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Municipal cultural planning: A toolkit for municipalities

More and more municipalities across the country are turning to municipal cultural planning to leverage local cultural assets to support economic and broader community development agendas. For an introduction to municipal cultural planning, as well as its key concepts and practices, take a look at the recently released Municipal Cultural Planning: A Toolkit for Ontario Municipalities. The Toolkit is not intended as a step-by-step guide for municipalities to undertake MCP, but rather an introduction and overview to support the successful initiation of a MCP process. While the Toolkit is primarily targeted to municipal staff and Council, and is focused on Ontario, it is also a useful introduction for planners, economic development officers, and other practitioners in Ontario and communities across the country.

Among the resources included in the Toolkit are links to a range of municipal cultural plans already completed by Ontario municipalities, videos of leading experts describing various aspects of municipal cultural planning and cultural mapping, and links to a wide range of other useful websites and resources.

Municipal Cultural Planning: A Toolkit for Ontario Municipalities is the first municipal cultural planning resource for Ontario municipalities. It was produced for Municipal Cultural Planning Incorporated (MCPI) with financial support from the Creative Communities Prosperity Fund of the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and was written by Millier Dickinson Blais' Greg Baeker, Director of Cultural Development.

Finding your better life

In late May, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a new interactive index that allows people to measure and compare well-being and progress based on topics critical to quality of life. Called Your Better Life Index, the tool is part of the larger OECD Better Life Initiative looking to better assess improvements in our lives. The index goes further than typical measures of progress which might hide decreases in well-being – such as GDP and employment rising as a result of a natural disaster, to offer a different perspective on a Country’s progress.

So how does Canada score? The Globe and Mail recently noted that “globally, Canada stacks up well” in areas like education, employment, safety, and satisfaction, but suffers in areas like obesity, leisure time, and childcare. Overall, Canada places second among OECD countries: behind Australia, but ahead of Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, and the US. Though the findings are national-level, they contribute to the increasingly strong quality of place identity Canada enjoys. In turn, a strong national identity assists us as we position our communities in the global competition for talent, investment, and new business. Further, the tool offers a model on which to build a local initiative to measure progress. For a number of already developed local alternatives, try the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) developed by the Pembina Institute or the Community Vitality Initiative (CVI) developed by the Centre for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership.

What makes a City of Opportunity?

What makes a city successful and dynamic? PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released their fourth annual Cities of Opportunity report dedicated to understanding what makes urban dynamics work and communicating these findings to stakeholders invested in the success of their city. Ten indicators were used to determine the rankings of 26 cities around the world. The indicators include: intellectual capital and innovation, technology readiness, transportation and infrastructure, sustainability, economic clout, ease of doing business, cost, demographics and livability, lifestyle assets, and health, safety and security. Each of these indicators is broken down into multiple factors which can be seen throughout the report. You can also find out more by using the interactive tools or exploring the indicator discussions on the Cities of Opportunity website.

While the top five rankings of PWC highlighted capital market centers, broad geographic sampling and mature and emerging economies as vital factors for city success, it also provides an interesting model for a tool at the local level that could create a more thoughtful and holistic approach to economic and community development.

The role of immigrant employment councils in economic development

“We know that small and medium enterprises need to hire the best talent they can for the resources they have. All we’re saying is: please understand that the pool from which you’re selecting is changing.” So says Peter McFadden, the Executive Director of the Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network (WRIEN). WRIEN is an Immigrant Employment Council (IEC) and operates as community-based, collaborative organization focused on putting immigrant employment front and centre in discussions of community prosperity. Though the first IEC in Canada only began operating in Toronto in 2003, there are now 10 IECs operating across the country from Halifax to Calgary, with many more in the development stages.

As McFadden notes, even in Waterloo Region – a hub of post-secondary education – local high-tech companies are demanding a level of educated, highly-skilled labour that is not being supplied by traditional sources. Combined with the aging of the domestic labour force, the shifting demographics of the Canadian population, and the growing competition for talent from emerging global markets, it is clear that attracting and retaining highly-skilled immigrants is becoming a necessary pillar of economic development and prosperity plans for communities across the country.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these issues are receiving attention and support at a national scale. With support from the Maytree and McConnell Foundations, the ALLIES (Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies) project was created at alliescanada.ca. ALLIES provides communities with a wide range of resources to support immigrant employment, including toolkits on mentoring and internships, and an employer website that provides companies with the tools to support immigrant recruitment and integration.

As Peter McFadden notes, “IECs are a tangible demonstration of wanting to be welcoming. When immigrants and employers say ‘this area really gets it’ – that’s the best support we can get”. Economic developers should explore these tools to understand how to attract and retain highly-skilled immigrants to support continued investment and industry in their communities.