All municipalities need to think long-term about how their communities will develop and evolve. In the Halifax region, communities have been envisioning the future and outlining their community visions since 2006. The process of charting those future plans is a way for communities to develop a mental picture of what their community will look like, be like and feel like 10, 15, and 20 years into the future. The visioning process provides direction on the desired outcomes of policies and regulations; the actual policies and regulations are developed through subsequent planning processes.
The 2014 Regional Plan commits the Regional Council to the ongoing support and a future commitment to community visioning, including considering the community visions when preparing secondary planning strategies, programs, and plans for service delivery.
The list of approved Community Visions and Action Plans follows. All documents are in PDF format:
- Bedford Waterfront Action Plan
- Fall River Action Plan
- Musquodoboit Harbour Action Plan
- Middle/Upper Sackville/Lucasville Vision
- Spryfield Vision
- Penhorn Vision
- Woodside Vision and Action Plan
The Community Visioning Program—2006 to today
The first Regional Plan in 2006 identified community visioning as a vital process to inform the future creation of secondary, or community, plans. The process was designed to help implement the Regional Plan at the community level, including the Regional Centre and in other growth centres. In addition to the Vision for the Regional Centre, community visions were approved by Regional Council to guide future secondary planning, policy development, business planning, and overall service delivery in eight communities. The program was suspended in the fall of 2011 and was re-examined during the Regional Plan's five-year review. The revised Regional Plan, adopted in 2014, included two new community visioning policies which remain in effect today.