Executive Sumary

To culminate a year of experiential learning and research, Participatory Canada wanted to understand demand and conditions for scaling the Participatory City approach in Canada. As part of this exploration, Participatory Canada commissioned a series of three strategy sessions in late 2020 and early 2021, to align around scaling demand and possibilities, learning architecture, and financing for the approach.

The 10 year vision for Participatory Canada was developed at Wasan Island in 2019. Participatory City Foundation, working in partnership with the McConnell Foundation, began seeding an intention and creating a plan to develop, learn and explore feasibility of prototypes during a social research & development phase in three Canadian cities, Halifax, Montreal, and Toronto. The live prototypes were designed to maximise learning opportunities and share knowledge and practices between the three cities. This was completed with an aim to test local responses to participation culture and to assess the emerging opportunities for building participatory social infrastructure in these neighborhoods long term.

After one year of research, the vision is still compelling and viable, even with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Information gathered from participants in the strategic sessions, through interviews, and from supporting research was used to develop this Participatory Canada Roadmap, which outlines potential pathways to help grow the vision for a scaled initiative in Canada.

The Roadmap utilizes a systemic and futures based approach to growing and scaling, to manage decision making and balance risks around uncertainties and externalities that might emerge over the next ten years. To ensure success, Participatory Canada should grow within each local community across the six essential components for scaling participatory systems in new places, including vision, context, learning architecture, school, resources and evidence. Three additional factors should also be considered that apply to each component and could amplify the success or failure of the approach in Canada. They include coordination, relationships and partnerships, and communication and storytelling. These factors will contribute to building practical participation ecosystems and also in sharing the learnings across the Participatory Canada network of cities.

Each city has its own vision and ambition manifesting into programs and activities within their communities. The vision for Participatory Canada must be co-developed with the Participatory City Foundation, and the participating Canadian cities to articulate the adapted vision for the Canadian expansion of the Participatory City approach. For example, developing a vision that is flexible and embodies reconciliation and anti-racism approaches will advance local agendas while building on participatory approaches.

Local conditions, including political, social and economic factors, can strongly influence the development of practical participation ecosystems. Financial implications take effect on a per city basis in costs for social infrastructure and core assets needed to establish the spaces for Participatory Canada, such as community storefronts, warehouse, and learning campuses. Additionally, social factors can vary across communities which impact the types of programs that should be activated at the forefront to validate the Participatory City approach; teams should aim for high impact and low risk projects.

Participatory Canada should focus on developing and making available curriculum and learning programs to educate partners and interested groups in the Participatory City approach. In later phases, focus should be on developing expertise and capabilities for individuals to create programs and facilitate systems change. Experiential learning and immersive experiences are preferred and believed to give the greatest impact to develop skills and knowledge of the Participatory City approach. However, with the continuing pandemic and considering geographic scaling across Canada, Participatory Canada should facilitate online and digital learning to support the growth of the program as travel and inperson interactions may be hindered in the short to medium term.

The school creates an essential hub for the Participatory City approach. It is a place to connect the growing set of deep learning campuses, share learnings and adaptations of the approach, and create skills for city teams and communities. The initial deep city implementation should act as the main Canadian learning campus of the Here&Now school to be a hub and entry point for other Canadian cities to connect into and explore the Participatory City approach. Additionally, the school should be utilized as a core piece of the measurement functions to support data collection and impact measurement. Creating supporting evidence will be critical to build future financing opportunities for Participatory Canada and its cities.

The first cohort of cities joining Participatory Canada will need a robust team to quickly establish local social infrastructure, programs and learning models. Accompanying the team, financial resources will need to be supported by the national team as well as local governments and organizations. Over time, people and financial resources will need to be coordinated across the scaling phases of Participatory Canada.

Each city that joins Participatory Canada will contribute evidence and data to collectively better understand the impacts the programs create in each community and in Canada. Measurement and collection of data and stories will be crucial in developing financial sustainability through strong business cases for practical participation ecosystems within cities.

