again to express their opinion, this time on the proposition from the borough compiled in their preliminary report. The result from the second consultation, again compiled in the second report of the OCPM, would then influence the outcomes of the final PDUES.
Finally, this project that aimed at achieving a sustainable neighborhood was a very relevant case study that allowed the analysis of how the need to work with the Sustainable Development Goals influence the potential to incorporate the results of public consultation in decision making.
Data Collection
In this study, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with persons who were closely implicated in the case study project. By aiming for an in-depth exploration of the meanings people assign to their experiences during the consultation of the PDUES, this research explored a small group of participants who contributed to a rich content for the study’s results. Preferably, the aim of this study would have been to achieve what Glaser and Strauss (1967) defined as a theoretical saturation, i.e. to stop sampling the different groups pertinent to a category when no additional data are being found (Glaser and Strauss 1967: p. 61). According to (Fusch & Ness 2015: p. 1408), “failure to reach saturation has an impact on the quality of the research conducted and restrains the content validity”. However, due to the research’s limitation in time, money and scope, the number of interviews had to be limited. That is why it was important to meet candidates that were very engaged in the project in
20 order to collect data with a rich content. Semi-structured interviews based on open-ended questions has been employed because they are flexible and enable to continually cover areas that contribute to answering the research questions of the study (Poole & Mauthner 2014: p.464).
Since this study is analysing the process of the public consultation and its influence on the decision-making for the project PDUES-Turcot, one requirement to be an eligible participant in this study was the fact that the person had officially participated or was closely involved in the organisation of this specific consultation. As the names of the participants in public consultations organised by the OCPM are always available on their website, it was quite easy to get a list of pertinent candidates for this study. The participants were selected in accordance to their degree of participation in the different consultation activities that were offered during this 2 years process, i.e. that had either submitted a brief and/or made an oral presentation during the hearing sessions, and/or had been involved in round table meetings, workshops, online questionnaires, information sessions, or that worked closely with the organisation of this consultation. It was also judged pertinent to have participants that represented different fields of expertise in order to capture nuanced experiences and perspectives which would enrich the study’s results. Once the list of candidates was established with their respective contact details, emails and phone calls were made where the purpose of this study and the implication of their participation was carefully explained. 28 persons had been contacted and it is a total of 15 persons who agreed to join participate in the study.
The list of interviewees (see Appendix) included persons that, during the PDUES-Turcot, were: • Representatives from the South West borough that used to or currently work closely with the PDUES-Turcot. • OCPM representatives who have a deep knowledge of the PDUES-Turcot and public consultations in general. • Representatives from diverse local organisations and community groups who participated in one or many consultation activities during the PDUES-Turcot. • Engaged local residents who participated in one or many consultation activities during the PDUES-Turcot.
A total of 15 interviews were conducted and the duration of the interviews was somewhere between 20-45 minutes. The interviews that occurred between February14 and March 6, 2020, took place in or around the city of Montreal at the convenience of the interviewees. All interviews were conducted in French as it was the language that both the author and interviewee had in common. An interview guide had been prepared prior to each interview and the questions varied according to the interviewee’s participation in different consultation activities during the project PDUES-Turcot as well as their relation to the project, i.e. either they were local residents, representatives from local organisation, the South west borough or the OCPM. Since the persons interviewed had different types of participation and responsibility in relation to the PDUES, it was necessary to have adapted questions to ensure a coherent and pertinent data collection. The questions asked during the interviews concerned their impressions and experiences of the consultation and implementation processes of the PDUES-Turcot in relation to decision-making and sustainable development.
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Data Transcription
All interviewees have given their approval on being recorded and the recordings were then transcribed into written form and in French as the interviews were conducted in that language. Since the representation of audible into written form is an interpretive process as it involves making judgments, it represented thereby the first step in analysing data (Bailey 2008: p. 130). A process of abstraction was then conducted as irrelevant or redundant information was put aside. A thematic framework (Ritchie & Spencer 1994: p. 179-180) within which the material was sorted by recurrent themes, concepts and key issues that emerged from the collected data was also set up. Once the selected material was reviewed and grouped, a reflection was made about which translation strategy to use in order to transfer the source material written in French into English. Challenges in interpretation is often experienced in any communicative activity, but they are further complicated when interlingual translation is required as language differences might hinder the transfer of meaning thus reducing the validity of the qualitative study (van Nes et al. 2010: p. 314). Indeed, the information communicated during the interviews was in French and had to be interpreted by me, the researcher and translator, and transferred into the target language (English) in such a way that the reader of the study could understand the message without any confusion. As the quotes of participants constitute an important part of the study’s, I decided to translate them with a target-oriented approach, i.e. to translate so that the quotes became fully comprehensible to the English-speaking reader. The use of quotes are considered to have a rich description that contribute to trustworthiness in qualitative research, however, using quotes can also be problematic because participants might feel that they are not fairly represented when seeing their spoken words in written form (van Nes et al. 2010: p.315). Translating quotes to another language enlarges this problem because in the translation, the words are literally not their own anymore (Temple 2008: p. 362). Since translation added an additional layer of interpretation to the transcribing process in this study, I provided additional information adjacent to the quotes in order to avoid misunderstandings and to increase the study’s reliability.
Ethical considerations
In order to make the research result trustworthy, the reliability and validity of the study has been highly considered. As many scholars have argued, case study can be subjective as it gives too much scope for the researcher’s own interpretations (Flyvbjerg 2006: p. 220). As previous personal experiences and achievements can influence my interpretation, I tried to be reflexive and recognise my own position within the research. I also tried to avoid interviewer effect which is an unconscious influence from the interviewer that can be for example doing some specific gestures or making facial expressions while asking questions (Esaiasson et al. 2012: p. 235). Interviewer effect can influence the interviewee in giving the responses they think are expected, rather than share their honest opinions or experiences which can be a threat to the validity of the study’s results. To accomplish a valid result, the research purpose will be used as a foundation in the identification of relevant interviewee and when structuring the interviews and the questions. All informants have been informed of the purpose of the research, that participation in the research is voluntary and that they have the right to suspend their participation whenever they wish and if desired (SFS 2003:460, 16§). In addition, all respondents will be given voluntary consent to participate in that study and will be informed that they will remain when the results of the study are presented (Dalen 2007: 21-23).
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Contextual background
This section consists of an historical perspective of public consultations in Montreal and an overview of the role and mandate of the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal. The planning area that is included in the planning of the new Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan will thereafter be briefly described and finally, the design of the consultations will be presented.
Public consultation in Montreal
Citizen participation is one of the means available to civil society to get involved in political decision-making at various stages of projects’ planning and implementation. It is a form of redistribution of power that allows citizens to be resolutely included in the future civic, social, economic and ecological life of their society. Public consultations are the main official opportunity for the residents to have a say in ongoing local planning issues and changes that are occurring in their own neighbourhood.
Montreal’s first formal public consultation structure appeared in 1989 with The Bureau de consultation de Montréal (BCM) who held public consultation on issues submitted by Montréal authorities. However, the existence of the BCM was closely linked to the political power that was in office during the same time and the new administration that took place in 1994 decided to abolish the Bureau, judging that public consultations should be held instead by a single city council standing committee (OCPM 2012: p. 2). Over the years, it became clear that the mechanism in place was not sufficient. Given the importance of the different projects who merited a more neutral and detailed analysis than the one provided by a committee “composed only of city councillors who often already had firmly set ideas about the projects under review “(OCPM 2012: p. 3). Consultations were proved useless for citizens and groups interested in evaluating and improving an urban project since it became obvious that the elected officials had already made their mind about the outcomes. Following various pressures from many different sectors of the civil society, the municipal administration created a commission mandated to examine consultation practices linked to urban planning. One of the recommendations that came out from this report was the idea of creating an office of public consultation with a mandate and a mission that would largely be similar to the Office as we know it today (Ibid). This new creation of the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal in 2002 was also incorporated into the Charter of the city of Montreal to ensure that changing political teams in the city’s administration would no longer have the possibility to jeopardize the existence of the Office (Ollivier 2018: p. 82).
