Framing the Roadmap

The Participatory Canada Roadmap puts forward choices to help frame the possible path and direction of Participatory Canada. It is meant to provide context and support around sequencing and strategic decisions on resources, such as considerations for when and how to develop people and capacity, financing approaches and methods, and how to support cities.

The Participatory Canada Roadmap must consider different elements of scaffolding the pathway from the present to reach the ten year vision that address assumptions, risks and opportunities in growing and scaling the Participatory City approach. These elements include:

• Considering common approaches to scaling social innovation and how they need to adapt for the Participatory

City approach in Canada, • Leveraging the essential components of large scale participation systems identified in the UK so they can be held as the core in Canada, • Sourcing and utilizing funding that is stage appropriate to support growth and scaling from early stage startup and evidence gathering, to longer term growth and impact development, • Adjusting to the uncertainties and externalities presented by an ever changing, uncertain future, as the Participatory

City approach grows and scales to reach its vision, and • Being flexible to pivot around new information and challenging assumptions so the roadmap followed is non linear and supports systemic ecosystem development.

Since the Participatory City approach is highly adaptive in nature and focuses on developing a learning, knowledge and capacity building model through fostering deep working and learning partnerships, how to grow and scale the approach needed to be considered carefully.

Through the three strategy sessions, the Participatory Canada core team, city leads, and current and potential partners considered the strategic choices around common social innovation scaling approaches (see Figure 6), framed around opportunities to best enable successful growth and scaling in Canada that fit with the Participatory City approach. They explored aspects of how far to:8

• Scale out by adapting the Participatory City approach in additional communities and cities, and growing the deep learning relationships and networks between cities, not through replication, • Scale up by changing larger systems and policies and informing regime change, such as defining social infrastructure for our times, and communicating to shift the broader cultural landscape for practical participation ecosystems, and • Scale deep by deeply embedding the Participatory City approach in places and local culture, growing the deep learning relationships with people and communities, while ensuring flexibility and adaptation to different and relevant contexts and circumstances.

Overall, contributors were explicit about wanting to avoid a cookie cutter, franchised model that felt imposed on communities and was perceived as ‘top down’ decision making. Growing and scaling the Participatory City approach in Canada in a sensitive and responsive way will depend on many factors, including being conscious of when it is appropriate to scale deep, up or out. Building networks and partnerships systemically and with purpose, while seeking new resources and financial models, will support effective growth, balanced through the ongoing commitment to deep learning and research with communities.

To effectively scale large practical participation ecosystems through the Participatory City approach, six essential components need to be in place (see Figure 7). They include vision, context, learning architecture, school, resources, and evidence. These elements cover the components of local conditions and dynamics, and the necessary infrastructure at the city and national levels. Additionally, three cross cutting dynamics and activities have been identified as vital to successful growth and development. These include building strong relationships and networks of learning and support, coordination and pulling together of all the components, and building the Participatory City narrative through communication and storytelling.

1. Vision: Each city has a vision of its future. These are often visibly led and communicated by government and institutions, but they are also expressed by people on how they would like to live, work, and play together. A strong and cohesive vision is needed at all levels to develop bold initiatives through this approach.

2. Context: Local conditions can strongly influence the possibility of developing practical participation ecosystems in cities. Political will and leadership, including underlying dynamics, the social, economic and environmental imperatives and needs of a city, and cultural and social factors all combine to influence the desirability, viability and probability that a systemic innovation of this scale will develop in a local context.

3. Learning Architecture: Materials in different formats and curriculum enable the development and implementation of local participation ecosystems. Learning resources are designed to support the progression towards an in-depth understanding of the Participatory City approach. From frameworks to practical skills, over time they build the necessary capacity for co-creating these new systems directly with the people living in the neighbourhoods of cities. The curriculum enables the progression of learning by starting with awareness of the Participatory City approach, growing and deepening the understanding, and ultimately gathering the necessary support, networks and resources to implement the initiatives. The learning architecture currently spans from online workshop courses for city leaders, to immersive experiential courses for practitioners, to resident peer-to-peer learning academies, and to masters courses.

