Session Registration

Session 1: Foundations of Land Use Planning:  Gain a clear understanding of how land use planning works in Ontario. Learn who makes decisions, how planning policies are formed, and how systemic and historical forces have shaped development patterns, displacement, and exclusion. 

Session 2: Navigating Planning Processes: Learn to stay informed about planning activity in your area. This session covers how to interpret development proposals, engage city planners and councillors, and prepare strategic, community-informed responses to planning and development applications. 

Session 3: Mapping Assets and Matching Tools: Identify your community’s physical, social, and political assets and use structured analysis tools like SWOT to assess local conditions. Learn how to match your goals — such as affordable housing or community infrastructure — with the right policy, financial, and grassroots strategies. 

Session 4: Lessons from the Field: Explore successful community-led planning efforts from Toronto and beyond. Learn how grassroots groups have shifted narratives, built broad coalitions, and won meaningful concessions and policy change by aligning community knowledge with strategic action. 

Session 5: Building a Community-Led Plan: Pull all your learning together to develop a practical, actionable plan for your community. Learn how to define goals, design inclusive outreach strategies, build coalitions, budget resources, and push for implementation through policy and public engagement. 

This program is designed to support your long-term leadership and community impact. Participants will receive: 

• A strong foundation in how land use planning systems work and how to intervene 
• Practical skills for analyzing planning documents and responding to development proposals 
• A step-by-step process to create a customized, community-led plan 
• Tools like glossaries, strategic planning workbooks, stakeholder maps, and narrative frameworks 
• Opportunities to build relationships with other resident leaders, grassroots groups, and planning professionals 

In July, we invite leaders to apply to be mentees in the From the Ground Up program. Those invited to be mentees access the public sessions, dedicated mentorship time with leading urban leaders,  as well as access to Urban Land Institute (ULI) Toronto events. This additional support further builds community, resources leaders with the connections and guidance on building strategies to achieve their community goals, and opens the door to stronger relationships with city-building leaders squarely within the land use planning and development sector.

Across the Greater Toronto Area, place-based non-profits – Non-profit organizations with established roots in their communities – and resident leaders are working to preserve affordable housing, protect community spaces, and sustain culturally meaningful local businesses. Yet, these same communities are often excluded from the very planning processes that shape their neighborhoods — from Official Plans to Secondary Plans and development approvals.   

When grassroots voices are left out, the consequences are clear: displacement, disconnection, and deepening inequities. From the Ground Up is here to change that.