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The Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (OCPM)
The OCPM was created specifically for the purpose of having a neutral and independent body to lead certain public consultations in Montreal. The Office leads public consultations that deal with Montreal’s urban development such as construction projects and bylaw4 changes, as well as policies. Anyone, including residents, developers or city councillors, can initiate or apply to change a bylaw so that a new project can happen. In that case, an application must be submitted to the borough, and the borough council has to vote on passing a motion to draft an amendment to the bylaw or not (OCPM 2020). It is often a political decision when it comes to decide who should be holding a certain public consultation in Montreal and when it will take place, but the mandates that are sent to the OCPM can originally come from either the citizens via the Right of Initiative to public consultations5, from the city council6 or the executive committee (OCPM 2011). The mandates primarily involve urban and land-use planning projects and policies under municipal jurisdiction but may include any project submitted by the executive committee or city council.
The Office also has the mandate to propose rules to structure public consultation in Montréal to ensure implementation of credible, transparent and effective consultation mechanisms. When a consultation is mandated, the Office is fully independent and in control of its processes, from the design of the consultation methods to the delivery of its final report. Indeed, the office distinguishes itself by being an independent organisation whose members are neither elected officials nor municipal employees, and as being a neutral third party between the public, the developers and the city (OCPM 2018a). The Office has thereby neither interest in the matters that are the subject of public consultations for which it is mandated (Ibid). Public consultation does not have decision-making power, but they help those in charge to make informed choices.
One of the first steps after being mandated for holding a consultation is for the President of the Office to appoint a Commission that include commissioners who lead the consultation project and a team that assist them in their work. The commissioners, who are appointed by the city council, have to follow a code of ethics which includes among others that they must exercise political neutrality and provide equitable treatment to all participants while avoiding all conflicts of interests when performing their duties (OCPM 2011). When the Office has received a mandate to hold a public consultation, they must ensure that the announcement of the public consultation covers the entire area affected by the project and to notify any groups and organizations that might be concerned by the development project. The purpose of the public consultation, the date, time and an appropriate accessible location of the public consultation sessions must be provided to the public. Anybody from anywhere is invited to
4 Bylaws are legally binding rules described in a borough planning document that regulate what, how and where you can build, and what types of activities are allowed in specific areas. In general, almost all bylaw changes require a local public consultation (OCPM 2020).
5 The Right of Initiative to Public Consultation has been adopted by the Montréal’s City Council in 2010 which allows citizens to obtain a public consultation by filing a petition in the form and within the timeframe provided for under the relevant By-law (Ville de Montréal 2020).
6 City council is made up of 65 elected officials and is Montréal’s main decision-making body. The mayor selects 11 members form the city council to form the executive committee that prepares documents and makes recommendations to city council on issues such as budgets and by-laws (Ville de Montreal 2020).
24 attend the hearing sessions and find out about the project, ask questions and express opinions orally or in writing as they are open to all. The hearing sessions are recorded and transcribed by a stenographer in order to ensure its transparency. All sessions are available on the Office Website a few days after the sessions. Following the hearing sessions, the Commissioners and its work team, composed of analysts from OCPM, deliberate and outline the issues and opinions expressed in all the submitted documents, presentations and other consultation activities that may have occurred previously. Once this debriefing and a consensus is done, they draft the post-consultation report that includes an analysis of the community’s issues and concerns as well as a list of recommendations. All the consultation reports from the OCPM are always written in a similar way, with distinct segments that include the opinions from the participants, the analysis from the Commission based on the mentioned issues and a segment that argues the reasons leading to its recommendations. By using similar procedures in every consultation report, it facilitates the reader to understand Commission's reasoning and it is this combination of transparency, predictability of methods and independency that guaranties the neutrality of the Office (Ollivier 2018: p. 85). When the consultation report is finalized, it is sent to the Mayor of Montréal, the city council and the executive committee for review and a few weeks later, the report is publicly available on the OCPM’s website.
Sometimes, public consultations happen late in a project’s timeline, giving the impression that big decisions have already been made. That is why holding public consultations early on or later in a project’s development can affect the public’s interest in participating. Taking this into account, the Office is holding more and more early- or upstream- consultations working on establishing innovative processes to create a vision and development principles rallying together a good number of interested actors and allowing collective benefits (OCPM 2012: p. 8). Indeed, the importance of using two consultation phases for major projects with large areas that are to be developed and that are lasting over many years is an approach that is gaining in popularity. This was the case of the studied public consultation PDUES-Turcot who has been using this two-steps consultation, as further explained in the next chapter.
The planning area for the PDUES-Turcot
In order to better understand and examine the processes of public consultation and its resulting decision-making, this paper will explore in depth the case study of the public consultation on the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan, for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in Montreal, Canada. The Turcot interchange is a hub for road traffic in Montreal, interconnecting different highways with a traffic volume of more than 300 000 vehicles per day (Transports Québec 2020). After almost 50 years of service, the interchange had to be rebuilt due to a concrete structure that was starting to crumble. In 2007, the Quebec government presented a construction plan for the Turcot interchange that proposed a rebuild and demolition of the original structure and a relocation of the highways and railways. This reconstruction project was expected to last until 2020 (Ibid).
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Figure 2: Aerial view of the Turcot interchange
Source 2: CBC News (2016)
The South West borough that is traversed and partly delimited by the interchange and the Lachine Canal has several neighbourhoods mainly with working-class and industrial origins. The area was essentially agricultural and remained so until the Lachine Canal divided the area, providing water power for factories (Ricciardi-Rigault 2005: p.2-3).
Figure 3: Lachine Canal and St-Henri Neighborhood in South West Borough
Source 3: Dronestagram (2015)
Industrial development such sawmills, foundries and leather tanning took place and workers started to move in resulting in agricultural lands that slowly start being converted to housing (Ricciardi-Rigault 2005: p.2-3).With the closure of the Canal in 1970 and the construction of major highway networks, the hub of manufacturing activity started to decline and these low- income working-class neighbourhoods were further segregated (Smart Cities Dive 2017).
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Figure 4: Abandoned Malting Factory Located Along the Lachine Canal in St-Henri's Neighborhood
Source 4: Citizen Erased Photography (2014). http://blog.citizenerasedphotography.
When the Canal was reopened for recreational purposes in 2002, renewed interest for the surrounding areas was peaking and gentrification started to take place. Many buildings have been repurposed and redeveloped into sustainable residential complex, condos, lofts, and art spaces with many studios overtaking empty warehouses (Smart Cities Dive 2017).
Figure 5: New sustainable buildings replacing empty warehouses along the Lachine canal
Source 5: Mtl Blog (2015). Photo taken by Jacques Leblond-Murphy.
Today, the South West borough has an average income that remains lower than the rest of Montreal and a fast-growing population which can partly be explained by an increasing number of immigrants that have arrived in this borough during the last ten years (CSSS South West-Verdun 2014). Massive public infrastructure lines dissect the area and main streets have stagnated or regressed with shops and services that are closing up. It is also an area that is struggling with food deserts having poor access to food retailers, a phenomenon often connected with socially deprived areas (Apparicio et al 2007: p.6). The neighborhoods are mainly characterized by duplexes and triplexes of varying quality and with high-end condo complexes along the Lachine Canal.
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Design of the consultations for the PDUES-Turcot
To figure out how the rebuilding of the area could be organized in the best way, the city of Montreal mandated the OCPM to hold a public consultation and analyze the opinions of the public in order to implement an Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES). One of the objectives with the PDUES was to improve the quality of life in the neighborhoods living nearby the interchange and respond to the concerns of the population.
