CityStudio: Developing policies

In the words of Benson Gihangange, the CityStudio component of ENVP 6001 was "a unique opportunity to examine the environment from the perspective of the decision makers."

In the winter of 2020, CityStudio at Grenfell Campus expanded to include the graduate-level course. CityStudio investigates sustainability policy questions and provides the City of Corner Brook with policy suggestions and recommendations that may be implemented by the city.

"It is one thing to picture how the environment should be cared for from one perspective, but it's a quite different story when you are trying to include everyone in a single decision," said Mr. Gihangange of Rwanda, who took the course as part of the master of arts in environmental policy (MAEP). "Diversity makes it challenging and requires consideration at multiple levels; that is, emotional, economic, historical and ecological values have to be taken into account, among other things."

Mr. Gihangange, who is now pursuing a PhD in Transdisciplinary Sustainability at Grenfell, worked with MAEP team members Samantha Young, Anastasia Addai and Ignatius K. Yankey. Like other teams in their class, they worked on developing a proposal related to the environment to present to the City of Corner Brook. The team was under the supervision of Andrew King, Corner Brook’s Sustainable Development Technician, and Dr. Garrett Richards, who taught the course.

"One of the greatest strengths of the CityStudio program is the possibility that student work will inform actual policy discussions and decisions for Corner Brook," said Dr. Richards. "This encourages the students to put more enthusiasm and thought into the projects and helps them to appreciate the complexity of real-world policy making."

The "mock" policy — which was proposed solely as a student exercise — was Natural Assets Policy. Mr. Gihangange’s team asserted that natural assets are essential in many ways, from "their role in sustaining and balancing the ecosystem to their economic and social usefulness in the community." The policy aimed to:

Topics presented by the other teams included green infrastructure policy, greenspace development regulations, sustainable procurement policy and urban agriculture (commercial gardens) bylaw.

"I had never worked in a public position or taken any related course during my academic career, but the MAEP program introduced me to the spheres of government and all the involved dynamics and structures," said Mr. Gihangange. "It is a program that I would qualify as innovative and useful, especially with the alarming ecological crisis the planet is facing."