Case study data analysis revealed topics or challenges that can be grouped into four major sustainability-related themes (and some miscellaneous findings): perceptions on sustainability and urban sustainability; issues and perceptions related to systemic and long-term thinking; barriers linked to local government powers and responsibilities; and issues in progress measurement and sustainability evaluation.
4.1. Sustainability perceptions
When asked how they perceive sustainable development, sustainability, and sustainable community, one third of all 30 interviewees viewed SD as a commitment to future generations and the continuation of current plans into the future. About 25% considered it as directly related to infrastructure whereas, interestingly, a different 25% linked SD to the need to reduce impact on the environment or at least consider environmental impact in decision-making. Lastly, about 20% of interviewees directly or indirectly referred to social and/or cultural aspects of sustainability.
Similar perceptions of weak, one-dimensional sustainability were also noticeable in Council and staff meetings we attended. Sustainability was referred to as the ability to financially maintain municipal assets that included only humanmade infrastructure which was sometimes discussed as an acceptable way to replace natural processes interrupted by urban sprawl. It is worth noting that, at the time of this research, DNV participated in the provincial initiative Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery, while CMR was considering participating in the national Municipal Natural Assets Initiative to integrate natural assets into the city’s core asset management processes [58, 59].
Following our request to describe a sustainable community, about one third of interviewees responded with examples in lieu of a definition and another third equaled a sustainable community with good land use planning and reduced environmental impact. The most frequently used keywords here were: balanced, complete, infrastructure, environment, energy, future, employment, people, and education. Words such as social, green, and management were also frequently used in examples about housing, smart growth, asset management, and environmental mapping and management.
Also, one participant incidentally alluded to the regeneration principle and goals of the Urban Productivity Framework: “If the sustainable city existed... I might have difficulty wrapping my head around how that would actually look like, but the concept of probably [be] mostly a net-zero cycle where your energy inputs and outputs are almost balanced.”
Regarding their city, most interviewees acknowledged that it could not objectively be considered a sustainable city. While many viewed their city as advanced or leading in environmental preservation and heritage protection, they believed that economic and infrastructure issues still kept the community far from their acceptable level of resilience or sustainability. Finally, a few explicitly associated their city's low level of sustainability with high levels of material consumption and waste and GHG generation.
For the last question on sustainability perceptions we showed participants the CCF’s six capitals and asked them to rate each capital by importance for their city’s decision-making on a scale from 1 (least important) to 5 (most important). The overwhelming majority agreed that the most important capitals were the physical and natural, closely followed by the human, social, and economic capitals (Fig. 2). While these five capitals were rated almost identically in both cities, there was a difference in the cultural capital which was rated as highly important (= 5) by 50% of CMR participants but only by 21% of DNV participants; although the population in DNV is slightly more ethnically diverse than in CMR, this rating could be related to potential uncertainties due to the partnership with the City of North Vancouver in cultural programming and culture venues.
Seeking to gauge the potential of urban productivity, we asked a question that included productivity principles and goals in disguise, with language such as diversified employment, restored natural environment, circular economy, and healthy and connected community. Interviewees rated six “city vision” elements for desirability and feasibility (from 1 = not feasible/desirable at all, to 5 = fully feasible/desirable); the six elements correspond to the CCF’s six capitals for comparability (Fig. 3).
All interviewees considered most elements as important and highly desirable but not necessarily feasible (Fig. 3). They rated the physical and natural capitals as the most important now and most desirable into the future. They linked the physical capital to their city’s effort to maintain infrastructure and achieve energy efficiency goals, and the natural capital to their city’s positive record of protecting surrounding nature. The economic aspect was also considered highly desirable which perhaps reflects municipal priorities for increased local economic development. Also, while both cities gave all capitals very similar ratings for importance and desirability, DNV interviewees rated each capital for feasibility slightly higher than CMR interviewees did. This may be related to median income levels and annual municipal revenue; as mentioned above the main revenue source is property taxes which are higher in DNV due to higher market values.