The three supporting functions of coordination, relationships and communication contribute to the effective development of the six essential components of scaling. Strong organization and coordination of resources and communication across teams, cities, and global programming will support the growth and evolution of the Participatory City approach. Moreover, Participatory Canada and cities will need to develop relationships with community organizations, local governments and funders to build long term sustainability and trust in practical participation ecosystems and social infrastructures. Evidence, shared experiences and learning curriculum will formulate the basis of communication assets to support the case for the Participatory City approach. Effective development of relationships, communication assets, and coordination across the six essential components for scaling will create efficiencies in knowledge sharing, utilization of resources, and deeper relationships with advocates, funders and communities.

Figure - Ten year roadmap for Participatory Canada

As Participatory Canada builds its foundation of the essential components for growing and scaling, a phased approach is recommended to develop additional elements around growing people capabilities, identifying and mobilizing sustainable financing sources, and strategically scaling across geographies using a strong network and relationship approach. Although each time period showcases a particular area of focus, each element should be continually developed over the next ten years to successfully scale practical participation ecosystems in Canada.

Within the short term, a focus on building the necessary teams to effectively establish the social infrastructure, learning architecture, and impact measurement approaches in the first cohort of cities. Engaging the community and key stakeholders (city and funders) to build momentum around the program and its ambitions will be crucial in priming Participatory Canada for success. The focus on people was viewed as critical to build the capacity and expertise necessary to mobilize the community through events, Participatory City programs (eg. Every One Every Day, Tomorrow Today Street kits) and to create measurement and outcomes frameworks.

In this phase, the first cohort of cities will mature and enable the sharing of key learnings, frameworks and approaches to support subsequent cohorts. With their deployment of Participatory systems, a focus on finding and enabling sustainable financing to support ongoing city funding and additional cities to onboard into Participatory Canada. Cities can leverage the stories and data emerging from each city implementation to support the case for public funding and/or additional private or philanthropic outcomes based financing methods to support continued growth of social impact.

During the convening sessions, ambitious goals were conveyed to embed and establish the Participatory City approach in at least 50 cities or communities across Canada by 2030. Clear demand and the appropriate conditions of deep networks, strong evidence and validation, and the built expertise and capacity across mature cities to support the Participatory Canada platform into new cities will be needed to achieve the ambition. Supporting the initial cohorts of cities will prime Participatory Canada to leverage their capacity to support other regional cities to adopt participatory practices, akin to a ripple, radiating outwards to new cities. Participatory Canada should use a futures lens and systemic solutions to consider possible externalities and uncertainties. This will ensure that the growth of Participatory Canada remains flexible and adaptable to any possible pathway over the next ten years to effectively grow and scale the Participatory City approach.

City and national implementation teams will need to consider other aspects of scaling besides the size and depth of a city implementation, such as building depth of practitioner knowledge. Adding the Participatory City approach to existing community participatory practices could amplify effects, leading to faster and stronger creation of social and systemic infrastructure for long term systems change and community resilience, while partnerships could drive towards collective impact. New city implementations should leap-frog each previous implementation to make use of learning and infrastructure, while existing cities should leverage new learning to keep ideas fresh and momentum moving forward. Mechanisms to transition from short term to long term partnerships and funding should be developed and tested, balanced with the increasing reality of limited funding availability in cities to build infrastructure. The ongoing pandemic may require a shift in the type of participatory programs and accompanying infrastructure that is needed in communities and they should be developed and evaluated over time, shifting as the needs in communities change.

Through the development of evidence, demonstration of impact, and rich storytelling, Participatory Canada should aim to be a leader in establishing, embedding, and financing participatory social infrastructure in Canada over the next decade, and beyond.

218 History of Participatory City 222 Ambition and Vision for the Participatory City Approach 224 Purpose of the Scaling Scenarios Roadmap

226 Scaling Approaches 227 Components for Scaling Participatory Systems 228 Funding Approaches 231 Systemic Approaches for an Uncertain Future

235 Growing the Essential Elements 236 Vision 236 Context 237 Learning Architecture 240 School 241 Resources 244 Evidence 246 Coordination, Relationships, and Communications 247 Scaling over Three Time Horizons 247 The Near Term (0-3 years): People 249 The Medium Term (3-5 years): Sustainable Financing 250 The Long Term (5-10 years): Building Networks

251 Assumptions, Constraints and Future Considerations 252 Understanding Emerging Demand

255 Appendix A: Summary of Strategic Sessions 255 Convening Session 1: Scaling 255 Convening Session 2: Learning 255 Convening Session 3: Financing 256 Appendix B: Financial Considerations