Invest in placemaking to increase local consumption
Remember the patio revolution of 2020? Municipal and provincial governments can quickly alter zoning rules and provide incentives to create better places. Outdoor art events and festivals are inexpensive to produce relative to the economic (and social) benefits they produce by boosting activity in downtowns and main street neighbourhoods. Canada’s Placemaking Community and its many partners including Evergreen and the Quartier des Spectacles have tools and resources to support experiences and models for placemaking activities that drive economic activity and build social capital. People need places and places need people.
Build new economic capacity by using existing buildings and building on available land
CUI is working with partners in cities across the country to enable the use of commercial office space in new ways such as affordable housing, market-rate housing, youth housing, and cultural spaces. But our research shows that 60-80% of vacant office stock may not be suitable for housing. What about new institutional uses – hospitals, long-term care and assisted living, post-secondary programs, and potentially light-manufacturing to contribute to ‘re-shoring’. Governments need to lift redundant rules that limit potential future uses, and institutional investors need encouragement to take risks at home, and support prototyping new uses.
Adaptive reuse experiments
To that end, all orders of government need to top up funding for adaptive reuse experiments and accelerate approvals. COVID showed us what fast can look like. As the push for more housing has shown, public land for public uses will enjoy broad support and can be expedited.
Procurement must change
Government procurement must change from preferences for lowest price bid, tobid, to incentives to purchase products and services from local sources. Short-term cost increases (if any) can be offset by government-backed relief programs, but increasing sustained demand for local services will build the capacity of local suppliers to compete.
Move on property and sales tax relief for local main street businesses.
As above, temporary transfers from the federal government can offset losses to municipal and provincial tax bases. As we know vibrant main streets deliver more than economic benefits, making public subsidies a good idea that delivers economic returns and significant public good benefits.
Make money cheaper for local businesses
Now will be the time for lending institutions and economic development agencies including commercial banks, credit unions, economic development agencies including Community Futures Development Corporations, the Business Development Corporation, impact investors, and institutional investors to come up with new vehicles for investment to support non-exporting business development.
Boost local and global tourist visits
Tourist destinations that attract local visitors and ones ‘from away’ is a form of non-tariff-able export activity (customers have tomust come and pick ‘their experience’ up). Coupled with a low Canadian dollar, sustainable tourism that invests in local places (rather than depleting them) is a no-brainer strategy in asset-based economic development.
Infrastructure our future
We have a strategic opportunity to pivot public and private investment into building key infrastructures that enable longer-term economic development for the future, asfuture, as well as creating good jobs now. Canada’s infrastructure deficit is already in the hundreds of billions. Bold cross-sectoral and multi-jurisdictional action will stimulate our tech skills development sectors to innovate quickly. Infrastructure assets are the gifts that keep on giving.
Place-specific actions
Certain parts of the country and certain economic sectors will be challenged differently in a changing continental economic climate. We need responses that are flexible and adaptive to the particular needsneeds of places. Collaborations across governments, businesses and communities can drive nimble, unique strategies to address the shared challenges that affect a place. Abandon one size fits all approaches, where effectiveness and accountability are both obscured, and replace with investing in locally-drivenlocally driven and determined solutions.
Local voices local action
A moment
CUI has never been a fan of prognostication and it’s too early to tell how 2025 will go, but we each have some agency over how we live, work, learn and experience our lives and places. In addition to the economic conditions prompting these ideas, Canada’s cities and communities will also be affected by global migration and unpredictable weather events, and our ongoing challenges with mental health, housing and community safety. But solutions are all around us: we all need to keep watching and reporting what we see is working, what’s not, and what still needs doing. Time to take our eEyes toon the street.
