Strategic Research Cluster on
Quality of Life Reporting Systems
and Cultural Indicators for Smaller Canadian Communities

Canada's urban areas are currently facing serious economic, social and environmental challenges. This is especially true for smaller cities, which have for many years depended on mining, agriculture, manufacturing and industry to sustain their growth, and which are now experiencing stable or declining population bases, are struggling to chart new directions for the future.

The strategic cluster researching Quality of Life Reporting Systems and Cultural Indicators for smaller Canadian communities brings together the three Community-University Research Alliances—centred in Kamloops, B.C., Saint John, New Brunswick, and Waterloo, Ontario—currently studying the cultural and social aspects of those small and mid-size cities making the transition from a reliance on industry and resource extraction to a reliance on cultural, environmental and historical resources.

We maintain that smaller cities occupy what many observers have identified as a cultural “third space,” positioned as they are in the shadow of large cosmopolitan cities but still bound by rural history and traditions. Understanding this space requires us to address people’s experiences and perceptions: to gather information on what long-term residents and newcomers feel about themselves and their communities. The under-representation of small cities in the scholarly literature on cities generally, particularly with respect to quality of life measures and cultural indicators, is thus a key rationale for research—and for this present research portal.

Canada’s Cities: Opportunities for Research, Mentoring and Research Training:

If smaller urban centres are to prosper and maintain their identities in the face of mass cultural influences and big-box retailing, they need to think critically about notions of scale, space, and place. To tell their own stories, small cities need to listen to the vernacular, to local examples and voices. Accordingly, we argue for localizing questions of globalization and cultural identity at the municipal level, seeking qualitative protocols and measures to explore the challenges and possibilities facing Canada’s smaller cities. It is our aim to employ knowledge about cultural organization and expression, sense of place, and community development as a theoretical basis and conceptual framework for defining “Quality of Life” and for developing qualitative indicators sensitive to issues of cultural formation.

The University College of the Cariboo is especially well positioned to coordinate such a cluster: as announced in Spring 2004, UCC is in the process of assuming responsibility for the province’s Open University, including OU’s extensive distance education infrastructure, experience, and technical facilities—including the intra-university high-speed network BCNet, which provides substantial increases in our IP-based videoconferencing capabilities. Accordingly, the strategic research cluster program will incorporate face-to-face and interactive video meetings, telephone and Web-cam conferencing, and Web discussions. Opportunities for associated research, mentoring and research training will be created by linking the development of the research cluster to best practices already pioneered by OU in its delivery of distance education.

The Research Cluster’s Value and Impact:

The introduction of SSHRC’s Strategic Research Cluster program (which has supported this initiative) comes at an opportune moment for all three Community-University Research Alliances studying small and mid-size cities: In May 2004, the CURA studying the “cultural development of small cities” (Kamloops, B.C.) hosted the first of two Small Cities Forums (international meetings of researchers interested in defining cultural issues specific to small North American cities). Immediately following the May forum, representatives from the three CURAs (from University of Waterloo, University of New Brunswick, St. John, and the University College of the Cariboo) came together for The Small and Mid-Size Cities Think Tank, an event moderated by UCC’s president Roger Barnsley and involving 16 university researchers and community partners. These two events highlighted our shared and overlapping interest in (1) defining what “quality of life” means in the context of Canada’s smaller cities, and (2) developing appropriate measures (in particular, cultural indicators) for assessing small and mid-size cities. Since then, each CURA has pursued related goals (in the form of meetings, municipal workshops, research conferences, and so on), but, at present, we have no formal mechanism for effective knowledge sharing and collaboration. Our recent partnership with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities provides an effective national network and ensures a ready audience, making inter-CURA cooperation (i.e., further research clustering) crucial.

Engaging the Larger Research Community:

Research on quality of life measures and cultural indicators particular to small cities is of critical interest to urban planners, social policy makers, cultural organizers; to academics in urban studies, cultural studies, social work, the social sciences, environmental studies, and the arts; and to the general public. In addition, we see potential links with other city-based initiatives such as Canada’s The Metropolis Project and The New Rural Economy Project2; the United States’ Arts and Culture Indicators in Community Building Project and The National Neighbourhood Indicators Partnership; and Britain’s Comedia: Creative Thinking about Cities and Culture project.