Figure 6: Planning Area for the PDUES-Turcot
Source 6: Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal (2018)
With this participatory approach, residents got the opportunity to actively participate in the future of their neighborhood and express their opinions on the main issues of the area. The marked area on the map below shows the area that is included in the PDUES, an area of 2,17 km2 that mostly borders Saint-Henri Ouest and Côte-Saint-Paul / Ville-Émard neighborhoods. The area is part of the South West borough, one of the 19 boroughs included in the city of Montreal.
Figure 6: South West Borough in Montreal
Source 7: Ville de Montréal (2020) The OCPM and the South West borough worked closely to plan the format and the timeline of the participative process that would ultimately lead to the adoption of an Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES). Since this project involved a large area that was about to be developed over many years, it was decided to have a participatory approach that would include two consultation phases.
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The diagram below shows the different phases and the timeline of the project PDUES-Turcot, which included both the public consultation phases as well as the implementation phase. The three pictures below the timeline arrow represents the results from the different phases which consisted of written reports from the OCPM and the South West borough.
2016 2017 2018-2025 Public consultation Public consultation Implementation Vision Preliminary PDUES Final PDUES
OCPM consultation report #17 OCPM consultation report #28 South West borough final PDUES9
The first consultation phase started in 2016 and aimed at identifying the issues and needs within the South West borough in order to formulate a vision that would integrate urban, economic and social dimensions. In the beginning of this process, nearly 28 000 leaflets were distributed in and around the PDUES area to invite residents to participate in the future of Saint-Henri Ouest and Côte-Saint-Paul / Ville-Émard neighborhoods (OCPM 2016a). Emails were sent to hundreds of institutions, community organizations and to thousands of citizens that are registered at the OCPM mailing list and newsletter. Announcements on social media were also placed at various times to inform about the different activities.
7 Source: OCPM (2016a) 8 Source: OCPM (2017) 9 Source: Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal (2018)
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Figure 7: Leaflets on the upstream consultation for the project PDUES-Turcot
Source 8: OCPM
During this consultation phase, the OCPM and a team from the South West borough organised many consultation activities such as round table meetings, workshops, online questionnaires and information sessions. They consulted the Tables de Concertation – or Neighborhood Round Tables- in both Ville Émard-Côte-St-Paul and St-Henri neighborhoods to get their advice on relevant organisations and residents to participate in the consultation activities. In Montreal, there are 31 Neighborhood Round Tables which are incorporated organizations with representatives of residents and neighborhood associations who belong to different networks (i.e. community groups, local health & social services etc.) and operate in different fields of intervention (CMTQ 2020). They are a sort of community leaders that come together "around the table" to discuss the problems of the neighborhood and deliver a collective capacity of local stakeholders for the improvement of the neighbourhood. They are also responsible for local social development and discuss concerns such as the fight against poverty, access to housing, the integration of migrants, young and elderly people, environmental mobilization etc. Those Neighborhood Round Tables bring citizen participation to Montreal in a stable way and are thereby an important element of concertation at the municipal level (Ibid). The round table meetings were led by the commissioners and their work team consisting of professionals from the OCPM and from the South West borough. It is between 18-20 different key actors such as local organisations and developers working within the community that attended those meetings that aimed at validating the current issues within the borough.
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Figure 8: Round table meetings with key actors from the neighborhood
Source 9: OCPM The issues that were discussed and debated during these meetings were all important factors to ensure a more sustainable neighborhood, focusing on the environmental, the social and the economical aspects of the new urban development. Indeed, the quality of living environments (poverty zones and food desert, lack of greenery, preservation of cultural heritage), the connectivity and mobility (active transport and public transportation within and between neighborhoods, economic dynamism (creating job opportunities and local employment) and the opportunity to create complete neighborhoods were among the debated topics. A total of 9 workshops were also organised at different places to discuss the same issues, this time with borough residents.
“It was important to involve the citizens early in the process, so that they could have a real contribution to the vision of the future of their borough. By doing so, it gave us the tools to integrate the demand from the citizens early in the planning phase and set up suitable solutions for the future” (South West borough representative, 2020-03-06).
Figure 9: Workshops with residents
Source 10: OCPM
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Online questionnaires were available on the OCPM’s website where people could submit their opinion on different issues about the neighbourhood. Other consultation activities consisted of two information sessions that would give the opportunity for the citizens to get information about the borough with different thematic booths and interactive 3D models. Those occasions gave the opportunity for the residents to ask questions to key actors from the community in a more informal way.
Figure 10: Information sessions
Source 11: OCPM
Finally, the last activity during the first consultation phase was the hearing session where anyone who wanted to submit their opinion and vision on the future of the South West borough could do so by either presenting orally in front of a public and a commission, and/or by submitting a written document.
Figure 11: Hearing session for the project PDUES-Turcot
Source 12: OCPM More than 2200 people participated in the first phase of this public consultation process, by either answering the online questionnaires, by participating in workshops, thematic round tables or public information sessions. Furthermore, OCPM has received a total of 35 written submissions and 19 oral presentations were made in front of a public and the commission in charge of the hearing (OCPM 2016a).
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Once all the consultation activities were over and all the submissions and presentations were delivered to the OCPM, the Commission worked together in order to compile, analyse and summarizeReport from all the the OCPM opinions that came in during the different consultation activities. This work resulted in a report that was published by the OCPM a few months later. The report followed the usual template used from the Office, consisting of a segment with the compiled opinions from the participants, the analysis from the commission based on the mentioned issues and a segment that argues the reasons leading to its
OCPM’s report- 1st consultation recommendations.
The Commission proposed 25 recommendations intended for the South West borough to enable the achievement of a sustainable neighborhood that reflects the vision of the population. Here are a few examples of the issues, chosen randomly, that are included in the recommendations from the OCPM:
- To increase the greening of the area to improve the air quality and reduce heat islands. - To enable the participation of the residents in the development of parks and green spaces. - To facilitate the interaction between residents and reduce social isolation - To promote the development of affordable social housing - To counter the effects of urban sprawl through better cohabitation and social mix - To promote urban agriculture strategies - To investigate the food desert issue - To promote green infrastructure - To promote local employment - etc.
The South West borough answered to those 25 recommendations with a summary table describing the action plan for each recommendation. The summary table was published on the OCPM’s website and thereby accessible to the public.
A preliminary Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES) was then submitted by the South West borough in April 2017, nine months after the report from the OCPM. This preliminary plan became the subject of a new public consultation and the start of the second phase, or the downstream phase, of this consultation process. This second phase aimed at developing strategies and proposing concrete actions that would make possible the implementation of the PDUES. This was also a phase where the public consultation was conducted in a more traditional way with the information sessions, the hearing of opinions and the report writing that constitutes the three main steps included in most of the Office’s public consultation processes (Ollivier 2018: p. 85).
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Even though the participation was not as high as the first consultation phase, more than 150 people participated in these public information sessions and 72 people presented their opinions either in writing or orally (OCPM 2017). The Office wrote its final consultation report with a total of 17 recommendations. The recommendations consisted mostly of adjustments to the proposed action plan mentioned in the preliminary PDUES written by the South West borough.
OCPM’s report- 2nd consultation
Based on the results from both public consultations and on both reports from the OCPM, the South West borough adjusted its preliminary plan and submitted a finalized
version of its Urban, Economic and Social Development
Plan in 2018. The plan is a description of the different
interventions that will take place on the territory between 2018-2025. Six categories came out as the main priorities to focus on during the implementation phase of the PDUES (Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal 2018):
- Social development South West borough’s final PDUES Economic development -
- Housing development - Greening - Mobility - Culture and Heritage
A total of 32 actions were divided into these main categories and all of them planned to be achieved before 2025. Example of those 32 actions will be provided under the section Sustainability and Sustainable Development.
