Thanks to my friend Darren Davis, I just recently learned about something called The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize. Named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, the prize is a biennial award that honors cities who have made, “outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world.” Along with the prize comes $300,000 (Singapore Dollars), which is about $287,000 Canadian as of today. The 2016 Prize Laureate is Medellín, Colombia. Over the past two decades, the city has transformed itself from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one that has become a model for social inclusion and urban innovation. Here is a video that talks about the transformation. It’s a bit cheesy, but it does provide a high-level overview of their urban initiatives. A lot of them will serve as a reminder about the importance of urban connectivity. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may also remember that my good friend Alex Feldman (VP at U3 Advisors) wrote a guest post about Medellín after he visited the city for the World Urban Forum almost two years ago. That post was called, What cities could learn from Medellín. It’s worth mentioning that the runners-up for this year’s World City Prize were Auckland, Sydney,

Yesterday my friend Darren Davis out of Auckland introduced me to a 3-part blog series that he recently did with Andreas Lindinger out of Vienna, which looked at pedestrian zones and shared spaces across these two cities.

The first post looks at the redesign of Vienna's Mariahilferstraße (important shopping street that I’m somewhat glad I get to write and not try and pronounce). The second post looks at Auckland’s overall shared space program. And the third one offers a direct comparison between the two cities. The posts are all hosted on an interesting blog called Vienncouver (Vienna + Vancouver), which I am now following as of this morning.

Compared to both Auckland and Vienna, Toronto is behind when it comes to pedestrian zones and shared spaces. So it’s interesting to see how other cities have managed to pull it off. It’s also further proof that you don’t have to be a warm climate city to have amazing public spaces.

Image: Vienna via Vienncouver (notice the cars and pedestrians mixed in)