Upcoming Webinars
Nov 25th
The Bentway: Unlocking Unexpected Public Spaces.
Ilana Altman
Co-Executive Director at The Bentway,
Toronto,Canada
Guest
Dec 9th
Well+Being:
Will-Power is Needed, but is Not Enough.
Gil Penalosa
Founder and Chair, 8 80 Cities.
Toronto, Canada
Guest
Jan 13th
Streets Reimagined: for People and Planet.
Skye Duncan and
Fabrizio Prati
Global Designing Cities Initiative
Guests
Jan 27th
Aging Playfully: Reimagining the Possibilities.
Maxwell Hartt
Director, Population and Place Research Lab,
Queen’s U. Canada
Guest
View and share all past sessions
The Bentway: Unlocking Unexpected Public Spaces
Key Takeaways Public space can be framed as a public-health tool and investment to promote well-being. Pilots including lighting, murals, intersection experiments should be paired with long-term standards for wayfinding, consistent streetscape, lighting. Summary The...
Pedestrian Safety Crisis
Key Takeaways Policy choices that continue giving priority to right-of-way for cars make streets more unsafe. Most safety tools and design solutions already exist, but political will and inequitable deployment often act as barriers. Summary Pedestrian deaths,...
Urban Life and Sustainable Behaviour
Key Takeaways Cities should be assessed for their urban spaces’ potential to invite people: does a project make walking, cycling, local shopping, and using shared facilities the easiest option? Urban design that invites sustainable behaviour. Easy bike/walk routes,...
Retrofitting Suburbia for Urgent Challenges
Key Takeaways Three principal retrofit strategies: redevelopment, re-inhabitation / adaptive reuse, and regreening. Vast underused parking lots, dead malls and low-rise office parks are prime sites to address housing, climate, health, equity and fiscal stress in...
San Francisco’s Parks: JFK Promenade and Sunset Dunes
Key Takeaways Parks are necessary for physical, mental, social and civic well-being. Placemaking can be paired with climate adaptation. Sunset Dunes combines pedestrianization with dune restoration to manage coastal erosion and climate impacts. Summary San Francisco...
BIKE BUS:
Moving Cities Toward Joyful, Child-Friendly Streets
Key Takeaways Bike Bus (supervised group bike rides to school) rapidly creates visible demand for active travel and delivers immediate health and social benefits. Bike buses reduce parental anxiety, build social capital, and normalize cycling where infrastructure...
Empty Homes, Crowded Cities:
Exploring the Global Housing Paradox
Key Takeaways The global housing paradox: millions of empty homes coexist with an acute affordability and housing-quality crisis. Practical innovations such as market intermediaries and startups; vacant-space registries; adaptive use models such as room-sharing...
Biidaasige Park:
Connecting Nature and the City.
Key Takeaways Flood protection and ecological restoration can be integrated at a large scale. The Port Lands project is a seven-year, $1.4B effort that renaturalizes the mouth of the Don River while lifting land out of a regional floodplain. Indigenous engagement and...
Streetfight:
Handbook for an Urban Revolution.
Key Takeaways Streets must be reclaimed as vibrant public places, where urban life happens, rather than car conduits or parking lots. Tactical, temporary pilots (such as paint, barrels, and beach chairs) demonstrate possibilities quickly, build political will, and...
Going for Zero:
Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future.
Key Takeaways Climate action and urban imperatives require a fundamental shift from acquiring new objects to the reintegration and healing of existing cities and infrastructure. Architects, planners and citizens have the agency to steer decarbonization toward...
Rethinking Smart Cities.
Leaving no-one behind.
Key Takeaways Co-governance, legal frameworks, and regulations must evolve alongside technology to leave no one behind. Any smart initiative must improve quality of life, equity and inclusion, not merely gather data or cut costs. All city sizes and budgets can get...
Nature Based Solutions for Managing Stormwater:
Creating Parks & Urban Resilience.
Key Takeaways ⇢ Public parks offer scalable sites for stormwater capture, flood mitigation, heat buffering and biodiversity gains. ⇢ Aligning parks, stormwater, and planning departments can enable the creation of larger capital and operational funds, unlocking...
Dear Participant
This bi-weekly webinar is to contribute creating passionate advocates on doing equitable, sustainable, playful, cities, where everyone lives healthier and happier.
Every other Tuesday I invite fascinating people to share interesting transformative actions. It’s 60 minutes, where in the first half the guest presents, and then we have a dialogue considering the questions and comments from participants.
I am very grateful to always have hundreds of participants, from over 25 countries, a few over 40! They are from all backgrounds, some work in public sector, others private, NGOs, others in active retirement; we also have elected officials, academics, media, etc.
Please invite others to watch live. Also, share the recordings widely, especially with decision makers, community groups, advocates, students, anyone interested in people and cities.
Kindest regards, GIL.