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Results
The interviews conducted with people involved in the sustainable project PDUES-Turcot allowed for a better understanding of the consultation and its decision-making processes. The perceptions and experiences of both processes expressed by the interviewees constitute the results of this study.
Since the interviews were conducted in French, the quotes from the interviewees has been translated by the author with the intention of remaining as close as possible to the original quote. The results are presented thematically, and the quotes are referenced with the interviewee’s relation to the PDUES-Turcot and with the date when the interview was conducted (e.g. South West Borough, 2020-02-14), as the names of the participants remained anonymous. Consultation process
The project PDUES-Turcot has aroused a lot of interest, not only with the people living nearby the interchange, but also among people working in different urban fields. All of them got the opportunity to express their vision of a sustainable and inclusive neighborhood while bringing their knowledge of the area and their respective competences to the table. Montrealers have indeed become used to be consulted for future urban development, but things have not been always been like this as things were very different not too long ago. “In the late 1990s, the consultations in Montreal were done very differently. Several urban development projects were treated in only one evening, with 4-5 minutes for each case to be discussed. There was very little possibility of giving opinions as the consultations were more of a formality for those having the power of decision.” (OCPM representative, 2020-03-05). The participation rate was indeed very low and over the years, this has created frustration among many actors and residents in the city. Thanks to the citizens themselves and their quest for more transparency, the practices have changed significantly to become the way they are today.
“There has never been an elected official who got up one morning by saying “I think it would be fun to consult the citizens ". The public consultations have always been the product of arduous pressures from the citizens” (OCPM representative, 2020-03- 05).
Public consultations have always been a bottom-up realization since it is the population that is demanding to be informed about the decisions related to their living environment. It is often when people are personally affected that their participation in such activities increase as they want to make their voice heard, which was the case for the project PDUES-Turcot. Indeed, with the reconstruction of the interchange that would lasts many years and affect a lot of residents, especially the ones living nearby, the consultation project raised awareness among people who wouldn’t normally get engaged in urban development as such.
“I would not call myself an engaged citizen since I do not necessarily have the time and interest in participating in consultations, but this time it was important that my
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opinions and worries would be heard since the construction work would affect me and my family’s everyday life for so many years” (local resident, 2020-03-02).
“I try to get involved in my neighborhood even if I don't always have the time since I have a job and a family, but the PDUES was a great opportunity to express my opinions and my vision of the area as I was hoping for real changes” (local resident, 2020-03-05).
Even though it takes time and energy to get involved in the community’s project, it remains important for the interviewed residents to be a part of the urban development of their community. Many saw this consultation as an opportunity to influence the outcomes of their living environment and wanted to be part of its future development.
It was important for all the interviewees to have a transparent and accessible process and a way of achieving that was to increase the opportunities for the people to participate. The local knowledge that people in the South West borough have developed over time was highly considered by the PDUES-team10 and that is why they wanted to make sure that the amount of participation would be high. As mentioned earlier, the information sessions constitute one of the three main steps included in most of the traditional public consultation processes. The normal procedure of those information sessions consists of a presentation of the project by the borough followed by questions from people, all that being done behind a microphone. As the PDUES-team wanted to make sure to not exclude anyone in the process, they decided to use a more inclusive approach and opted for “drop in” information sessions where people could ask their questions and discussed their concerns in a more informal way: “This formal way of speaking in front of a public with a microphone is something that organizations or those with louder voices are more comfortable with, but it is not the case for everyone.” (South West borough, 2020-02-24). The PDUES-team also decided to have those information sessions on different dates and locations to ensure that as many people as possible could participate. Consultation practices are constantly reviewed, and their format are often changing to suit different groups and to become more inclusive, open and transparent. The project PDUES-Turcot is in that sense an example of this constant evolution towards a better and flexible consultation practice. Since the project covered a large area and was going to last for several years, it was decided to implement a two-step consultation phases, a strategy that is gaining in popularity for projects of this significance.
“It was important with this consultation process to have a Plan that represented what the community was looking for and that is why we chose to have a vision document in the first place. It is no longer happening to consult the population on a document that is almost final, we need the support of the community from the very beginning” (South West borough, 2020-02-24).
Another step of the consultation process for the PDUES-Turcot was to organise round table meetings and workshops in order to discuss some of the major concerns of the neighborhood with key actors from the area. The PDUES-team consulted the Neighborhood Round Tables to get their advice on who they thought would be best suited to participate in the consultation activities. Since the Neighborhood Round Tables are community leaders that have a close
10 The PDUES-team was composed of professionals from the OCPM and the South West borough
36 interaction with the members of the community, asking their advice shows this genuine desire from the PDUES-team of having engaged and devoted participants that can contribute to the development of the community. The majority of the interviewees that participated in the round table meetings and workshops during the consultation phase of the PDUES appreciated those occasions to discuss major concerns in the neighborhoods with key actors in the community. The outcomes of that activity can be resumed by the following comment:
“The round tables and the workshops allowed us to share our visions in our respective field of expertise. Since the participants know very well their neighborhood, I think they have a general expertise on the issues that citizens face, the weaknesses and the strengths of the neighborhood, so I believe that the future urban developments should always take into account the expertise of the people who live or work there” (local organization, 2020-02-27). Indeed, the participants in those consultation activities were members from organizations within social, educational, cultural, environmental and housing fields. They all had different competence and expertise that could contribute to the discussions on the different concerns of the community. Expertise has also been increasing among citizens themselves as we are witnessing a shift where citizen experts are becoming the new paradigm while the elite citizens no longer are being the only ones to contribute to urban development. This is something that the OCPM has noticed throughout the years with an increasing in both the quantity but mostly in the quality of the submissions sent to the Office. “When we look at the contribution from citizens over the past decade, we notice a higher quality of the briefs that are much better debated and articulated. Citizens are doing their own researches and learn about different urban models and concepts from around the world and can propose very interesting and innovative solutions that can be applied here in Montreal” (OCPM representative, 2020-03-04). The presence of Internet, social media and the familiarization with technologies has thus enabled citizens to have a better understanding of the cities and to share this knowledge on a global scale. Citizen experts has gained more and more understandings and skills that enable them to actively participate in efforts to improve community life. Many interviewees mentioned the political strategy behind the decision of having a public consultation as a way of compensating for the inconvenience that was expected during the reconstruction of the interchange: “Given that people were going to suffer due to the relocation and renovation of the interchange, I think that the PDUES-Turcot was a strategy from those in power to say “you will suffer but after that it will be better, we will compensate or mitigate the situation“ (local organization, 2020-02-27).
“We had to innovate and show that there would be concrete change in the area because people were disillusioned” (South West borough, 2020-03-06). A video was also made showing different areas and assets of the borough, an ambitious and innovative initiative driven by the South West borough to create an inspiring vision of the future of the neighborhood. Since manifestations occurred on the neighborhood’s streets back in 2009, choosing to consult the people about the future of the borough was a way to appease all the inconvenience that would be felt from the reconstruction of the interchange and to avoid further public manifestations. Furthermore, the consultation process is seen as crucial
37 in order to have a final action plan that reflects the desire of the population and that can lead to real change.
“When you have the public support with an action plan that is carried by the population, like it was the case with the PDUES-Turcot, it becomes a very powerful document in terms of political management or to ensure that we can have the funding, elements that facilitate its realization (South west borough, 2020-02-24).
Overall, the consultation process has been appreciated by all the interviewees and was considered a positive experience that brought up very important issues to focus on in order to achieve a more sustainable neighborhood. It was a process where transparency, flexibility and real willingness to work together and to get the best outcomes as possible for the area were present in every steps of the way.
