During the first 100 days of COVID, we’ve spoken with 100 urbanists to discuss what’s changed in Canada’s cities, and what needs to happen as we move forward. This is what they said.
"Youth need access to mental health services especially in these uncertain times." -Aaron Myran
"Let’s assume that students are going back to school in September with some kind of altered schedule in order to facilitate social distancing. Every urban school should have a “front porch” that extends into the street as needed. This porch should protect against the elements and can be used for queuing and staging of students that allows for social distancing and temperature checks as they enter the school. The porch can also be used for teaching space, gym classes, socializing with appropriate social distancing and community-based programming." - Adam Lubinsky
"Cities are implementing many positive changes to the active transport systems (cycling, and walking) across Canada to support the reopening of the economy and apply physical distancing measures. Many of these changes are named "temporary"; communicating these changes in a systematic way is important to get people to use these new facilities, and generate new behavioral habits among Canadians to make these changes permanent in the future and to sustain the surge we are seeing in active transport use." - Ahmed El-Geneidy
"This pandemic has taken many of us out of our normal routines and given us a chance to think critically about what we do. It has also shown us that health, safety, and comfort are very unevenly distributed within our communities. I hope our collective effort toward recovery is shaped by that knowledge - and a genuine desire to end exclusionary practices and policies." - Alex Bozikovic
"Give cities funding and power to do the essential work like addressing social determinants like health, income, education, gender, race, Indigenous status, and safe and secure housing." - Alex Flynn
"Provide frontline workers like community organizations with stability and continuity so that their resources are not spent looking for funding." - Allison Ashcroft
"The opportunities and responsibilities are in front of us to both highlight and name the weaknesses, shortcomings, and challenges in the way we do things, as well as to innovate and break through these ruts and support the leadership and access of communities who have been galvanized by racialized violence and inequality." - Amanda Gibbs
"Contrary to popular requests, the federal government should continue with and not relax the requirements on social services and climate change for federal funding on infrastructure projects that are over $20 million." - Amarjeet Sohi
"Build back better; ensure representation from groups that have been marginalized - not just to consult, but to bring in as partners and decision makers. Also, defund the police to increase funding of the social services communities need." - Ana Gonzàlez Guerrero
"As urbanists, policymakers, and designers, consciously undertake exercises to understand one's biases before they embark on a project. When Black groups raise an issue, do not respond with “this is out of scope” but with how can our work reduce the stress on them. They experience our work and by definition that becomes our scope." - Anthonia Ogundele
"Provide technology and equipment, and/or ‘activity packs’ and other services to communities that have poor access to technology or are high-risk." - Åsa Kachan
"Change the old model of long-term care facilities which had four people in a ward." - Bonnie Crombie
"Redeploy laid off municipal staff to work at community services such as food banks. Alternatively, they can become community service ambassadors whose primary responsibility is to work with bylaw officers to enforce public health orders through education." - Brian Bowman
"Federal officials need to get over their absurd and inconsistent misread of their constitutional limitations with respect to cities - and then forward aid to Canadian municipalities directly as they are perfectly entitled to during an emergency, preventing a range of devastating impacts on transit and other services essential to the planned recovery in the process." - Brian Kelcey
"Small businesses will need a new financial product like a cooperative model joined with different kinds of financial instruments and investors." - Bruce Katz
"Hack your streets policies and land zoning regulations so that Main Streets and neighbourhoods can adapt and thrive. Let business spill out into the street. Make safe zones for pedestrians and cyclists permanent. Let more people live near commercial areas. " - Charles Montgomery
"Use tools such as participatory budgeting to democratize parks and public spaces and make them free for all and all kinds of activities." - Carlos Moreno
"Evenly distribute green infrastructure and green space in our communities." - Chandra Sharma
"Make cities an active part of the conversation between the different levels of government, and use a “four corner table” approach to bring together the municipalities, provincial governments, federal government and First Nations’ government for decision making." - Charlie Clark
"Infrastructure should be people-oriented." - Charlotte Mitchell
"Urban agriculture should have a permanent place in parks. Rethink parks as not just areas where you go to relax but also as areas for growing food and selling it. " - Cheyenne Sundance
"Embed decent work principles and standards into the recovery process. Begin by keeping people protected and healthy as they return to work. No one should be sacrificed to the mission of opening up the economy in any sector. Workers must have access to personal protective equipment (PPE), reasonable scheduling practices,10 paid sick days, and fair compensation. All of us have a role to play in redesigning supportive systems and structures, especially those most directly affected." - Colette Murphy
"Deferring taxes until August 31, 2020." - Danny Breen
"Embrace the pause that COVID 19 has provided to reflect on the patterns and habits of your work and life. This moment of colliding crises is the perfect time to ask the big questions; what is the purpose of our cities, who should they serve, and how can we dream bigger?" - Danny Bridson
"Find new formats for performances including ways to safely engage outside, engage with smaller groups inside or do a hybrid of shows for a small audience inside and livestream it for others." - Daryl Cloran
