Using Data to Plan for Equitable Growth in Halifax
City: Halifax, Canada
Reporting to: Executive Director, Planning and Development
The Challenge
After decades of slow population growth, Halifax has seen a sudden surge of new residents, driven largely by global migration and, secondarily, by people relocating from other parts of Canada in search of lower living costs. Whereas the population once grew by about 1 to 2 percent per year, it has increased by more than 10 percent since 2022. Over this period, Halifax added more than 50,000 residents, bringing its total to roughly half a million today. Development pressure is strong, especially in suburban areas. Yet housing supply is falling short of demand, and the average price of a home has doubled over the past decade.
Halifax planners are updating long-term plans to accommodate growth in the urban core, suburban areas, and across the metro region. However, completing those plans takes years. In the meantime, city leaders are working to accelerate development, especially in the rapidly expanding suburban areas. They passed an interim regional plan that allows new housing to be built faster, and have already identified a number of strong sites well suited for future growth to occur. Halifax is also beginning work on a new suburban plan that will update and enhance land-use policies and regulations to better reflect the needs of suburban communities.
While the long-term planning continues, city leaders aim to establish a clear, data-driven, and policy-aligned process for prioritizing new development, particularly in suburban areas. The goal is to unlock the greatest increase in new housing supply without overloading infrastructure and transportation systems. City leaders also want to ensure that suburban expansion does not create barriers for low-income households, immigrants, and historically marginalized communities in terms of housing affordability and diversity, transit options, or representation of diverse local voices in planning decisions.
Key questions include:
- At which stages of the development and rezoning application processes are delays most commonly occurring?
- What data needs to be collected consistently to measure performance and track improvements?
- How should the city prioritize development sites to maximize housing yield and infrastructure readiness?
- Where are roles and responsibilities unclear or duplicated across agencies, and how could interagency collaboration be enhanced?
- What process improvements could meaningfully shorten approval timelines without compromising technical rigor?
- What best practices from comparable cities could Halifax adapt?
What You’ll Do
The fellow will assess opportunities to remove bottlenecks in development and rezoning approvals and give city leaders tools to strengthen cross-departmental collaboration on these applications. The fellow will also develop a framework for using data to support process improvements and to prioritize development sites that support inclusive growth in accordance with the interim suburban plan. This will involve engaging with a number of internal stakeholders, including the city’s Departments of Planning and Development, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Legal Services, and Transit, as well as Halifax Water, a critical partner on all development reviews. External stakeholders include developers and homebuilders, who are the primary applicants for development approvals, engineering and planning firms that prepare technical submissions, and agencies within Nova Scotia’s provincial government.
Key deliverables will include:
- A data tool kit, including:
- An inventory of available datasets and identified gaps (i.e., GIS, demographic, housing, and transportation data).
- A framework for integrating equity into the analysis.
- A dashboard to visually represent growth and equity metrics for decision makers.
- Data models to assess growth patterns and equity impacts.
- Documentation for ongoing use.
- A report with recommendations for embedding data-driven processes into planning workflows.
- A presentation of findings, equity impacts, and recommended next steps for Halifax city leadership and community stakeholders.
What You’ll Bring
The fellow will be expected to possess the following skills:
- Data Analysis
- Design Thinking
- Mapping (GIS)
- Policy Analysis
- Financial Modeling
- Qualitative Interviewing and Analysis