Project implementation process
Once the consultations were over and the OCPM has submitted its second consultation report, the South West borough reviewed the results and dedicated a special attention towards the recommendations formulated by the Office. A year later, they published the final PDUES which represented the start of the implementation process that was going to last during 2018- 2025. A total of 32 concrete actions were presented in the PDUES document, all of them aiming at achieving a more sustainable and inclusive community. “It was important for the borough to be able to carry out all the proposed actions, that we had the field of competence and budgetary resources to implement them. That is why we had to filter the actions according to its feasibility” (South West borough, 2020-02-24). When reading through the PDUES, it is clear that the document is mostly based on the results of the consultations, however, the borough is not obligated to follow the recommendations from the OCPM and is not either obligated to concretize their formulated actions since the PDUES is not a legally binding document. Basically, this means that once the consultation and the final report is over, the borough is free to decide in which direction to go without having to formally report about it. This is an element that has been discussed and debated by many interviewees which can be summarized as follows:
“We don’t necessarily have a problem with the fact that boroughs don’t follow our recommendations as we understand that some actions might be difficult to realize. What bothers the most however is for the citizens and organisations who have spent a lot of time at participating in the consultation process to not receive any explanation on why their ideas have not been retained. If the elected people would take the time to systematically explain the reasons why they make certain decisions, I'm sure it would add credibility to the consultation process, otherwise this can become a threat to our democracy” ( OCPM representative, 2020-03-05).
“I wish it would be more difficult for the authorities to choose to go in the opposite direction of what the population wants. The problem with this type of consultation report like the one from the OCPM is that the elected officials can choose what they want to get into politics with, and the only weight they have to bear is a political one
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as there is not real repercussions if they go against the recommendations” (local organization, 2020-03-04).
When the OCPM’s report following the first consultation on the PDUES-Turcot was published, the South West borough did send a summary table where they explained how they would solve or take care of each recommendation mentioned in the OCPM’s report. This summary table was a way to give feedback to the participants of the public consultation as it gave an explanation on what could be expected to happen in relation to the recommendations. The summary table became accessible to the public as it was published on the OCPM’s website. The South West borough did not provide a summary table for the second report from the OCPM as they published their final PDUES instead.
The PDUES written by the South West borough contains a list of 32 actions, and one of them (action 19) was to “Create a follow-up committee for the realization of the PDUES”. Indeed, participants had mentioned that they wanted to be engaged and have something to bring to the table even during the implementation phase of the project. This suggestion was retained by the South West borough and was listed as one of their concrete action. After consulting the two Neighborhoods Round Tables to get their advice on who should participate in the follow-committee, the South West borough invited the participants for their first meeting. The idea behind this committee was to have a group of people that would carry out the action plan, that would meet and get informed and get the chance to be engaged in the progress of the different ongoing projects. An objective was also to empower the community through the implementation of the PDUES as many would get new knowledge and experience along the way. However, many interviewees who had participated in the follow-up committee meetings felt it was more like attending a presentation rather with very little possibility of discussions between the participants.
“I did not feel that it gave much since everything was decided and everything was planned in advance, we just sat there and listened, we did not feel that we could bring up any possible changes. However, it allowed us to know what was going on with the project before the rest of the community so that we could be prepare and inform them” (local organization 2020-03-05).
“I found that the meetings I attended were a little artificial as if they were put in place because the borough felt they had to and not because they wanted to collaborate with us. What we asked during the consultation process was to have a committee not necessarily with a decision-making power, but at least with a certain power of influence” (local organization, 2020-02-27). Indeed, the meetings gave updates that allowed the following up of the progress of the ongoing projects, but it was a one-way communication that prevailed during those meetings. Many interviewees mentioned the importance of clarifying the mandate of this follow-up committee in order to ensure its efficiency. It was also important for the participants to feel that they could be engaged in the conversation and feel that they could contribute to the changes, and not just listen. Since the participants in the committee have different fields of expertise, they would certainly want to contribute to the project implementation if given the opportunity. “It is normal that unpredictable things can happen and change the initial plans, especially in long-term projects such as the PDUES, and having a follow-up
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committee with a certain influential mandate could help relaunch new strategies (local organization, 2020-03-04). These meetings could provide the South West borough with local and professional support as different perspectives from diverse fields of expertise could lead to new efficient strategies. The follow-up committee met a few times during the first year following the PDUES, but information about who participated and what was discussed during those meetings was not publicly known as the list of members and meetings protocols were sent only among the participants themselves. Due to employee turnover and lack of resources, the meetings had to be postponed, but the current responsible for the PDUES project at the South West borough plan “to start again with the follow-up meetings during the spring 2020 and with the ambition of having meetings 2-3 times a year or when it will be judged necessary” (South West borough, 2020-02-14). Most of the interviewees believe that it is the borough itself that should lead this follow-up committee as they are the ones in charge of the realization of the PDUES. However, many have proposed ways of improving the meetings by suggesting a committee that would rather resemble a working group:
“Once the consultation is over and the final report is submitted, it would be great to have a meeting with the same actors who were implicated earlier. We could review the recommendations one by one and redistribute the tasks related to the recommendation among the persons who are qualified and want to take the lead towards certain initiatives. This would be a more innovative and effective way of working, and it could mean that some people who were not involved in the consultation process four years ago may now be interested in being involved. It’s good to have opinions but it’s even better to see action” (local developer, 2020-02- 24).
The format and procedures of the follow-up committee meetings would need to be reviewed and adapted if they are to be in accordance with what the people was hoping for. The goal and mandate of the committee should also be clarified so that all the participants are on the same page in terms of expectations.
A webpage was created to allow the population to follow the progress of the different projects using 3D geo-spatial visualization tools. For the South West borough, this was a new way to present information to the public. The webpage allowed for the borough to virtually show the latest realization and the ones that were about to start.
Figure 12: Interactive model showing the evolution of the project PDUES-Turcot
Source 103: Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal (2018).
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However, the site is unknown for many citizens and the information is not always updated. As mentioned by a representative from a local organisation:
“There are few people who embodies the PDUES in its duration as it is important to have continuity in the project. Currently there is a weakness of vision and of communication since the people ask us about the status of different projects. The borough refers to the webpage but it does not play its role when people do not know that it exists or that it is not up to date”. (local organization, 2020-02-27). With the employee turnover and the original PDUES-team from the borough that is no longer working with this project, it has been an inevitable challenge to maintain continuity in the long-term project when new persons had to take on new roles and responsibilities. This reality has given the impression that the project is lacking an overall perspective and vision. Many interviewees have also expressed the weakness in communication as they are eager to know what the next steps of the project are: “Once the consultations were over, no one has contacted me to keep the connection and inform me of the project’s development. We were many people involved during the consultations and we all spent a lot of time reflecting and bringing collective ideas for the neighborhood, and I think it is a shame that this ends up once the consultations are over” (local developer, 2020-02-24).
This lack of communication and feedback has been a source of frustration for many participants who felt that they should at the very least be informed of the different status of the project considering all the time and energy they spent on the different consultation activities. Most of the interviewees would have appreciated having a continuous dialogue with the borough and be given the opportunity to contribute in the development actions even when the consultations were over. This lack of follow up and communication in general is not an issue that is specific to the PDUES-Turcot, but something that keeps on coming back. The OCPM has been pointing out this recurring problem for many years, and one proposed solution was for the boroughs to provide a summary table where the action plan for each recommendation from the OCPM would systematically be explained and made public. This summary table is necessary for the citizens to understand how their contribution is intended to be taken care of although it has some limitation:
“Some of the recommendations are not always achievable since some of them have budgetary or responsibility issues that are beyond the exclusive scope of the borough, or that require additional studies and further collaboration with partners” (South West borough, 2020-02-14)
Indeed, as many different actors are involved in bigger projects like the PDUES, the borough itself cannot always be in control of all the aspects as their field of responsibility can be shared with other actors and institutions. However, by filling in a summary table of the action plan related to the recommendations shows a willingness to have a more open and transparent dialog with the people concerned and engaged in the project. In the case of the PDUES- Turcot, such a table had been provided.
