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What's working, what's not and what's next for Canada's cities. Presented by noted urbanist Mary Rowe, president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute.
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Many of our cities’ biggest challenges right now are playing out inside public libraries. Library staff come face-to-face daily with issues relating to homelessness, substance use, mental and physical health, and, of course, education. As they continue to adapt to their communities' increasing needs, their funding is not growing.
Two library CEOs from opposite ends of the country join host Mary Rowe to talk about the reality of running a library in 2025. Åsa Kachan is the CEO and chief librarian for Halifax Public Libraries. Pilar Martinez is the CEO of Edmonton Public Libraries.
You can read more on this topic in CUI’s report, Overdue: The Case for Canada’s Public Libraries.
https://canurb.org/wp-content/uploads/CUI_Overdue_report_10.04.23.pdf
The increased threat of extreme weather has made it increasingly clear that we need to better prepare for - and respond to - these events.
Author Adam Greenfield thinks one answer is to create a new kind of institution at the heart of each neighbourhood. He calls it a “lifehouse”, a community hub to provide refuge and resources during emergencies, as well as ongoing services like daycare and workshops. Adam talks to host Mary Rowe about what a lifehouse is, how he took inspiration from the Occupy Sandy hurricane relief effort, and why getting to know your neighbour may be the radical thing you can do.
Adam Greenfield’s book is called Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire.
Further reading: “How resilient is New Orleans Today” at The Brookings Institution.
Last summer, Beth Sanders was getting ready to lead a new planning department for Jasper, Alberta when the municipality was evacuated due to wildfires. The fires ended up destroying about a third of the town.
Beth joins Mary to talk about the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding, as well as lessons for other municipalities facing increasing threats from climate change.
Beth is the Director of Urban Design and Standards for the Municipality of Jasper and the author of Nest City.
It’s no secret that Canada is in a housing crisis. The gap between incomes and housing prices has been growing for decades, as governments of all political stripes have promised to ease the burden. So what will it take to finally end it? Murtaza Haider and Carolyn Whitzman join host Mary Rowe to talk about how we got here and what we can do about it.
Carolyn Whitzman is a senior housing researcher at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis. Murtaza Haider is the Executive Director of the Cities Institute at the University of Alberta, where he is also a Professor and the Radhe Krishna Gupta Executive Chair in Cities and Communities.
Festivals can be a great excuse to get out and see something new. But they can also be disruptive to local residents and businesses. So when do they help a place thrive, and when are they more trouble than they’re worth?
CityTalk host Mary Rowe gets the perspectives of two guests who helped shape iconic downtown areas. Tim Tompkins was president of the Times Square Alliance in New York City from 2002 to 2020. He’s now director of the Sustaining Places Initiative at the NYU Marron Institute. And Mark Garner is executive director at Calgary Downtown Association. He’s the former CEO and executive director of Toronto's Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association.
At the Canadian Urban Institute, better, future-proof infrastructure pervades every project and discussion we have. Ahead of the upcoming Ontario Bike Summit in Windsor, host Mary Rowe has a two-wheeled chat with leading advocates for more, better and safer urban cycling systems, including Eleanor McMahon (Share The Road Coalition); Lanrick Bennett Jr. (School of Cities, U of T); Leona Medley (Joe Louis Greenway Partnership); and Anneke Smit (Centre for Cities, Windsor Law). Learn more about the Ontario Bike Summit here.
The title of this episode is shared with a report recently released by the Canadian Urban Institute. It compiles the findings from thousands of community-level placemaking projects along with perspectives on placemaking from leading practitioners, including Jerome Barth of Belleville Placemaking (NYC) and Marc-André Carignan of Kollectif (Mtl.) featured in conversation with host Mary Rowe. Report author Jacquelyn West also discussed key findings with Bridget MacIntosh, a Toronto-based cultural strategist and contributor to the report. Download a copy of Let's Talk About Placemaking here.
Housing and infrastructure present challenges to nations across the globe. CUI's State of Canada's Cities Summit was pleased to welcome Alain Resplendy-Bernard, director of State Buildings for the government of France, as a special guest panellist. CUI board chair Cameron Charlebois also met Alain at our onsite studio for a deeper dive en français. Also, CUI researcher Jacquelyn West speaks to Monique Simard, board chair of Montreal's Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles, considered one of the most successful 'centre-ville' revitalizations in the world. See and hear more about the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
Day 2 of CUI's State of Canada's Summit in Ottawa (December 2024) offered something new to attendees - walking tours of innovative project sites. Our microphones joined Brad Rodgers and Ana Bailao of Dream Unlimited for a tour of Zibi, a net-zero community being developed on the banks of the Ottawa River. Later, we joined Leanne Moussa and Kwende Kefentse along Ottawa's Laurier Avenue to hear about their community redevelopment initiative dubbed The Other Hill. See and hear more about the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
For the final episode gleaned from the State of Canada's Cities Summit, host Mary Rowe introduces a 'blue-ribbon' panel of housing experts recorded at the Beaver Barracks Housing Development in Ottawa. The discussion centres on the evolving roles and responsibilities for all orders of government in solving Canada's housing crisis. See and hear more about the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
Bolstering Canada's local economies has become an instant priority in the wake of proposed actions by the Trump administration. Fortunately, we have no shortage of smart people with innovative solutions already in the works. Canadian Urban Institute CEO Mary Rowe chats with Heather Hachigian, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Management at the School of Business at Royal Roads University in Victoria BC about the 'five pillars' of community wealth building solutions. See and hear more about this program at citytalkcanada.ca
Host Mary Rowe welcomes another 'tariff/no tariff' conversation with Doug Griffiths and Heather Thomson of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, and frank talk about what could, and what shouldn't, happen in this moment of economic uncertainty (crisis? opportunity?) for communities across Canada. See and hear more at citytalkcanada.ca.
