Municipal Innovation Network Gathers Momentum

Efforts by Communities of Tomorrow to build a Municipal Innovation Network in Saskatchewan are beginning to show positive results. A series of meetings and consultations that started in late 2008 are now resulting in a direct focus on innovative solutions to municipal infrastructure challenges.

“We believe that our municipalities will be the centre piece for Saskatchewan becoming the innovative infrastructure capitol of the world,” said Communities of Tomorrow President John Lee. “They are the primary field laboratories for new technologies and systems, and will be the main beneficiaries of innovative approaches.”

With that focus in mind, CT asked municipal infrastructure consultants Bland Brown and Harlan Ritchie to do extensive face-to-face consultations with city managers and engineers at Saskatchewan’s 13 cities. They sought to discover the most common infrastructure challenges and to test the cities’ interest in pursuing innovative solutions.

“This process has been a real education,” said Bland Brown, a former municipal engineer with the City of Regina. “We have seen a genuine interest in looking at new solutions to age old problems in building and maintaining infrastructure systems.”

As a result of these consultations, CT is now preparing to facilitate insighting sessions with the staff of several cities, which will seek to draw out creative approaches to their infrastructure challenges.

“It is really difficult to focus on innovation when your resources are committed to just keeping up with day to day demands,” said Bland Brown. “We are trying to help these folks take a bit of a time out from the every day routine, to let them stretch their thinking.”

CT President John Lee presented the vision of a Municipal Innovation Network to the annual meeting of Saskatchewan city Mayors and City Managers in May.

“Our mission was to get a commitment from the senior leadership of these communities to participate in this process,” said John Lee. “We emerged from that meeting with a strong endorsement for CT’s continuing mandate to build partnerships between municipalities, industry and the research community in this province.”

The first of the municipal insighting sessions is scheduled for this fall.