To follow-up big projects like the PDUES remains a difficult challenge as there are many similar ongoing projects all around the city of Montreal. Many ideas have been proposed such as creating search tool that enables the browsing of all city documents to detect decisions related to a specific project can be easily found or assigning a person responsible
41 for the PDUES-Turcot that would be employed by the city of Montreal and as a contact person between the city and the borough (OCPM 2016). Those ideas would uncontestably ensure a better control over the planned actions that are happening around the city and in different boroughs, and thereby facilitate its implementation. “We wanted to have a person working at the city that would be responsible for following this project, but it is difficult. There is no tool right now at the city to make sure that the commitments that are made in documents like the PDUES-Turcot are traceable in the city’s budget. Since the budget changes every year and the priorities are constantly reviewed, a certain project may be postponed without the borough's knowledge. It is therefore necessary to set up a mechanism at the city level that can monitor all the commitments included in this PDUES and in other documents as well, to ensure its feasibility” (South West borough, 2020-03-06)
In brief, the implementation process and where most of the decision-making is done in regard to the actual realisation of the PDUES-Turcot is, according to the interviewees, where most improvement has to be done in order to ensure the effectiveness and the transparency of public consultation as a whole. The West South borough did show a willingness to remain engaged with the residents and participants after the consultation process. They responded to the recommendations from the first OCPM report by sending a summary table describing their action plan for each recommendation. They created a website intended to be the platform where the progression of the project would be illustrated with interactive 3D model. They also started a follow-up committee in order to keep the contact with engaged members of the community.
However, at the time when the interviews for this paper occurred which is two years after the PDUES was published, the communication between the borough and the residents appear to be non-existent. The follow-up committee has ceased and the PDUES website that was once intended to be the virtual link between the borough and the population is not properly updated which makes it difficult to follow the progression of the project. The shared opinion from most of the interviewees was that once the public consultation process was over, they no longer were part of the equation as the communication seemed to have gradually diminished to nothing.
The interviews conducted with people involved in the sustainable project PDUES-Turcot allowed for a better understanding of the public consultation and its decision-making processes. In the next chapter, analyses and discussions will focus on local mechanisms and approaches used in decision making during and after public consultation and to evaluate their influence on the management of sustainable development.
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Analysis and discussion
This chapter analyses the study’s results from both an institutional and a citizen perspective, based on theory from the literature review and the theoretical framework. The chapter discusses the study’s general results while drawing parallels with theories and literature that address the notions of local knowledge and citizen expertise, the role of public consultation in relation to political power as well as sustainability and sustainable development.
Citizen expert
Expert citizens are, according to Henrik Bang (2005) individuals in and from the community who are equipped with relevant knowledge, understandings and skills that enable them to actively participate in efforts to improve community life. Today, more and more citizens won’t accept that people decide without them being consulted, they have equipped themselves with tools to reflect, debate, speak up and demonstrate, and the decision-making power is thereby increasingly questioned and challenged. Citizens who participate in public consultation are themselves city planners, architects or engineers and have a very deep knowledge on urban development. The increasing engagement of the population in urban projects combined with the fact that normal citizens are getting more and more experts in the urban development are important elements to consider in order to ensure a more participatory democracy. One of the first step to creating public participation activities is to take the capacity and expertise of citizens seriously and to put it to use in service of our democracy (Noveck 2016). The results of this study show that the prerequisites for a participative approach were there. Information about the PDUES-Turcot consultation was made available by email via registered mailing lists and newsletter subscribers as well as via direct email to targeted organisations and citizens. Publicity was also made on social media and leaflets were distributed in the neighborhood concerned by the PDUES. The population thus did have the opportunity to express their opinions in different ways and on many occasions, either by attending information sessions where they could get information about the PDUES project and ask questions, or either by submitting brief in written and /or orally in front of the Commission and a public. Furthermore, 18-20 different key actors such as local organisations and developers working within the community were selected in collaboration with the Neighborhood Table Rounds to participate in different consultation activities such as workshops and round table meetings aiming at validating the current issues within the borough. The participants in this study had a wide range of expertise with social, educational, cultural, environmental and real estates field and could contribute to the different issues in very many ways. In brief, there has been a clear desire of reaching out to as many people as possible to compile opinions and knowledge about the neighborhood concerned by the PDUES. All interviewees appreciated this consultation process as they felt that they could influence the outcomes of the South west neighborhood. However, this knowledge and expertise appears to no longer be consulted once the consultation process was over. As expressed by a representative from a local organisation:
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“It's been a long time that I work in this professional field and I have not often seen experiences where the expertise of the people REALLY is taken into account, valued and put forward (local organization, 2020-02-27). This trend appears to be common many interviewees expressed that they did not get the impression that their expertise and knowledge has been influencing the decision-making in the development of the PDUES. As they don’t see specific actions being concretized in their neighborhood, they don’t know if it is because the actions are being postponed or canceled which gives the impression that what was once agreed does not seem to apply anymore. In the case of the PDUES that is mostly based on opinions from the population, one could argue that the PDUES does reflect the expertise and opinions of the population as it took into consideration most of the recommendations from the OCPM. However, as there is a lack of communication between the borough and the population, it gives the impression that the decisions are being made without considering the population’s expertise and opinions. In that sense, one could notice a similarity with Elliot’s study (1984) which attempted to show the value of open participatory communications and revealed that citizens are not necessarily against the decisions being made as long as they are presented and debated in an open democratic process. Perhaps this is the case here, that participants in the PDUES-Turcot would tend to accept changes on issues that were important to them if they were getting the chance to be part of the conversation surrounding the issue.
As mentioned earlier, local knowledge about the surroundings is assumed to be better used in a decentralized democracy, resulting in better decisions being taken and with implementation processes being more effective (De-Shalit 2004: p. 138.). The acceptance of new decisions towards the development of the PDUES would probably increase if the population could follow the progress with a better direct contact from the borough, with update information on the website, and with a follow-up committee that enables dialog and cooperation.
While much emphasis has been placed on developing processes of inclusion that ensure that particular groups are not left out of the participatory processes, less attention has been directed to self-exclusion (Cornwall 2008: p.279). Self-exclusion can be associated with a lack of confidence because people feel that they have nothing to contribute and that their ideas won’t be taken seriously. But it can also be because people do not feel that there is any point in participating and the opportunity costs of taking part simply do not outweigh the benefits of so doing (Ibid). If participants time after time feel that their contribution is not taken into account, there is a risk that they won’t participate in further consultation which is a threat to our democracy. Today, we have the means to collectivise our expertise to solve all sorts of problems as the space for active participation has opened up and is much more available than never before (Meert 2016). Citizens with their knowledge and engagement should be seen as a resource base and be given the possibility to be engaged and influence the decision-making, even after the consultations are over. Knowledge and experience that are context-dependent are at the very heart of expert activity (Flyvbjerg 2006: p.223) and should definitely be considered in projects such as the PDUES-Turcot. As expressed by Fischer (2000), the call for increased participation involves more than just getting larger numbers of people to come to meetings, it also involves bringing another kind of rationality, such as the cultural rationality, to bear on the decision-making process.