4. School: The Here&Now School of Participatory Systems and Design has a national learning and development focus. It includes Learning Campuses that are the deep Participatory City implementations that act as demonstration sites for building the large scale practical participation ecosystems. Both the global, national and city level elements of the school support the learning infrastructure for building these systems and change capacity in any city. The more locally this knowledge is embedded and accessed, the stronger and quicker the approach will be established. The Here&Now School helps diffuse the knowledge and practices of the Participatory City approach through the network of Learning Campuses and strong partnerships developed with each city. The network Figure 7 - Top six essential components for scaling the Participatory City approach

contributes and creates spaces for new communities, partners, and individuals to build capacity and knowledge while sharing the emerging field of practice with others.

5. Resources: People capital and financial resources are critical for ensuring the right levels of expertise and teams are in place to co-create the Participatory City approach and develop the practical participation ecosystems within each city. These also form the platform of social infrastructures needed, including networks, spaces and projects.

6. Evidence: Every city that joins the Participatory City network contributes evidence and research towards the feasibility, inclusivity, value creation, systemic integration and adaptability of the Participatory City approach. Measurement, and the collection of evidence to demonstrate impact, is vital for growing the approach in Canada. Strong evaluation results will encourage public and private investment to create the foundation for the long term financial sustainability of

Participatory City.

A. Coordination: Acting as the organising function for this model, coordination activities pull all six essential components together into strong and cohesive initiatives and infrastructures. A high level of coordination needs to be strongly established to effectively execute on the city initiatives; this builds on the existence of the six, deeply interdependent essential components.

B. Relationships and Partnerships: Establishing relationships and partnerships creates opportunities and deep collaboration within the practical participatory ecosystem.

Across the six essential components, this enables the

Participatory City approach to bring together the right people and organizations to form the capacity and support that a city implementation requires.

C. Communication and Storytelling: Spreading the word and bringing the Participatory City approach to life through creative and enticing stories is essential to building a large network of contributing partners and growing the elements of the ecosystem. It is a vital function that enables co-creation of the approach (where people see themselves in the stories) and growth of the emerging field of learning and practice in the Here&Now School.

Balancing the pace and scale of integration and development of each essential component in a city will support the successful growth of practical participation ecosystems through the Participatory City approach. To identify the appropriate funding to support the growth and scaling of the Participatory City approach in Canada and its essential components, there is a need to consider the strategic choices around two dimensions of Participatory Canada: the systemic and transformational nature of the Participatory Canada vision, and the direction for initiative leadership. For example, the overall projected costs will need to consider which strategies, tactics and learning architectures of the Participatory City approach will be built and to what degree, (such as Tomorrow Today Streets, Every One Every Day, a learning campus), and who will be responsible for driving and sustaining the effort (such as a nationally-led core team for overall strategy, partnership building, research and learning, systems development, and for city-led teams who develop the work according to local context and build local partnerships, systems change visions, data collection and outcomes measurement, research and learning that connects with other nodes, etc.).

A project from Every One Every Day and IKEA’s Live Lagom Programme. Tomorrow Today Streets gives local neighbours, families and friends the opportunity to start exciting projects right on their own streets. It offers 24 Kits to help residents start projects that are practical and help stay connected.

It’s collaborative planning, designing in success and failure and space to co-design lots of little projects as well as work on larger ones. This is an opportunity to create a circular economy. Coexisting together and connecting with other ecosystems while putting residents at the center of the system allows for self directed involvement through a diverse range of project ideas and participation opportunities.

Funding for the Social R&D pilots in Canada was primarily provided by the J.W. McConnell Foundation and support from the Government of Canada (ESDC Investment Readiness Program9), with $100K grants given to each city to establish Social R&D projects on embedding participation within their communities. Significant matched funding and in-kind contributions were secured by local pilot partnerships. The initial Social R&D pilots have led to substantive conversations and interest in each city in continuing or expanding the participatory systems moving forward.

