Journal of the American Planning Association

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Planning for Sustainability: Experiences in Two

Contrasting Communities

Kevin S. Hanna

To cite this article: Kevin S. Hanna (2005) Planning for Sustainability: Experiences in Two
Contrasting Communities, Journal of the American Planning Association, 71:1, 27-40, DOI:
10.1080/01944360508976403

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360508976403

Published online: 27 Nov 2007.

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As natural-resource-based economies
continue to change, local planning will
play a pivotal part in managing their
transition. This research examines the
role played by planning in defining a
vision of sustainability in two such
communities in the Canadian Pacific
Northwest. The case studies are impor-
tant in several respects: they illustrate
that sustainability can be an important
organizing theme in planning a commu-
nity’s response to change; they show that
through planning, concepts of sustain-
ability can evolve from individual to
collective definitions; and they illustrate
planning-based efforts to manage change.
In the communities examined here,
planners played an especially influential
role in the transition process: they helped
define possibilities.
Kevin S. Hanna is an APA member and
an assistant professor in the Department
of Geography and Environmental
Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in
Waterloo, Ontario. His research centres
on the role and influence of planning
in small communities set in natural
resource regions. His focus has been on
the Pacific Northwest. With colleagues,
he is also working on understanding the
interplay between housing development
and planning conflict and the impor-
tance of quality of space to urban
competitiveness.
Journal of the American Planning Association,
Vol. , No. , Winter .
© American Planning Association, Chicago, IL.

Planning for
Sustainability
Experiences in Two Contrasting Communities
Kevin S. Hanna
ver the last two decades, many small natural-resource-based communities
O
in the Pacific Northwest have seen their income decline due to changes
in the timber and fishing industries. Factors such as their location and
the residents’ ability or willingness to see local social and environmental assets in
new ways have affected how such communities respond to this transition. For
such places, sustainability has become an important theme in planning. But
developing new economic and social opportunities remains a significant chal-
lenge for towns that have long relied on natural resources (Gill & Reed, ).
For many of these communities, planning has been incidental. Few employed
professional planners, and few viewed planning as an integral part of community
well-being. This situation is now beginning to change.
This article examines how Tofino and Ucluelet, two small towns on western
Vancouver Island in the Canadian Pacific Northwest (see Figure ), have ap-
proached the concept of sustainability and the role planning has played in how
they have responded to change. Each town has experienced a significant shift in
its economic base of timber and fishing. The reasons for decline in these indus-
tries are complex and involve a range of political, economic, and natural events
—most of which are well beyond the influence of the affected communities
(see Barnes & Hayter , ; Cone & Ridlington, ; Hayter & Barnes,
a,b; Reed, ; Schwindt, ). Tofino and Ucluelet added planning
to their local government because they wanted to respond to changes through
locally controlled mechanisms. Planning provided a mechanism through which
these communities developed a sustainability discourse. There are two main
objectives in this article. The first is to understand how the discourse on sustain-
ability evolved and what role was played by planning; the second is to illustrate
some of the lessons learned from practice in transitional settings where planning
is also a new local function.
Sustainability and Communities
A colleague recently described sustainability as a vague but significant con-
cept in planning. It has been broadly discussed as the melding of ecological,
social, and economic imperatives (e.g., Dale, ; Rees, ; Voinov & Smith,
 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 

Figure . Tofino and Ucluelet, western Vancouver Island, .

Source: Cartography Office, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON.
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability
). The permeable nature of sustainability makes it
attractive to planners. Because it excludes no one, environ-
ment, development, and social interests can all find comfort
in its vagueness, yet despite equivocation, the concept main-
tains just enough coherence to encourage discourse among
diverse interests (Hempel, ). But sustainability is also
a reactive idea, emerging when the basics of societal or envi-
ronmental welfare are threatened (Bridger & Luloff, ;
Bryant, ; Hempel, ; Luloff, ; Paehlke, ).
Communities sustain themselves not only through
economic well-being, but more intangibly through the
shaping of a common identity and culture by means of
shared history and values, and through common places of
interaction (Healey, a; Nozick, ). When change
occurs in natural-resource-based towns—where there is a
transition to what Gill and Reed () term “a new post-
productive landscape” (p. )—a community’s identity
can also change. Community boundaries change as the
economic and social activities that form the basis of com-
munity identity shift and as new people arrive. But identity
and the elements that create it may be what communities
strive to sustain most of all. There can also be a tendency
to romanticize a life that can no longer be sustained
(Campbell, ). Throughout such transition, the juris-
dictional boundary can take on a new significance, as the
community focuses attention inward to the space that is
controlled locally.
Some see sustainability as promising something that
may ultimately be unattainable: a sense that life will stay
the same. This assumption suggests a contradiction within
common notions of sustainability. It implies a desire to
maintain certain attributes, yet the concept is also a call
for change. It is a notion that questions the viability of
industrial society, many aspects of which are unsustainable
(Paehlke, ). Sustainability may be most effective not
as a type of permanent objective, but as an organizing
theme, or semantic device, around which places in transi-
tion develop a discourse for responding to change. As a
community defines what it wants to sustain, it articulates
the values and attributes that are important to its mem-
bers—or at least to those whose voices are heard.
Planning in a Transitional Setting
As has been widely and recently discussed, planning
should be inclusive and communicative (see Briggs, ;
Healey, , a, b; Innes, , ; Lapintie,
). Planning has also been described as the setting
where a community generates the ideas over which it has
ownership (Healey, ). Of course, such perspectives are
idealistic. In everyday life, power flows from institutional
authority, and planners are rooted in these structures.