Comments on employment and housing in particular hid some pessimism that interviewees linked to the absence of related municipal power and the reality of being “bedroom communities”. Some participants also repeatedly spoke about the lack of available land for industry and manufacturing in their city which for them constitutes a major economic drawback and reduces municipal revenue that could be used for improved infrastructure and other services.
In commenting on social, human and cultural capital ratings, many interviewees again alluded to the lack of municipal mandate for education and cultural protection. Some pointed to the changing demographics as both a shortcoming and an asset: the city may struggle to engage with and integrate a highly diverse community but socio-cultural opportunities may also increase thanks to citizen-led groups. Despite the above, participants eventually expressed a rather optimistic perspective for the future because they believed that their city’s OCP already included objectives for all “city visions”.
4.2. Systemic and long-term thinking
Systemic, long-term thinking is fundamental for sustainability in highly complex systems like cities. “Running a city is a massive job, it's like running 25 businesses really” (participant). Systemic thinking was not explicitly mentioned but sparsely implied in our data: several interviewees alluded to the interactions among policies, the potential consequences from heavily focusing on one aspect, and the need to adopt policies that promote balanced community development. A few interviewees connected these concerns to complexities inherent in local policy-making and community systems.
Many interviewees noted that decision-makers usually do not connect the dots among issues nor with the larger picture, i.e., the Official Community Plan or national and international goals. One person for instance wondered: “But how do things connect? And how good are we in connecting all these elements together?”. Such responses revealed discrepancies between policy and practice; for example while DNV’s Transportation Plan prioritized place-making “for people, not cars” with low-impact choices such as walking or cycling, our research data showed that in practice the city prioritized investment in additional road network.
Several interviewees discussed the need for long-term planning and informed decision-making through more or comprehensive information. They explained that in reality this did not occur often and provided examples such as one-off rezoning decisions or piecemeal OCP amendments. Similarly, Council meeting observations contained only a few occasions of systemic thinking when a Councillor inquired about the broader impact of a policy. Perhaps unavoidably though, any agenda topic would eventually be connected to other issues or the municipality's concerns at that time, e.g. economy or housing debates would at some point be linked to infrastructure, transit, or education.
Systemic thinking was also sporadically present in responses about the roles of Council and staff in municipal operations and sustainability decision-making. More than half of the interviewees agreed that Council's role was “higher up” and to provide direction, while city staff were viewed as subject-matter experts, knowledgeable about best practices, and required to provide relevant and professional information and implement the OCP based on Council directions. Overall, most interviewees implicitly acknowledged the systemic interconnections among City Council, municipal staff, and vision development and implementation.
A recurrent theme was about municipal departments often operating in silos, guided by their own specific priorities and path dependencies, without necessarily considering the impact of their work on other policies or coordinating with other departments. Only a few participants discussed this explicitly; for example: “there’s a lot of different things I need to do that are going to compete with my sustainability goals. […] I don't see everything through the lens of sustainability, […] I have it really compartmentalized right now” (participant). This is supported by our review of documents such as CMR’s Environmental Management Strategy and Strategic Transportation Plan: both briefly mention sustainability but propose policies of smart growth and additional infrastructure. Also during the DNV case study we did not encounter the cross-departmental sustainability team reported to have been established in 2007 for a partnership with The Natural Step [60].
Another common thread was the perception of citizens as customers which has resulted in a separation of the city into two components: local government and community. This disconnect emerged repeatedly as participants affirmed the role of local government as simply delivering service to citizens. One interviewee explained that for Council the three-legged stool consisted of performance in sustainability, fiscal, and customer service, but in most cases “customer service and fiscal won over the sustainability”. The example of waste management came up several times in the interviews: if citizens want weekly garbage pick-up and are willing to pay more, the city must deliver accordingly – even if this means increased volumes of garbage and CO2 emissions.
Systemic thinking for sustainability also requires long-term planning, although this may be overlooked in practice: “our planning tends to be short term or catches up” (participant). Many interviewees believed that, without long-term goals, decision-making and prioritizing were reactive and fragmented, resulting in insufficient citizen involvement and decisions detached from set strategies. They acknowledged short-termism, i.e., what people want at a given moment and in the near future, as a multi-faceted barrier: politicians may not be re-elected if they aim for longer term goals and citizens may perceive their impact during one election cycle as negligible and thus focus on shorter-term benefits. Some interviewees also noted that the community is constantly in election mode and that only citizens opposing or directly interested in a policy are vocal. More than one third stated that Council should think in horizons that are much wider than electoral cycles and “plan for the future” (participant) by helping develop the community's long-term shared vision and working with staff to ensure implementation.
