Strategic sustainability: Addressing the community infrastructure deficit

Communities across Canada have succeeded at integrating sustainability into their high-level visions and plans, but have struggled with translating those ideas into practical strategies, actions and outcomes. Municipalities will be making significant investments in community infrastructure in the near future, but how can they be strategic with those investments so they are used to advance sustainability? How can they assess their priorities, identify their resources and implement infrastructure projects that can serve as catalysts for broader movement towards sustainability in their communities? This paper explores these questions through case studies of award winning sustainability initiatives in urban, rural and First Nations contexts to identify key strategies to bridge the planning-implementation gap. Ultimately, our findings indicate that addressing our infrastructure deficit in a sustainable manner is not so much a technical issue as it is a challenge of awareness about viable solutions and our capacities as decision-makers in our communities to make strategic decisions and act.