Happy 50th Birthday, Environment! How will we shape our future communities?
Environment’s 50th anniversary is here! And what better way to acknowledge this milestone than examine one topic that has been at the centre of our work since we first welcomed students, staff and faculty, back in the fall of 1969 – shaping our sustainable cities and sustainable communities.
The world is becoming more urban every day. According to the United Nations close to 55 per cent of the planet's population currently lives in an urban area or city, with that figure set to rise to 68 per cent over the coming decades. We may not always recognize it, the confrontation between a driver and cyclist on a street corner, our recent political polarization, and our affordable housing crisis all have roots in the fact that more and more people are choosing to live in cities.
In our second-ever issue of ENVision, the new Faculty of Environment newsletter, we want to explore the future of cities – our communities - and how our researchers, students, alumni and partners are working to make cities more livable.
While cities are as complex as each individual citizen living in them, they are also systems where the built and social environment and many more factors are interconnected. This is illustrated in our energy grid. In this issue we check in with one of the top real estate management firms in Canada on how outfitting developments with smart energy technology is the first step in conservation, the graduate student working on convincing people to embrace that technology in their daily lives, and how one cannot work without the other.
No look at urban life would be complete without a dive into the root causes of housing affordability, and potential solutions, including an internship where Environment students help flip the script for an established housing charity. We also revisit what was discussed and what we heard from you and our esteemed panel at the January Imagining Canada’s Future Cities event in Toronto.
We highlight some of the impacts and potential opportunities urbanization presents our communities and citizens as one of our very own collegues reflects on a personal journey battling cancer on highway 401, and a reflection on how we can be feeding our growing communities more sustainably.
We wrap-up all of these ideas with an expert roundtable, headed by Environment Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion Brian Doucet, and leaders in government and development titled: Ontario and the Mega-City: What does Toronto’s rapid growth into a global capital mean for its citizens, the province and the planet? This discussion explores how the growth a globalized super city impacts its neighbours in regards to housing, transportation, economics and more.
Finally, Vanessa Schweizer, closes things out with a bold challenge for realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I won’t spoil the surprise, but it shows just how much work we have to do, and a blueprint for how to do it.
On behalf of everyone who helped create ENVision, we hope you enjoy this newsletter, and we welcome your feedback and encourage you to stay connected.
