The City of Prince George has been handed an award of merit for its work piloting a new tool to help Canadian cities make better long-term land-use decisions.
It shares the distinction with Stantec Consulting and the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, which offers the free tool available online for local planning departments.
It's called the Community Infrastructure Planning Decision Support Tool or CIPDST and it forecasts 100 years in the future with a focus on the economics of proposals.
Planning horizons are usually 25 years ahead, and land development even shorter, Stantec said in its project summary. This tool quadruples that outlook, which the Awards for Planning Excellence jury from Canadian Institute of Planners called innovative.
"Local governments in Canada are faced with a huge infrastructure deficit and the current reactive asset management approach to the problem will no longer be enough," Stantec's summary said.
Planners will often consider social, cultural and environmental elements, "while rarely veering into the territory of finance and costing" Stantec said in its project summary document.
"To date, there has not been a comprehensive tool readily available to help assess how different patterns of development can be used to reduce this deficit."
The city's manager of sustainable community development also pointed to North America's infrastructure deficit as an example of the previous approach of short-term thinking. Looking ahead a century could help address those problems.
"Thinking long term is to be able to ensure the decisions we're making today aren't going to detract or withdraw from the quality of life a community can have in the future," said Tiina Schaeffer.
It allows cities to sign on for those long-term obligations they perhaps hadn't considered before - or opt for other alternatives.
"This provides the opportunity to provide a high level cost in a language that a lot of people understand - which is money."
The city was one of three cities that acted as test pilots in 2014 when the project started and then one of six that helped develop the tool further.
The project summary named Schaeffer specifically for playing "a key role in piloting the tool through its use at the City of Prince George" but Schaeffer also credited a number of departments in the city for their work, including asset management, engineering and financial planning.
"What we've found with this tool is we've really been able to break down a lot of silos and align a lot of our work, so that's been a big plus to utilizing this tool," Schaeffer said.
Stantec also noted the traditional distance between decision-makers results "in a disconnect between infrastructure planning, development planning, and financial management processes."
The hope is the program can start up some of those conversations.
Schaeffer explained the tool as a spreadsheet with the formulas for cities to input and then crunch the numbers. In some cases the numbers are already there.
One example compares two types of development options: a single family, sprawling low density development new subdivision versus an infill redevelopment medium density situation.
Traditionally, the city might simply look at the expanding property tax base of the single family low density development and on the face of it the medium density brings in 27 per cent less.
But, the 100-year forecast shows the single family situation creates a 54 per cent higher annual lifecycle cost per household when you consider operating and maintaining the capital assets that may have been cheaper to start off.
"This (tool) looks at it a little more holistically," Schaeffer explained.
"It's a much larger cost than the capital and it's a long term financial obligation that the city and the community is taking on."
Other cities have shown some interest and Prince George also presented its work at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference for its involvement.
It hasn't yet been used for current projects or in recommendations to council but Stantec notes the city is "exploring how to integrate the use of the tool into their development decision making processes."
Schaeffer said it still needs to be tested more internally for staff to understand the results and the level of confidence in them, but the city will continue using the tool.
"We want to take this further internally to really build our own understanding of what the costs are with land use decisions, how it impacts our long term financial plan and what that means to the community."
Five awards for planning excellence were handed out as well as seven in the merit category, for demonstrating excellence in some but not all categories. Winners were picked from 55 projects submitted across 13 categories.
