Toronto's Chief Planner, Gregg Lintern, posted this on Twitter a few days (if you can't see it below, click here):

A couple things came to mind when I saw this.

First, it's a reminder that census data is painfully slow. Five years is a long time and a lot can and will change during that time period, including the kind of built form that people are living in.

Second, I agree with Gregg. Toronto is in the process of transforming into a majority apartment/condo dwelling city (if it hasn't already), and it signals a pretty important juncture in our city's history.

It also begs an important question: How should our planning response change and adjust as this percentage of urban dwellers continues to creep upward?

There were some big announcements in the planning world this past week here in the Greater Toronto Area. Gregg Lintern (follow him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Toronto (he was previously the acting chief planner following Jennifer Keesmaat’s departure) and Andrew Whittemore (couldn’t find him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Mississauga.

As I went through the articles announcing the above appointments, I couldn’t help but be reminded that this region is at an exciting and pivotal moment in its history. All of the talk is about improving urban mobility (i.e. becoming less dependent on cars); intensifying around transit stations (as well as gently intensifying neighborhoods); making downtown a better place for families; and so on.

It can be easy to feel defeated in this big bad world of city making. Oftentimes things seem to get reduced to either urban vs. suburban rhetoric or, as if nothing else matters, this one simple question: “But, how tall is the building?” So its nice to know that those at the helm continue to see endless opportunity in this region. I know that I wouldn’t want to be doing what I’m doing anywhere else.

Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash

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When I was in Miami at the beginning of this month I missed an interesting event that I normally would have attended. It was a conversation between the Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, and the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan.

Sadik-Khan was appointed under the Bloomberg administration and quite famously oversaw a huge number of urban changes in New York. Projects such as the addition of hundreds of kilometers of new bike lanes and the creation of 60 new pedestrian plazas across the city – including the one in Times Square.

I was bummed I couldn’t attend, but thankfully Keesmaat wrote a post on her blog following the event and the Metcalf Foundation shared videos of the conversation. 

Here’s a piece that I liked from Keesmaat’s blog post:

“But she also pointed out that when they demonstrated what could be done, when they quickly mobilized around action, residents clamoured for similar changes in their neighbourhoods. Not surprisingly, this is why her book is called Streetfight – because it is a fight. City building is often the battle of ideologies, and when you’re trying to change the status quo, there is always a significant demographic of the population that is fully committed to maintaining business-as-usual.”

If you have some time, you can also click here to watch the videos. There’s about an hour and a half worth of video, so you might want to open up a bottle of wine or something.