Practice is confined by the limits of legislation, budgets,
community resources, attributes of location, and commu-
nity political and social dynamics.
As Pløger () argues, planning is a form of discur-
sive power. But it can also be a process in which conflicts
emerge over the power relationships that reflect the en-
trenchment of strong economic or social interests (Bridger
& Luloff, ; Marsden et al., ; Wilkinson, ). The
introduction of planning to rural, natural-resource-based
settings can bring about a transformation from local con-
ventions of negotiation and decision making to technical
rational styles of communication (Briggs, ; Tauxe,
). And in some places, the more complex a discourse
becomes, the greater the tendency for community initia-
tives to become fragmented and diffused (Schafft &
Greenwood, ). In transitional settings, such as those
discussed here, a discourse on sustainability may centre
on defining what a community wants to sustain and what
tools are needed to achieve success. Thus, while planning
can place an important new emphasis on local government
as a setting for action and responding to change, it also
brings new challenges.
A central challenge for planners is to ensure that while
the process of decision making is open and inclusive and
the community’s power to decide is wide-ranging, the
decisions are ultimately pragmatic and attainable. As
purveyors of knowledge, planners have the greatest poten-
tial to act as advocates for open and inclusive community
processes—a role that takes on particular importance
when planning becomes the setting within which a com-
munity develops a discourse about responding to change.
The challenge for planners in a small community is one of
balance. They must facilitate inclusive participation with-
out unduly shaping a community’s identification of what
is to be sustained, but planners must also be sources of
information and ideas. This dual role can create tension, as
planners are expected to generate proposals but not be seen
as overly invested in them. The case studies that follow
illustrate the role that planning has played in two towns
where sustainability has emerged as an organizing theme
for responding to change, and where lessons for practice
have emerged.
Transition and Planning in Two
Contrasting Communities
Research Approach
The research for this article used a case study approach
employing formal and informal interviews, a review of
planning documents, and community visits. In each town,
 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 
the interviews took about  weeks and were conducted
from  to . The questions focused broadly on the
social and economic context that informs local planning;
community sustainability; communication and participa-
tion; the role of planners in shaping community discourse,
guiding participation, and providing information; issues
in planning practice; and the nature of and reasons for
regional change. Thirty-two people directly involved in
local planning participated in the formal interviews. These
were in many respects the towns’ civic elites; they included
planners, municipal elected officials, business people,
members of advocacy groups, and individuals who had
been actively engaged in planning steering committees and
public consultation events. They represented diverse and
sometimes overlapping interests. For example, some busi-
nesspersons were also involved in environmental organiza-
tions. All had had first-hand experience in the development
of their town’s recent Official Community Plan (OCP).
The OCP is defined and briefly outlined below.
The formal interviews each lasted  to  hours. They
were recorded (later transcribed) and notes were taken.
Although an interview guide was used, the format was
conversational and open ended. This adaptive approach
allowed questions to be modified as new information
emerged from the field work. Less formal discussions
involved another  community members. Planners and
other local contacts had identified these people as residents
who had attended planning events or had commented
on the OCP process but were not directly involved in
local government. Only notes were taken during these
discussions.
Conducting interviews in a small community poses
particular challenges for maintaining the confidentiality on
which participation may depend. In this case, respondents
were promised that quotes would not be attributed in a
manner that might lead to the speaker’s identification. This
assurance was essential for getting people to speak freely. It
was important to all respondents that their contributions
to this research not adversely affect their place within the
community. While the preference might have been to
identify comments by categories such as business, gov-
ernment, or environmental organization, this would have
compromised respondents’ anonymity. Therefore, only
community location is used to identify most quotes. Some
planners’ comments are attributed, with their approval.
Setting, Governance, and Place
Tofino and Ucluelet are located on western Vancouver
Island, about  km apart (see Figure ). Each has a perma-
nent population of fewer than ,. During the summer
months, the area’s population can grow to well above
, per day. Pacific Rim National Park lies between the
two towns and has about , visitors per year—a
conservative estimate based on automobile counts (Parks
Canada, ). The actual number is likely closer to
,, (Parks Canada, personal communication,
November ). Almost all visitors to the Park spend
some time in one or both study communities.
Each town has a civic staff of less than  people. Each
has a planning office, headed by a professional planner, but
neither has a planning commission. In British Columbia,
local government elections for mayor and all councilors are
held every  years. Regional District Electoral Area Direc-
tors (akin to county supervisors) are also elected every
 years. For a municipality having a population of ,
or less, the council consists of a mayor and up to six coun-
cilors. Each has one vote on council, including the mayor,
and decision making occurs largely within the council
setting. The local bureaucracy is directed by a town man-
ager, appointed by the town council. Except in large cities,
council members typically are nonpartisan. British Colum-
bia’s Local Government Act (Province of British Columbia,
) requires that council meetings must be open to the
public, with some exceptions (e.g., meetings where labour
negotiations, land acquisition or disposal, or litigation are
discussed).
Ucluelet completed its current Official Community
Plan (OCP) in . Tofino finished its OCP in the fall
of . Each process took about  year to complete. The
OCP serves as a municipality’s general statement of poli-
cies and objectives that guide land use planning, service
provision, and infrastructure development. British Colum-
bia’s Local Government Act (Province of British Columbia,
) requires that all bylaws and works undertaken by a
town council be consistent with the OCP. In essence, it
makes towns plan. Ideally, the OCP will be developed with
significant public consultation, which can include creating
a steering committee composed of several town councilors
and citizens appointed from the community. Tofino and
Ucluelet appointed OCP steering committees. If a com-
munity does not employ a planner, an outside consultant
or regional district planner would help to develop a plan.
An OCP time horizon is usually  to  years (Tofino
and Ucluelet have -year plans). Zoning, land use desig-
nations, and infrastructure plans are declared in the OCP,
but are implemented through ancillary documents.
The process of creating an OCP must include public
consultation. The form is not specified, so each community
chooses its own methods. The final product is passed as a
by-law. An OCP is ideally a stable but adaptive document.
Many communities will review their OCP every  years and
amend it to reflect changing conditions. Amending an
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability
OCP, while not uncommon, is not viewed as a desirable
way to accommodate development applications.
Conflict and Regional Transition
Timber and fishing provided the economic base for
both towns until the mid s. In contrast to other com-
munities in the larger region (the Alberni Clayoquot
Regional District), natural resources no longer form the
basic sector in either town (Horne, ). The timber
supply declined in part due to the lack of merchantable
trees. But there was also uncertainty about the develop-
ment of preservation policies, First Nations land claims,
volatility of market demand, and the long-simmering
Canada/U.S. softwood timber dispute. The wild salmon
economy has also declined and, as with the timber sector,
the reasons are complex. Overfishing, high fleet capacity,
land and marine environmental factors, conflict between
Canadian and U.S. salmon policies, and impacts from
farmed salmon have all contributed.
While the study towns are representatiave of transition
in the Pacific Northwest, they also have some unique char-
acteristics: they are not particularly remote and are adja-
cent to uncommon aesthetic resources. Four respondents
(all business owners) commented that they first came to
live in the area and then decided how to “make a living.”
Two respondents commented that they came to Tofino as
part of the environmental movement and stayed—and as
one commented, “We were not alone.” The s and
early s were a period of antilogging protests, centered
on plans to log old growth forests on nearby Meares Island
and around Clayoquot Sound. An influential activist
population was established in Tofino, and this contributed
a group of new, forceful participants in local government.
The years of protest and conflict created tension not
only between the towns but also between longtime resi-
dents and more recent arrivals. “Every night on the news it
was Ucluelet men in baseball caps, threatening to kick in
the teeth of the next hippie they saw, up against the resi-
dents of the Peace Camp, who spoke only when holding a
talking stick” (Klein, , p. ). Violence occurred and,
as one respondent noted, “Not everything made it into the
news.” Around this time a yellow ribbon campaign was
started in Ucluelet; if you wanted to show support for
loggers, you wore a yellow ribbon or put one on your
vehicle or on the front of your house. Tofino was also the
place of choice for those who had come to the area as part
of the environmental movement and wanted the logging
economy to disappear, while Ucluelet was where the
loggers lived. The divisions cut deeply, and it seemed that
everyone had taken a side. A chasm formed between the
two communities.