To support the demand for growth and scaling of the Participatory City approach, financing Participatory Canada will likely require cross-sectoral and hybrid partnerships with governments (e.g. federal, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous), foundations, private sector partners, and other investors at different scales (such as neighborhood, community, region, country, and internationally) where collaboration is required to help deliver change from the ground up, and connect in with a global network.

Within Canada, there are many established financing tools available that could be used to fund the Participatory City approach, helping to shift Canada towards a more inclusive and participatory society. Financing tools can be understood through a spectrum. Refer to Figure 8 for this visualization: start on the left

Figure 8 - The financing landscape in Canada

with smaller catalytic funding and move to the right with larger, scaled funding with a revenue or cost benefit. outcomes are achieved. Examples of Social Impact Bonds include the Heart and Stroke CHPI SIB16 and Saskatchewan’s Sweet Dreams SIB.

• Grants: Provide critical initial capital to fund initiatives without a strong record of revenues and proven outcomes.

Additionally, grants are typically dispersed in smaller denominations and aim to provide catalytic funding for exploratory work, or particular initiatives.

Examples of grants and organizations providing funding include the Federation of Canadian Municipalities10 ,

Community Foundations of Canada11, and other foundations.

• Blended financing tools: Tools that leverage public or philanthropic capital to mobilize additional private sector investment towards a social or environmental objective.

Often used in development contexts, blended finance typically sees public or philanthropic capital absorb risk through guarantees or grants to improve the risk/return profile and catalyze private sector investment that otherwise wouldn’t have flowed to a project. Another form of blended finance, venture philanthropy, channels philanthropic capital towards high-impact ventures, alongside strategic and operational advice, and other non-financial support.

Examples of organizations and foundations utilizing blended finance include Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation12 ,

Omidyar Network, and Shell Foundation. Major venture philanthropy funds include the Draper Richards Kaplan

Foundation, 13 PRIME Coalition14, and JDRF T1D Fund15 . • Community Bonds & Loan Funds, and Private Debt/Equity:

Community bonds are similar to traditional bonds, except they always generate a social or environmental return in addition to a financial return, and are generally open to nonaccredited investors. Community loan funds lend to local nonprofits or social enterprises and accept higher risk and offer more generous repayment terms than conventional lenders. Finally, there are impact-focused private debt or equity funds that function similarly to community loan funds except they target a specific social or environmental topic while often operating across a broader geographical footprint. As these tools require the lenders to be repaid (either by the lendee or via a resale of equity), they require reliable, growing revenue streams.

Examples of these financing mechanisms include the CSI

Community Bond18 , Social Enterprise Fund19, and Nesta’s

Arts & Culture Impact Fund20 .

• Social Impact Bonds (SIB): Designed as an outcomes based financial instrument for investors to fund social services, these bonds earn repayment of capital and, often, a return (paid by an outcomes funder like the government) if

10 Federation of Canadian Municipalities, “Funding Opportunities” https://fcm.ca/en/funding 11 Community Foundations of Canada, “Current Initiatives”, https://communityfoundations.ca/ current-initiatives/ 12 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “Strategic Investments”, https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ about/how-we-work/strategic-investments 13 Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, “Our Model”, https://www.drkfoundation.org/about/ourmodel/ 14 PRIME Coalition “What is Prime”, https://primecoalition.org/what-is-prime/ 15 JDRF TID Fund “Investment Strategy”, https://t1dfund.org/investment-strategy/ 16 Heart & Stroke, “Innovative program tackles blood pressure risk”, https://www.heartandstroke. ca/activate/chpi 17 Innovation Saskatchewan, (September 3, 2019) “The Sweet Dreams Initiative”, https:// innovationsask.ca/news/the-sweet-dreams-initiative 18 Centre for Social Innovation, “Invest in your community”, https://communitybonds.ca/invest-inyour-community 19 Social Enterprise Fund, https://socialenterprisefund.ca/ 20 Nesta, “Arts & Culture Impact Fund”, https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/arts-culture-impact-fund/

Cities, communities and residents looking to transition their neighborhoods to a just, sustainable, and participatory future require a financing and wealth approach that holds a long term view to successfully scale the Participatory City approach in Canada. While the financing mechanisms described in Funding Approaches might act as one set of mechanisms to finance the Participatory City approach, to have meaningful, scaled systems change in Canada, this work would additionally benefit from Transition Financing21. This type of financing enables capital holders and investors to redirect very large amounts of capital towards novel portfolios of assets with accompanying infrastructure around people capacity, data and innovation at macro and micro levels. This is a new way to scale transformation through systems change while identifying and aligning with actors’ priorities, risk profiles and envisioned outcomes, in this case relating to Participatory Social Infrastructure.

