I just got my tickets for NXT City Night, happening Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 6:30pm here in downtown Toronto.
If you’re not familiar with NXT City Prize, it’s an annual urban design competition where young Canadians (35 years of age or younger) submit ideas to improve the built environment. The top submissions win a total of $9,000 in prize money and the winning idea gets paired up with the City of Toronto work on actually implementing it. That’s the best part.
The 2015 finalists have already been announced, here, but the top submissions will be announced at NXT City Night. The Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, will be there, along with the competition’s very impressive jury.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of what makes cities great often happens through citizen-led grassroots movements.
The High Line in New York – which today attracts over 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be responsible for over $2.2 billion in new economic activity – was really the work of 2 friends who thought that preserving and repurposing the High Line was a cool idea. Which is why in 1999 they founded a non-profit called Friends of the High line. Amazing things happen when people and passion get involved.
So I would encourage you to grab a ticket and join me at NXT City Night next week. Tickets are $25, but if you use the coupon code ATHISCITY, you’ll get $5 off your ticket :)
The event is also taking place in a spectacular old warehouse building at 56 Maud Street (formerly St. Andrew’s Market Hall). That alone is reason enough to come. I’ve been inside before. Get your Instagram ready. But if that’s not enough, there’s also:
Open bar including Steam Whistle beer and Pillitteri Estate wine
Catering from Oyster Boy, Kanpai Snack Bar, Thoroughbred and many more
Art installations by Wayward Collective
Beats by Jesse Futerman and A Digital Needle
Local wares from GetFresh, Shopify, Spacing Store and Swipe
I hope to see you there. Make sure to tweet at me if you’ll be there so we can connect in person.
Jennifer Keesmaat is the Chief Planner of Toronto. She was hired for this job in 2012.
She has a Masters in Environmental Studies (Politics and Planning). She is a Registered Professional Planner with the Canadian Institute of Planners. And she was also the founder of 2 (city) planning firms prior to taking the position of Chief Planner for Toronto.
So presumably, she was hired for this job because she possesses some sort of expertise in the realm of planning. I also presume that she is expected to make her opinions known to other people so that informed planning discussions can occur and decisions can be made.
So I find it curious that in some circles, and in the media, Jennifer Keesmaat is being branded as a “troublemaker.”
A lot of the recent chatter stems from the fact that Keesmaat was at odds with Mayor Tory during the Gardiner Expressway East debate (quote via Toronto Life):
Eventually Tory had enough and pulled Keesmaat into a meeting where he basically told her to zip it. “The mayor has said it is perfectly appropriate for staff to make their opinions public, as Ms. Keesmaat has done,” wrote his communications chief, Amanda Galbraith, in a statement. “It is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms.” Keesmaat counters that she never campaigned. “I stated an opinion,” she says simply.
But the “troublemaking” didn’t just start with the Gardiner East. Pretty much since the moment she took the position of Chief Planner and launched her own blog (ownyourcity.ca), she was dubbed a shit disturber. (Those bloggers!)
But if you ask me, these criticisms stem from an old and outdated way of thinking.
The last thing we need from government is less transparency and more politicking. We should be working towards more, not less, information. Even if that information doesn’t butter our metaphorical bread.
What do you think?
I think this will make for a great discussion in the comment section below.
I just got my tickets for NXT City Night, happening Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 6:30pm here in downtown Toronto.
If you’re not familiar with NXT City Prize, it’s an annual urban design competition where young Canadians (35 years of age or younger) submit ideas to improve the built environment. The top submissions win a total of $9,000 in prize money and the winning idea gets paired up with the City of Toronto work on actually implementing it. That’s the best part.
The 2015 finalists have already been announced, here, but the top submissions will be announced at NXT City Night. The Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, will be there, along with the competition’s very impressive jury.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of what makes cities great often happens through citizen-led grassroots movements.
The High Line in New York – which today attracts over 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be responsible for over $2.2 billion in new economic activity – was really the work of 2 friends who thought that preserving and repurposing the High Line was a cool idea. Which is why in 1999 they founded a non-profit called Friends of the High line. Amazing things happen when people and passion get involved.
So I would encourage you to grab a ticket and join me at NXT City Night next week. Tickets are $25, but if you use the coupon code ATHISCITY, you’ll get $5 off your ticket :)
The event is also taking place in a spectacular old warehouse building at 56 Maud Street (formerly St. Andrew’s Market Hall). That alone is reason enough to come. I’ve been inside before. Get your Instagram ready. But if that’s not enough, there’s also:
Open bar including Steam Whistle beer and Pillitteri Estate wine
Catering from Oyster Boy, Kanpai Snack Bar, Thoroughbred and many more
Art installations by Wayward Collective
Beats by Jesse Futerman and A Digital Needle
Local wares from GetFresh, Shopify, Spacing Store and Swipe
I hope to see you there. Make sure to tweet at me if you’ll be there so we can connect in person.