Important decisions keep being made in big and important projects like the PDUES-Turcot as so many things can happen along the way. It is thus important that the public is kept informed about new decisions that are affecting the project if we want to ensure that the residents
44 remain engaged in the development of their surroundings. The citizen expertise that is highly considered during the consultation process would gain on being equally considered during the implementation phase where most of the decision are taken. By doing so, the chance of having a broader perspective that would lead to new and effective strategies is increasing, and actions might be implemented in a more democratic way. Political strategy
Despite the popularity of citizen participation, many studies have showed that it has had little impact on the mainstream political decision-making and the participation could thereby be considered as simply a reinforcement of existing knowledge-validating and decision-making structures (Wakeford & Singh 2008: p.7). There is thus a risk that organisations use consultation as a political tool to show that the population is consulted, but the way those consultations are performed do not necessarily promote real participation. It is important to make the difference between information sessions where the population is invited to listen as being the same as consultation where citizens really can make a contribution. Indeed, facilitating genuine participatory process and then to develop a means of ignoring the outcomes that do not suit the political agenda is a strategy that has been adopted by many institutions (Wakeford & Singh 2008: p.7). This is a something that many interviewees have discussed about during the interviews as a representative of a local organisation expressed:
“Most of the time big decisions are managed top-down where those in power give some candies to calm the claims and demands from the population, like consulting them for example, but in reality, they have their own political agenda” (local organization, 2020-02-27).
This is an issue that has been addressed for a long time by different scholars such as Arnstein (1969) who pointed out that there is a critical difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and having the real power needed to affect the outcome of the process. The South West borough organised follow-up committees with members from the community which shows their willingness to consult and include them in the implementation process. However, as many participants expressed in their interviews, they felt that those meetings were rather a platform from the borough to inform where little space was given for discussion and debate. In that sense, it could be argued that those meetings and the committee as a whole where empty rituals of participation with little effect on the process outcome, as mentioned by Arnstein. Participants and public participation organizers may not agree on what constitutes a “good” process if they have different underlying goals and expectations for that process (Abelson & Gauvin 2006: p.7), that is why it would be beneficial for both parts to have a clear mandate of the follow-up committee in order to ensure its efficiency. Cornwall (2008) is another researcher who has argued that consultations “are widely used as a means of legitimating already-taken decisions, providing participation to lend the process moral authority”. Its outcomes are open to being selectively read and used by those with the power to decide and there are rarely any guarantees that what is said during the consultations will be responded to or taken into account (Cornwall 2008: p.270). When reading through the PDUES-report, it is clear that the 32 suggested actions have been reflecting the recommendations of the OCPM’s reports which implies that the population’s opinions have been considered. However, as the implementation process is being dealt more internally with
45 little updated information provided to the population, it is unclear if the new decisions that are taken are going in the same direction as it was previously claimed. In Montreal, when an urban development project is being proposed, it entails new bylaw changes that need to be approved by the population through either a referendum or a public consultation. If the option of having a referendum is chosen, residents in the area are required to vote on whether or not they approve the bylaw change whilst when the OCPM is in charge of a public consultation, there isn’t any option for a referendum.
“The consultations of the OCPM replace the referendum process and prevent thereby local special interests that could hinder the realization of project that is of general interest” (OCPM representative, 2020-03-04).
It also means for the OCPM that they often receive consultation mandates on controversial and sensitive political issues that elected officials have to deal with.
“In general, the hot potato is being passed to us from elected officials to bring about a solution and to find a way to handle difficult matters” (OCPM representative, 2020-03-05). To choose public consultation over a referendum is therefore a strategy from elected officials to get more insight from a broader public in order to take better informed decisions on controversial topics. Many researchers have concluded, open participatory decisions are the only way around Nimby (Fischer 2000: p.130) as decisions that are in the interests of the wider community but that are unpopular with some local communities sometimes have to be taken. In the case of the consultation for the PDUES, it is rather a YIMBY- Yes In My Backyard- approach that was promoted as citizens got the opportunity to express what they would like to see improved in their surroundings to achieve a sustainable neighborhood. Finally, as the implementation process of the PDUES-Turcot is being dealt mostly behind closed doors with little interaction between the South West borough and the population, it becomes difficult to acknowledge if the decision-making is following the initial engagement or another political agenda. In the same way as urban political ecologists have been pointing out power relation that often results in highly uneven urban landscapes, the relationship of power can similarly be addressed in regard to the public consultation and decision-making during the PDUES. As much as the consultation process was extensive and thoroughly organised with citizens providing knowledge, expertise and engagement, there is a clear unequal power relation with decision-makers who are lacking in giving feedback and thereby lacking in transparency once the consultations are over.
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
The definitions of sustainability and sustainable development can be quite problematic as it exists a large amount of definitions for both terms. One of the most common definition of sustainable development was defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1987, who described it as “a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987: p.15). The definition of sustainability may be taken further as it stipulates that in order to achieve it, we must balance the three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental and social factors) in equal
46 harmony (Ibid). The 32 actions that have been prioritised by the South West Borough in its PDUES can all be classified as being sustainable as they touch upon those three pillars. Here are a few examples of the listed actions, chosen randomly, as well as the categories they were divided into:
Example of Actions: - Maximize greening on public areas - Improve the overall housing conditions - Establish partnerships for the development of residential projects - Create new local employments - Promote built and archeological heritage - Promote sustainable mobility - Integrate art in public areas - Etc.
Categories: - Social development - Economic development - Housing development - Greening - Mobility - Culture and Heritage
All the 32 actions have been compiled in a summary action plan that specifies the responsible entities, the partners, the funding as well as the timeline for all of the actions:
Figure 13: Summary action plan of the 32 actions included in the PDUES-Turcot
Source 114: Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal (2018)
When reading through the list of the 32 actions, it becomes evident that some of the actions are very broad as they implicate many aspects that are intangible and difficult to define, which make the aspired result quite vague and hard to follow. Action 5 “Develop a biodiversity network” is an example of a very broad action that is difficult to define and measure as its implication can be interpreted in many different ways. This is also something
47 that Swyngenouw & Kaika (2014) has pointed out, arguing that the term sustainability has become an “empty signifier” that has neither intellectual coherence nor political substance. Indeed, as many aspects can be involved in the definition of sustainability, trying to achieve sustainable solutions, or actions like it is the case with the PDUES, can be interpret differently making it difficult to ensure concrete outcomes.
Sustainable cities are often seen as the ones described by Jane Jacobs (1969) with communities that are walkable, diverse and oriented around a mix of housing, shops and public facilities. At its heart, sustainable design is based on social and ecological values, rather than a value set dominated by economic efficiency and profit (Wheeler 2004: p. 69). However, social and ecological design must be made financially feasible and one main obstacle to these goals is the economic factor. Indeed, for a project to be pursued, it depends largely on its allocated financial budget and the project PDUES-Turcot is no exception to that. As mentioned earlier, some of the recommendations from the OCPM were not always achievable with some of them representing budgetary issues that were beyond the exclusive scope of the South West borough. Since the city budget changes every year, the priorities in regard to urban development are constantly reviewed and certain projects may be postponed or even cancelled for financial reasons.
To achieve sustainable cities and neighborhoods, local planners need to act strategically in order to foresee future developments, but they also need to bring together different interests and expertise by preserving historical structures and linking the neighborhood to the natural landscape (Wheeler 2004: p. 186). In other words, this means that the planners must be able to handle the input of facts, information and ideas from different sector representatives while also promoting democratic processes in order to merge the three aspects of sustainability at a local level (Mannberg 2006: p.3). That is thus easier said than done. As we are living in a modern society that highly subscribes to capitalism, balancing equally social, environmental and economic factors to achieve true sustainability remains one of the biggest challenges of our time.
The United Nation Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 is a requirement for sustainable development providing a global action plan with 17 Sustainable Development Goals. One of its goal “Sustainable Cities and Communities” is highlighting the need for efficient urban planning and management practices in order to deal with the challenges brought by urbanization (United Nations 2020). With its PDUES and the 32 proposed actions, the South West borough is doing its part in planning for sustainability as they plan on providing access to inclusive and green public spaces, protecting cultural and natural heritage, enhancing participatory and integrated planning and providing access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems and housing, among others.