The economy of Tofino had already changed by the
early s, when the protests reached their height. It had
become a community based on tourism and the economy
of protest, rather than the traditional bases of timber and
salmon. A symbol of this change could be seen in what
happened to a small building on the Tofino waterfront.
For many years, it had been used as a field office by the
MacMillan Bloedel timber company. Then it became a
rainforest information center, and more recently an upscale
clothing store. Tofino had benefited from change—there
was growth and there seemed to be jobs—while down the
road, Ucluelet waited as logging and fishing jobs disap-
peared. But change was underway in Ucluelet, too, and in
each community as the open conflicts subsided and the
regional economy moved beyond natural resources, local
planning soon emerged as an important aspect of manag-
ing transition.
Planning as a New Local Function
Ucluelet added a planner to its civic staff in , and
Tofino followed in . Previously, the regional district
had provided planning services. A regional district planner
had visited each community a few days a month and each
town’s previous OCP had been developed by regional
district staff. As one respondent commented, “Frankly
planning didn’t used to matter much. Our needs were
pretty basic, and we didn’t need a local planner.” This view
shifted to reflect the changes that were occurring in the
local economies. Each town began to think of a locally
based planning capacity as not only an essential aspect of
civic governance, but one that had to be controlled at the
community level. In British Columbia, there are no legis-
lated population or area thresholds for employing staff
planners. Most small B.C. communities use consultants or
regional district planners on an ad hoc basis. The decision
to add planners to a municipal office (in a small com-
munity) reflects local context and issues such as growth
management, diversification objectives, and community
transition (B.C. Local Government Division, personal
communication, ). Civic staff and politicians in To-
fino and Ucluelet also indicated that the planning function
provided by the regional district was no longer sufficient
to address local needs. In both towns, creating a commu-
nity planning function marked a significant investment of
budget resources, which in itself is a testament to the
importance that these communities now place on local
planning.
On assuming their positions in each community, the
planners began to develop a new OCP. This work was
augmented by external planning consultants. As the plan-
ners noted, there were four basic reasons for using occa-
 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 
sional external sources. First, it allowed local planners to
attend to routine duties without being overwhelmed by
OCP work; second, it provided an opportunity to access
expertise in facilitation and developing participation
events; and third, there were technical needs well suited to
consultants (e.g., geomatics, infrastructure demand analy-
ses, and growth projections). As one planner commented,
“No-one has every planning skill.” Finally, because the
planners are visibly embedded in their communities, facil-
itating OCP meetings or directly managing the consultation
process might appear to display bias or unduly shape the
outcomes. The planners were concerned that this would
affect not only the discourse on community objectives and
values, but also their ability to act impartially among
competing interests during other routine planning duties.
As one planner commented, “There isn’t the anonymity
here you’d have if you worked in Victoria or Vancouver.
It’s not good enough just to really be impartial; you always
have to look impartial.” The use of external consultants
helped ease these tensions.
Responding to Change Through the
OCP
Some Differences
The differences between Tofino and Ucluelet are
reflected in how the respective OCPs and local planning
evolved. Tofino has experienced rapid growth as a result
of tourism, and the planning function was introduced to
manage the impacts. One respondent likened planning in
Tofino to “still building the boat while you’re sailing out
of the harbour.” But in Ucluelet, where the growth rate
had been slower, the new planning function was seen as
part of developing strategies to encourage and facilitate
growth in a more strategic manner than Tofino had been
doing. Put another way, Ucluelet’s decision to develop a
local planning function represented a proactive response to
growth, while Tofino’s was reactive.
The planning discourse in each town was affected by
community cohesion. Respondents in Ucluelet indicated
that they saw the creation of their OCP as a process aided
by an already existing community bond: Economic decline
and the years of environmental protest had created a rela-
tive sense of common identity through shared hardships.
In Tofino the perception was quite different; respondents
described their community as fractious. Three respon-
dents noted that council meetings were raucous events
where, as one respondent commented, debate “could drift
into a place for rather personal disagreements.”
The divergence between environment and develop-
ment perspectives was on the minds of many as Tofino was
preparing its new OCP. A good illustration of the differ-
ences within Tofino appears in the business community.
The town has two chambers of commerce, each aligned
with one of the two perspectives and each taking a differ-
ent stance on development and growth proposals. The
Tofino Business Association was formed after the Tofino
Chamber of Commerce was, in the words of one respon-
dent, “taken over by environmentalists.” The Tofino
Business Association is viewed by some as being too pro-
development and “pining for the forest industry” (Tofino
respondent). While this division is perhaps representative
of Tofino’s civic politics—it is a division that several
respondents also characterized as being between those who
are recent additions to the town and those who have
deeper roots—in reality, the lines are not so easily drawn.
It was against this background that Tofino’s OCP was
initiated. Tofino’s new council wanted the make-up of the
Steering Committee to represent the community’s diverse
and sometimes combative interests. One committee mem-
ber commented, “When I saw who would be at the table,
I wasn’t sure this was going to work,” and another stated,
“There were people there who never spoke to me. But it
changed, and after we finished [the OCP] I can say that
some people no longer cross the street to avoid talking.
I can’t say we all like each other now, but we understand
each other’s views.”
In the informal discussions, several community
members were asked why it seemed that the community
discourse was cohesive in Ucluelet but fractious in Tofino.
The reasons they gave centered on the influence of Tofi-
no’s activist community and conflict over the nature of the
town’s growth, while Ucluelet was seen as a less activist
place. One answer pointed to the identity orientations of
the communities: “It’s the difference between fishing and
logging.” Ucluelet was historically a community of loggers
“who were used to working on a team” (Respondent inter-
views). Logging is a group-oriented activity, and in this
region it centres on a few large, vertically integrated firms.
Tofino was based mostly on salmon fishing, a more solitary
and competitive occupation composed of individual entre-
preneurs. Others commented on the very recent nature of
community cohesion. Some respondents noted that Uclue-
let had factions and unique interests before the antilogging
protests, but was never “as divided as Tofino.” They attrib-
uted this difference to the absence of an activist commu-
nity in Ucluelet. When the protests began, Ucluelet closed
ranks and became even more cohesive. Conversely, Tofino
began to fracture along three lines: environmentalists,
supporters of development, and, as one respondent put it,
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability
“those who wished that things would stay the same and
trouble makers [developers and environmentalists] would
go away”
Emergence of a Sustainability Discourse
In each town, the OCP process was not initially about
communicating a vision of sustainability and was certainly
not about defining the term; rather it was about respond-
ing to change. Each community initiated a series of public
meetings and workshops, and it was within these events
that sustainability emerged as a theme. There were three
formal concurrent interactive settings: the local political
bureaucracy, the OCP steering committee, and commu-
nity OCP participation events (see Figure ). In the inter-
views, community participation events emerged as having
the most influence on both community members and the
planners. These events were broadly based on open dis-
cussion, scenario building, and information exchange.
Respondents in each town emphasized the importance
of three qualities in the community participation events:
() the opportunity to ask technical/legal questions about
creating an OCP, () workshops that were interactive
and emphasized discussion of options, and () the use of
graphic displays to show design and growth alternatives.
For example, in Tofino, various growth scenarios were
developed based on different growth rates. These scenarios
became influential for illustrating how, under variable
planning conditions, the community might change, both
physically and socially. The scenarios were presented in
workshops, where discussion evolved about how commu-
nity members envisioned sustainability and what kind of
growth they wanted to see with respect to that vision.
In the interviews, respondents were asked what
sustainability meant to them, how their definition had
evolved (during the creation of the OCP), and what would
be needed to achieve it. Respondents in both towns com-
mented that sustainability had emerged as a term or idea
after the public participation processes began—it was a
word around which discourse evolved. In other words,
sustainability emerged as a tangible notion once the local
governments began to consult their communities about the
new OCP. Participation events and the meetings of OCP
Steering Committees provided places of discussion and
articulation, where the notion of sustainability moved from
being a collection of individual positions to being a more
collective idea (see Figure ). The individual ideas moved
from discussion within the community at large to the OCP
steering committees, which then placed community “feed-
back” into the respective plan. This process of dialogue
focused on the idea of sustainability, in part as a way of
articulating objectives and strategies for community sur-

