We recognize and acknowledge that many communities have been left out of, and marginalized during development processes in the City of Toronto, despite them being disproportionately impacted by these very planning decisions. Meaningful and effective engagement is only the beginning of efforts towards healthier relationships with these communities. We need to do better so we can build long-lasting, reciprocal relationships with these local communities. We also need to ensure that we actively and intentionally work towards identifying how power can be shared and how the spaces in our city can be co-created.
We want to underline that this toolkit is a *first* step towards making engagement more equitable and inclusive. It offers tools for planners to do less harm in their practice within current institutional structures. While we acknowledge that this is not enough, we offer this toolkit as a beginning and an invitation for more critical conversations around how power can be shared with communities.