City Space

The Globe’s podcast about how to make our cities better is back for another season. Join host Adrian Lee over the course of six episodes as he speaks with global experts and those close to home as we learn what our cities are doing right and what can be improved. Up this season: the real purpose of a capital city, the future of our downtown cores and how a city can prepare for looming climate-change disasters. Listen to our trailer and catch up on season one now. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Public transit is essential to the well-being and growth of a city, but as we all know, it’s hard to get it right. Enrique Peñalosa , a former mayor of Bogota, Colombia once said that “a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” And while that’s definitely something to strive for, how achievable is it, really?

On the last episode of this season, we explore what conditions are necessary to create a thriving public transit system in any city - and what, too often, is ignored. Adrian speaks with Christof Spieler, who helped redesign the Houston bus network, about the public transit blueprint he believes can be applied to all cities. We then hear from David Zipper, an urban mobility expert who worked with Washington and New York City mayors, on why focusing on something he calls ‘mundane mobility’ will benefit the average rider in ways even the flashiest of public transit tech never can. Plus, The Globe’s reporter Eric Andrew Gee, tells Adrian about why his time spent riding the Thunder Bay bus network made it clear how political public transit can be. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Soaring rent costs is a global phenomenon — and the problem is officially in Canadian cities. In 2020, the average price of rental housing in Toronto was more expensive than it was in San Francisco, London and New York. How did we get here? In this episode of City Space, we explore how the crisis in rental housing happened, how it’s affecting the people we really need in our cities, and what we can do about it.  
Adrian speaks to Raquel Rolnik, urban planner and former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing about the worrying global trends of rental housing becoming exposed to financial markets. We then hear from Martine August, an associate professor of planning at the University of Waterloo, who explains the rise in corporate landlordship. Finally, The Globe’s architecture critic Alex Bozikovic explains what’s really standing in the way of affordable housing  in our cities —  and how we can change that.

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Public spaces are often the best parts of a city. But during the pandemic, many of us started to realize how our public spaces, like parks, weren’t quite working for us. In this episode, we hear from three experts: Adri Stark, project manager at Park People and one of the authors of the 2021 Canadian City Parks Report; Leslie Kern, the author of Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World and Anna Zivarts, the director of the Disability Mobility Initiative Program in Washington. In conversation with Adrian, they share how public spaces are failing people in ways we might not often consider, and how we can really make them work for all of us.

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The battle for road space between bikes and cars is a well-known one in many cities. But conversations about being a “bike person” or a “car person” tend to skew more towards identity politics than what the data tells us about how to make a city safe and most efficient for all citizens - no matter how they choose to get around. So why can't we get past our emotional response?

Peter Norton, an associate professor and author of "Fighting Traffic", as well as the new book, "Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving" shares just how cars came to dominate our roads and how they still have a place in contemporary cities. Plus, Adrian talks to Canadian-Danish urban mobility expert Mikael Colville-Andersen about coaching cities around the world to be more bike-friendly. And Adrian comes clean on something you might not expect.

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A generation ago, a middle-class income could buy you a detached home in a big city. Now? Folks are finding they need to set their sights further and further away from any downtown centre if they want to hold fast to that dream. But as populations and climate emergencies rise, experts tell us that urban densification is the necessary path forward. So what do cities have to do to retain the middle-class? And how, exactly, does the middle-class break their addiction to personal space and redefine “making it” when it comes to acquiring housing?

In this episode, we hear from Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s former Chief City Planner and founder of Markee Developments, on why she thinks rental units and high-quality public spaces will do the trick. Plus, Rollin Stanley, former General Manager of Planning for Calgary, details how governments all over the country should get imaginative with their heritage buildings. Finally, we ask Rob Carrick, Personal Finance Columnist at the Globe, about why he’s letting millennials off the hook when it comes to housing. 

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The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept that would see neighbourhoods designed so that day-to-day amenities are always just a short walk or bike ride away. And after living 18+ months of pandemic life, where most of us were forced to stay in our own neighbourhoods, it seems like implementing this idea in as many cities as possible will pay nothing but dividends. But while it’s popular in other parts of the world like many European cities, can we really just cut and paste the idea in Canada?

In this episode, we hear from Alain Miguelez, Ottawa’s Manager of Policy Planning, who believes our nation’s capital is ripe for the 15-minute city and explains why he’s working hard to help execute it there.  Plus, we check in with Jay Pitter, an award-winning placemaker and urban planning lecturer, about why she believes there is a crucial — but so far, absent — step necessary for the 15-minute city to actually work in North America.

 

 

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A new podcast from The Globe and Mail about how to make our cities better. Join host Adrian Lee over the course of six episodes as he speaks with global experts and those close to home as we learn what our cities are doing right and what we’re missing. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

for information about our collection and use of personal data for

advertising.