Community Animators and Participatory Planning

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

Identifying and implementing equitable participatory planning processes is challenging for city planners. Through a qualitative analysis of the Families and Educators for Safe Cycling Project (FESC), an active school travel (AST) project in Toronto (Canada), we identify a potential new path to increase the range of voices heard by planners and decision makers. Specifically, we present community animation and animators as an effective approach for community engagement in AST planning through analyzing 27 semistructured interviews, reviewing key project documents, and coding key themes. We showcase how community animation can play a key role in the meaningful engagement of school communities by deepening and enriching the participatory planning process. We conclude by suggesting that community animators can foster more equitable participatory planning processes by working to include historically marginalized communities within urban planning.

Takeaway for practice

Specific groups of people, such as school communities, continue to be excluded from participatory planning processes. By providing insights into the value of community animators, this research allows planners to understand, conceptualize, and apply more equitable participatory planning processes during infrastructure development. Though the case is based on a specific program related to AST in Toronto, the results can assist planners in other communities in enriching their local engagement processes.

Keywords:

• active school travel (AST)
• community animators
• cycling infrastructure
• participatory planning
• planning equity
• Toronto

Acknowledgments

We thank CultureLink for hosting the Families and Educators for Safe Cycling (FESC) project and facilitating our access as researchers, as well as Dr. Beth Savan, Kristin Schwartz, and Sam Perry for their contributions to the article. We also to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments.

Additional information

Funding

The Metcalf Foundation’s Cycle City Program funded the Family and Educators for Safe Cycling (FESC) project.

Notes on contributors

Ryan Anders Whitney

RYAN ANDERS WHITNEY ([email protected]) is a tenure-track research professor in the School of Architecture, Art and Design at the Tecnologico de Monterrey.

Trudy Ledsham

TRUDY LEDSHAM ([email protected]) is an adjunct professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.