Spotlight on Future Cities

Infrastructure & Construction Innovation Tech Adoption

Published on July 31, 2019

Andrea Barrack / Global Head, Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship - TD Bank

Geoff Cape / CEO - Evergreen

Josipa Petrunic / Executive Director & CEO - Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC)

Sevaun Palvetzian / CEO - CivicAction

Urbanization in Canada, as in all other countries, is accelerating at a rapid pace. Our cities are growing in terms of their size, the challenges they face and their importance in terms of improving the quality of life for a rapidly increasing portion of Canada’s population. This Spotlight explores the main challenges Canadian cities face in terms of their design, mobility, climate change, housing, civic action and more; and how we must approach the design of our future cities to make them as liveable, prosperous, inclusive and sustainable as possible.

Key Takeaways & Calls to Action

How we create our cities will determine Canada’s economic vitality and equity. It’s critical that all sectors—not solely government—take part in finding innovative and bold solutions to shape the cities we want to live in.
Canada needs a visioning process to map out our smart city vision over the next 50 years. It should align private sector, government, academia and civil society around a collective approach to city building.
When it comes to building world-class public mobility infrastructure in Canada, the government and the taxpayer have a significant role to play.
Instead of relying on provincial governments to make top-down decisions, Canadian cities should have more independence in designing and implementing policies and programs that best fit their priority needs relating to key issues such as infrastructure, housing, climate change and more.