Written Evidence JW 11.01.16
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Evidence for the Local Government and Regeneration Committee Scottish Parliament 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 Glasgow 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 Scotland, 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