Evidence for the Local Government and Regeneration Committee

10:00am, 20th January 2015, Committee Room 1

An Expanding Agenda for Participation The case of Toronto’s waterfront regeneration

Dr James T. White Lecturer in Urban Design Urban Studies, The University of

Email: [email protected] Telephone: 0141 330 3664

Introduction

Participation has been one of the central tenets of planning thought since the 1960s when thinkers began exploring how decision making could become less ‘top-down’ and more ‘bottom up’ (e.g. Davidoff 1965; Friedmann 1973; Healey 1997). The reality is, of course, very different and efforts to broaden participatory practices tend to be uneven. Political and financial roadblocks, skills shortages and various other obstacles typically mean that engagement with local people, although often well intentioned, tends not to move beyond top-down ‘consultation’ (Arnstein 1969). At the same time, however, interest in broadening the scope and effectiveness of participation is growing.

In the UK, national planning policy directives have emphasised the need for a more participatory planning system since the late 1990s, initially as part of New Labour’s sustainable communities initiative (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2003) and, from 2010 onwards, as a key component of the coalition government’s localism agenda (Department for Communities and Local Government 2012) which, through the powers of the 2011 Localism Act, has enabled communities in England to produce their own local neighbourhood plans (Department for Communities and Local Government 2014). In , where planning powers are devolved, opportunities for public participation have also widened (Clifford and Tewdwr-Jones 2013). The Local Government (Scotland) Act 2003 requires local authorities and other agencies of government to partner with citizens and civil society in community planning. It stresses that consulting local people is not a sufficient form of community engagement and states that each local governing authority in Scotland has a duty to devise and facilitate opportunities for participation and co-operation that “suit local circumstances” (Carley 2006, 253). The Act was followed in 2009 by a community empowerment action plan (Pollock and Sharp 2012), which envisages that communities will “achieve significant improvements by doing things for themselves” because they have the clearest sense of “what will for work for them” (Scottish Parliament 2014, 2). These concepts have since been translated into the 2014 Community Empowerment Bill, which passed into law as the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act in June 2015, and which has the potential to profoundly reshape the participation and decision making landscape of regeneration efforts in Scotland.

In the following paragraphs the case of Toronto’s waterfront regeneration is offered as evidence to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee with the intention

1 that it provides informative lessons on the design and implementation of innovative participation processes. The research for the Toronto case study was conducted between 2012 – 2015 and involved interviews with more than 50 waterfront actors and stakeholders, direct observations of the built environment at various stages of the development process, and extensive archival research. The research was published in academic journals by this author during 2014 and 2015 and the information contained in this report is summarised from that work (White, 2014; 2015a; 2015b).

Toronto’s Waterfront Regeneration (Summarised from White 2014, pp. 545-547)

The focus of this case study is ‘Waterfront Toronto’, a quasi-autonomous regeneration agency created in 2001 by the local (City of Toronto), provincial (Province of Ontario) and federal (Government of Canada) governments to masterplan and revitalise the expansive post-industrial waterfront in Toronto (see Figure 1). Since the 1970s, the regeneration of Toronto’s waterfront had been both slow moving and piecemeal (Desfor et al 1989; Gordon 1996). Early masterplanning efforts failed to garner political support and much of the land held by the public sector was sold during the 1980s. The mixture of housing and commercial development that followed varied in quality. Recognising the challenges faced on the waterfront, the federal government halted any further development and established a Royal Commission to establish a new way forward. After engaging with a range of stakeholders, including local people, government agencies and local businesses, the Commission published a report in 1992 that focused on sustainability and proposed mixed-use redevelopment with improved public access to the waterfront (Laidley 2007). Although its findings were generally well received, academics questioned the accessibility of the Commission’s efforts to engage the public noting that the many stakeholder meetings convened privileged private sector interests (Laidley 2007).

The Commission’s main recommendation was that a dedicated organisation be established to coordinate the waterfront’s development. But, while a ‘Regeneration Trust’ was formed in the mid 1990s, it was given little decision-making power. It was not until the end of the decade that the waterfront’s regeneration received sustained focused from the local, provincial and federal governments. In 1999 a private-sector led Task Force was charged with producing a new vision for the waterfront that, while building on the Trust’s work, was also to support an emerging bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. In 2001, the Task Force was subsequently incorporated as the ‘Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation’ (TWRC, since named Waterfront Toronto) and awarded contributions of $500 million from each of the three governments to implement a design-led vision for regeneration. Dominated by private sector financiers and urban design consultants the new corporation received critical feedback on its early failure to sufficiently engage local people in the planning and design process for the waterfront (Lehrer and Laidley 2008). However, as Waterfront Toronto became more established this assessment began to shift and, in recent years, the corporation has placed a much higher premium on public participation (Eidelman 2011) by engaging meaningfully with community stakeholders.

