Tag: land & development conference

• The pre-meeting is often better than most panel discussions

  

  When you’re preparing for a panel discussion, one of the things you usually do is have a pre-meeting with all of the participants. The purpose of this meeting is, of course, to get to know everyone and decide on what you’re going to talk about. Everything then gets buttoned up and you have the actual panel.

  But one of the things I’ve been feeling lately is that oftentimes the pre-meeting is more interesting than the actual panel. And that’s because everyone is more relaxed and everyone is engaged in a genuine discussion that hasn’t been pre-meditated. Nobody wants to hear boring and overly-scripted answers. Natural and free-flowing discussions are so much more engaging.

  So I’m going to try and keep this in mind and not put on a sucky panel next week at the land & development conference (which, by the way, will be in person). I’m moderating a panel on innovations in project design, delivery, and building operations. If you’d like to join, you can register over here.

  2022.05.31

• Anachronistic employment areas

  Today I was at the Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I started live tweeting during the breakfast, but my vintage iPhone 6 couldn’t keep up, so I had to stop. Some insights throughout the day. But a lot of what you would expect. I suppose it’s more about the networking.

  I would, however, like to reiterate something that Ken Greenberg mentioned about Employment Areas/Lands in Toronto. For those of you who aren’t familiar, these lands are essentially intended to serve one, and only one, purpose: employment. And the process for introducing a mix of uses, including residential, is an onerous one to say the least.

  I appreciate why this is the case. But I agree with Greenberg in that this kind of single use zoning is antiquated. It does not reflect the realities of the market today. There are other mechanisms we can use to maintain and provide for employment, and ensure that we don’t end up with a city of all residential.

  2018.05.15