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Conclusion
In the process of sustainable city development, citizens have become an important factor in order to understand what is best for the city to become sustainable. The concept of sustainable cities has brought the need for rethinking of sustainable urban development practices, and public consultation is one of those practices that is gaining more and more in popularity. Scholars and practitioners, however, do not have a general consensus about what the term sustainability exactly means which leads to an uncertainty in clearly determining what is to be sustained. This vagueness can have an impact on the outcomes of public participation on sustainable projects that run the risk of not being very specific and thereby ineffective. Furthermore, there is often a lack of feedback once a public consultation has occurred which leads to a difficulty for citizens to measure the impact of their participation in consultations and to follow up afterwards. There is a need to increase the knowledge about how public consultation on sustainable projects works and how it impacts the implementation, i.e. the decision-making in order to improve the effectiveness of this participatory process in urban planning.
The purpose of this study was to critically analyse how existing structures of public consultation articulate with the aim of achieving sustainable city development. Empirically, this study analysed the impact of public consultation on decision-making of the Urban, Economic and Social Development Plan (PDUES) for areas surrounding the Turcot interchange in the city of Montréal.
The study showed that the consultation process was transparent, flexible and open as there was a real willingness from all actors involved to get the best outcomes possible for the area. It was a positive experience that allowed discussions on very important issues to focus on in order to achieve a more sustainable neighborhood. The respondents all appreciated seeing their opinions mentioned in the post-consultation reports from the Office de Consultation de Montréal (OCPM) which indicated that their views had been considered. The final PDUES written by the South West borough, that was almost entirely based on the results of the OCPM reports, also shows that the outcomes from the public consultations have an influence on their decision-making. It can also be concluded that there was a shared vision and agreement on what sustainability would mean and implicate for the neighborhood as the 32 sustainable actions included in the PDUES were actions that were highly discussed by most of the participants involved. However, at the time when the interviews for this paper occurred which is two years after the PDUES was published, communication between the South West borough and the population in regard to the project’s development seemed to have gradually diminished to nothing.
This lack of follow up and communication in general once the public consultations are over is not an issue that is specific only to the PDUES-Turcot, but a recurring problem that has been pointed out for many years by the OCPM. Even in a case study like the PDUES-Turcot where there was a real and undeniable intention to consult the population with its two consultations, upstream and downstream, there is an evident contrast between the consultation phase and the post-consultation phase in term of communication and interaction. How recommendations from the public consultation have been taken into consideration in the decisions during the final project and what the next actions are to be expected should be an integral and compulsory step to ensure a true and valid democratic process.
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As there is a clear imbalance in term of collaboration between the first and the final stage of the public consultation process, perhaps considering a legally-binding agreement that would cover the entire process could be a pertinent solution. Certainly, what causes the lack of feedback and thereby of transparency in the implementation phase requires more thoughts as it raises concerns about the existing power relations in urban planning. Although this study is not looking for universal generalizations as it examined a small group of individuals within a specific context, the results of this case study can hopefully be transferred to other studies that are looking at the influence of consultations and decision-making processes on sustainable urban development in similar cities around the world.
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Appendix List interviewee
Interviewee Relation to the PDUES Interview Date
Person 1 South west borough representative 2020-02-14
Person 2 Local developer 2020-02-24
Person 3 South west borough representative 2020-02-24
Person 4 Local organisation 2020-02-24
Person 5 Local organisation 2020-02-27
Person 6 Local organisation 2020-02-27
Person 7 Local resident 2020-03-02
Person 8 Local organisation 2020-03-02
Person 9 OCPM representative 2020-03-04
Person 10 Local organisation 2020-03-04
Person 11 Local resident 2020-03-05
Person 12 Local organisation 2020-03-05
Person 13 OCPM representative 2020-03-05
Person 14 South west borough representative 2020-03-06
Person 15 Local resident 2020 - 03 - 06
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Interview Guide
1. Présentation de mon projet, mon stage et mes études
2. Vous avez participé à 4 tables rondes organisées par l’OCPM en mars 2016.
Vous-y avez participé en tant que représentant de l’arrondissement Sud- Ouest quel était votre rôle et votre mission lors de cette forme d’activité participative?
Comment avez-vous trouvé cette expérience? Intéressante, efficace, surprenante?
Quelle a été votre impression sur les participants et leur implication et connaissance du secteur Turcot?
Suite à cette participation, avez-vous communiqué votre expérience aux autres membres de l’arrondissement? o Si oui, de quelle façon et à qui?
Avez-vous eu recours aux synthèse des tables rondes écrites par l’OCPM?
3. Vous avez également participé2 séances d’information et 2 portes ouvertes en avril 2016 (Centre Gadbois et Théâtre Paradox).
Ces séances avaient lieu à deux endroits différents, soit dans le secteur St- Henri Ouest et secteur Émard Côte-St-Paul donc au nord et au sud du canal Lachine. Êtes-vous d’accord avec le choix de ces deux emplacements?
Comment avez-vous trouvé cette expérience? Intéressante, efficace, stimulante?
Avez-vous consulté les transcriptions des séances par la suite?
4. Le rapport de la consultation en amont « Au-delà des chantiers, pensons les quartiers » a été publié en août 2016 par l’OCPM
Est-ce que ce rapport a été utilisé comme outil de travail pour formuler la version préliminaire du PDUÉS?
Le rapport a formulé 25 recommandations et vous avez répondu à ces recommandations avec un tableau synthèse (Montrer). Comment avez-vous structuré votre travail à l’interne pour répondre aux recommandations?
Avez-vous publié le tableau synthèse répondant aux recommandations de l’OCPM à d’autres endroits dans le but d’informer le travail fait par l’arrondissement, par exemple Intranet etc?
Avez-vous déjà consulté les transcriptions des séances d’auditions d’opinion qui se trouvent sur le site de l’OCPM?
o Si oui, qu’en était la raison?
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5. Consultation en amont vs en aval
Il n’est pas chose courante que d’avoir recours à deux consultations publiques successivement (amont et aval) comme cela a été le cas dans ce projet. Quelles ont été les principales raisons pour le choix de cette démarche?
6. PDUÉS et mise en œuvre du projet
Est-ce que le rapport PDUES de l’OCPM a été utilisé comme outil principal pour apporter des changements à la version finale de votre PDUES?
Est-ce que les projets qui ont été entamés ou en voie de l’être suivent le résultat du PDUÉS ou avez-vous dû en dévier à quelques reprises?
o Si c’est le cas, de quelle façon et à qui avez-vous informé cette information?
7. Comité de suivi du milieu
Depuis novembre 2016, un comité de suivi composé d'organismes du milieu et de représentants de l'arrondissement se réunit afin de conserver un dialogue constant.
Comment s’appelle ce comité et qui en fait parti?
Étiez-vous présents lors des rencontres de ce comité?
Combien de fois par année ont lieu ces rencontres? Sont-elles documentées? Si oui, où peut-on trouver cette documentation?
8. Participation publique en général et processus décisionnel
Que pensez-vous du des différentes étapes du processus de la consultation publique que je viens de vous énumérer (séance d’info, tables rondes, les 2 consultations publiques suivis des 2 rapports? Est-ce efficace, pertinent?
Est-ce que le résultat de ces démarches (les 2 rapports) ont influencé les décisions prises au sein de l’arrondissement
Quelle est la plus value de l’OCPM par rapport à d’autres acteurs travaillant avec la participation publique?
Quel était votre mandat décisionnel vs les élus de l’arrondissement (maire de l'arrondissement)?
Est-ce que les élus étaient tenus informés du processus de consultation publique du PDUES?
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