Planning with Cents - Part 1

Without jobs many young people are leaving mid-sized Canadian cities like Windsor, Cambridge and Sarnia, all of which are struggling with declining populations or limited growth.  For cities, growth provides the opportunity to finance investment and for planners to make change through progressive plans. 

How can planners and cities adapt to the new economic reality? How can planners chart a new future for the industrial heartland of Ontario? Can we find new ways to attract people and development? Is there a new identity for these mid-sized cities?  From pennies to pipes, in this episode we explore the real cost of development.  How our current financing mechanisms are working against our planning policies, and bankrupting our municipal coffers? The story of one municipality’s fight against this, and how it’s financing the retrofit of a new urban centre in the suburbs. Facing a recession – we’ll learn how a depressed city is using innovative tools to climb out of the red, and how one man’s ordinary acts are doing extraordinary things to help them do it. 

This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Ontario Professional Planners Institute.