We interrupt CUI's post-State of Canada's Cities Summit programming for some timely conversation about economic resilience. There's nothing like the wake-up call of a looming Canada-US trade war to focus the attention of communities everywhere on innovative strategies to generate local strength and reduce impacts of cross-border disruptions. Dan Kelly is the CEO and Chair of the Board of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), whose thousands of members' economic activity represent 50 percent of Canada's GDP. Host Mary Rowe chats with Dan about the ways small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are reinventing themselves and how we can all support the socio-economic vitality they bring to our main streets. See and hear more about CUI's place-making initiatives at canurb.org.
Mention infrastructure, and it's hard not to picture things like public buildings, transit systems and water/power distribution. However, other vital elements of urban society are, or should be, integrated into those things and need to be part of their design. This episode's two featured panels, recorded at CUI's State of Canada's Summit in December 2024, explore those elements - culture and social equity - in the context of Infrastructure. Some of the featured voices include Isabelle Mondou, deputy minister of Heritage Canada, Brian McBay of Vancouver's 221A and Cathie O'Toole, CAO of the Regional Municipality of Halifax. You can see and hear more from the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
The dozen panel discussions recorded in December 2024 on Day One of CUI's State of Canada's Cities Summit revolved around urban infrastructure in all its modern permutations, and how we need to build it better, faster and more sustainably. However, that doesn't preclude its ability to also add beauty and contribute to our collective well-being. The first featured panel in this episode delves into that topic, guided by Alex Bozikovic, architecture critic for The Globe and Mail. And to wrap up the day's proceedings, host Mary Rowe moderates a panel of blue-ribbon 'distillers' of ideas to summarize the gleanings from this second-annual gathering in Ottawa. You can see and hear more at citytalkcanada.ca.
The Canadian Urban Institute's mobile podcast studio at the State of Canada's Cities Summit in Ottawa last December offered CUI staff the opportunity to chat with some of the leading voices attending the event. In this episode, media and communications advisor Anne-Marie Aikins speaks with Carol Bélanger, City Architect for the City of Edmonton... the first such position in Canada. In a similar vein, research associate Léandro Santos caught up with Mathieu Grondin, the newly-appointed Nightlife Commissioner for the City of Ottawa. Later, Anne-Marie returns to chat with Alex Bozikovic, columnist and architecture critic for The Globe and Mail about the relationship between design and infrastructure. See and hear more from the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
More forward-thinking discussions on infrastructure from CUI's State of Canada's Cities Summit, these the first of several recorded by our mobile podcast studio. Featured upfront, host Mary Rowe shares a pre-lunch chat with Leila Ghaffari, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Planning & Environment at Montreal's Concordia University, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Later, Sadhu Johnstone, former City Manager for the City of Vancouver, drops by the studio to talk about his current role as a Climate Lead with the Climate Ready Infrastructure Service, a new CUI initiative in partnership with Housing and Infrastructure Canada. You'll find more resources and details on the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
As host Mary Rowe stated early in this series, once you understand what infrastructure is, you can't help but see it everywhere around you. This episode features two discussions recorded at the State of Canada's Cities Summit in Ottawa last December, both dealing with bricks-and-mortar aspects of infrastructure; a session on securing real estate and lands needed to address the housing gap, and another on perhaps the most urgently needed resource - climate-ready infrastructure. You can see and hear more from the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca.
Where do you start two days of conversation about the issues around infrastructure in all its modern urban permutations? For host Mary Rowe and her team at the Canadian Urban Institute, the answer was obvious - talk first about the mental health crisis affecting most every community. This episode recorded in December 2024 at the State of Canada's Cities Summit in Ottawa features a panel discussion titled Mental Health Matters: Building Supportive Main Streets & Downtowns, as moderated by Paul Johnson, City Manager for the City of Toronto. And CUI vice-president Robert Plitt chats with Andrea Barrack, vice-president of Sustainability and Impact at RBC, the Summit's presenting sponsor, about her takeaways from the sessions. You can see and hear more from the Summit at citytalkcanada.ca
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