Transition Financing can balance the high pace of government spending as a result of COVID-19, both in managing the pandemic response and jump-starting the economy. The capital, policy and infrastructure solutions needed both for COVID-19 recovery and to make progress on the larger issues of growing inequality, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, inadequate healthcare, domestic violence, and racism, can be financed through a portfolio of long-wealth assets instead of isolated, medium term infrastructure projects. A new class of public-private capital can be further leveraged through co-investments by residents using community wealth mechanisms. This could lead to the creation of co-funded, participatory social infrastructure crucial to building forward better from COVID-19, bridging social capital and cohesion, and strengthening civic legitimacy and resilience.

While developing the six essential components of the Participatory City approach and identifying appropriate funding over a ten year time horizon can help build towards success in growing and scaling practical participation ecosystems in Canada, the future is unwritten and constantly evolving. Strategic foresight can help us understand the potential future environments in which the Participatory City approach could flourish or fail. As new trends and developments emerge across society, they can become the drivers of change that could significantly affect the creation of participatory social infrastructure. While our understanding of the potential impact of those changes might be more clear in a near term time frame of a few years, it is less clear as the time horizon is lengthened. More possibilities for different futures emerge22. In considering a ten year time horizon for scaling Participatory Canada, combined with a strong vision and ambition for scaling held by the team for the Participatory City approach, a path forward could include taking action to influence developments that increase the chances of the desired future coming true. Balancing the monitoring of weak signals to identify possible changes at an early stage23, while remaining flexible for the emergence of different futures, will help ensure the success and sustainability of Participatory Canada.

Participatory Canada can understand the possible futures of cities and communities, and implications for the Participatory City approach, by leveraging the work completed by organizations that practice strategic foresight globally and in Canada. For example, Future Cities Canada explores ways to build the capacity of cities, aiming to make them future-focused, equitable, regenerative, and prosperous for the next 50 years24. Partnering with this type of organization can help surface insights about the future while also contributing to its creation25 .

Globally, as we move towards 2030, many cities and regions are struggling with how to adapt to megatrends around individuals, the physical environment, and the global economy while improving the quality of life and moving towards more inclusive and just societies. For example, how does a Canadian city adjust to a population with higher life expectancies, while the youth population needs access to jobs. This connects to the rising use of enabling technologies and digitization, and capital flows within and between communities, shifting the type of work people can do, the learning and training people need, and how people can participate in government and public decision making. Different social and physical infrastructure will be needed as part of delivering public services, building climate resilient natural and built environments, while reducing stress on natural resources from population and economic growth26. Since many people will reside in cities by 2030, the Participatory City approach could be one way to facilitate the path to sustainable living.

22 Jacobsen, B., Hirvensalo, I. (May 7, 2019), “What is Strategic Foresight?”, https://www. futuresplatform.com/blog/what-strategic-foresight 23 Prescient, “Introduction to Strategic Foresight” (retrieved May 5, 2021), https://prescient2050. com/strategic-foresight-tools/ 24 Jessica Thornton, J. Future Cities Canada (January 16, 2020), “Planning for the Cities We Want: Strategic Foresight to create our preferred futures”, https://futurecitiescanada.ca/stories/planningfor-the-cities-we-want-the-case-for-strategic-foresight-in-cities/ 25 To learn more about Future Cities programming, see https://futurecitiescanada.ca/programs/ 26 KPMG International (2014) “Future State 2030: The GLobal Megatrends Shaping Governments”, https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2014/02/future-state-2030-v3.pdf In addition to adapting to and planning for key trends, Canadian cities interested in the Participatory City approach will also need to pay special attention to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while considering its long-term implications to Participatory programming and governance. Canadians have seen acceleration in specific trends leading to shifts in the areas of health, economy, society, the environment, and governance, areas which are all connected at the impact level as outcomes of practical participation ecosystems. Some key areas of consideration that might directly affect the Participatory City approach and drive adaptations to it include27:

