Determining Highest & Best Use Under Zoning, Capital, and Political Constraints
How governments, Indigenous Nations, and institutional landowners identify development paths that are not just theoretically optimal, but realistically executable within regulatory, financial, and political realities.
Executive Snapshot
This decision pathway illustrates how First Nation leadership evaluated a clean-slate land opportunity to determine what development would genuinely serve the Nation and the surrounding region—economically, socially, and across generations.
Client Type: First Nations, Governments
Decision Context: Undeveloped, urban-adjacent land with access to regional infrastructure and services
Core Question: What development mix will create sustainable jobs, own-source revenue, and missing services—rather than short-term land monetization
Polaris Lens: Regional population and demographics, education and workforce readiness, infrastructure capacity, service gaps, retail leakage, and industry demand
Outcome: A data-driven development pathway aligned with real regional needs, long-term economic independence, and generational stewardship
The Decision Context
A First Nation in Saskatchewan controlled a large, undeveloped land parcel located immediately adjacent to an urban centre. The site had direct access to regional transportation corridors and proximity to existing municipal services, creating a rare clean-slate opportunity for long-term development.
Unlike constrained redevelopment sites, this land was not burdened by legacy uses, contamination, or obsolete infrastructure. The question facing leadership was not how to retrofit an existing asset, but how to responsibly determine what should be built—starting from first principles.
The Nation’s objective extended beyond land monetization. Leadership sought to understand how development could create sustained employment, generate own-source revenue, and deliver missing services and infrastructure—while strengthening regional resilience for both the Nation and surrounding communities.
To inform this decision, a comprehensive 30-minute drive regional analysis was undertaken, examining population trends, demographics, education gaps, workforce participation, infrastructure capacity, healthcare access, retail leakage, industry composition, and public service deficits. The intent was to identify not just what could physically fit on the land, but what the region genuinely needed—and what could be sustained over generations.
The core challenge was alignment: choosing land uses that matched real market demand, workforce readiness, servicing capacity, and cultural priorities, rather than importing generic development models that would struggle to perform in a Saskatchewan context.
Leadership required a disciplined framework to translate data into a coherent development pathway—one that balanced economic independence, community well-being, and long-term stewardship of the land.
The Wrong Way to Approach a Clean-Slate Development Decision
Treating a clean-slate First Nation land opportunity as a conventional real estate exercise is the fastest way to undermine long-term outcomes.
A common failure pattern is to begin with preconceived development types—industrial parks, retail strips, residential subdivisions—or to react to external proposals brought forward by developers, operators, or adjacent municipalities.
This approach typically leads to:
Prioritizing land monetization before understanding regional need
Importing generic development models that do not fit local demographics or workforce capacity
Chasing short-term revenue without building long-term employment or skills transfer
Overlooking missing services and infrastructure that constrain participation by community members
Creating economic activity around the Nation rather than within it
When development decisions are made without first understanding population trends, education pathways, workforce readiness, infrastructure gaps, and service deficits, projects may appear viable on paper but struggle to deliver durable benefits.
In a Saskatchewan context—where labour availability, service access, and market depth vary widely by region—this often results in stalled projects, underutilized assets, and continued dependency rather than economic independence.
Leadership recognized that repeating this pattern would risk locking the land into uses that generate limited jobs, limited resilience, and limited generational value.
The Polaris Decision Framework
Polaris approached this engagement as a clean-slate systems design challenge rather than a real estate or land-use exercise.
The starting point was not land form, density, or financial yield, but a fundamental question: What is missing in this region—and how can land development be used to close those gaps in a way that creates jobs, services, and long-term independence for the Nation?
The framework unfolded in deliberate sequence.
First, a comprehensive regional analysis was conducted across a 30-minute drive radius to establish an evidence-based understanding of population growth, age distribution, household composition, education attainment, labour force participation, income levels, and migration patterns. This ensured development decisions were anchored in who actually lives in—and will live in—the region.
Second, workforce readiness and education pathways were examined to identify where skills existed, where gaps constrained participation, and where targeted development could realistically employ community members rather than rely on imported labour.
