Sustainable Community Hubs – Human Centred Cities

Sustainable

Community Hubs

Featured Project

Welcome to the Sustainable Community Hub resource dashboard! This platform supports community leaders and innovators in creating positive, local, change through collaborative action. There are a plethora of great ideas out in the world, so why can’t we bring these home? Where do we begin? How do we bring sustainability to our communities?

This hub focuses on Toronto in some cases, but much of the process can be translated to different locales. This by no means is a 100% comprehensive collection of services and tools. It attempts to be a curated starting place for you to build off of. If you would like to share anything that you think should be included, please do!

Project Menu

Define

Community Development

The City of Toronto, which is rapidly developing, states that “this intensity of development must be balanced with an appropriate investment in the infrastructure required to keep the heart of the city strong, liveable and healthy…ensuring that Downtown remains inclusive, accessible and affordable for people of all ages, incomes and abilities”(Source: City of Toronto). Communities are intangible and social by nature, but infrastructure shapes the wellbeing of a community. There are many community development frameworks and toolkits published by academics, businesses and municipalities.

Some effective tools for community development can be found packaged in what is called a ‘Complete Community’. The University of Delaware shares it’s tool kit and guides which focus on creating and promoting Complete Streets, Efficient Land Use, Healthy and and Liveable, Active and Inclusive, and Sustainable and Resilient.

Complete Communities Key Focus Areas. Delaware

(Source: University of Delaware, Complete Communities Toolbox)

Ensuring the wellbeing of a community is complex. Luckily, the design firm Dialogue has created the Community Wellbeing Framework. Wellbeing is broken into 5 core facets with 18 focus areas. Measuring your communities wellbeing is not an exact science but frameworks like this can help.

Community Wellbeing Framework by Dialogue

Click the image for a larger view. (Source: Dialogue)

Sustainable Development

Though sustainability may seem like a buzzword sometimes, it is both a global and local concern that deserves continued focus and attention. Sustainable development can be defined as “a broad collection of principles and corresponding planning policies to bring urban economies and local land development in closer alignment with the long-term limits of the landscape to support urban settlements, absorb the wastes of human activities and enable non-human flora and fauna to thrive” (S. Campbell, 2013).

Sustainable action should not solely focus on the ecological. Equity and social justice along with economic development must be included when community development occurs.

Sustainable Development and Social Justice

Click the image for a larger view. (Source: S. Campbell)

There are many facets of sustainability outlined in both Project Drawdown and the Sustainable Development Guidelines.

(Source: Drawdown)

(Source: UN SDG’s)

What can you and your community work on?

Critical Infrastructures for Sustainable Communities:

Nature ●

Community Wellbeing Framework: Environment, Nature and Systems
Sustainable Development Goal number 15, Life on Land

Waste ●

Community Wellbeing Framework: Social, Support Systems and Environment, Natural Systems (through preservation)
Sustainable Development Goal number 12, responsible consumption and production

Water ●

Community Wellbeing Framework: Social, Support Systems
Community Wellbeing Framework: Environment, Natural Systems (through preservation)
Sustainable Development Goal number 12, responsible consumption and production

Fuel ●

Community Wellbeing Framework: Social, Support Systems and Environment, Natural Systems (through preservation)
Community Wellbeing Framework: Environment, Mobility
Sustainable Development Goal number 13, Climate Action
Sustainable Development Goal number 12, responsible consumption and production

Food ●

Community Wellbeing Framework: Social, Support Systems
Sustainable Development Goal number 2, Zero Hunger

Action Library

There are plenty of actions to be taken through the Tactical Urbanism Guide and via the Toronto Enhancement of the Public Realm program. These ideas often have existing processes for implementation but are open enough to be adapted to your neighbourhood. Whether you want to improve access to healthy organic food, make your streets more bike or pedestrian friendly, improve the resiliency of your community when it comes to inclement weather, or encourage your community to reduce waste, there is something sustainable and feasible for your community. You may even want to mix and match programming with infrastructure to help test and promote the changes your community wants to see.

Some existing programming and events that may be useful venues to test ideas are:

100 in 1 day ●●●

Second Hand Sunday ●●

Really Free Market (replicate this in your neighbourhood!) ●●

Jane’s Walks ●●

Open Streets or Ciclovia ●●

Infrastructure Interventions:

Depave ●●●●

The Laneway Project ●●●

Little Free Library ●

Food Up Front ●●●●

Community Garden + Pollinator Garden ●●●●

Advocate for a new Bike Share Station ●●●●

Complete Streets and Pedestrianized Streets ●

10 Minute Walk (to a park) ●

Start a Carpool with Smart Commute ●

Walk Your City (Wayfinding) ●●

If you have any other ideas to add to the list, please reach out via the contact page!

