Resources We Love
There are so many great resources that can support your work to foster equity, sustainability and well-being. Here are some we love. We will add to this list regularly - so check back often!
City for All Women Initiative
This excellent guide presents a flexible approach to equity and inclusion for municipalities. It has been written for both municipal staff and elected officials, and is adaptable to the diverse structures, contexts, and experiences of municipalities from across Canada.
American Planning Association
This historic guide provides specific, actionable policy guidance crafted through an equity-in-all-policies lens on crossing-cutting topics and areas of planning. It identifies policy recommendations for planners to advocate for policies that support equity in all aspects of planning at local, state, and federal levels.
BC Healthy Communities
This guide is for local governments looking to incorporate equity-focused community engagement strategies in their public consultation processes. Featuring community examples, resources, strategies and other useful information, this guide helps local governments plan their community input process to ensure the feedback they receive is meaningful and authentic. Equity-centred, inclusive community engagement can help shape government policies and projects to create healthier, more accessible communities.
Alberta Urban Municipalities Association
The AUMA’s Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Toolkit (2014) offers a framework to help guide users to create a more welcoming and inclusive community. The toolkit walks you through the stages of recognizing the issue, building commitment, designing a vision and strategic plan, designating actions and responsibilities, and celebrating the accomplishments. See also the Measuring Inclusion Tool for Municipal Governments (2019).
BC Healthy Communities
This guide supports local governments of rural and urban communities across British Columbia as they create active, healthy and thriving places for all people. Within this guide, you'll find information about healthy housing and its co-benefits, as well as actions and examples from B.C. communities, funding opportunities and strategies, a checklist of healthy housing actions, a guide to local and provincial housing legislation, a glossary, and more.
Happy City
Social isolation is a public health concern in cities around the world. The location and design of multi-family housing has a significant impact on local relationships, neighbourhood trust and residents’ sense of belonging. Using evidence from neuroscience, sociology, environmental psychology, architecture and public health, Happy City developed powerful actions to promote sociability in multi-family housing. The visual toolkit identifies evidence-based principles, strategies and actions to boost social connections in multi-family housing.
Urban Sustainability Directors Network
A scan of best practices for how local governments have defined equity and incorporated it in sustainability programming, lessons they have learned, innovative tools they can use, and opportunities to collaborate to build on these successes. Also see the USDN's Equity Foundations Training.