Resource Centre

Sustainable Community Planning and Development

Infrastructure Canada has an important role to play in the promotion of sustainable community development in Canada, both by virtue of its mandate and the programs that it delivers.

While Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs) are currently only required within the context of Gas Tax Fund (GTF) Agreements, the basic principles and benefits of sustainable planning are applicable beyond the GTF scope to other infrastructure programs and to initiatives being carried out by other federal departments and agencies.

Explore this list of information, tools and resources to help your community become more sustainable.

• Federal initiatives related to sustainability planning
• Canadian resources and templates
• International resources
• Examples of completed sustainable community plans
  

---

Federal initiatives related to sustainability planning

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - Rural Secretariat
  Works in support of sustainable and viable rural and northern communities.
  
  
  • Rural Partnership Development Program (April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009)
    The objective of this funding program is to engage stakeholders to develop collaborative activities that enhance developmental capacity in rural, northern and remote communities and regions.
    
    
  • Models for Rural Development and Community Capacity Building (and other previous programs)
    Research and analysis activities undertaken under this recently completed program will contribute to the understanding of what approaches (models) to community development and capacity building work in rural, remote and northern communities.
    
    
• Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) – Sustainable Community Planning
  Provides best practices in design and development, tools for planners and designers, and other research on sustainability.
  
  
  • EQuilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative
    EQuilibrium is a national housing initiative, led by CMHC, that brings together the private and public sectors to develop homes that combine resource and energy-efficient technologies in order to reduce their environmental impacts.
    
    
  • Sustainable Community Planning
    CMHC encourages neighbourhood design and land use planning approaches that reduce costs and environmental impacts, while maintaining community liveability. CMHC's web site provides examples of best practices in design and development, tools for planners and designers, and other research on sustainability.
    
    
• Environment Canada - Sustainable Community Indicators Program (SCIP)
  A reference guide to help communities and organizations develop indicators of sustainability and establish a sustainability indicators program.
  
  
• Human Resources and Social Development Canada – Community Partnerships
  Works to advance the social priorities of the Government of Canada related to children and their families by working with the voluntary sector by making strategic investments that build knowledge, facilitate information sharing, and support effective practices in early learning.
  
  
  • New Horizons for Seniors Program
    Across Canada, this program helps to ensure that seniors are able to benefit from and contribute to the quality of life in their community through their social participation and active living.
    
    
  • Social Development Partnerships Program
    A broad-based umbrella grant and contribution instrument that works with non-profit organizations by providing funding to help them improve life outcomes for children, families, and people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations.
    
    
• Tamarack - Vibrant Communities
  A locally-based national project to enhance the effectiveness of community non-profit organizations, government and other partners to collaboratively tackle the problems of poverty and exclusion.
  
  
• Infrastructure Canada Studies
  Infrastructure Canada’s Research and Analysis Division has developed several products to disseminate the results of their research and to foster improved communication, coordination and collaboration with researchers, policy and decision makers and others.
  
  • The Path Towards Sustainability: An Evaluation of the “Sustainability-ness” of Selected Municipal Plans in Canada
    This paper aims at assisting policy-makers by providing key information and a new assessment tool that help in defining and assessing sustainable community planning. Eleven Canadian case studies in community planning are used to examine the extent to which they consider sustainability, providing a general and preliminary overview of the state of community sustainability planning in Canada.
    
    
  • Study of International Best Practices in Brownfield Management and Redevelopment Policy
    This study gives an overview of brownfield management and redevelopment policies and practices among members of the OECD considered leaders in this field. The study identifies certain common traits, issues and key success factors in the policies studied.
    
    
• Montréal’s New Harbourfront
  Montréal's harbourfront has long been remained a collection of undeveloped and underutilized Crown properties. Canada Lands Company was recently mandated by the the Government of Canada federal government to carry out a planned redevelopment of these properties. Working closely with a wide range of stakeholders, an exceptional urban space will be created for Montréalers to live, work and play at Montréal’s New Harbourfront.
  