Assess

Stakeholder Mapping

Before deciding on an action, it is important to identify who in your neighbourhood might be an ally or partner. Think through who might be essential to the process, who might be a good support, and those who will benefit from this action. Many equity seeking communities are left out of traditional planning processes and as a community lead project, it is essential to also identify who might no be in the room and ensure that the process is inclusive. After stakeholders have been identified, they can be mapped to show relationships of exchange. What is being traded in this partnership? Is it money, expertise, land, services etc.?

This is the simple process:

List key stakeholders
Prioritize
Visualize (see template below)
Add relationships/value exchanges.
Try mapping this both in the present and the future.

For an expanded process, check out this method here.

Asset Mapping

Asset mapping is a useful tool to take stock of what great things you do have in your community. By understanding what you have, you can take a look at what gaps there are in service or infrastructure and see what actions you can take.

Google my maps is a free mapping tool, some people may be less comfortable with drawing but can easily plot things on a map. To help organize the map, you can also create categories that reflect the critical infrastructures. See below for an example map.

Memory Mapping

Some people may be more comfortable freehand drawing maps from memory. It is always very telling to see what people recall and prioritize when mapping from memory.

Using memory as a tool for ideation is also a fun co-creation tool for people to visualize their neighbourhood dreams. Local artists can even get involved to create beautiful community maps like the one below!

Check out this example from the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development and the Centre for Architecture.

Memory Map

Decide

Making group decision is always challenging. A really effective way to make sure that all ideas are captured is to create and Idea Library or Portfolio. By collaboratively placing these ideas within a matrix that factors in feasibility and impact, it becomes clear which ideas can be easily implemented and which are going to create the most impact for the community. See below for a template created in Google Drawings. This template can easily be replicated with paper and sticky notes for in-person decision making or in something digitally collaborative like Google Jamboard, Mural, or Miro. A more sophisticated digital version can be downloaded for GSuite here.

Act

The Big Picture

Project planning is where the real fun begins! Ideas become real and impacts are made. Tools like the Business Model Canvas or the Mission Model Canvas can be adapted for Community planning. This is where all of the work that has been done to this point comes together to reveal the big picture of your what your community hub might look like. Think through the formats, methods, actions, funding and of course people involved in making this a reality. This document can evolve as your continue to implement and reflect.

Community Canvas, Business Model Canvas

View the original template here at Strategyzer.

Project Management

When working with teams, it is useful to set up a task manager like Trello or Asana, which are free up to a certain number of members! This way, the team can assign tasks to people, collaborate virtually, and track progress.

See below for a community Trello board example.

Maintain

Funding

There are many aspects to maintaining your community hub and it’s projects. There will be different roles and team management ongoing as outlined above, but, unless the community contributes money ongoing for implementing and maintaining projects, new funding sources are needed. As outlined in the Community Model Canvas above, there are various ways to fund your projects; sponsorships, co-op model, donations and grants. It is always wise to keep track of grants and keep a schedule of their deadlines. This might even influence your decision making process depending on grant requirements! You can view a master list of City of Toronto Grants and Incentive here; specifically the community grants located here.

Other sources of community grants include but are not limited to:

Replicate & Share

Who else might benefit from what you have learned? Allies and partners can benefit from your insights as well as many other communities looking to get started or existing neighbourhood groups looking to add a new focus on sustainability. Think about reaching out to some other community organizations to do a skill share event! Pay it forward, share what you did on social media, get the press involved to help inspire others to follow in your footsteps.

To see a map of existing community groups in Toronto, visit this website.

TANGO Map

Revisit

It is always good to revisit the projects which have been implemented. For example, gardens especially need maintenance and will need to be revisited every season. You may want to take a look at the action library and pick another idea. Your community team will keep getting better as they experience and learn. Keep inviting new people to make sure new perspectives are included.

Think about:

Is the project still performing in the way it was intended to?
Who is included? Who is not included?
How can this be improved or evolved?
How can this be funded better or made more permanent (scaled up)?
How might we reach newcomers to the neighbourhood and involve them?

Would you like to start a sustainable community hub in your neighbourhood? Get in touch to collaborate!