vival and as a point around which discourse and eventual
agreement would form.
In terms of defining sustainability, the responses
emphasized both personal and community perspectives.
For both towns, community survival, responding to
change, managing growth, and maintaining community
identity emerged as dominant themes. Below are some
examples (words in brackets are provided for clarification).
Talk about sustainability became pretty common,
but it only got interesting once we had to define it.
Then some very different views came out. (Tofino
respondent).
Sustainability was hotly debated [when the OCP was
being developed]. As you may have heard we have
factions here. And they are very definite about their
point of view. So sustainability was a bit of an issue.
Some saw it in ecologic terms, I mean really about
preserving nature, vegetation, the environment overall.
Others thought it should be about sustaining the
economy. But our economic growth is based on land-
use and on an environmental advantage. (Tofino
respondent)
It’s about keeping things together. I mean we have a
certain way of life here. I guess it depends on protect-
ing the things that make this place unique. That’s not
just nature but the people here too. But I guess it’s all
together. Most of us have relied on the forest industry,
or fishing for others, and that’s what’s given this place
its personality. The link to nature, the way it used to
be, was pretty strong. But that’s all different now. It’s
still there, but it’s different; it’s changed and I don’t
think we can go back. (Ucluelet respondent)
Tough to define. If I could, my career would be done.
People kept using the word sustainability, then some-
one asked—what does it mean? Let’s define it. Some-
one else said, for example, any and all old growth
[forests] within the [municipal] boundary must be
retained. Environment over everything else. Others
took a more industry approach. Fishing wanted make
sure that stocks were there for them to make a liveli-
hood, so how do we keep that going? Everyone had a
different approach based on their experiences. I’ve had
to define it as making sure a community can grow in a
healthy way from land use but not at the expense of its
future. That’s the kind of very general idea we have to
develop from an economic, social perspective; land use
decisions today should not be at the expense of the
 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 