4.3. Local government power
A significant obstacle to successful sustainability planning and implementation is related to the perceived inability to influence decision-making. Several interviewees expressed concerns that they couldn't make a difference or resolve issues in aspects such as the energy mix or socio-economic opportunities and equality. Their influence was perceived as low or not meaningful, leading to fragmented action or even inaction. Land use was the most frequently mentioned policy area that local governments have absolute control over; a few interviewees also stated that any development (such as sustainable development) starts with planning land uses.
Energy is another example reiterated in half of the interviews and during several Council meetings, either in the context of waste (waste management or waste-to-energy) or regarding building and transportation energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Energy decisions, particularly those seeking to reduce energy consumption and building emissions, are not entirely within the local government's purview. Although both cities have GHG emission reduction targets, they can control such policies for municipal facilities only. However, as many participants observed (some with concern), the city can always lobby to higher levels of government to influence other energy-related policies.
This perception of low ability to influence policy-making also came up about intangible community aspects related to social, cultural, human capitals. Several interviewees explained that, in combination with the anticipated lack of influence, they would not pursue a policy if tangible, measurable, or immediate results could not be expected: what matters in city management is what can be measured.
What is measured however is directly influenced by local government power and capacity. In our case studies, we repeatedly heard that sustainability processes can be hindered by a limited service delivery mandate which regulates municipal resources and capacity levels accordingly. Some interviewees compared their cities to European cities whose sustainability action benefits from broader powers and support from national governments, the European Union, and active citizens.
The most prevalent obstacle mentioned as directly linked to the complicated governmental system is the availability and allocation of funds. Municipalities in B.C. expect provincial or federal funding to act on issues that they do not have mandate for. The provincial and federal governments were frequently mentioned in both case studies regarding the need to advocate or apply for funding or when discussing sectors over which the provincial government has clear authority. Interviewees mentioned repercussions such as policy-making inflexibility and a slow-moving governmental system.
4.4. Assessing urban sustainability
When asked whether a sustainability assessment tool would be useful in their city, most interviewees responded that it would provide value if used to evaluate strategic documents such as the OCP and area plans, as it might become onerous if applied, for instance, to every development application. They attached however some conditions: the tool should be accurate, populated with timely and valid data, well structured, clear enough to prevent contradictory interpretations, and adaptive to align with forward-looking goals so that citizens contribute to, accept, and support it.
Most respondents also believed that a regular sustainability assessment would greatly affect decision-making (Fig. 4), by revealing broader impacts of a policy, supporting policy continuity, helping decision-makers prioritize, and enabling comparisons over time and adjustments. Finally, while most interviewees would welcome a full city-wide sustainability evaluation annually or biannually, some would also like to see sustainability impact assessment entrenched in daily operations, perhaps as a regular section in reports to Council.
We then asked participants to choose their preferred way of benchmarking among these options that stood out as the most common ways of benchmarking in our review of sustainability assessment literature and sustainability frameworks or indicators systems: (a) measuring progress toward set policy goals and targets, (b) measuring progress against scientifically based sustainability targets, (c) comparing to a baseline assessment of the city's sustainability, or (d) comparing to other municipalities in the region, in Canada, or abroad. Almost all interviewees expressed difficulty in choosing only one option. Most favored a combination of options (a), (b), and (c), but eventually more than one third chose (a) and one fifth chose (c) (Fig. 5).
Several interviewees explained their choices as context-dependent, reiterating that each community is different and that transparency and accountability about assessment is more important than adopting standards for the sake of comparability (per the assumption behind option d). Overall, most agreed that a baseline assessment and science-informed goals and targets would make data collection meaningful and would help identify progress or barriers; a few also noted that local governments have to measure and report on progress anyway.
