Gathering community ideas for Victoria West. credit: City of Victoria

One way to describe a neighbourhood is to consider its population and development—those who live and work in the area and the places they inhabit. These are important elements, surely, but only the beginning of what’s considered when creating a neighbourhood plan.

Neighbourhood plans provide the planning framework to guide development in an area of the city and assist with several important community objectives, including assisting developers and residents to understand the types of development changes envisioned for an area and identifying future investment for capital projects and infrastructure.

Planning for the future needs of a neighbourhood requires the collection and analysis of a large amount of data. “A successful neighbourhood plan needs to understand the trends, market opportunities, and challenges that the neighbourhood currently faces,” says community energy planner Devon Miller of the City of Victoria. “Such an overview provides the grounding to balance community needs with market reality for the neighbourhood plan policies and strategies.”

Download Summer 2017

Read more about City of Victoria’s three-phase approach to neighbourhood planning in “The Use of Data in Neighbourhood Planning,” in the Summer 2017 edition of Input, page 12. Download Summer 2017

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