Beyond fundamental legislated requirements, the OCP is a locally driven product. The Local Government Act
specifies what the OCP will contain by specifying what must be considered, but it also outlines what may be
considered, not as a limiting element but as an advisory one. OCP decisions and discussions took place within the
following three arenas.

Political Bureaucratic Settings

This consisted of the local council(s) and bureaucracy, the level at which the final OCP would be publicly
debated and eventually passed as a by-law.

OCP Steering Committee Meetings

The committee, created by the local council, was composed of political representatives and non-elected
community members. It designed the OCP, in part by guiding the process through consultation, participation,
discussing and articulating possibilities, and serving as a setting for developing the common objectives and strategies
that were ultimately placed in the OCP.

Community Participation Events

These events included open houses, public meetings, interactive displays, and drop-in discussions where ideas
were sought and eventually the planning options identified through participation were displayed for further
comment and discussion.

Information, planning themes, growth projection scenarios, and design options were displayed in graphic and
text form. Participation was expressed verbally one-to-one with planners, in group settings, and by written
responses to questions posed during meetings. Municipal staff, town council members, planning consultants, and
members of the Steering Committee were present to discuss options and answer questions. In Ucluelet, about 
people attended these events, and in Tofino, about . In each town this accounts for about half of the adult
population and was representative of year-round residents.

Figure . OCP-related participation settings in Tofino and Ucluelet, –.

future. But we don’t even know what industries will
be part of our future, so how do we plan for that? The
direction we decide in the OCP has to be open enough
to adapt to change. (Tofino respondent)
It means many things—resource protection, job pro-
tection—and we tried to cover all these in the OCP.
For this town, sustainability was about saving the com-
munity, saving the economy. It was part of surviving.
What began to change was how people here looked at
the environment—it became a community resource.
We can’t use it the way we did; things have to change,
not because anyone wants it to, but because there isn’t
a choice. I think the OCP came to be about keeping a
lifestyle. They didn’t want to loose what they came
here to have, and that was the message we tried to put
into the Plan [OCP]. (Ucluelet respondent)
There has to be a broad range of people [age groups
and origin] with different skills. There also has to be a
sense of community health—having an economy that
allows young people to stay. I think about the need
to sustain different people and a broad community
structure. We have to think about healthy communi-
ties and environments. We struggle with thinking
about maintaining the economy and growth with as
little detriment to the environment. From my point,
the environment is what sustains business. It’s why
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability 

many of us live here—affordability is a new idea, really took on. As each community looked within, its boundary
a very new issue; it’s a major struggle in the OCP. delineated the extent of local government authority and
(Tofino respondent) defined the space that its OCP would influence.

