User:Ostafimary/Catalytic City Planning

Cities remain on “on the frontline of the sustainability challenge” (Purcell and Hawke Baxter 2007).

Cities benefit when they redesign the way they lead, manage, create and innovate to build resilient, evolutive cultures and structures. This process enables cities to take a strategic upstream approach to sustainability which will inevitably be valuable in the future.

By design, The Catalytic City Planning Process uses a whole-systems-thinking approach and is people-oriented, as individuals and groups of individuals are the ones who drive process and change. Ultimately, this process will help your local authority build “inner strength” thereby enabling staff and elected officials to undertake more genuine and connected relationships with external stakeholders to create a healthier city.

The process consists of five phases that synergistically build off of one another and yet, is not meant to be prescriptive. The tool allows for – if not demands – that a local authority recognize its unique strengths and weaknesses while harnessing the existing and latent creativity, talent and passion of its people to cultivate innovative homegrown solutions.

Phase 1: Meet People Where They are
There is a saying that “people don’t mind change, but they mind being changed” – the same is true for individuals working in any organization, including the local authority of a city or municipality. For many, “sustainability” is a misunderstood concept, the mere mention of which can induce a spectrum of emotions ranging from sheer panic to outright denial – the latter manifesting itself in statements such as “we’re already doing sustainability.” Once clarified, even the harshest sustainability critic can become your biggest champion. Be prepared, therefore, to meet people where they are today and focus on learning together to achieve success.

Defining Your System Meeting people where they are requires an understanding of the “system” in which they function. Does your system include elected officials or only non-elected city staff? What are its boundaries? Does it include other levels of government (municipal/county/district/regional, province/state and federal/national)? What is your organization’s social capital? How would you describe your current governance system: Does it function more like hierarchy or a network?

The scale and location of your city will also be determining factors in decision-making, as too is a deep understanding of the culture and history of your workplace and the individuals (both elected and non-elected staff) working within the system.

Engage Willing Minds In this phase, you will also need to begin to identify and engage your core team. “Invited” participation versus “required” attendance at meetings and workshops is recommended. When individuals choose to participate in the process of co-creating solutions, they are likely to have a more meaningful personal experience and, therefore, a deeper level of overall engagement in sustainability thinking. Energized and inspired, these willing minds are certain to positively influence other members of the team.

And Don’t Forget to Capture the Journey… The use of multimedia tools such as digital cameras, video and audio recording devices is encouraged to informally document the process as it unfolds. Enlist the support of some volunteer “curators” to create, collect, manage and share these items. These images, audio and video recordings can be used at any point to illustrate the evolution of your city’s sustainability journey – and you will find this to be a valuable resource when it comes time to tell your city’s story to others within and without, including media and community groups. This is an opportunity for collaboration and team building. By devoting time to reflection you are reinforcing the learning from the experience and allowing knowledge to emerge which can then be applied to future phases.

Phase 2: Originate New Stories of Meaning
Every culture carries with it many “stories of meaning.” These are stories that help unify individuals and groups. They are passed along and shared and relied on for advice or guidance. As an organization, the local authority also has its own stories of meaning about what it does and why, as well as how and when. The sustainability challenge within a local authority, then, requires new ways of thinking and doing and effectively, new stories of meaning. Not surprising then, the goal of this phase is to seed the co-creation of new stories of meaning within your city.

Acquire a Shared Language Of course, to understand and envision new stories of meaning, one must first have an understanding of not only the language in which it has been created, but the system too. Therefore, it is important to delineate a clear definition of sustainability and share it amongst the team so that everyone is speaking the same language. An “A-B-C-D” workshop is one way of doing this. It is a simple methodology that provides a common language and understanding around sustainability in order to facilitate effective communication, along with cooperation and consensus to ultimately move toward a vision.

Analyse your Current Reality It is imperative to understand what is currently happening in the system in order to move strategically in the future. Which departments already have responsibility for sustainability issues? Where are the gaps? What is working? What is not? Rather than focusing on fixing the problems and limitations, energy should be allocated to continuing and adapting the processes that have proven to work. In short, this strengths-based approach advocates doing more of what is working well – and less of that which is not, as defined by a methodology called “Appreciative Inquiry.”

Co-Create a Concrete Vision of Success A well-conceived vision consists of two major components: a “core ideology” and an “envisioned future, “as noted by Jim Collins, author of Building Your Company’s Vision (Harvard Business Review 1996). Winning must not be vague, so co-create a concrete vision and define your internal key strategies with all the internal stakeholders to help direct the change effort and to define success in the future. Determine the core values of your organization to guide your day-to-day work. Communicate the new vision and strategies and empower people to act on the vision by encouraging innovation and new ideas. Through a compelling vision, meaningful new stories of meaning will emerge.

Phase 3: Co-Evolve Innovation
Once individuals within the local authority are engaged, speaking the same language and sharing a common vision of success, the next phase is to develop an integrated effort toward innovation. The sustainability challenge is complex and constantly changing, requiring a new perspective and creative strategies. This is a collaborative effort, involving all levels of the local authority to think, act and build their capacity together in order to realize success.

