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Creating sustainable communities: skills and learning in Ontario’s small urban municipalities

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Abstract

This article presents the pilot study results of a province-wide survey of skills and learning in sustainable community development in Ontario, Canada. The pilot project focuses on the testing of an online survey to examine skills building for creating sustainable communities in Ontario’s small urban municipalities. The survey examined the generic, technical and specialist skills, whether they are skills already acquired and/or required by professionals and practitioners for creating sustainable communities. The survey targeted 74 small urban municipalities and 300 respondents by profession. Building sustainable communities require ‘upskilling’ of the workforce as it poses a challenge to those hoping to make a real progress and development at the local level.

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Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge Lakehead University’s Office of the Vice-President for Research Development and Innovation for the funding of the research through the Strategic Grant on Sustainability Studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sustainability Sciences, Lakehead University, 500 University Avenue, Orillia, ON, L3V 0B9, Canada

    Rosario Adapon Turvey, Nandakumar Kanavillil, Christopher Murray & Gerardo Reyes

  2. Department of Geography and the Environment, Lakehead University, Orillia, Canada

    Rosario Adapon Turvey

  3. Department of Biology, Lakehead University, Orillia, Canada

    Nandakumar Kanavillil

  4. Department of Physics, Lakehead University, Orillia, Canada

    Christopher Murray

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  1. Rosario Adapon Turvey
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  2. Nandakumar Kanavillil
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Correspondence to Rosario Adapon Turvey.

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Turvey, R.A., Kanavillil, N., Murray, C. et al. Creating sustainable communities: skills and learning in Ontario’s small urban municipalities. Environ Dev Sustain 20, 1173–1190 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-017-9933-9

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