As Throgmorton (, p. ) notes, the gradual Outcomes

definition of sustainability can be a very personal process.
Sustainability emerged as part of a linear discourse about
change (see Figure ) that developed within the context
of articulating a new OCP. Initially, sustainability was a
cohesive word that expressed what seemed to be a common
objective—permanence. Sustainability was inoffensive,
its ambiguity was comforting, and it served as a semantic
device for establishing a community discourse. But when
the need to define it arose, there was a realization that
visions of sustainability were divergent, personal, and
sometimes embedded in self-interest. Links among econ-
omy, orientation, and identity emerged, but so did the
realization that change was at hand. The communities are
no longer based on fishing and logging; those identities
had become a legacy, seen as history or as aspects of com-
munity appearance, but no longer the real source of indi-
vidual livelihoods. In this regard, some residents expressed
a palpable sense of uncertainty about the direction of the
community and their ability to preserve the social elements
that define community identity. This concern was also
reflected in the new meaning that each town boundary
As discussions progressed, there was a gradual artic-
ulation in each community of a common view of sus-
tainability. Not unexpectedly, this view became more
complex as a result of the exchange of information and
exposure to different ideas. Each town’s process provided
an opportunity to deal with issues that had taken on im-
portance as the local economies changed, and each com-
munity articulated a vision of sustainability in its OCP.
Ucluelet’s plan takes a two-part approach. First, it provides
a brief concept of sustainability based on the integration
of economic, environmental, and social objectives (the
three pillars of sustainability) and requires that local gov-
ernment decisions be integrative (they must explicitly
consider sustainability objectives). It also requires that the
decision-making process be inclusive and employ active
consultation. Second, it includes a vision statement. This
statement provides a list of detailed objectives that address
the desired physical form of the town, economic diversity,
public access to forest and shoreline, enhancing the com-
mercial core, and building design that reflects a West Coast
vernacular.

. As the process of developing an OCP begins, residents express concern about how change will affect the survival
of the community.

. Sustainability emerges as a term. At first it seems to be a common objective, a way of addressing change and
uncertainty. Initially, participants think they are talking about sustaining the same thing(s). The word takes on a
cohesive quality.

. The term takes on a less cohesive quality. There is a realization that sustainability means different things to
different interests. The term now needs to be defined and made more precise.

. Argument ensues about what is to be sustained. The sustainability discourse begins to coalesce.

. Gradually, the group develops an intricate idea of sustainability that encompasses others’ interests. In a classic
sense, these embody environmental, social, and economic concerns. Community identity emerges as part of a
complex sustainability objective, because it depends on many variables that flow from varied realms and may or
may not ultimately be sustainable.

. Sustainability becomes an organising theme around which planning for change occurs.

. Sustainability objectives in the plan emerge first as a notional theme and then as specific actions.

Figure . Stages of a discourse on sustainability.

