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The City of Saskatoon's Local Area Planning (LAP) Program is a community-based approach to developing comprehensive neighbourhood plans. In order to achieve sustainable and implementable Local Area Plans (LAPs), the City of Saskatoon has been using innovative methods of collaborative decision-making to engage citizens. The program has been recognized nationally by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for demonstrating innovative approaches to citizen engagement in Sustainable Community Planning. A total of eight LAPs have been adopted by City Council and 212 recommendations have been approved, with 101 of these recommendations being completed, 71 currently in progress and 40 to be determined. Great strides have been made to implement the LAPs by allocating resources for coordinating implementation, working with communities, and for implementing the various recommendations. In addition, over 1,000 people representing various interests have participated in one or more LAP Committee or implementation meetings. Through this participation, partnerships have been formed, program and service delivery has been improved, and most importantly, communities have taken ownership of their plans. After completing eight LAPs, the LAP communities, City Council and city planners have felt the need to measure ongoing changes and progress in the LAP communities. In recognition of this, the City of Saskatoon's City Planning Branch will be working with LAP communities, the Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR) and other stakeholders to develop a framework for statistically measuring changes in LAP communities and to monitor \"Neighbourhood Success Factors\". The Neighbourhood Success Factors will work to detect serious socio-economic conditions before they reach a point of crisis. This paper will first describe the LAP Program before reviewing the proposed framework for statistically measuring changes in Saskatoon's neighbourhoods.

Issues related to democratic restructuring and citizenship at the municipal level in Latin America have been the subject of increasing interest and debate among scholars and development practitioners in recent years. This study investigates how international cooperation may facilitate enhanced citizen participation in local-level decision making in the region by examining a specific Canadian-sponsored linking project involving the cities of Charlesbourg, Quebec (Canada) and Ovalle (Chile). The study presents a relatively optimistic account of the role that innovations transferred as a result of this project have played in enhancing citizen involvement in local government. At the same time, it suggests that any such gains may be limited and must be viewed within the larger politico-administrative context in Latin America and attendant factors restricting the establishment of a broad democratic culture at the local level.

In this paper we examine how Canadian and Flemish municipalities manage and measure sustainable development initiatives. First, we present information on how Canada, Belgium and its Flemish region introduce sustainable development initiatives at the federal and regional levels of government. The introduction at municipal level of impact assessment systems, indicator and monitoring systems, and sustainability reporting systems is discussed in general, followed by a comparison of specific case studies. In Canada, we selected the municipalities of Ottawa, Hamilton-Wentworth and Vancouver and in Flanders, the municipalities of Hasselt, Gent and Leuven. For each case study, we considered the following evaluation criteria: introduction of a long-term vision for a sustainable future; development of goals, targets and indicators; measurement of indicators; involvement and information of the local population; introduction of impact assessment and reporting systems. The discussion section deals with differences in the approach to managing and measuring sustainable development initiatives in Canada and Flanders. This study shows that sustainable development is not yet widely practised at the local level in Canada and Flanders, but Canadian municipalities have more experience with planning processes and vision development, measurement systems and public involvement. The Flemish municipalities were more inclined to go along with international campaigns dealing with local sustainability and take strong sustainable development actions which were not integrated in broader sustainable development policies. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Local Government in British Columbia, 4th edition, edited by Robert L. Bish and Eric G. Clemens, is reviewed.