481: The NEW, new normal

Innovation, in its purest form, comes from unfettered imagination. The simple decision to try. To be flexible. To think outside the box.

But there will always be someone who says that the box is "just how it's always been."

And so most of the time, we stick with the status quo. Change, after all, is tough.

But then came COVID-19, and world protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality.

Suddenly all of the reasons why certain processes, systems, and operations couldn't be flexible evaporated.

The idea of going "back to normal" is now off the table. We saw that most office workers could work from home, or with staggered hours.

We saw that cities could open up streets for pedestrians and bicycles.

We've seen what's possible. In all aspects of our social, economic and political lives, people are advocating for a NEW "new normal". This week: how we design a more flexible future together.

+ Michael Longfield, the interim Executive Director of Cycle Toronto, on how the city has built kilometres of new bike lanes, created car-free zones, and what might be needed to ensure they stay in place after the pandemic threat subsides.

+ The pandemic rapidly switched education to an emergency, remote-teaching model. But does that temporary change mark a bigger shift towards online learning? And could that make university and college a more flexible experience? Tony Bates, the author of a dozen books on online learning and distance education, weighs in on how higher education is changing.