 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 
In Tofino’s plan, sustainability is first articulated as pro-
moting a sustainable healthy community, and, like Ucluelet’s,
there is an integrative theme based on economic, environ-
mental, and social qualities. Tofino’s extension of this
vision centres on policies for growth management, design
and land use, community and economic development
(a mix of commercial and social development objectives
expressed as explicit physical planning objectives), envi-
ronment and resources (specifically, the conservation of
ecologically and aesthetically sensitive areas within the
community, which in this OCP accounts in large part
for defining a healthy community), and a strategy for
implementation and monitoring.
A new economy means new planning challenges.
Aspects of local land use that have been taken for granted
can emerge as unanticipated and contentious planning
elements. In the respondents’ comments, four themes
emerged as common areas of concern to each town’s
planning process. Although they are of variable importance
to each community, these are the elements that residents
sought to sustain and enhance:
• Community character. In Ucluelet, this centres on
maintaining the look of a West Coast fishing and
logging community, through new design and develop-
ment criteria. Ucluelet has been forceful in applying
these standards. Tofino has had difficulty articulating
such standards, in part because they are being devel-
oped after so much generic development has already
occurred and because there is a culture opposed to
such interventionist tools. But even in Tofino, the new
OCP recognizes unique neighbourhoods and articu-
lates a policy to maintain their character, and there are
efforts to outline and implement design guidelines.
Each town is seeking to sustain the aesthetic aspects of
place that help define its identity.
• Accessibility. Ucluelet developed an aggressive and
explicit strategy to ensure access to its public shoreline
and forests through access requirements for new devel-
opments and public investment in coastal trails (within
the town boundary). These trails are being extended
gradually and will eventually connect to Pacific Rim
National Park. Tofino’s shoreline has been largely
closed to the public by development, but the town nev-
ertheless seeks to open up some areas through board-
walks and the enforcement of often-narrow corridors of
access to public beaches. These narrow access trails are
a legacy of “past approvals now seen as not too well de-
signed” (Tofino respondent). Public access is a notable
issue in Tofino. Accessibility can imply convenience,
but as a community grows convenience can change.
For example, in Tofino parking is no longer always easy
to find. More visitors means greater parking demand,
and each community has had to address this problem.
Parking time limits, parking space requirements for
new businesses, parking prohibitions, and in Tofino
even parking lots at the edge of town are being consid-
ered. Parking would seem a trifling issue in a small
community, but it is symbolic of Tofino’s transition.
• Affordable housing. The supply and affordability of
housing is now a problem for those who are seasonally
employed—many of whom live in the area all year—
and for those who are employed year round, but have
middle or lower incomes. Seasonal visitors will pay
premium rates for rental units. The result in Tofino
has been a lack of affordable year-round housing.
Local planning now encourages the development of
attainable/affordable housing and on-site lodging for
seasonal workers. Tofino is also considering the cre-
ation of a local housing authority, which would man-
age a small public housing stock. In Ucluelet such
pressures have not yet materialized, but as it also
grows, it may face housing problems similar to those
experienced in Tofino. Affordable housing is seen in
both communities as an important part of sustaining
the community—by creating a context where, as one
Tofino respondent noted, “young people from local
families can build a life in their community and are
not forced to move because it’s too expensive for them
to live here.”
• Greenspace. Preserving greenspace became important
to both communities as development encroached onto
forest and shoreline areas. With the emergence of a new
economy, such spaces have taken on value, and conser-
vation has become a planning objective. Greenspace
was also seen as an important asset of location—one
that not only attracts investment but is also integral to
quality of place. This is an element that members in
each town linked to community sustainability.
Both OCPs defined sustainability in a broad sense, but
more importantly both developed specific actions linked to
putting sustainability ideas into practice. These were new
elements for each town. The plans marked a transition
from planning as a basic activity geared toward meeting
simple infrastructure needs and delineating land use to a
complex set of actions around which each community now
organizes internal space to respond to changing economic
and social dynamics. Each OCP marks a recognition that
sustaining the community will increasingly rely on the
marshalling of internal resources, rather than on the extrac-
tion of external ones.
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability
Some Lessons on The Role of
Planners
Defining What is Possible
Several important implications for practice emerged
from the case studies. British Columbia’s Local Government
Act (Province of British Columbia, ) requires public
participation in developing an OCP but it does not spec-
ify that participation must influence the outcome or how
this will occur. No power is allocated through participa-
tion; the process ensures only what Pløger () calls a
“right to a voice” (p. ). If participation is to be effective,
those who legislate formal power must agree to reasonably
listen to and abide by what the public voice says. For the
planners in the study communities, this situation presented
specific challenges. Each process, though locally managed,
had to adhere to a larger legal/political framework that acts
as a form of limitation on possibilities. In each community,
the planning process moved from articulating a broad
vision of how to respond to change (eventually articulated
as sustainability) to defining specific required actions—
ones that could be achieved within the legal planning
framework.
The nonplanners viewed the planners’ role as encom-
passing five functions: listening to views and opinions,
keeping things on track, guiding the process, answering
questions about legislation and legal requirements, and
ensuring equity in representation and opportunity for
participation (Respondent interviews). They also differen-
tiated between the role of the local planners, which was
seen as listening and providing information as required,
and the role of the external consultants, which was seen as
itinerant and providing a facilitation service. Respondents’
comments on the role of the planners provided a powerful
indication of the influence of information. For example:
To a large extent it [the planners’ role] was about
information. Some people might have a view of
how they wanted the plan to be, but it might not be
realistic. Or we might not have the authority to do
some things. There are limits to what the [Local
Government] Act allows. Our tax base is limited, and
spending on some ideas might not be possible. The
planners could tell us if an idea was possible. (Ucluelet
respondent)
These views reflected how the planners (local and
external consultants) viewed their own roles. The planners
acted as agents of knowledge and information, which
provided them with a powerful platform from which to