  
• National Research Council Canada - Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure Research
  The Centre’s Regina initiative promises to provide researchers, firms and municipal officials with the tools to address the dual challenges of sustainable development and urban infrastructure renewal in the environmentally conscious 21st Century.
  
  
• Natural Resources Canada
  
  • CanmetENERGY - Buildings and Communities
    Recognized nationally and internationally for its leadership role in the research, development, and deployment of leading-edge energy efficient and renewable energy technologies for new and existing housing, buildings and communities.
    
    
  • Forest Communities Program
    Focuses on building local, regional and national partnerships to generate new ideas and solutions, as well as focuses on the sustainability of forest-based communities, increased involvement of other resource sectors, and an emphasis on the development of new economic opportunities in these communities.
    
    
• Downsview Park
  A Crown corporation mandated to build "a unique urban recreational green space for the enjoyment of future generations" on a self-financing basis on 231 hectares [572 acres] in the geographic centre of the Greater Toronto Area.
  
  
  • Sustainable Community Development Guidelines (PDF - 4.60 MB)
    This document provides a description of PDP’s plans for the creation of Canada’s first national urban park in the Greater Toronto Area. The Downsview Park Sustainable Community Development Guidelines have been created to provide the framework for the implementation process.
    
    
• Public Health Agency of Canada
  
  
  • Healthy Living Unit
    A federal contribution initiative to address community development and infrastructure by supporting effective, sustainable actions and infrastructure at all levels that promote healthy living and provide supportive environments for health.
    
    
  • Active Transportation
    The Agency recognizes that the community is a key setting that has many areas which have a direct impact on physical activity and healthy eating, such as transportation. Work in this area includes support to a number of organizations and initiatives related to active transportation.
    
    
  • Canadian Best Practices Portal for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention
    Includes information related to effective community interventions and organizes systematic reviews of these interventions on one site.
    
    
  • Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute
    The Agency provided funding to the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute to support their benchmarks/monitoring program. A large part of this program is committed to producing the Physical Activity Monitor, a telephone survey to track changes in physical activity patterns.
    
    
  • Canadian Public Health Association – Canadian Journal of Public Health: Back Issues
    Provides publication information for articles/commentaries/letters that have been published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health
    
    
  • Division of Aging and Seniors
    Sustainable Age-Friendly Communities - Find tools that can help identify barriers as well as possible solutions, best practices and actions needed to move forward on healthy aging in communities.
    
    
    • World Health Organization - Age-Friendly Cities
      
    • Age-Friendly Rural and Remote Communities: A Guide
      
      
  • Health Policy Research Bulletin: People, Place and Health
    This issue explores how research on "place and health" has evolved and offers a lens for viewing this research from a determinants of health perspective.
    
    
  • The Office of the Voluntary Sector (OVS)
    The OVS has been active in convening voluntary sector leaders to discuss action on the social determinants of health, which would fall under the "social sustainability" pillar of integrated community sustainability planning. What We Have Heard (PDF – 345 KB) is a summary of participants' feedback on what needs to be done to advance action on social determinants of health in Canada.
    
    
• Transport Canada
  
  
  • Urban Transportation Showcase Program
    Canada’s cities and regions are making clean, efficient and convenient transportation options a reality. This site highlights innovative sustainable transportation projects and issues that are changing how Canadians move.
    
    
• Waterfront Toronto - Toronto Waterfront Revitalization
  The Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, and the City of Toronto (the three government funding partners) have each committed $500 million dollars to support revitalization of the Toronto Waterfront. Responsibility for overseeing and leading this waterfront renewal rests with Waterfront Toronto – formerly known as the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC) – a provincially-legislated corporation. The Federal contribution is managed through the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Initiative Secretariat (TWRI). Waterfront Toronto has developed a Sustainability Framework to ensure that sustainability principles are integrated into all facets of waterfront revitalization management, operations and decision-making.

Resources and templates

Provincial and university-based

Alberta

• Alberta Urban Municipalities Association - Municipal Sustainability Planning
  Provides municipalities with municipal sustainability planning guides (similar to an ICSP) and resources, including The 5 Dimensions of MSP, the process of MSP, pre-planning assessment FAQs, and a list of related activities and events.

