Central Peninsula Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan

The City of Saint John will complete a Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan (SNAP) for the Uptown Central Peninsula, the urban heart of the region, as a pilot for a new neighbourhood planning program to advance the sustainability and smart growth principles in PlanSJ, the City’s award-winning Municipal Plan. This program will serve as a template for other neighbourhoods in Saint John and throughout New Brunswick. The plan will comprise of tools to realize urban density including a set of urban design guidelines, a modernized heritage bylaw that promotes reinvestment in heritage assets, and infill strategy for re-developing vacant, underutilized properties and brownfield sites. As one of Canada’s oldest urban neighbourhoods, the Central Peninsula’s long history of urban industry has resulted in a considerable number of brownfield sites - approximately 160 of which are provincially recognized. The neighbourhood plan will facilitate the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated lands through strategic implementation initiatives. The Central Peninsula is the City of Saint John’s primary economic centre, containing more than 50% of the region’s employers yet less than 10% of the region’s population - approximately 8,000 residents - resides in this neighbourhood. Increasing residential density in Saint John’s urban core is fundamental to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing climate change and this challenge will be addressed in the plan. The baseline data collected through this program will create a benchmark for measuring the environmental, economic, and social health of the neighbourhood. Actions and targets set through this plan will ensure that the sustainability of the neighbourhood’s redevelopment is maximized. As part of its implementation and monitoring plan, the City’s Community Planning and GIS teams will be collecting and reporting progress to the community through the City’s Annual report card to ensure transparency in tracking success. Data will be used for monitoring performance towards meeting PlanSJ’s sustainable growth and this plan’s targets. High cost items such as urban design guidelines will be largely transferable to future neighbourhoods with similar urban design and architectural styles. By undertaking a digital engagement strategy through the improvement of municipal software programs and low cost cloud based systems, as opposed to hiring consultants to build project specific engagement platforms, the cost of engagement in future initiatives will be significantly reduced. In addition to PlanSJ, the program will be developed in accordance with the City’s Municipal Energy Efficiency Plan (MEEP), Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP), City Climate Change Action Plan, and its multi-modal transportation plan, MoveSJ. City staff will work collaboratively with citizens and community leaders, through a Collective Impact Model, to build grassroots community capacity and partnerships to improve the quality of life in Saint John’s inner city neighbourhoods. This program is pivotal to advance the community’s social renewal strategy, LivingSJ, to transform low income neighbourhoods in support of poverty reduction and to foster socially cohesive communities. While collective impact is widely used in Saint John, it remains an innovative approach, especially when endorsed and implemented by government. The program will be piloted in the Central Peninsula in 2017 and will be expanded to other urban neighbourhoods over the next 5 years. This staged approach will allow the program to be tested and adjusted over time as it is applied in different contexts with unique challenges proving its knowledge value. (Project description from original funding application)