Place-making and sustainability in Ontario’s small urban municipalities

Abstract

The complex task of place-making to build sustainable communities has been challenging yet compelling when finding solutions to intertwined issues on the environment, the economy and society. This paper examines the idea of sustainable place-making for building sustainable communities in the context of small urban municipalities (SUMs) in Ontario, Canada. For this purpose, a ‘small urban municipality’ is defined as a city or town that has adopted a local environmental action plan and/or an economic development strategy and has no more than 60,000 populations. It provides a conceptual review of place-making and explores how it is linked with the goal for urban sustainability in the context of SUMs in the Canadian way. The study seeks to answer this question: based on a survey of relevant professions, what are the constraints and factors facing cities, towns and townships in Ontario for creating sustainable communities in terms of place-making?

Keywords

• place-making
• urban sustainability
• sustainable community development
• small urban municipalities
• place