British Columbia

• Royal Roads University - Community Research Connections - Sustainable Community Development
  Research is dedicated to building civic literacy and useful knowledge for integrated decision-making around critical public policy issues, particularly, sustainable community development.
  

• Simon Fraser University – Sustainable Communities: Centre for Sustainable Community Development
  Supports the sustainable development of communities through research, education (credit and non-credit), and community mobilization; it provides research, training and advisory services throughout BC and Canada as well as internationally.
  
  
  • Strategic Sustainability and Community Infrastructure
    The project, among other things, explores strategic decision-making that makes the link between community sustainability values on the one hand, and public and private capital investment for community infrastructure (i.e. utilities, transportation, water and sewage, etc.) on the other.
    
    
• Union of British Columbia Municipalities – Gas Tax/Public Transit
  Provides British Columbia municipalities with background information, reports, program information, and resources for both the gas tax and public transit funds.
  

• Capacity Building and Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Projects Program Guide (PDF - 439 KB)
  This program guide is meant to assist British Columbia municipalities in applying for funding under the Gas Tax Agreement’s General Strategic Priorities Fund and Innovations Fund for capacity building and Integrated Community Sustainability Planning projects.

Nova Scotia

• Canada-Nova Scotia Infrastructure Secretariat
  Administers the federal-provincial agreements that provide funding to infrastructure projects in Nova Scotia.
  
  
  • Integrated Community Sustainability Plans: Municipal Funding Agreement for Nova Scotia (PDF - 294 KB)
    A handbook prepared by Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations to serve as a guide for Nova Scotia municipalities to facilitate the preparation of their Integrated Community Sustainability Plans.

Ontario

• Association of Municipalities of Ontario
  
  
• Ontario Ministry of Culture
  Municipal cultural planning supports local economic development. The Government of Ontario is encouraging municipalities to integrate cultural planning into their daily business to emphasize local arts, cultural industries, heritage and libraries as they plan for the future of their communities.
  
  
• Ontario Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal – Places to Grow
  Places to Grow is the Ontario government's program to manage growth and development in Ontario in a way that supports economic prosperity, protects the environment and helps communities achieve a high quality of life.
  
  
• University of Waterloo - Centre for Cultural Management
  Undertakes a broad range of activities providing leadership in cultural management education and research. Their Web site serves a widespread community of cultural managers, trustees and other interested individuals and organizations, and provides management resources.

Quebec

• Université du Québec à Montréal – Département d’études urbaines : URBATOD
  This research project examined how to make « transit-oriented development » (TOD) a practical, operational reality for cities, developers, transportation companies, specialists and the departments concerned. The project’s website provides lessons learned from several case studies.

Yukon

• Yukon Government – Gas Tax Fund: Integrated Community Sustainability Plans
  Communities receiving gas tax funding are expected to produce an ICSP that sets out their values and defines environmental, cultural, social and economic objectives.
  
  
  • Integrated Community Sustainability Plan Template (PDF - 1.71 MB)
    The Yukon has developed an ICSP template to simplify the planning process and enable communities to incorporate existing plans, including official community plans.

Other

• Centre for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership
  Provides tools, training and innovative solutions, allowing communities and organizations to realize their potential. Their tools and services are applicable to a wide range of communities: rural and urban, First Nations, communities of interest, and organizations.
  Resources and Publications:
  
  
  • 69 Tools, Techniques, and Resources for Communities (PDF - 920 KB)
    
  • Communities ‘Life Cycle’ Matrix (PDF - 416 KB)
    
  • Provincial Report: The State of Entrepreneurship in Rural Communities (PDF - 90 KB)
    
    
• Creative City Network of Canada
  An organization of people employed by municipalities across Canada working on arts, culture and heritage policy, planning, development and support.
  
  
• Dockside Green
  The Dockside Green community is a 15-acre master-planned harbourfront community in the City of Victoria featuring three distinct neighbourhoods that are designed to offer a sense of belonging, and with it, pride in an accomplishment of true environmental sustainability.
  