guide and influence processes and outcomes. The power to
define what is possible flowed from institutional knowledge.
Planners helped structure the image of sustainability by
articulating what could be done within the confines of
institutional/governmental rationality. But the respondents
did not view the planners as unduly influential at either
steering committee meetings or public participation events.
Indeed, the overarching perception was that the planners
had been impartial. They had served as “skilled-voices-in-
the-flow” (Throgmorton, ). By articulating what can
be done, planners represent pragmatic and often subtle
power mechanisms, determined by the politics and organ-
izational culture of place (Healey, ). Planners work
within the pragmatic bounds of institutional reality. Their
role is embedded in this context and fulfills a substantial
need for information about what is legally defensible and
legally required in a community plan.
Facilitation and the Quest for Balance
The planners themselves viewed their role as facilita-
tive and saw the OCP process as an opportunity to develop
a community-based vision for managing change. In both
towns, the participation process was approached as being
the pivotal element in determining what the final planning
strategies would be. The steering committees received
information generated through formal participation and
used it to develop the final OCP. They became avenues for
action. But communication extended beyond the bound-
aries of committees and participation events to informal
settings.
In this regard, two observations stand out. One plan-
ner indicated that the process of participation never really
ended:
It’s a small community, and even when I stood in line
at the Co-op [supermarket], someone would talk
about the OCP and make suggestions, ask questions.
I think at one point a draft of the OCP was in just
about every house.
Another respondent (a nonplanner) noted:
The OCP consumed the community. At first it
seemed that it might be a flash point for divisions, but
it didn’t happen. It seemed at times that everyone was
involved, discussion happened everywhere. It may not
create a cohesive community, but it did create talk and
consensus.
There was also concern about the nature of the plan-
ners’ influence. For example, one planner stated, “From
 Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter , Vol. , No. 
the start this could not be my product—it’s theirs [the
community’s]. The problem was that some expected me
to take the lead, but that wasn’t my job.” And another
described planning practice as “a perpetual balancing act
between factions, legal need, and the town’s expectations.”
One steering committee member commented, “The ideas
that people expressed had to be taken down as they said. In
the workshops we kept all the written responses. We didn’t
want to filter comments. The plan had to be a community
product based on their words.” A planner also noted,
“There’s a temptation in this profession to rephrase every-
thing in planner-speak, but this isn’t a town that would
tolerate it. The ideas that were spoken had to be kept as is;
it’s not my place to reword others’ ideas.” This statement
alludes to the need in practice to recognize and address
what has been described as the potential for a disconnect
between the language of planning and bureaucracy and the
language of residents (Briggs, ; Tauxe, ).
The planners were aware of the potential for bias.
One acknowledged that the challenge was “to manage
one’s own bias by first recognizing it.” Participants in both
towns seemed to be aware of the need to “keep things on-
track” (a theme mentioned often) to ensure that the plan-
ning process conformed to the legal requirements of the
Local Government Act. But each planner noted that provid-
ing advice is an interpretive process and providing knowl-
edge runs the risk of seeming to be biased toward specific
ideas or projects. This lesson carried through to the OCP
process where planners had to balance interpretation with
their own desires for the community. It is also a lesson that
highlights the importance of the skillful use of consultants.
Local planners will have a personal interest in how their
town evolves—perhaps deeper than for those who practice
in larger communities. Beyond bringing specific skill sets,
an external consultant can help defuse some of the conflicts
that local planners face as citizens of a place. As one plan-
ner noted, “I live here after all,” and “A consultant can tell
people where to sit around a meeting table—he’s from the
outside—and the [OCP] Steering Committee will react
better to the request coming from him than from me.”
Conclusions and Implications for
Practice
Sustainability may be a vague, even elusive concept,
but for planners, sustainability is useful as an organizing
theme in planning a community’s response to change.
In Tofino and Ucluelet, this theme emerged during the
development of new OCPs. As the OCP process evolved,
the need to define sustainability came about, and different
perspectives and definitions appeared. These differences
gradually combined to form a more complex and collective
vision of what each community wanted to sustain. Charac-
ter and identity, access to forest and shoreline, affordable
housing, and preservation of greenspace became important
elements of sustainability. The planning process provided
an opportunity to develop a sustainability discourse that
helped each town identify what it values most and what
qualities it seeks to maintain and enhance.
In both towns, the planning process became a vehicle
for achieving consensus. Planning provided the social
context within which community members explored not
only their own individual preferences but also those of
others (Healey, ). In such a setting, an important
challenge for planning is to ensure that the process of
decision making is open and inclusive, that the decision-
making space is wide-ranging, and that the process reflects
the diverse perspectives that can exist even in a small
community. In small towns, the planner’s impartiality is
not only requisite; it must also be readily apparent. At the
same time, the decision or plan must be attainable and
pragmatic—not always an easy balancing act. As strategies
for addressing change are discussed through participation
events, council meetings, and other formal or informal
settings, a community will look to planners to provide
information about what is legally/logistically possible.
Natural-resource-based communities will increasingly
turn to local mechanisms to help respond to change. Plan-
ners in transitional towns can expect to see local planning
processes become an important avenue for responding
to change, as the economic, social, and even geographic
boundaries that define the community erode, in response
not only to a changing economy but also to influxes of
new people and the ideas and expectations they bring with
them. Planners will play an influential role in small transi-
tional communities; they define what is practicable, act
as agents of knowledge and information, facilitate critical
discussion, and help generate ideas about how a commu-
nity might respond to change. Planners function in a very
powerful sense as voices of what is possible.
Acknowledgments
Support for this work has been provided in part by a University Short
Term Research Grant. I would like to thank the respondents, especially
the planners in Ucluelet and Tofino, for making the time available to
talk about their communities and the four anonymous JAPA referees
who provided suggestions and guidance in the preparation of this
article.
Hanna: Planning for Sustainability
Notes
. Those interviewed also included elected officials who are currently
serving and those who no longer hold office but had been involved in
processes to develop their town’s OCP.
. The regional district level of government is akin to a county. It
provides selected common infrastructure services and planning func-
tions for smaller communities and unincorporated areas.
. In , Ucluelet completed a -year review of its OCP. As with the
development of the original OCP, this process employed external
consultants to support local planning staff.
. The Peace Camp was set up by antilogging activists near the start of
a logging road built to serve timber operations in the Clayoquot region.
This site served as a staging point for environmental protests and a place
of conflict between those opposed to logging and those whose liveli-
hoods depended on it.
. The proximity of Tofino to Meares Island and other logging areas in
contention made that community a more attractive place for activists.
At the start of the OCP there was already a small community of envi-
ronmentalists and artists who formed the basis for hosting the external
environmental movement. In contrast, Ucluelet, a logging town, was
not a hospitable place for those who had come to protest against the
very industry that provided a livelihood for so many residents.
. The interests or factions are not always easy to label, but they tend
to fall into categories of environmentalists, proponents of development,
long-time residents who are simply not comfortable with change, and
those who are not consistently aligned with any one perspective.
. At the time this research was conducted, British Columbia’s Local
Government Division was hoping to develop recommendations and
guidelines for the design of OCP consultation.
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