On January 16, 2018, Waterloo's City Council unanimously approved the proposed neighbourhood strategy, and have given the go-ahead to pursue feedback from the community.
The strategy identifies three categories ("pillars") for action:
Pillar 1: Encourage neighbourhood interactions
Pillar 2: Empower neighbours to lead
Pillar 3: Build a corporate City culture and policy environment that support neighbourhood-led and delivered initiatives
Actions that fall under these categories include creating a culture of neighbourliness, building genuine connections between residents, providing more opportunities and indoor spaces for neighbours to connect, providing training to neighbourhood groups regarding volunteerism, and more.
With the first draft approved, and their final round of public engagement recently concluded on February 11, 2018, their next steps are to go back to Council, based on the feedback they heard, with a revised strategy that is aligned with the communities' priorities and goals for Waterloo neighbourhoods.
Also, importantly for other neighbourhood developers or municipalities getting started in neighbourhood work, in January 2017 the City of Waterloo completed a scan of municipalities leading neighbourhood strategies. Read their report for a comparison of strategies in eight single and lower-tier municipalities across Canada, as well as an overview of five different types of strategies that municipalities are adopting.