501 - Toronto MCR Engagement Process: Experience Exchange

October 13, 2021

1:00PM - 2:00PM

Fishbowl

Sponsored By:

The City of Toronto is completing a municipal comprehensive review (MCR) to bring the City’s official plan into conformity with the growth plan by July 2022. The MCR process presents an opportunity to address, through planning policy, a number of growth-related challenges facing Toronto. These challenges include: housing affordability, climate change, mobility, public health, reconciliation and others that will help inform the City’s response to, and recovery from, the current pandemic. This is an opportunity for city planning to face and address some of the inequities that are, in part, the result of historical planning processes. The public, stakeholder, and Indigenous engagement program for the MCR uses digital engagement tools and involves local community and Indigenous leaders to bring together diverse voices from communities across Toronto to help shape the evolution of the City and address current challenges.
                   
A core component of the engagement process is focused on bringing forward and reflecting the voices of under-represented, marginalized, and racialized populations. The pandemic context poses challenges that the MCR engagement process seeks to overcome using various digital tools and community networks. This session focuses on the engagement process being followed for the City’s MCR and how it has evolved from planning through implementation. The digital tools used for engagement, such as dashboards and storymaps, will be demonstrated with discussion on the benefits and challenges of these tools. The process to establish the Community Leaders Coalition (CLC), made up of equity-seeking organizations and groups, will be presented. The session will include a facilitated experience exchange where participants can share stories, ideas, questions, and data to help shape and improve similar engagement programs.

 

Speakers