Society

How do we design inclusive cities?

Urbanisation continues to gain momentum across the world. With it are a growing chorus of concerns voiced by city populations. Can transport be improved and made accessible to everyone? Is the city equally safe for women or minorities? Do children have access to green space and nature? Does new development reckon with the social ills of the past? The list of issues grows and grows.

In different ways, these are questions that practitioners in the built environment must increasingly reckon with. Whatever language we use – ‘greater equity’, ‘increased inclusion’, or ‘social value’ – achieving a truly ‘inclusive city’ must begin by taking account of people’s behaviours, preferences, needs and aspirations we can develop the most inclusive and beneficial design outcomes. It requires that everyone involved in city development prioritise listening and consultation before big ideas are put into practice – and as we know, in any city there is no shortage of diversity to people’s life experiences, aspirations and opinions.

Inclusion is never a push-button solution – fundamentally it must be community and context-led. Our ethos is to bring everyone into the process; that means clients and developers, architects and occupants, commuters and operators, cyclists and drivers, walkers and wheelchair users, closer together. For our teams, it means being a translator, a listener, a collaborator, and always ready to learn and adapt. This is how we develop cities where everyone sees their priorities recognised in the built and natural environments they call home.

At ARTISTA, years of experience have shown us that there is huge potential to blend consultation, planning and imagination with design and placemaking skills to reshape an area, a service, or a practice, for the better. Inclusion can be understood as being as much a design choice or a planning requirement as a more abstract virtue of city life. Inclusion becomes tangible as we provide a better experience for every community and stay focused on the intimate, yet often misunderstood connection between human behaviour, social needs and the built environment that shapes our cities.

How do we tackle this Issue?

Explore the different ways cities can become more inclusive

Social Impact Assessment and Sustainable Project Planning Under Bill C-69

Social impact assessment (SIA) can contribute to the sustainable development of people and communities by aligning mitigation and benefit enhancement measures with the community’s sustainable development goals and objectives. In this way, SIA is essential to understand and support a project’s effect on and contribution to sustainability.

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is a process of analyzing, managing and monitoring the intended and unintended social, economic, health and well-being consequences, both positive and adverse, of projects. In addition to meeting regulatory requirements and corporate social responsibility policies and procedures, SIAs can support sustainable project development outcomes for people and communities, by aligning mitigation and benefit enhancement measures with a community’s sustainable development goals and objectives. In this way, SIA is integral to understanding and supporting a project’s effect on, and contribution to, sustainability.

The increasing explicit requirement for SIA within environmental assessment legislation illustrates the emerging paradigm shift in environmental assessment methodology globally. Under this model, the requirement to assess social, economic, health and cultural impacts, in addition to environmental impacts, goes beyond mitigation of adverse impacts, to the development of project planning objectives focused on net gains and positive outcomes that contribute to better environmental, social, economic and cultural conditions of local communities and regions within which a project is situated.

A Canadian Example: Bill C-69 and the New Impact Assessment Act

An example of this emerging paradigm towards a more wholistic consideration of project impacts and its contribution to sustainability is Canada’s recently-enacted Bill C-69, which mandates changing the name of the country’s federal review agency from the “Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency” to the “Impact Assessment Agency of Canada” and the name of the legislation from the “Canadian Environmental Assessment Act” to the “Impact Assessment Act (IAA).” These name changes are significant in that they direct the requirement to address the studied impacts — social, economic, cultural and health as well as environmental, and reflect the principle of sustainability.

Bill C-69 also includes a requirement for gender-based analysis, to determine differential social, economic, cultural health and well-being conditions, and differential project impacts, and mitigation and benefit enhancement requirements across vulnerable and marginalized groups.  There is also a new mandatory early planning and engagement phase with Indigenous groups, as well as with regional and local government, public and stakeholders, and mandatory consideration and protection of Indigenous Knowledge alongside other sources of evidence in impact assessments. Lastly, there are more formalized processes for Indigenous groups to conduct their own impact assessments within the regulated impact assessment process.

Federal authorities have indicated that the purpose of the IAA includes fostering “sustainability,” whereby the Minister or Governor in Council’s public interest determination pertaining to the project must also consider sustainability as one of the factors to be considered in rendering a final decision on a project. The above changes illustrate that the Canadian federal government is aligning Canada’s impact assessment regulations with well-known international environmental and social standards, including those from financial institutions around the globe.

These changes have positive implications for supporting robust and meaningful SIA processes, social management plan development, and opportunities to enhance a project’s contribution to sustainability  However, implementing new SIA requirements under new impact legislation such as Canada’s Bill C-69, can be challenging, requiring new ways of thinking about projects for project proponents. An example of this new approach can be found in our work on the socio-economic impact assessment for the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project in Vancouver, Canada.

In our work supporting clients globally, we find the following factors important:

• Early, Inclusive and Meaningful Engagement with Indigenous Groups, Vulnerable Groups and Stakeholders: It is important to identify individuals, vulnerable groups, and communities directly and indirectly affected by the project, determine specific social impacts and benefit opportunities they may experience, and gather views on how a project could contribute to impact equity and sustainability. Early engagement also helps identify culturally appropriate and agreed upon assessment indicators and methods for the SIA and determines how these communities want to engage in the assessment process. Communities with limited ability to participate in the impact assessment process require capacity funding and, in some instances, capacity development on the regulatory process.

• Community-Led SIAS: SIAs need to be participatory at a minimum, and can be community-led, depending on the interests and capacities of communities. In Canada, some Indigenous communities have identified the importance of conducting their own SIAs within the regulated impact assessment process. In addition to contributing to statutory impact assessment process, community-led SIAs can generate relevant information to assist Indigenous groups and proponents in the impact benefit agreement processes, particularly where mitigation may require compensation. This typically requires co-development of the “social” aspects of the IA terms of reference by proponents, regulators and Indigenous communities, and formal agreements between proponents, communities and regulators on how results of community-led SIAs can be integrated and considered within the project Environmental Impact Statement.

• Social Management Planning with a Sustainability Focus: For larger, long-term projects, the concept of sustainable projects is linked to requirements for formalized community investment agreements as a project condition. Successful agreements consider investments to sustainably support public goods and services impacted by the project such as investment into water infrastructure along with fund-generating mechanisms to support infrastructure upkeep, and capacity development to support its management. They also consider benefit enhancement opportunities such as skills and capacity development to support uptake of higher-level occupations, local business capacity and growth, and transferability of skills and business opportunities across industries.

• Supporting Public and Indigenous Engagement using Available Technology: The use of new technologies such as cloud-based systems can make sure that documents related to project consultation are available to concerned parties for greater transparency. Computer-based models can accept data on the financial, environmental and social impacts of a project, and then determine which combination of project attributes will result in the best outcome.

Environmental assessment legislation globally have generally been limited in directing the assessment and management of social, economic and health impacts of projects. Emerging legislation, such as Bill C-69, illustrates how such legislation is changing to advance this understanding and help projects reach their potential as sustainable development opportunities for local communities.