Systemic Approaches for an Uncertain Future

While developing the six essential components of the Participatory City approach and identifying appropriate funding over a ten year time horizon can help build towards success in growing and scaling practical participation ecosystems in Canada, the future is unwritten and constantly evolving. Strategic foresight can help us understand the potential future environments in which the Participatory City approach could flourish or fail. As new trends and developments emerge across society, they can become the drivers of change that could significantly affect the creation of participatory social infrastructure. While our understanding of the potential impact of those changes might be more clear in a near term time frame of a few years, it is less clear as the time horizon is lengthened. More possibilities for different futures emerge22. In considering a ten year time horizon for scaling Participatory Canada, combined with a strong vision and ambition for scaling held by the team for the Participatory City approach, a path forward could include taking action to influence developments that increase the chances of the desired future coming true. Balancing the monitoring of weak signals to identify possible changes at an early stage23, while remaining flexible for the emergence of different futures, will help ensure the success and sustainability of Participatory Canada.

Participatory Canada can understand the possible futures of cities and communities, and implications for the Participatory City approach, by leveraging the work completed by organizations that practice strategic foresight globally and in Canada. For example, Future Cities Canada explores ways to build the capacity of cities, aiming to make them future-focused, equitable, regenerative, and prosperous for the next 50 years24. Partnering with this type of organization can help surface insights about the future while also contributing to its creation25 .

Globally, as we move towards 2030, many cities and regions are struggling with how to adapt to megatrends around individuals, the physical environment, and the global economy while improving the quality of life and moving towards more inclusive and just societies. For example, how does a Canadian city adjust to a population with higher life expectancies, while the youth population needs access to jobs. This connects to the rising use of enabling technologies and digitization, and capital flows within and between communities, shifting the type of work people can do, the learning and training people need, and how people can participate in government and public decision making. Different social and physical infrastructure will be needed as part of delivering public services, building climate resilient natural and built environments, while reducing stress on natural resources from population and economic growth26. Since many people will reside in cities by 2030, the Participatory City approach could be one way to facilitate the path to sustainable living.

22 Jacobsen, B., Hirvensalo, I. (May 7, 2019), “What is Strategic Foresight?”, https://www. futuresplatform.com/blog/what-strategic-foresight 23 Prescient, “Introduction to Strategic Foresight” (retrieved May 5, 2021), https://prescient2050. com/strategic-foresight-tools/ 24 Jessica Thornton, J. Future Cities Canada (January 16, 2020), “Planning for the Cities We Want: Strategic Foresight to create our preferred futures”, https://futurecitiescanada.ca/stories/planningfor-the-cities-we-want-the-case-for-strategic-foresight-in-cities/ 25 To learn more about Future Cities programming, see https://futurecitiescanada.ca/programs/ 26 KPMG International (2014) “Future State 2030: The GLobal Megatrends Shaping Governments”, https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2014/02/future-state-2030-v3.pdf In addition to adapting to and planning for key trends, Canadian cities interested in the Participatory City approach will also need to pay special attention to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while considering its long-term implications to Participatory programming and governance. Canadians have seen acceleration in specific trends leading to shifts in the areas of health, economy, society, the environment, and governance, areas which are all connected at the impact level as outcomes of practical participation ecosystems. Some key areas of consideration that might directly affect the Participatory City approach and drive adaptations to it include27:

• Pandemic persistence - Without a clear timeline for how long it will take to ‘go back to normal’, such as developing virus immunity, managing mutations, deploying vaccines and providing treatment, the ways Canadians interact safely indoors and outside will dramatically need to change. The

