The short and long of collaborative planning in the mountain resort destination of Canmore, Canada
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This paper examines the outcomes of a collaborative planning exercise in the mountain town destination of Canmore, Canada, and offers a unique view of the experiences and challenges facing community leaders, planners and residents in post-process strategy implementation and monitoring. Diverse resident and stakeholder interests came together in 1994 in a year-long collaboration to develop a Growth Management Strategy (GMS). While short-term process outcomes are reported elsewhere, this paper focuses primarily on the medium- to longer-term outcomes and the experiences of participants eight-nine years after the GMS process ended. Tangible and intangible, as well as direct and indirect outcomes were identified. The results show that some gains appear to have faded overtime, significant challenges were experienced in strategy implementation and monitoring, while growth continued to impact the social-cultural fabric of the community. However, a number of positive gains and efforts indicate that collaborative processes complemented by citizen-based strategic visioning and strategic planning can be valuable for direction setting, growth management and sustainable community development in destinations like Canmore. Implications for research and practice are discussed. The study also suggests the need for a new planning paradigm to manage such complex community domains. 2011 Taylor & Francis.
