MCP: What are we really talking about?

This post come from Kate, who attended the Placing Creativity Conference in June and who has been involved in MCP for a number of years.

On June 9-10, some of the best minds in the field of cultural mapping gathered at the MArS Centre in Toronto for the “Placing Creativity” workshop. It was powerful stuff. We were particularly fortunate to have pioneer thinker Colin Mercer on hand, all the way from the U.K..  In reflecting on progress I had made in my understanding of municipal cultural planning and mapping during the event, one of Colin Mercer’s points stood out: Cultural planning is not planning for culture.

“Of course!” I reflected—MCP is about applying cultural resources to address broad civic challenges, it’s about integrating culture into all municipal planning.  We all knew this, yet it was a clarifying statement, a pointed reminder.

While it was an enlightening comment for the practitioners in the room, the statement itself, to any uninitiated person, is simply paradoxical.

It led me to reflect that MCP is burdened by inadequate definitions, explanations and nomenclature. It’s something MCP cogniscenti have to address, if MCP is going to be taken seriously as a part of planning practice in Ontario.

What is MCP?

So what is municipal cultural planning? MCPP defines it as "The strategic and integrated planning and use of cultural resources for economic and community development." This gives us a good indication of what MCP should do for us. But it’s not so good at describing what MCP is. A more explanatory description I’ve been playing with is:
“MCP is a municipally-led effort to systematically identify cultural resources within the municipality, to recognize them as assets, and to plan for their incorporation into all aspects of the municipality’s work in order to maximize their contribution to the community’s economic and social vitality.”

We could rename MCP to more clearly emphasize that it’s not about planning for culture. I like “Creative Economy Planning for Municipalities”, or  “Planning With Culture For Creative Economies”.  But using the term “Creative Economy” has its pitfalls, as the Floridian term is so broad, embracing everything from accounting to law. Planning for the creative economy could result in a plan that excludes vital components of culture and still advances economic transformation. One can imagine an unfortunate situation where the creative economy is burgeoning, but cultural landscapes are being paved over or library branches are being closed.

A Plan + Planning

There is a further definitional challenge. MCP encompasses both a strategic planning process, involving the development of “a Plan”--a guiding document-- and, the applied practice of planning using culture as conducted by municipalities—the day-to-day decision-making that implements the Plan that has been developed. This use of a cultural lens by municipalities is intangible and ongoing; it’s undertaken by certified Planners, and most of us non-Planners don’t really know much about it.

When MCP cogniscenti talk about “engaging in municipal cultural planning”, rarely are we clear about whether we mean Plan creation (by the community and stakeholders) or Plan implementation by Planners. 

Renaming the Plan

I propose that re-naming “the Plan” would assist with some of these challenges. 

I suggest that the plans produced by municipalities to guide their municipal cultural planning be called: “Cultural Resource Use Plans”.  This name solves our initial paradox by clearly indicating that it’s a plan for the USE of culture, that culture is a resource to be exploited.

Such a plan would guide the exploitation of the resource. But this name, borrowed from more traditional resource planning practice, suggests not just use, but wise use. A Culture Resource Use Plan would, like any natural resource use plan, place part of its focus on supporting the resource base in order to promote sustained use of the resource over time.  A plan to care for cultural resources could be a legitimate section in a CRU Plan, or it could be a subsidiary plan, like a Master Plan for Culture, to which the CRU Plan refers. The outcome of changing terminology in this way will be that culture will be strengthened by MCP.