"Include and listen to more voices in decisions regarding parks." - Dave Harvey
"Pursue low carbon resilience projects that can employ those groups that have been affected the most during COVID. " - Deb Harford
"Calgary has been going through what we know as the crisis arc. The initial response to the crisis was people helping each other, a sense of cooperation and participation. Then we see a downturn in the public mood, then a point where people are exhausted, anxious. We're having interesting conversations about what kind of city we want when we recover. What does a recovery look like? I think you're seeing tension between people who want to return to normal and people who are recognizing that normal wasn't good enough. We need to build back better. " - Druh Farrell
"We need to find low or no cost solutions. We can often get distracted by or attracted to big budgets, especially with the hopes of an infrastructure stimulus. The truth is that municipalities, businesses, and communities are shorter on money than on needs. Let’s think of the low-cost solutions; changes in policy or bylaws; and the non-financial resources we can muster for the recovery." - Elliott Cappell
"Actively create and maintain dialogues with key stakeholders, including institutional actors, small businesses and citizens, to continuously adapt activities and public services and facilitate an equitable and sustainable economic recovery." - Émilie Thuillier
"Explore user fees to create a revenue stream, for example, tolls on high vehicular traffic areas (this particularly can also shift transportation behavior away from cars and increase ridership)." - Enid Slack
"In just a couple of months, housing of almost the entire homeless/ street population has occurred. Although interim, this could potentially be made permanent. This demonstrates the actual power of our governments to allocate resources and mobilize action to address a long-standing and long- tolerated inequity in society." - Franc D'Ambrosio
"Invest in technology and programs now to help deliver better and varied formats when life gets back to normal." - Gohar Ashoughian
"Steps for public space past COVID: Provide simple amenities in gathering areas to create a relaxed yet safe environment, and make it interesting using any tool/technology/medium possible - get creative." - Guillaume Aniorté
"Support Black people in North America and see how we can hold space for them." - Heather Igloliorte
"Stay the course. As our cities begin to reopen and reimagine the form of our urban places, now more than ever cities need to forge ahead and implement the policies in their official plans that ensure equity, health, climate resilience and prosperity. To 'get things back on track' we may feel the urge to put on hold our visions and goals. But the opposite is needed - cities have emerged from pandemics before - we need to ask ourselves what kind of city we want and align our efforts accordingly." - Howaida Hassan
"Now is the time to turn speculation to action. Measurable steps towards recovery will be fueled by creative experimentation and preparedness plans. We need to prototype new models for transportation, commerce and culture in the public realm to drive real-time feedback and to ensure solutions are co-created alongside the community." - Ilana Altman
"Think local. Act local. Spend local. Empower local. Pass on your knowledge and experience into your local community. Go deep and demonstrate you are there to help. Show up for the businesses and people who are the foundation of your community." - Jake Stacey
"Where progress has been made in terms of making cities and parks more sociable, walkable, connected and safe, don’t let these COVID-inspired changes be rolled back. They’re necessary for our well-being and mobility beyond the various stages of the pandemic." - Jane Farrow
"An accessible and meaningful action is to support the hyper local activities in our neighbourhoods... really lean into investing in the people providing the social and economic underpinnings that keep our cities complex and safe. It takes more effort than shopping online but COVID has made it clear to me how micro enterprises are one of the foundational requirements to support the rich diversity of a healthy city." - Janna Levitt
"Non-Black urbanists that have not explicitly worked on anti-racism projects are kindly asked to not bid or take up the funding opportunities for anti-racism projects. Let those who have faced it in their communities go after them." - Jay Pitter
"To support a coordinated response between and across different levels of government, municipal staff should engage the public and key local stakeholders to better understand COVID data needs and data access and usability challenges through local meetup, online data request mechanisms, and tactical outreach." - Jean-Noé Landry
"Build capacity through social cohesion. For example, Melbourne has a food delivery service for vulnerable elderly populations. But they also use the service to check if these populations have proper cooling for when a heat wave comes." - Jeff Hebert
"Build capacity both in our social networks, our social fabric, our physical fabric and our economic infrastructure that will last." -Jeff Lehman
"Strategize for local tourism, that is, attracting/encouraging locals from nearby communities to become tourists in your municipality to make up for the lack of International tourism." - Jim Watson
"Get the hardest-hit communities back on their feet. Invest stimulus packages into works from which everyone can benefit, like parks, public schools, and cultural institutions." - Jing Liu
"Look at gas tax as a short-term revenue stream. As the price of gas is low, an introduction of a gas tax that brings the total price up to what it was before the pandemic (not over) can reduce the psychological effect it has on consumers, which can reduce the push back." - John Godfrey
"To share my new insights from the first 100 days in my writing, presentations and social media in the next 100 days, especially dealing with what I have learned about poverty, homelessness, the need for more affordable housing, universal health and universal wages, and the urgency to address human suffering of all kinds as we come out of this pandemic and enter other disruptive eras ahead." - John Jung
"Study from this pandemic and prepare for the next one." - John Tory