Building on the previous questions, participants selected their preferred attributes of a sustainability assessment framework they would recommend for use in their city. We offered some options but encouraged additions. The most preferred attributes were user-friendliness, communicability, and resonance with the community (Fig. 6). Other important factors were user time investment, outputs that enhance decision-making, scalability, and cost, with the latter deemed as less important if the tool provided high value and long-term benefit. Participants reiterated that they wanted an intuitive tool, easy to embed in municipal operations, and independent from electoral cycles. They described an ideal tool as self-explanatory, visual and interactive, transparent, in lay language, consistent with community values, and flexible enough to “grow with the community” (participant).
Collection and management of data for sustainability assessment and progress evaluation was not only discussed in interviews but was also the main topic of many meetings with staff in both cities. We extensively consulted with subject-matter expert staff about the potential use of several holistic urban productivity indicators in their city; we discussed relevance of indicators, suggested targets, direction, and units, data availability and sources, etc. We particularly proposed indicators related to socio-cultural and human productivity and some indicators on natural, physical, and economic aspects to be measured in addition to mainstream sustainability indicators. These suggestions were initially informed by the academic and practitioner literature on concepts and approaches that the holistic Urban Productivity Framework converges and builds on.
The initial reactions to the proposed indicators were generally positive as staff supported the expansion of the city’s metrics database to measure more dimensions and in more depth so as to have better picture of the city’s sustainability state and progress. These reactions may in part be attributed to the two cities measuring limited ecological, economic, and social indicators that for the most part did not correspond to sustainability-related goals or policies. They were used because of convenience or simplicity in data collection (e.g. another governmental or non-governmental body is responsible) but they mostly assessed staff performance, plan completion (not plan implementation), or population demographics, or measured a negative side of policy impact (e.g., numbers of crimes or offences but not perceptions of safety and cohesion).
Although data such as those currently collected enhance understanding of the community and contribute to informed decision-making, we noticed a lack of community assessment indicators that would measure various resource flows within the community and the impact of policies on all aspects and assets. Both cities seemed to focus on measuring assets or aspects that could easily or readily be quantified but had barely any indicators for intangible community assets.
Many of our holistic productivity indicators pertained to the socio-cultural and human productivity but in most cases staff raised objections to adopting them in practice. They attributed this to the lack of: timely and reliable data; adequate human resources for data collection; and/or financial resources for new databases and portals. Specifically the difficulty to obtain reliable, adequate, frequent, and locally useful data and the extensive reliance on data from external sources (e.g. national census, regional surveys, etc.) stood out in most discussions. Additionally, whole-community surveys were conducted infrequently and would lead to unreliable data due to the low number of responses; project-based consultations with citizens were more frequent but limited in scope. Nevertheless, expert staff offered valuable feedback and helped us refine the list of indicators.
After recognizing the significance of abundant and good quality data for decision-making, senior staff in particular appeared reluctant to assign their teams additional, data-related work, emphasizing that staff had reached capacity for the mandated service delivery. They generally advised against assigning data tasks to one person per department and suggested instead to have one data coordinator for the entire municipality. On a similar note, some interviewees implied that their city would need to reconnect data collection and reporting with strategic goals such as those in the OCP.
Finally, some participants added that all local government work must be justified in terms of value created for the community and therefore the cost-effectiveness of data collection must be visible to citizens. This is another reason why most of the socio-cultural and human productivity indicators we suggested were not embraced in the two cities; they would measure intangible and subjective urban assets and, according to staff, this would not align with Council’s (and constituents’) priorities at the time. Perhaps the above also partly explains why one of the case municipalities had established a citizen group tasked, inter alia, to review the OCP monitoring processes.
In a nutshell, as several participants mentioned, limited mandate, short-termism, and overall municipal capacity are the main constraints that can obstruct sustainability data collection and management. Almost all participants agreed that this process should require minimal effort, with streamlined and efficient measurement processes, and a few in fact favored municipal investment in technology for connected databases and related training. In any case, the need for more data (in volume but above all in comprehensiveness) to better inform decision-making was repeatedly expressed both in meetings with staff and in the interviews as analysis showed.