Resources

Getting to the Open Smart City

Smart cities are becoming an increasingly significant part of our world as our dependency and use of data and technology continues to rise.

Getting to the Open Smart City, a new report from Future Cities Canada and OpenNorth, explores the concept of “openness” within a smart city context. The report analyses how the use of open smart technologies and approaches can help cities achieve more accessible and equitable outcomes, and provides recommendations to how our cities can integrate openness into our data policies.

Report

Green Bank Financing to Accelerate Clean Energy Deployment in Canada through the Canadian Infrastructure Bank

This report finds that the creation of a Green Bank division within the new Canadian Infrastructure Bank can fill an institutional and finance gap in Canada and spark greater private investment in clean energy infrastructure.

The Green Bank model has been deployed around the world to accomplish similar goals, and has proven effective. Canada is well suited to adopting the Green Bank model because of its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals, its focus on “green infrastructure” investment, and its present lack of institutions dedicated to project finance for the broad deployment of commercially viable clean energy solutions. The new Infrastructure Bank would be an ideal institutional home for a Green Bank.

Report

Building Canada’s Low-Carbon Approach to Infrastructure Investments through Prioritization, Policy and Procurement

A proactive approach is required to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions across government decision-making. The purpose of this report is to provide recommendations for the federal and Ontario governments on the public policies that will drive clean innovation and growth, and provide guidance for investments in sustainable, low-carbon, resilient infrastructure that are aligned with compact, complete community design, provincial growth planning, and that provide economic and community benefits.

Report

Future Cities Canada Roadshow Report

From late 2017 to early 2018, Future Cities Canada worked with partners across the country to host a series of roundtable conversations and meetings with municipalities and communities. These meetings gathered insights about the opportunities and challenges facing cities and regions in order to collectively build a vision for equitable, regenerative and prosperous 21st century cities. These conversations from each city are captured in this final document.

Report

Future Cities Canada: A Systems Approach to Urban Innovation

Historically, cities have always been natural incubators for experimentation, change and progress. Today, our cities are on the brink of a new wave of innovation, driven by emerging practices related to governance and participation, a panoply of powerful new technologies, the availability of massive amounts of urban data, and novel sources and forms of capital investment. But the forces of inertia are also present in the form of established procedures, legacy mind-sets, and vested interests. To make progress, it is important that forward-looking people share a vision and language of change, take inspiration from successful models of change, and have a sense of where change can be achieved with the least resistance.

This brief report takes a modest step towards addressing these needs by sketching out a theory of change that could be used by Future Cities Canada to guide the partners as they design and develop this promising new coalition.

Report

How to be Smart(er) in Mid-Sized Cities in Ontario

It is increasingly clear that data and technology are becoming synonymous with city-building. This movement towards “smart cities” will continue to accelerate in the years to come, presenting a critical opportunity and challenge for leaders in communities of all sizes. This paper, written in partnership with Code for Canada, discusses the opportunities for data and technology in Canada’s mid-sized cities, with a particular focus on Ontario.

Report

Realizing Social and Economic Objectives through Infrastructure Planning and Investment

Municipal governments own almost 60% of Canada’s infrastructure. In Ontario, billions of dollars in investment are forthcoming from the provincial and federal governments over the next decade to assist with municipal infrastructure needs. In light of the scale of this investment, and growing interest in this topic in Ontario, this study was commissioned by Evergreen with three objectives:

• to explore how Ontario municipalities can use community benefits to maximize social and economic outcomes through better infrastructure planning and investment, in order to deliver greater value for people and communities;
• to address how community benefits can be aligned with or incorporated into Ontario’s municipal asset management program; and
• to provide preliminary thinking as to how community benefits can be evaluated.

Report

We Are Cities Action Agenda

The We Are Cities campaign, an initiative between Evergreen and McConnell Foundation’s Cities for People, engaged thousands of residents, asking them to imagine an agenda for the future of our cities. In the end, this Action Agenda was created to establish the five priority areas for action.

Report