This paper identifies specific policy fields where new tri-level agreements could have a positive impact and closes with six principles to inform their design and implementation.
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The paper suggests that community consultation be integrated into the earliest stages of the planning process to ensure that such plans proceed into the expensive construction process with much broader support.
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Engagement to Action: Improving Policy Outcomes Through Better Consultation contextualizes and summarizes remarks from a panel discussion on the role of public consultation in policy making within the context of intensifying polarization, erosion of trust, and increasing diversity.
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This paper describes the experience of some of Mexico’s largest cities in implementing nationally mandated urban growth policies, in particular the top-down nature of these new policies and the lack of local consultation in their implementation.
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The question of how best to govern large urban areas has long preoccupied policymakers, particularly as metropolitan areas have become recognized as drivers of national prosperity and globalization. This paper identifies five governance models in operation across the country and identifies five themes and trends in metropolitan governance.
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The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into relief a range of health, social, and economic challenges for municipalities in the Greater Toronto region. These challenges – such as lack of affordable housing, income inequality, the need to spur economic development, and the impact of climate change – all spill across municipal boundaries and need to be addressed through cooperation and coordination at the regional scale.
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Alan Harding, Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, describes the development of Greater Manchester’s primarily “bottom-up” form of regional governance. Harding offers four key lessons that can be taken from the Greater Manchester experiment
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Across Canada, and particularly in Toronto, calls for increased municipal autonomy and the protection of municipal authority in the Canadian constitution have been getting louder. These issues have become no less significant following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, which has revealed the limits of municipal powers and financial resources, while also demonstrating the importance of provincial and federal support for municipalities in difficult times.
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