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.