Jennifer Keesmaat is the Chief Planner of Toronto. She was hired for this job in 2012.
She has a Masters in Environmental Studies (Politics and Planning). She is a Registered Professional Planner with the Canadian Institute of Planners. And she was also the founder of 2 (city) planning firms prior to taking the position of Chief Planner for Toronto.
So presumably, she was hired for this job because she possesses some sort of expertise in the realm of planning. I also presume that she is expected to make her opinions known to other people so that informed planning discussions can occur and decisions can be made.
So I find it curious that in some circles, and in the media, Jennifer Keesmaat is being branded as a “troublemaker.”
A lot of the recent chatter stems from the fact that Keesmaat was at odds with Mayor Tory during the Gardiner Expressway East debate (quote via Toronto Life):
Eventually Tory had enough and pulled Keesmaat into a meeting where he basically told her to zip it. “The mayor has said it is perfectly appropriate for staff to make their opinions public, as Ms. Keesmaat has done,” wrote his communications chief, Amanda Galbraith, in a statement. “It is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms.” Keesmaat counters that she never campaigned. “I stated an opinion,” she says simply.
But the “troublemaking” didn’t just start with the Gardiner East. Pretty much since the moment she took the position of Chief Planner and launched her own blog (ownyourcity.ca), she was dubbed a shit disturber. (Those bloggers!)
But if you ask me, these criticisms stem from an old and outdated way of thinking.
The last thing we need from government is less transparency and more politicking. We should be working towards more, not less, information. Even if that information doesn’t butter our metaphorical bread.
What do you think?
I think this will make for a great discussion in the comment section below.
“If the decision ultimately of the council is to support the hybrid I think frankly it’ll be a major step backwards and you’re going to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll be very frank, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.”
-Paul Bedford, former chief planner of Toronto
As many of you I’m sure know, I have been a vocal and passionate supporter of removing the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto. I have written about it so many times that a lot of you are probably sick of hearing about it.
I’m sorry if that’s the case. But it’s a hot and important topic in Toronto right now. We’re just over 3 weeks away from City Council finally making a decision. That is scheduled to happen on June 9th and/or 10th.
For the most part though, I was pretty confident that we would ultimately make what many of us believe is the right decision. But then this past week Mayor John Tory went public in his support for the “hybrid” option, which is basically to rebuild the elevated expressway in a slightly different configuration. And that really upset me.
Here’s what that looks like (versus the remove option shown at the top of this post):
Have we learned nothing from our past city building mistakes?
Since that announcement, I went on Twitter every night this week to check out the discussions that were happening around #GardinerEast. And every night it got me so worked up that I then had trouble falling asleep. I have since stopped reading about the Gardiner East before bed.
But rather than just get frustrated, my friend (a fellow city builder named Stephen Job) and I decided to do something about it and create a petition using Change.org.
It is a petition that we will ultimately be sending to Toronto’s entire City Council prior to their June 9 meeting and we hope that you will consider signing it and sharing it with your network – regardless of whether or not you happen to live in Toronto. (Although it’ll certainly help if you’re a taxpayer and voter in the City of Toronto.)
We just finished getting it up and you can check it out and sign it by clicking here.
Images: Toronto Star
“If the decision ultimately of the council is to support the hybrid I think frankly it’ll be a major step backwards and you’re going to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll be very frank, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.”
-Paul Bedford, former chief planner of Toronto
As many of you I’m sure know, I have been a vocal and passionate supporter of removing the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto. I have written about it so many times that a lot of you are probably sick of hearing about it.
I’m sorry if that’s the case. But it’s a hot and important topic in Toronto right now. We’re just over 3 weeks away from City Council finally making a decision. That is scheduled to happen on June 9th and/or 10th.
For the most part though, I was pretty confident that we would ultimately make what many of us believe is the right decision. But then this past week Mayor John Tory went public in his support for the “hybrid” option, which is basically to rebuild the elevated expressway in a slightly different configuration. And that really upset me.
Here’s what that looks like (versus the remove option shown at the top of this post):
Have we learned nothing from our past city building mistakes?
Since that announcement, I went on Twitter every night this week to check out the discussions that were happening around #GardinerEast. And every night it got me so worked up that I then had trouble falling asleep. I have since stopped reading about the Gardiner East before bed.
But rather than just get frustrated, my friend (a fellow city builder named Stephen Job) and I decided to do something about it and create a petition using Change.org.
It is a petition that we will ultimately be sending to Toronto’s entire City Council prior to their June 9 meeting and we hope that you will consider signing it and sharing it with your network – regardless of whether or not you happen to live in Toronto. (Although it’ll certainly help if you’re a taxpayer and voter in the City of Toronto.)
We just finished getting it up and you can check it out and sign it by clicking here.
Images: Toronto Star
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