Community engagement became a formal requirement of planning in Canada via the neighbourhood improvement program of the 1970s.

That program required local governments to work together with residents to rehabilitate neighbourhoods in order to access federal funding. It was created in response to the phenomenon of residents protesting freeways and other unwanted neighbourhood changes. Ensuring neighbourhood input on the provision of services, infrastructure and amenities — schools, street-calming measures, bus stops, parks, shops and meeting places, for example — became core to urban planning.

Fast forward 50 years and federal, provincial and local governments in Canada have flipped the script on this logic. Community engagement in planning at the neighbourhood scale is considered a barrier.

Cities in Western Canada are passing blanket rezoning and district-based planning policies that shut neighbourhoods out of the process. The cities of Edmonton and Calgary are cases in point, with neighbourhood groups in vocal opposition.

In Vancouver, the same process is afoot. While the rationale is that the move will improve housing affordability, it threatens to perpetuate disadvantages in neighbourhoods that are growing in population without redevelopment.

As researchers in urban studies and health sciences, we demonstrated this effect through a neighbourhood equity analysis. We examined South Vancouver, a group of six distinct neighbourhoods that account for 15 per cent of Vancouver’s population. In all the ways that public services and infrastructure are funded — from child care to direct social spending and improvements........

© BIV