Ann Dale, RRU Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development

By Edward Hill Communications Officer

Community Survey

In the early 1980s, the dusty Vancouver Island town of Chemainus faced economic collapse — sawmills were closing and forestry jobs were drying up. Yet the town survived, reborn as a tourist destination.

What Chemainus had was plenty of “social capital,” an ethereal concept linked to individual, community and government networks, says Prof. Ann Dale, Royal Roads University Canada Research Chair on Sustainable Community Development, and professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability.

Dale says the exact survival dynamics are hard to nail down, but involve the strength of community bonds, individual leadership and people willing to take measured risks. “When a single-industry economy collapses, social capital makes the difference,” Dale says. “But what was it in Chemainus, and can we create that? Whatever ‘that’ is?”

Understanding “social capital” and its relationship to sustainable, healthy communities underwrites Dale’s ambitious and varied projects. In early March, her team (Rob VanWynsberghe, Levi Waldron, Lenore Newman and Chris Ling) released an online Community Liveability survey to explore the kind of relationships people create, and how landscapes and infrastructure can shape communities. Dale would like to collect responses from at least one million Canadians.

“We want to get people thinking about sustainability and their communities,” Dale says. “It’s all part of reconciling social, economic and environmental imperatives — for allowing sustainability at all levels.”

Survey questions probe the urban and rural divide, social engagement — be it walking to the store, voting, or volunteering — law and order, cultural diversity and greenspace. It examines how people form networks, be it churches and cafes, or in cyberspace. Dale hopes to sift out how geography and infrastructure inform decision making on sustainable lifestyles.
“We have really got to redesign cities and subdivisions,” Dale said. “If you’ve got no opportunity to walk to the library or the park or the store, what are you going to do?”

Dale noted that some social scientists deride virtual chat rooms and Internet relationships as isolating and eroding social capital. Dale suspects online environments have allowed youth to redefine and expand the meaning of community.

The survey developed out of three years of research into social capital in three communities in B.C. and two in Australia. Dale hopes it will provide deeper clues to why some communities can muscle through hard times.

“We may get richer explanations. We may find nothing,” she said. “We are searching for those nuggets of information that explain why some communities survive and others collapse.”

Community Planning

Planning for sustainable community development — defined largely as economic, social and environmental sustainability — was a key element of the federal government’s five-year $5 billion Gas Tax Revenues program, announced in 2005. The 2007 budget topped that up to $8 billion and extended the program until 2013-14. 

All municipalities seeking gas tax funding need to develop an Integrated Community Sustainability (ICS) plan, but Dale says local governments are having a tough time getting it off the ground. Where consultants have developed ICS plans, many sit shelved because there was no community buy-in, she said.

Dale, with researchers Chris Ling and Kevin Hanna, released an Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Tool in March, a flexible guide for municipalities to get their ICS plan rolling with public support, but without paying consultant’s fees.

“Every community in the country has reports telling them how to do better, but they’re not implemented because they’re not owned by the community,” Dale says.

“Normally you have a consultant going one way with planning. We say there are six or seven ways to take the framework and adapt it to the community. And part of this is to engage the community in development.”

Dale called the federal gas tax rebate “innovative policy,” saying it’s the first government initiative linking funding directly to sustainability planning. She said a critical aspect of the planning tool process is amending municipal bylaws that encourage urban sprawl, poor land planning and poor transportation planning.

“What stops innovation and sustainability are bylaws based on old thinking,” Dale says. “If a community moves along with the plan it will be wealthier, healthier and sustainable in a meaningful way.”

Dale admits the ICS tool is a “sleeper” idea — municipal planners may be slow to see its merits. Municipalities, though, are under the gun to submit ICS planning documents to respective provincial gas tax authorities by May 31, 2007, with a possible extension for later in the year. The gas tax fund originally expired in 2010, and British Columbia’s gas tax authority, for one, expected to distribute the majority of its funding this year and next. The 2007 budget input will likely extend timelines for distributing the funds. 

“This tool is innovative and leading edge, and little old RRU did it with a small team,” Dale said. “This is a significant tool for Canadian communities. It allows communities access to money, and the work process ensures the plan won’t sit on the shelf.”

Community thinking and rethinking

In January, Dale assembled fellow Trudeau scholars and sustainability experts at Royal Roads University for a two-day think-tank on how communities need to evolve in the brave new world of climate change.

Dale dubbed the Governance for Sustainable Community Development conference “research in action” from some of the best minds in Canada on sustainable development. The Trudeau scholars videotaped their ideas on bridging ivory-tower research with real-life action, and led a public discussion on how swift and wide changes to governance structures is necessary to curtail greenhouse gas pollution.

The interview clips were distributed on the Internet, part of Dale’s concept to have field research available for scrutiny as it is gathered, coined by Dale as Postcards from the Edge. Dale said how researchers meet and collaborate needs to change; it’s too expensive and far too polluting to keep flying people around the continent.

“I have a vision of creating novel ways to disseminate research, especially to small and remote communities. It really opens up access,” Dale said. “As a society we are just beginning to explore the power of the Internet to connect people. Most of the time we are doing things the old ways.”

Read more about Ann Dale's research...