[URBAN NOTE] 'Toronto to recruit diverse citizens without city hall experience to offer advice"

[rfmcdonald]

Metro Toronto's Jessica Smith Cross reports on an interesting-sounding new initiative.

Toronto is getting ready to recruit a diverse group of citizens who aren’t often involved with city hall to help make important planning decisions.

The “Toronto Planning Advisory Committee” will be a group of up to 30 citizens who will be to called on to advise the city’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat.

It should be up and running by the fall, said Daniel Fusca, who runs the stakeholder engagement in the chief planner’s office.

The idea behind the new committee goes back to December 2014, when the city commissioned an Ipsos-Reid survey asking Torontonians about what they know of city planning and how much they’ve been involved it, said Fusca.

“The survey confirmed for us what we had always suspected – that the majority of participants in our planning processes are white, male homeowners over the age of 55,” he said. “Newcomers to Toronto, renters and youth are particularly underrepresented.”