Third, infrastructure and service capacity were assessed, including transportation access, healthcare availability, childcare, utilities, and community services. These elements were treated as economic enablers rather than social afterthoughts, recognizing that participation in employment depends on the presence of supporting systems.
Fourth, a market and industry gap analysis was undertaken to identify unmet demand, retail leakage, missing services, and business categories capable of sustaining operations in a Saskatchewan context. The focus was on uses that could both perform financially and deliver regional benefit.
Finally, potential development pathways were evaluated against cultural priorities, governance capacity, implementation sequencing, and long-term stewardship considerations. This ensured the resulting strategy was not only viable, but governable and adaptable over time.
The outcome was not a fixed master plan, but a prioritized development pathway—one that aligned land use with real demand, workforce capacity, infrastructure readiness, and generational objectives.
This framework allowed leadership to move from “What could we build?” to “What should we build, in what order, and why?”
What Changed Because of This Work
Before this engagement, development discussions were largely shaped by external proposals. Plans were brought forward by outside parties with their own objectives, timelines, and return requirements. While some early development had occurred, it was disconnected from a broader economic system and struggled to perform—creating activity without creating momentum.
Decision-making had become reactive. Opportunities were evaluated individually, often without a clear understanding of how they contributed to employment, service access, workforce participation, or long-term prosperity for the Nation as a whole.
This work shifted the lens entirely.
Rather than asking whether a given proposal should proceed, leadership reframed the core question: What does a prosperous Nation look like in twenty, thirty, and fifty years—and how can this land be used deliberately to support that future?
By grounding decisions in population trends, demographics, education pathways, workforce readiness, infrastructure capacity, and regional service gaps, leadership moved away from externally driven ideas toward internally authored strategy. Development was no longer evaluated based on immediate excitement or perceived opportunity, but on whether it strengthened the full social and economic ecosystem of the Nation.
The land ceased to be viewed as a site for isolated projects and instead became a strategic instrument—capable of delivering jobs, services, skills development, and own-source revenue in a coordinated and sequenced way.
Most importantly, leadership gained the confidence to pause, challenge, or decline proposals that did not align with long-term Nation-building objectives. Decisions were no longer about filling land quickly, but about stewarding it wisely.
What changed was not just the development plan, but governance itself: from reacting to what others brought forward, to setting the terms of development based on what would genuinely serve the Nation and the broader region for generations to come.
Where This Pattern Applies
This decision pathway applies wherever leadership is responsible for stewarding land that carries long-term social, economic, and generational significance—particularly when development pressure comes from outside rather than from an internally defined vision.
It is especially relevant to:
First Nations with urban-adjacent or highway-accessible lands seeking to move beyond project-by-project development toward long-term economic independence
Clean-slate or underdeveloped sites where the opportunity is to design a system from first principles, rather than retrofit legacy uses
Communities experiencing service, infrastructure, or employment gaps despite nearby economic activity
Leadership teams evaluating external proposals and seeking a defensible framework to determine what aligns with long-term Nation-building goals
Regions where development decisions affect not only the landowner, but the broader economic ecosystem over decades
In each of these contexts, the central challenge is the same: shifting from reacting to what is proposed, to deliberately choosing what should be built—and in what sequence—to support prosperity across generations.
This pattern is not about maximizing short-term returns. It is about using land as a strategic instrument to build capacity, resilience, and independence over time.
Discuss a Similar Decision
Decisions involving land, sovereignty, and long-term prosperity rarely announce themselves as urgent—but their consequences compound for generations.
Polaris works with First Nations, governments, and institutions at moments where leadership must step back from individual proposals and ask more fundamental questions: What future are we building, who does it serve, and what sequence of decisions will get us there?
If you are stewarding land with long-term significance, facing external development pressure, or seeking to move from reactive decision-making to a deliberate, data-informed pathway for prosperity, we welcome a strategic conversation.
These discussions are exploratory by design—focused on understanding context, constraints, and long-term objectives before solutions are considered.