CONFIDENTIAL 🔒

Participatory Planning For Sustainable Transportation Developments

Cover Image: Taken at UrbaNights, 2025

PLACE / Education
TYPE / Urban Design/Research
YEAR / 2025

TEAM / Yogi Fedorchuk; Thanakrit Gonggraikij; Sydney Ikeda; Stephanie Juarez-Beaulieu; Kaylin Oddy; Ethan Palamarek; Dominic Mesenchuk; Erick Wiebe

ABSTRACT
Keywords: Community Associations, Engagement, Participatory Planning, Sustainability

Participatory planning is an emerging form of community engagement, in which citizens actively and meaningfully participate in the planning process with the end goal of improving the planning process. This project explores participatory planning as it relates to public transportation projects, and transit-oriented development (TOD).

Our group has summarized the purpose of the project into the following research question: How does the City of Calgary address aspects of sustainability through engagement processes for public transportation projects across communities, in comparison to Portland, USA and Bogotá, Colombia? Additionally, two subsequent questions were identified. Firstly, how do each of these municipalities and community associations conduct participatory planning? Secondly, what are their outcomes?

By employing a mixed methods approach of quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data, we were able to draw from multiple perspectives. Our qualitative scope included case study research focusing on Portland, USA, and Bogotá, Columbia, as well as conversations with relevant experts in fields of community engagement, urban planning, and development in Calgary. These conversations were aimed at providing insights into current practices of participatory planning within Calgary. A set of comparative and thematic analyses were utilized to examine how Portland and Bogotá have leveraged participatory planning. Our research sought to understand current practices and highlight best practices, with a particular consideration for all four pillars of sustainability: social, economic, environmental, and cultural (United Cities and Local Governments, 2010).

The objective of this body of work is to propose a set of recommendations that may be used to inform future applications of participatory planning for transportation projects in regard to community associations in Calgary.