On November 29, 2017, TCAT and our Active Neighbourhoods Canada (ANC) partners, the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre (MUEC) and the Sustainable Calgary Society, released a new report entitled Building Active Communities Together.
This report articulates the participatory planning approach developed by MUEC during their Green Active and Healthy Neighbourhoods program, and refined by the Active Neighbourhoods partners during our pilot projects from 2013-2017.
Our twelve pilot projects were incredibly varied in their geography, their process, and their outcomes. We worked within rural, suburban, small town, and urban contexts across three provinces, and engaged a broad range of stakeholders, partners, and community members. Our report speaks about the successes and challenges of each project, including the lessons learned through our on-the-ground collaborations.
Looking to the future, the publication also outlines some of the goals of our next project phase. As we move the Active Neighbourhoods project forward, we will focus on the best practices we’ve developed, and will increase the reach and impact of our work by focusing on larger scale systems change through influencing professional practice and policy.
The ANC team was honoured that the success of our approach to designing healthy Canadian communities was recently referenced in the State of Public Health in Canada in 2017 report.