BasicGov / BLOG

Ahead of the Curve blog series authored by HB Lanarc and sponsored by BasicGov explores trends in municipal management, including a move to adopt sustainable practices. Leading communities are taking on all of these trends and leveraging opportunities to improve services to citizens and productivity

Opportunities for Leadership in Development Review and Approvals

1.  Making Sustainability a Daily Consideration

The most innovative communities are incorporating sustainable development through a wide range of policies and regulations, for example: passive building design, citizen behaviour (car and bike sharing, public space walkable designs, recycling, and habitat conservation), transit-oriented development, neighbourhood-scale renewable energy utilities, and water conservation and reuse technologies. A key strategy is to consider buildings, streetscapes, landscaping, and infrastructure together to facilitate innovative, sustainable developments.

Every development application is an opportunity to ensure and track implementation of these policies and regulations.  Because considering different systems together involves many different organizations (e.g. integrating planning, engineering, building, operations and maintenance can create efficiencies, saving money and energy), information tracking and timing for triggering actions is a critical part of embedding sustainability in the development management process.

Next week we’ll talk about faster processes and making visions real.

Previous Ahead of the Curve blog posts Trend 1 – Drive toward sustainability, Trend 2 – Mounting fiscal challenges, Trend 3 – public demands for accountability, Trend 4 – reduce red tape, Trend 5 – risk management, Trend 6 – preparing for emergencies, Development process – manage land use.

Click to read Ahead of the Curve white paper

2nd part of the series … to view previous blog post – Intro and Trend 1: A Drive to Sustainability

Ahead of the Curve: How Leading Local Governments are Benefitting from Sustainability and Other Trends

Local governments are called to perform a delicate balancing act on a daily basis. They must meet competing demands of developers to reduce red tape while citizens demand greater transparency, maintain and enhance amenities while managing the immense costs of infrastructure replacement, and grapple with intangible global changes like climate change and immediate local issues like poverty. As if this were not enough, local governments must also coordinate emergency preparedness for their communities and do battle in court when challenged – not an unusual occurrence.

Sustainable development – “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” – is a defining challenge of our time, but it is also a promising approach to solving complex, interrelated issues. Indeed, leading local governments, from Whistler to New York and Albuquerque, have embraced sustainable development as a way to live up to the strong visions of their citizens. These leaders manage trends proactively, identifying them and then “getting ahead of the curve” in order to ensure development is sustainable in the long term. To illustrate the benefits of sustainable development, this white paper summarizes six trends affecting local governments, and highlights leadership responses in a key area of local government activity: development review and approvals.

Trend 2: Mounting Fiscal Challenges for Local Governments

The maintenance of roads, sewer, water and utility infrastructure systems is essential to the functioning of our communities. Every community in North America is facing a dilemma of how to pay for the maintenance of their aging and crumbling infrastructure – most notably in our highways and bridges, which were largely built in the 50’s and 60’s. Municipal property taxes are expected to keep up the pace of paying for operations and maintenance, yet all municipalities are struggling to make this work. When declines in municipal tax revenues occur – such as with the sub-prime mortgage crisis – this problem exacerbates fiscal vulnerabilities, and deferring maintenance further compounds the problem.

Communities that are integrating their planning, engineering, building, operations and maintenance are able to find efficiencies. What is cheapest today vs. what is the best value in the “life-span” of a municipal investment? Leading communities are considering the full life-span of infrastructure, and working to extend existing resources by reducing waste and using more efficient technologies and processes.

Read “Ahead of the Curve” White Paper.