Create an Internal Communications Plan Achieve results through infrastructure by creating new structures and promoting information flows. If you want to get people excited about sustainability, keep reinforcing the vision and the idea of change. Leverage the existing channels of communication that are in place to keep the internal stakeholders focused and involved. To build more internal connections amongst your sustainability champions, consider an internal mentoring program to stimulate innovation in your organization. In this way, people are now change agents radiating innovation throughout the local authority, transforming the very structure of which they are part.

Cultivate Communities of Interest Within Create and cultivate a community of interest around sustainability issues which are cross-cutting amongst departments. In many cities, committees are formed around the need to draft a plan or a report, but once the report has been published and shared, the committee disbands or languishes, losing energy. Move from a “document/output” focused process toward a “people/process” practice. This less rigid and more fluid approach enables strategic thinking to live continually.

All too often, fragmented policies are set in place which causes a lack of synergy amongst departments. Sustainability requires a “whole-systems” approach in which all the departments are viewed as interconnected and part of a whole. This breaks down the hierarchy and “silo effect” of departmentalism and allows information to flow more organically and freely, thus opening the door to collaborative innovation.

Phase 4: Assess and Nurture Progress
To facilitate learning and growth amongst individuals and groups within your city, it is imperative to design and implement mechanisms to continuously assess and nurture the very progress that will support your local authority’s efforts to move toward a more sustainable future – starting from within. Here, the emphasis is on the identification of key areas where steps may be taken to improve processes for a more holistic approach that promotes accountability and inspires action.

Inclusive Decision-Making Effective progress requires an understanding of both the distribution of power within your local authority and how decisions are made. As such, you will need to better understand if, and where, power and authority is concentrated in your organization. Is it balanced or lopsided? Does your city’s structure still make sense with what you are trying to achieve today? Does it promote transparency? Is current policy a hindrance in any way?

If the answers to these questions are coming up as “no”, you may consider alternate methods of power could be better dispersed. How can key individuals, groups and departments act more like pollinators, cross-fertilizing policies and projects with their ideas formulated from within their own unique microclimate within the local authority? When individuals become an integral and valued part of the decision-making process, they are more willing participants and maintain a greater sense of responsibility for their actions.

Develop Progress Indicators“We care about what we measure and we measure what we care about,” wrote the late Donella Meadows, an American educator and environmental scientist, best known for pioneering work as author of Limits to Growth (first published in 1972) and research on system shifts using a 12-point leverage approach.

Similarly, as Bob Doppelt suggests, evaluating the progress of the flow and quality of information regarding sustainability knowledge is crucial in understanding your city’s internal progress toward the achievement of its strategic, sustainability objectives.

While there are many different models of sustainability measurement, including the Global Reporting Initiative’s G3 Guidelines (primarily aimed at the private sector), recent research by Alaya Boisvert, Sarah Cheevers, Erin Romanchuk and Karen Stroebel suggests indicators fall into two distinct meta-categories:

•	Socio-ecological Indicators (SEIs) – those that measure how your city’s actions are performing against their declared vision of sustainability; and •	Planning Process Indicators (PPIs) – measures concerned with the “success and structure” of your city’s planning process.

With respect to PPIs, the researchers further noted that “how frequently the results of indicators are communicated to the public can reflect if a planning process is transparent.” Here, it is suggested the same may be true for internal communication strategies within the local authority and between stakeholders such as elected representatives, departments etc. Increasing the frequency of communication of progress relative to PPIs may also increase transparency within your local authority, one of the foundations of good governance systems for sustainability.

In short, whether SEI’s, PPI’s or others, such progress-measurement mechanisms are critical tools in your local authority’s quest to redesign its internal governance systems to support the achievement of your city’s strategic sustainability objectives through greater transparency, accountability and more collaborative decision-making.

Phase 5: Celebrate & Share
Celebrations are more than just opportunities for coffee, cake and pats-on-the-back; they are important events that help bind the community together around a shared vision and goal. The process of achieving full sustainability – if that is even possible in such complex, interconnected global system – is a long-term endeavour and as such, it may be useful to consider centering your celebrations around the attainment of both “hard” and “soft” strategic objectives. While softer milestones such as increased information flow may be more difficult to define, they are just as important to celebrate as concrete hard goals as a reduction in waste or greenhouse gas emissions or increased energy efficiency in city buildings. This approach ensures that “celebrations” do not devolve into a dreaded, annual event but, rather, are genuine opportunities for deeper reflection.

Harvest Your Innovation Share your stories within your local authority along with others in the local community through media websites and events. Co-create a reward day for the sustainability employees and city councilors of the year acknowledging their internal initiatives. Now is another good time to use all the images, audio and video recordings that your volunteer curators have been collecting and cataloguing.

It is also beneficial to develop case studies in order to showcase best practices that can be archived on your city’s intranet as well as externally facing public website pages. In this way, the information is easily accessible for others local authorities around the world to learn from. Sharing the learning can inspire and motivate other individuals and teams within your organization and others – further positioning your city as a positive, progressive place to work thus making it easier, as Bob Willard, author of The Sustainability Advantage notes (New Society Publishers 2002), to attract and retain increasingly scarce and finicky talent.

Next Steps Finally, remember that this is both a necessary and evolutionary process. Building internal alignment does not happen overnight, nor does it ever really end – but that is no reason to never even begin. We are confident that this tool will help you to build a new form of public institution that serves public interest in a creative and innovative way.