In order for IMBA to fulfill it’s mission of creating, enhancing and preserving mountain bike opportunities we spend a lot of time advocating for mountain biking. Often this advocacy turns out to be attending public meetings for management plans, or at the very minimum providing commentary on drafts of such plans.

Canada is a very big place and there are a lot of management plans being drafted at any given time. So IMBA relies on its network of regional and local affiliate clubs and reps. I’ve communicated with a number of the local reps in Ontario and they’ve all spent their fair share of time attending stakeholder meetings, public open houses, reviewing draft plans and providing feedback. It’s a necessary part of keeping mountain biking available on public lands.

I’ve come across more than a few “public consultations” that were not very well run and could be considered “public” only in the roughest sense. (In fact it was one like that, that got me involved in advocacy, but that is a story for another time.) The process of involving the public in something as complicated as a management plan for a property is a tricky proposition. How many stakeholders should you include, when should you go to the public, how many times should you go to the public, etc? If only there was some research out there that provided some guidance. Well it turns out there is (but you probably figured that out by now ).

Morgan Skowronski, for her Master’s Degree in Science in Planning, undertook a case study of the community engagement process behind the Crothers’ Woods Trail Management Plan. Having been personally involved in the process from the beginning I felt that the City of Toronto did an excellent job, but I might be a bit biased in this regard. It turns out according to the Morgan’s studies that in fact the City did do a good job, in fact in her learned opinion the City did far more than what would normally be expected considering the size and scope of the plan in question. So lets hear it for the City of Toronto.

Because I was involved in the process I already knew the background about Crothers’ Woods, the Plan, the stakeholders, etc. But I was pleasantly surprised when I got to section 4 & 5. I got an introduction to the research into public spaces, how people perceive such spaces, interpersonal and intergroup conflict surrounding the use of such spaces, etc. I also learned a bit about collaborative planning processes, including why we should do it, the anger that can result from it, fairness in the process, and how to evaluate if it is done well.

Here are some selections from her conclusions:

When looking specifically at the process used to engage the public, the City officials
seemed to work within a fairly flexible system that allowed for a wide variety of voices to
be shared.  While there was some structure to the public meetings, all people were given
the opportunity to discuss any issues they saw as important.  Caution against taking too much of a criteria-driven approach seems to be well heeded in this case.  While a lot of
scientific data was collected about the forest, most of the focus within the Strategy is on
addressing the social needs of the multiple user groups.  When considering the idea of
increasing social capital it is difficult to fully assess how much community knowledge
was enhanced through this process, with the amount of information that has been
collected at this time.  It seems that a good attempt was made to bring people together in
an effort to get them to understand each others perspectives.  There still seem to be
groups, such as the dirt jumpers and dog walkers, who feel that their “inappropriate” use
of the space should be recognised as valid.  This suggests that there are still obstacles
to address before a higher level of understanding and cooperation are achieved.

And:

Observations indicate that the public consultation process was able to meet a significant
portion of the criteria laid out by Innes & Booher (1999).  Many different stakeholders
were included in the process, the City was open to creative suggestions and tried to facilitate a positive exchange of knowledge.  Even if all of the stakeholders did not completely agree with the outcomes, it appears that every effort was made to accommodate the interests of all parties.

If you’re a mountain bike advocate, or just an advocate in general, Morgan’s paper provides some good background material on the gears that are turning behind the scenes in the public consultation process. If you’re a land owner or land manager considering an upcoming public consultation you could do worse than to read Morgan’s paper and adjust your process to accordingly.

Full Disclosure: I was involved in the Crothers’ Woods Trail Management Plan from the beginning. Morgan approached me at one of the many trail builds that were held in Crothers’ Woods about this project. I was interviewed in her research, and IMBA provided their books Trail Solutions and Managing Mountain Biking to Morgan for background material.