2 Figure 1: Locating and Illustrating Toronto’s Waterfront (From White 2015b, p. xx (in press))

An ‘Iterative’ Participation Model (Summarised from White 2015b, pp. xx – xx (in press))

200-500 people regularly attend participation events on Toronto’s waterfront and, crucially, Waterfront Toronto conducts engagement activities from the very start of its masterplanning processes and continues with them until buildings and public spaces are fully constructed. This is important because it allows members of the community to witness why ideas might change, and also allows Waterfront Toronto to gauge early responses to shifting objectives. However, central to this approach is the iterative nature of the participation process, and the use of corresponding public

3 meetings and stakeholder roundtables (see Figure 2). The first public meetings during a masterplanning process typically begin with a broader discussion of the participants’ ideas, desires and concerns about the site in question. Design principles and master planning options are not presented until later meetings, by which time the design teams have had an opportunity to respond to the local knowledge of the participants. Further feedback is collected at the interim stakeholder roundtable meetings, which are held in camera with community representatives, as well as local businesses and institutions located in or in close proximity to the precinct (these include active neighbourhood associations, large commercial concerns located on the waterfront, as well as advocacy groups for small business and other interests). The primary aim of the stakeholder roundtable meetings is to have focused and detailed discussions about specific design and planning proposals in preparation for the next public meeting. Although no minutes are released from the stakeholder roundtables, a thorough summary booklet of each public meeting is produced and hard copies are made available; the summary documents for most of the public meetings conducted by Waterfront Toronto since 2003 are readily available on the corporation’s website.

Written summaries of the precinct planning meetings demonstrate the strength of the iterative engagement processes adopted by Waterfront Toronto and, in particular, the level of collaboration that occurs between design experts and lay people. In contrast to previous research on design collaboration events, which has found expert opinion to dominate and obfuscate the decision-making process (Grant 2006; Bond and Thompson-Fawcett 2007), the format adopted by Waterfront Toronto appears to emphasise reciprocity. At the start of each meeting, the corporation’s design consultants outline how the evolving design has changed since the last public meeting and then, as a starting point for the next round of discussion, seek feedback on the new material they have produced. The same process is repeated at each meeting until a final precinct plan is produced. Further stakeholder roundtables and annual public meetings are then held to solicit feedback on the scope of supporting planning documentation, such as zoning by-law amendments, and the various building projects that are underway. For the corporation, the stakeholder roundtables act as a critical sounding board for new and, at times, controversial ideas and provide an important two-way link between the community and the corporation.

Figure 2: Iterative Participation Model (From White, 2015b, p. xx (in press))

4 Concluding Thoughts (Summarised from White 2015b, pp. xx – xx (in press))

For certain individuals and certain groups on Toronto’s waterfront the Waterfront Toronto participation process has engendered a ‘sense of ownership’ over the planning and design process, and some of these involved consider it as much a ‘community process’ as a ‘Waterfront Toronto’ process: the iterative model is key to this. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement and on Toronto’s waterfront more could be done to engage both with people from poorer neighbourhoods in Toronto (Lehrer and Laidley 2008), as well as with those who have recently moved to the waterfront. My research also found that the corporation’s stakeholder advisory committees could be more transparent and open. There is scope for Waterfront Toronto to think innovatively about rotating membership to avoid certain individuals – whether they are well meant or not – from controlling knowledge and decision- making. The big challenge for an organisation involved in new city building, such as Waterfront Toronto, is to adapt its participation processes as a place changes. Pulling together the ideas from planning theory with the experience of Toronto’s waterfront leads to a short series of concluding principles, or lessons, that are shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Lessons for the Future

Establish a commitment to collaboration that extends beyond consultation at all stages of the decision-making process.

Continually evaluate participation efforts to ensure that all members of the public have equal and fair access to the planning process.

Find ways to ensure that equal value is given to expert and lay knowledge to encourage both mutual learning and a sense of shared ownership of regeneration objectives.

A Cautionary Note

In Scotland, with the emerging empowerment bill and commitments to the ‘charette mainstreaming programme’ there are many opportunities for co-producing planning and design ideas and widening participation – there are also multiple risks. In the neoliberal context, where participatory planning process might include, not just local citizens, but local businesses, real estate developers, government agencies and other stakeholders, critical questions emerge about power, control and influence (Legacy et al. 2014). Theorists have argued that a new ‘tyranny’ of participation is evolving where citizens are not always on a level playing field with other, more powerful, stakeholders and that the motivation for participation is often driven, not by local concerns, but by top-down policy agendas (Pollock and Sharp 2012). “Rather than allow communities to forge their own direction,” argue Pollock and Sharp, “the various mechanism by which they are engaged and empowered often encourage alignment with institutional and government objectives and a demarcation of local interests not driven by communities themselves” (2012, 3066). Understanding how and by whom information is controlled (Hanna 2000) and whether community knowledge garners the same respect as the advice offered by experts, is therefore crucial (Aitken 2010). Yet, more fundamentally, theorists and practitioners must not concentrate their efforts solely on identifying groups that participate in the planning process. Instead, they should attempt to identify those that were absent and, in so doing, accept that notions such as ‘community’ and ‘the public interest’ can exclude

5 difference and diversity (Sandercock 2003). Transferring the objectives contained in a parliamentary bill or statute into meaningful participatory practice on the ground presents a challenge for local planning and regeneration authorities, as well as communities. It is not just local people, but businesses, real estate developers, and agencies of government that fall under the ‘stakeholder’ umbrella. It is not enough to assume that having more participation means the public are more involved.

References

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