Participatory City approach will need to adapt to deliver meaningful interactions and impact while maintaining safety for participants. With a high likelihood of future pandemics, a resilient and effective Participatory City approach is necessary. • Long-term physical distancing and mental health - Core to the Participatory City approach is fostering in-person interactions to build community resilience and connections, including alleviating loneliness and trauma. Programming teams and participants will need to assess the level of risk they are willing to accept and the benefits they could receive by attending in-person programs balanced against the different types of connections and experiences possible through online programming. • Economy - If people remain affected by unemployment, and asset and job loss, the Participatory City approach might be able to offer a way to share community wealth, and provide opportunities for working, learning and training that wouldn’t exist in the traditional job market. The need for a new approach is highly necessary as inequalities and cross-generational tensions continue. For example, considerations should balance the needs of people with no or low incomes, single parents with need of child care, isolated and vulnerable individuals who need a connection, and youth who need to develop a livelihood. • Digitization - The demand for and participation in online platforms for all aspects of life has significantly accelerated alongside mandated physical distancing and lockdown orders by the government. While the Participatory City approach thrives on in-person activities and experiential learning, it will need to shift and adapt to leverage effective practices for community building and participatory engagement to help ensure the safety, inclusivity, and accessibility of programming. Disparities in access to resilient technology should be considered as potential limiters to achieving key social outcomes, for example for health, education, and access to employment.

Figure 9 - Systemic versus linear roadmaps

The Participatory City approach aims to develop practical participation ecosystems in communities and cities. By its nature it is inherently designed to create systems change in complex environments. This means that a linear roadmap would not be appropriate to grow and scale the systemic approach in Canada, since systemic change requires systemic solutions28 (see Figure 9).

With the many possible alternative futures that exist, Participatory Canada should consider using a futures thinking and systemic approach to implementing and following the Roadmap over time. Using a futures wheel29 is one approach to making decisions and considering possible paths forward that could help Participatory Canada think through first, second, and third order consequences to enable it to get to its desired outcomes. Similarly, a systemic roadmap could enable Participatory Canada to manage uncertainty and risk, and develop paths to systemic financing as the future becomes more clear. For planning how a Participatory City approach might fit within a COVID-19 future, a systemic roadmap could help the team adjust to a future with ongoing episodic flare-ups, or to a future with long term disruptions and continued acceleration of negative economic, social, and environmental issues, or to a future that looks very different and becomes the new normal. This work is also emergent and connects to other key areas of change required to transition to a flourishing future. The attributes of the Participatory City approach, including a clear, shared vision, the foundation of experimentation to learn and adapt in each place, coupled with learning architecture to return learning to the system make it likely that Participatory Canada could achieve emergent results at scale. Other successful emergent initiatives have also used approaches that leverage community engagement, participatory practices, and highly developed network and relationship strategies30. Participatory Canada should leverage emergence strategies to amplify the transformational effect of empowering citizens to be co-producers of transitions in their communities through the creation and adoption of participatory social infrastructure.

28 Dominic Hofstetter, “Innovating in Complexity” Part 1 (July 7, 2019), Part 2 (July 26, 2019), and Part 3 (August 23, 2019). 29 MindTools, “The Futures Wheel: Identifying Consequences of Change” https://www.mindtools. com/pages/article/futures-wheel.htm

Figure 10 - Ten year roadmap for Participatory Canada

30 Fourth Quadrant Partners, “A whole Greater Than Its Parts: Exploring the Role of Emergence in Complex Social Change”, http://www.4qpartners.com/emergence.html

Navigating the Pathways of Growth and Scale

Participatory City is an inspiring initiative with the great promise of impact through creating more inclusive and participatory communities and culture within cities. The pathway to scaling and growing the Participatory City approach in Canada will need to both grow the essential components, and scale towards its ambition over the next ten years (see Figure 10). The direction of growth and scaling of Participatory Canada will be dependent on balancing the approaches to scaling social innovations, determining the appropriate funding strategies and partners, and being flexible towards future externalities and systemic possibilities that emerge as implementation occurs across Canada.

Through the three convening sessions, there were many points of alignment between the participants and the principles of Participatory City. These elements of consensus serve as initial design principles to help guide the development of the Participatory City approach in the first deep city implementation and in subsequent cities. Over time, the essential elements will grow with the approach. Additionally, three factors will also scale over time: connections to people, sustainable financing, and building networks.

Navigating the growing and scaling pathway means making key choices about the context and support for sequencing and strategic decisions on resources, such as considerations for when and how to develop people and capacity, financing approaches and methods, and how to support cities. Working through the roadmap also means considering the different elements for scaffolding the pathway from the present to reach the ten year vision by addressing assumptions, gaps, risks and opportunities in growing and scaling the Participatory City approach within communities.

The Participatory Canada Roadmap puts forward choices to help frame the path and direction of Participatory Canada that need to be considered for growing and scaling over 1, 5 and 10 years of implementation.