Non-Academic Partners and their Roles:

Our national partners include, first, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (representing 1000 Canadian municipal governments, with close relationships with all provincial and territorial municipal associations). The FCM’s national reach affords us a network comprising virtually all municipalities in Canada and ensures the possibility of consultation and effective dissemination among the nation’s civic leaders and municipal planners: the FCM has taken a lead role nationally in the research and development of quality of life indicators for Canada’s cities. To date, these indicators have been primarily quantitative in nature, and though they have been tested in 18 large metropolitan centres, no small cities have been involved. Preliminary discussions with Senior Policy Manager John Burrett confirm our working thesis that, while essential for comparative analysis, quantitative indicators alone are inadequate measures for assessing quality of life in smaller cities. Burrett points out that the research cluster—involving three CURAs already in the process of establishing a research exchange on cultural indicators and quality of life measures—will help develop, refine, test, and advance the relevance of qualitative indicators for small cities nationally and internationally.

Our second national partner is the Working Group on Museums and Sustainable Communities, a national network of museum-based researchers studying what qualitative and quantitative measures and indicators best enable museums (and cultural organizations generally) to understand community needs and assess program impacts. The group is currently exploring new qualitative measures sensitive to municipal scale and thus provides both an important cultural lens and special attention to questions of human consciousness. In addition, based on its many national research conferences, workshops, and publication initiatives, the Working Group brings outstanding expertise in national networking practices.

Our third national partner, the Creative City Network, contributes an organization of municipal workers representing 123 communities working on arts, cultural economic development, heritage policy, cultural planning and support. The network brings a commitment to research and development, has experience developing and critiquing cultural indicators, and actively encourages communities to become proactive in developing their creative, cultural, and heritage sectors.

The fourth group of non-academic partners includes the network of community researchers already partnered with the three CURAs. Here the two small-city municipal partners, led by Ron McColl (Manager of Recreation and Culture for the City of Kamloops) and facilitated by the FCM’s John Burrett, will initiate plans for (1) developing community surveys, focus groups, and town hall meetings; (2) supervising student research assistants in the collection of data; and (3) providing the research cluster (including Canada’s municipal governments) with practical feedback and personal contacts essential to the development and implementation of qualitative indicators.

Project Team

All three principal researchers (each either a director or co-director of a CURA focusing on small or mid-size city development and culture) have extensive experience managing academic networks with national and international reach. Collectively the project team already directs over 100 university researchers and community partners, and the directors have overseen the training of more than 90 research assistants. In addition, all three principal researchers have significant administrative experience as department chairs and, in the case of the University of New Brunswick, St. John, as Dean of Arts.

Immediate Objectives: development of a concept paper

We have been asked, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to develop a “concept paper” detailing a research design suitable for drawing together a national network interested in developing and testing Quality of Life Reporting Systems and Cultural Indicators for Smaller Canadian Communities.

The concept paper’s preparation will incorporate extensive consultation using a variety of media—including this Web portal: we propose to root our design proposal in practice, beginning with a series of telephone conferences, following the protocols developed by the WGMSC. The Working Group has been very successful at using technology to build its vision, and to plan its workshops. The core of the work is done on conference calls, all of which have been financially supported by the Canadian Museum of Nature. Through large and small group work, the workshop planning is shared both on telephone calls, and in documents circulated through e-mail. Our initial focus (November-December) will be on (1) sharing and reviewing our research on quality of life reporting systems (especially the reports prepared for the FCM by Flett Consulting and Fotenn Consultants) and cultural indicators (especially the publications generated by the three CURAs). Next (December-January), employing teleconferencing, telephone, and an e-mail discussion list, we will discuss the work on cultural organizations, cultural indicators, and sustainability pioneered by the WGMSC. Working inductively, then, we’ll reflect on our consultations, our research requirements, and our developing network (focusing on appropriate governance structures, on securing additional funding, and on creating mechanisms for identifying and engaging further national and international research partners); in turn, and in collaboration with Open University researchers, tutors, and technicians, we’ll consider and document best practices for connecting and interacting collaboratively on an ongoing basis—working toward the draft summary of the research design (January 2005) and the National Workshop (February 2005), with our follow-up strategic cluster meeting in Kamloops scheduled for late February.

A self-appraisal component will be built into our discussions, one that takes into account the diverse literature on cooperation and community development, as well as related work on strategy and organizational theory by scholars such as Henry Mintzberg, where he and several colleagues discuss collaboration as an organizational strategy and simultaneously reflect upon their own collaboration as co-authors.