• Pandemic persistence - Without a clear timeline for how long it will take to ‘go back to normal’, such as developing virus immunity, managing mutations, deploying vaccines and providing treatment, the ways Canadians interact safely indoors and outside will dramatically need to change. The

Participatory City approach will need to adapt to deliver meaningful interactions and impact while maintaining safety for participants. With a high likelihood of future pandemics, a resilient and effective Participatory City approach is necessary. • Long-term physical distancing and mental health - Core to the Participatory City approach is fostering in-person interactions to build community resilience and connections, including alleviating loneliness and trauma. Programming teams and participants will need to assess the level of risk they are willing to accept and the benefits they could receive by attending in-person programs balanced against the different types of connections and experiences possible through online programming. • Economy - If people remain affected by unemployment, and asset and job loss, the Participatory City approach might be able to offer a way to share community wealth, and provide opportunities for working, learning and training that wouldn’t exist in the traditional job market. The need for a new approach is highly necessary as inequalities and cross-generational tensions continue. For example, considerations should balance the needs of people with no or low incomes, single parents with need of child care, isolated and vulnerable individuals who need a connection, and youth who need to develop a livelihood. • Digitization - The demand for and participation in online platforms for all aspects of life has significantly accelerated alongside mandated physical distancing and lockdown orders by the government. While the Participatory City approach thrives on in-person activities and experiential learning, it will need to shift and adapt to leverage effective practices for community building and participatory engagement to help ensure the safety, inclusivity, and accessibility of programming. Disparities in access to resilient technology should be considered as potential limiters to achieving key social outcomes, for example for health, education, and access to employment.

Figure 9 - Systemic versus linear roadmaps

The Participatory City approach aims to develop practical participation ecosystems in communities and cities. By its nature it is inherently designed to create systems change in complex environments. This means that a linear roadmap would not be appropriate to grow and scale the systemic approach in Canada, since systemic change requires systemic solutions28 (see Figure 9).

With the many possible alternative futures that exist, Participatory Canada should consider using a futures thinking and systemic approach to implementing and following the Roadmap over time. Using a futures wheel29 is one approach to making decisions and considering possible paths forward that could help Participatory Canada think through first, second, and third order consequences to enable it to get to its desired outcomes. Similarly, a systemic roadmap could enable Participatory Canada to manage uncertainty and risk, and develop paths to systemic financing as the future becomes more clear. For planning how a Participatory City approach might fit within a COVID-19 future, a systemic roadmap could help the team adjust to a future with ongoing episodic flare-ups, or to a future with long term disruptions and continued acceleration of negative economic, social, and environmental issues, or to a future that looks very different and becomes the new normal. This work is also emergent and connects to other key areas of change required to transition to a flourishing future. The attributes of the Participatory City approach, including a clear, shared vision, the foundation of experimentation to learn and adapt in each place, coupled with learning architecture to return learning to the system make it likely that Participatory Canada could achieve emergent results at scale. Other successful emergent initiatives have also used approaches that leverage community engagement, participatory practices, and highly developed network and relationship strategies30. Participatory Canada should leverage emergence strategies to amplify the transformational effect of empowering citizens to be co-producers of transitions in their communities through the creation and adoption of participatory social infrastructure.

28 Dominic Hofstetter, “Innovating in Complexity” Part 1 (July 7, 2019), Part 2 (July 26, 2019), and Part 3 (August 23, 2019). 29 MindTools, “The Futures Wheel: Identifying Consequences of Change” https://www.mindtools. com/pages/article/futures-wheel.htm

Figure 10 - Ten year roadmap for Participatory Canada

30 Fourth Quadrant Partners, “A whole Greater Than Its Parts: Exploring the Role of Emergence in Complex Social Change”, http://www.4qpartners.com/emergence.html