Students explore how cities should grow at World Cities Week
From November 2 to 6, University of Waterloo students spent their lunch hours at World Cities Week 2026, hosted by FCI and Dr. Nadine Ibrahim, Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering. On Tuesday, students took positions on some of the hardest questions in Canadian housing, from apartments in every neighbourhood to who should pay for services in new low-density developments, and several changed their minds as the discussion unfolded. Wednesday and Thursday turned to adaptive reuse: student teams proposed new uses for Kitchener’s former Charles Street Terminal, and Scott Higgins of HIP Developments showed how a former Cambridge factory became the Gaslight District. Students also built a model community out of LEGO, and Alon Eisenstein of the University of British Columbia closed the week with Friday’s Turkstra Talk.