Local governments have a key role to play in implementing climate innovations as they have jurisdiction over a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC³) is the first longitudinal study exploring climate innovation in Canadian municipalities. A tri-university research collaborative, it focuses on British Columbia (BC), whose voluntary efforts to set and meet climate change goals were far more ambitious than those offered by the federal government (and almost any other province in North America at the time). These efforts included introducing a carbon tax and the Climate Action Charter voluntary agreement in 2007. Since then, 187 of the 190 local governments in BC have signed the Charter to take action on climate change. Research in the first phase of MC³explored the dynamics of innovative local responses to the coordinated suite of government legislation, complimentary policy instruments, financial incentives and partnerships with quasi-institutional partners. In the second phase, the 11 original case studies were revisited to explore the nature of transformative change in development paths and indicators of change. Methods include sentiment analysis, decomposition analysis of regional/local emissions, and modelling relationships between climate action co-benefits and trade-offs. This paper provides a synthesis of research outcomes and their implications for environmental governance at multiple scales and the potential of policy innovations to accelerate transformation towards carbon neutral economies. Key policy insights

Effective resource planning incorporates people-place relationships, allowing these efforts to be inclusive of the different local beliefs, interests, activities and needs. 'Geovisualizations' can serve as potentially powerful tools for facilitating 'place-conscious' resource planning, as they can be developed with high degrees of realism and accuracy, allowing people to recognize and relate to them as 'real places'. However, little research has been done on this potential, and the place-based applications of these visual tools are poorly understood. This study takes steps toward addressing this gap by exploring the relationship between sense of place and 'visualization of place'. Residents of the Capital Regional District of BC, Canada, were surveyed about their relationship with local coastal places, concerns for the coast, and how they mentally visualize these places. Factor analysis identified four sense of place dimensions - nature protection values, community and economic well-being values, place identity and place dependence, and four coastal concerns dimensions - ecological, private opportunities, public space and boating impacts. Visualization data were coded and treated as dependent variables in a series of logistic regressions that used sense of place and coastal concerns dimensions as predictors. Results indicated that different aspects of sense of place and (to a lesser degree) concerns for places influence the types of elements people include in their mental visualization of place. In addition, sense of place influenced the position and perspective people assume in these visualizations. These findings suggest that key visual elements and perspectives speak to different place relationships, which has implications for developing and using geovisualizations in terms of what elements should be included in tools and (if appropriate) depicted as affected by potential management or development scenarios.

The COVID-19 outbreak has revealed multiple vulnerabilities in community systems. Effectively addressing these vulnerabilities and increasing local resilience requires thinking beyond solely pandemic responses and taking more holistic perspectives that integrate sustainability objectives. Pandemic preparedness and climate action in particular share similarities in terms of needs and approaches for community sustainability. This paper reflects on what the outbreak has illustrated regarding community vulnerability to crises, with a focus on local economy and production, economic diversification, and social connectivity. The paper argues for integrated approaches to community development that increase our capacity to respond to both public health and climate crises.

Systems models can support community planning, and by engaging local government and community stakeholders, these models can be designed to capture a comprehensive but manageable range of key interests, concerns, and values. This study explores a participatory approach for designing a community systems modeling exercise. The research involved convening focus groups of local government and diverse community stakeholders in Squamish, Canada, in order to discuss local issues and possible futures for the community. Focus group feedback was used to inform the development of a model of relationships between development paths (reflecting different densities) and multiple community outcomes, such as access to amenities and education, walkability, parks/trails, food and farm systems, public transit, housing affordability, and local employment. A participatory approach to modeling yielded many benefits, including alignment with normative participatory planning concepts, effective model scoping, accessing additional information sources, and enhancing local social capital and investment in the project.