Tessa Williams on how cities can progress from equity rhetoric to action

When I first considered joining REACH-Cities, I questioned what I could bring to the team as a transplant to Metro Vancouver. Looking back on my journey from planning to research, I realized I had a unique perspective to offer. I was raised in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), a mid-sized city on the unceded, traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq people. My interest in how places shape people led me to study community design, then work as a city planner in Nova Scotia and Ontario.

I have little lived experience with inequity as a white, settler, cis-gender woman, but my time as a city planner opened my eyes to the unique capacity of local governments to advance (or undermine) equity. I saw how seemingly objective technical exercises could harm people, such as a bus stop streamlining program that unintentionally made it harder for low-income seniors to access the library. I wanted to apply an equity lens to my work and mitigate negative impacts, but struggled to find resources to guide me.

As research lead for the “Practices Inspiration for Sustainable Transportation Equity” project, I had the opportunity to develop the guidance I was seeking early in my career. I worked with a team of researchers and planning practitioners to identify local governments making notable progress towards equity[TW1] , then interview city staff to uncover what worked, what failed, and why. The case studies and promising practices in our final report contain tangible strategies for local governments to progress from equity rhetoric to reality.

I used my learnings from this project to co-facilitate workshops with YWCA City Shift. Together, we helped city staff define equity, and apply tools such as gender-based analysis plus (GBA+). It has been incredibly rewarding to support city staff as they strive to embed equity into their own projects, such as the Surrey Social Action Plan and Edmonds Town Centre Community Plan Update. Looking forward, I hope the REACH-Cities team can grow this community of practice. Creating equitable communities requires fundamental changes to the ways local governments operate and there is much to be learned from sharing across cities.