  
• Federation of Canadian Municipalities
  
  
  • InfraGuide: The National Guide to Sustainable Infrastructure
    InfraGuide operated from 2001 to 2007 as a partnership between the FCM, the National Research Council and Infrastructure Canada. Its national network of experts produced a collection of case studies, best practice reports and e-learning tools for sustainable municipal infrastructure.
    
    
• Global Footprint Network
  Supports a sustainable economy by advancing the Ecological Footprint, a measurement and management tool that makes the reality of planetary limits relevant to decision-makers throughout the world.
  
  
• The Natural Step Canada
  A non-profit organization providing results orientated advisory and training services to help community and business leaders integrate social, environmental and economic decision making into their operations with a holistic, proven and scientifically-rigorous framework.
  
  
• Walk and Bike for Life
  A Canada based non-profit organization, with an international outlook. It is dedicated to improving awareness of the benefits of walking and cycling as activities, and of urban parks and rails as great places, and their impact on creating healthier communities.
  

International resources

• England - Communities and Local Government
  Works to create thriving, sustainable, vibrant communities that improve everyone's quality of life.
  
  
  • Eco-towns: Living a greener future - consultation paper
    Eco-towns offer the opportunity to achieve high standards of sustainable living while also maximising the potential for affordable housing. This consultation document seeks the public's views on the vision for eco-towns and the shortlisted locations proposed.
    
    
• European Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign
  To mainstream local sustainability throughout Europe, the Campaign fosters the implementation of the 'Aalborg Commitments'. The partners of the ESCTC provide you with practical guidance, project ideas and tools, showcased in the Sustainability Kit and in the linked partners' websites.
  
  
• ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability
  An international association of local governments and national and regional local government organizations that have made a commitment to sustainable development.
  
  
• International Centre for Sustainable Cities (ICSC)
  Created to bring the idea of urban sustainability into practical action. It brings together the business community, civil society organizations and various levels of government to tackle urban issues. ICSC works nationally, internationally and in its home region, Greater Vancouver, Canada.
  
  
  • Sustainable Cities: PLUS Network Partners in Long-term Urban Sustainability
    A network of more than 30 cities and communities around the world who share their learning and best practices on long-term integrated sustainability planning.
    
    
• Smart Growth Online
  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined with several non-profit and government organizations to form the Smart Growth Network (SGN). The SGN works to encourage development that serves the economy, community and the environment.
  

Examples of completed sustainable community plans

• City of Calgary: The Rivers District Community Revitalization Plan
  Outlines a public infrastructure program that will facilitate the reclamation, redevelopment and revitalization of this underdeveloped inner city area.
  
  
• City of Calgary: imagineCALGARY
  With the imagineCALGARY Plan for Long-Range Urban Sustainability finalized, the Calgary community is gathering to turn the imagination of the community into action.
  
  
• Metro Vancouver: The Sustainable Region Initiative
  The Metro Vancouver launched the Sustainable Region Initiative (SRI) in 2001 to identify public values regarding regional sustainability, the principles that should guide regional development, and the key actions necessary.
  
  
• Regional Municipality of Niagara: Niagara 2031: A Strategy for a Healthy, Sustainable Future
  A strategy initiated by Regional Council that will guide healthy and sustainable growth in Niagara for the next 25 or more years.
  
  
• Town of Olds – Sustainable Living
  The Town of Olds is currently involved in a Municipal Sustainability Pilot Project. Olds is one of five urban municipalities working closely with the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association in 2007 to help chart a course for achieving municipal sustainability.
  
  
• Whistler 2020: Moving Toward a Sustainable Future
  A comprehensive sustainability plan, which moves beyond traditional piece-meal planning to broadly address social, economic and environmental issues in an integrated and upstream manner.

* Disclaimer: The above is a non-exhaustive list of links to some third party sites. Infrastructure Canada provides these links only as a service and convenience to our visitors. We assume no responsibility for the accuracy, currency or reliability of the content of sites external to Infrastructure Canada. Links to external sites do not imply Infrastructure Canada’s official approval of the content of the sites or the organizations hosting them.