Emily Rho

Building Together: Empowering Communities to Co-Create Urban Living

Co-authors: Ainsleigh Burelle, Farah Joy Basha

Co-creation is an opportunity to bring together the government, private sector, and community stakeholders in order to build more enjoyable and inclusive urban spaces in which to live, work and play. There are many cited benefits to inviting citizens and community members into the urban design process: for local government, it can be a way to collect community needs and ideas and manage risks more proactively; for private developers, it can allow them to tap directly into the market for new ideas; and for community members, it can provide them with a sense of belonging, representation and ownership by influencing the decisions that directly affect their health and wellbeing.

Despite these benefits, co-creation of urban living spaces with the community is still widely viewed as a risky, emergent approach that in many cases is being practiced in a performative manner, or not at all. While major cities in Europe and Asia have begun to pave the way for successful approaches to this practice, North American cities have an opportunity to address the systemic barriers that currently limit more inclusive and equitable co-creation.

Through both secondary and primary research, this paper maps out the current models and frameworks of citizen co-creation in the context of urban planning, specifically focusing on the city of Toronto, Canada. We identify the barriers and limitations that may currently prevent equitable and inclusive participation from community stakeholders. Further, we propose a theory of change for how to address these barriers and disrupt negative feedback cycles, while also putting forth five actionable strategic interventions that will ideally help practitioners in the field contribute to enabling a shift towards more equitable and inclusive community participation in the urban planning ecosystem.