Musqueam Comprehensive Community Plan: We Are of One Heart and Mind
2011 Planning Institute of B.C. Award for Excellence in Planning Practice
2010 Canadian Institute of Planners Award for Excellence in Recreation Planning (Honorable Mention)
Musqueam’s comprehensive, sustainable community development plan, We Are of One Heart and Mind tells the story of the community’s past, its present, and its future path. The culmination of years of collaboration, innovation and learning, this Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) sets a new standard for effective, responsive and integrated community-based strategic planning. As the community’s guiding plan, We Are of One Heart and Mind will lead Musqueam to becoming a self-sufficient, self-governing Nation and a complete and healthy community.
This project involved a full suite of strategic approaches to research, objectives, prioritization, community engagement, organizational development, action planning, decision making, implementation and monitoring. A community-driven effort, We Are of One Heart and Mind was built upon Musqueam values and their unique culture. EcoPlan worked to ensure that the planning process was community driven, engaging Musqueam members every step of the way in all aspects of plan development. Integrating twenty economic, social, physical and organizational planning developments, We Are of One Heart and Mind will provide current and future leadership, administration, and members with direction and guidance on how the Musqueam community is to develop over time.
A key principle of this project was that internal capacity building and planning tool development was integrated into the collaboration process. Through this process Musqueam developed its strategic planning capacity to promote consensus, increase transparency and ensure the incorporation of community feedback in decisions. This increased capacity facilitated the developed new land use evaluation and scenario modeling tools, and the incorporation of internet-based resources (Google Earth, Sketch Up, social media) to improve community engagement and planning processes.
We Are of One Heart and Mind includes:
- A powerful community vision;
- Community objectives, ranked and prioritized by Musqueam members;
- Supporting actions, prioritized and sequenced (short, medium and long-term) to help realize community objectives;
- Guidelines for implementation; and,
- A monitoring and evaluation framework for both compliance and impact monitoring to increase staff capacity and allow for future improvements to the plan.
As a summary document, the CCP also includes highlights of related sub-plans, procedures and tools, including:
- A Community Profile summarizing the community and trends affecting it;
- An integrated Land Use Plan for Musqueam’s reserves and settlement lands;
- Departmental strategic plans, work plans and budgets that link and coordinate with community objectives and plan actions;
- A new administration organization chart and operating procedure to improve efficiency and support plan implementation;
- A high-level Economic Development Strategy and principles, including a new economic development corporation to lead enterprise development; and,
- A set of new planning tools to support ongoing plan implementation and the creation of new policies, programs and plans in the future.