"Introduce the international concept of “sites-and-services (as first introduced in Chicago)” to Toronto. Plan, service (i.e., with both engineering and appropriate social services and supports), and subdivide suitable lands within Toronto for a maximum of 50-75 lots (similar to Canada’s “War-Time Housing” communities). Lots will be assigned to households in need, and come with legal patent to occupy said lands for a set period (e.g., 2 years), and the potential to assume ownership on completion of a legally habitable starter-home within this period one planned and designed to permit improvement and/or expansion, as household needs evolve over time." - John van Nostrand
"Regina Downtown Business Improvement District will shift from providing support and assistance to our businesses that are slowly reopening after being closed for 100 days to business retention and retraining. Our businesses have been so focused on not going out of business, that sometimes they can’t see what’s on the horizon. Our BID is looking towards the horizon and shoring up our defenses for a potential second wave." - Judith Veresuk
"Make cultural spaces and institutions accessible to BIPOC students and workers along with training and mentoring them." - Julie Nagam
"Governments should support business owners to invest in their own businesses and digitize them." - Karen Wong
"It is imperative that we utilize the data and experience gained during this period to adjust and future-proof our operations in order to ensure they continue to meet the new and altered demands and expectations of the public at large. This process starts with a critical assessment of the steps taken to date in response to the pandemic in effort to determine their level of success and applicability going forward." - Kelly Paleczny
"Increased budgeting for mental health." - Kristyn Wong-Tam
"Budgets are the moral documents that show true intentions, and the allocation of city budgets in a new way will allow for authentic choices. This means not looking for solutions to one problem - health - while delaying solutions to the existential threats of racial injustice and climate change. True transformational change will only come if all three are addressed together, and the beauty is that by funding projects and programs with co-benefits cities will be better prepared for these cascading shocks and stresses, making us better as a whole." - Laurian Farrell
"Hold governments accountable to not just see these as temporary measures, but to figure out how to try to make it stick. The homeless have been housed in a very short period of time during the pandemic in underutilized spaces. Hold governments accountable to these steps should post- pandemic governments fall back on those steps. The homeless or the people advocating for them should claim their right to a decent place to live during this pandemic and post pandemic period." - Leilani Farha
"Advocate for youth to be on task forces related to the future of housing and employment because they have the lived experience." - Linxi Mytkolli
"Repurpose municipal facilities that are closed to the public (eg: recreation facilities, parks) to create temporary shelters for homeless populations as existing shelter and safe consumption sites have had to significantly reduce their capacity." - Lisa Helps
"Immigration and population growth should be accompanied by a multifaceted policy agenda that includes urban planning, employment, regulatory innovation, and entrepreneurship." - Lisa Lalande
"Of all the desolating uncertainties that came with the pandemic there was only one critical absolute, that housing is the panacea for COVID-19. The pandemic exacerbated the already egregious disparity within Indigenous housing. To continue to ignore the dispossession of Urban Indigenous Peoples violates international human rights and is detrimental to the future of Canada. As the fastest growing population in the country that will make up 20% of the Canadian workforce by 2035 all economic recovery must include a long-term investment built on the foundations of a for-Indigenous by-Indigenous, Urban Indigenous Housing Strategy." - Margaret Pfoh
"We need COVID-19 bonds (like war bonds) to help small businesses get back on their feet. The cost of doing business has to be cheaper - review taxation, use a profit-sharing method of leasing so that owners can ease into business, and use a phased labour implementation to bring people back into full time employment." - Mark Garner
"Make the most vulnerable groups in our society the key political pillar so that we can pay attention to our society’s vulnerability." - Markus Kip
"Libraries will need to have better quality of digital services because people will get tired of technology soon." - Mary Chevreau
"Retrain people and equip them with new skills, especially technological ones, so that they can face the impacts COVID has had on their industry." - Mary Moran
"One practical measure that cities, businesses, investors, and universities can immediately take is to join the Race to Zero- a global United Nations campaign to build momentum ahead of COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021 around the shift to a healthy, resilient, zero-carbon recovery economy that prevents future threats, creates decent jobs, and unlocks inclusive, sustainable growth." - Marnie McGregor
"In the next 100-days of the pandemic, the actions for Edmonton include working to relaunch the essential services that citizens need for economic recovery and healthy living, but in that time we are also starting to reimagine our city based on lessons from the pandemic and from our community’s urgent call to address systemic racism." - Mary Persson
"Embed libraries with community partners - this will enable libraries to provide services to diverse groups and needs." - Maureen Sawa
"To build community resilience, direct part of the stimulus packages to strategizing and planning for green infrastructure and climate change projects rather than just traditional infrastructure projects. For example, retrofitting residential homes on a large scale." - Mel De Jager
"To curb populism, it’s important how we get information to the public." - Michael Götting
"Rethink the production model and find ways to pay as many people and artists as possible." - Michael Hidetoshi Mori
'"Those who hold power in city-building should release their powers and invite young people to participate and get involved in municipal processes." - Michael Redhead Champagne
"Reach out to your favorite local businesses, and “adopt” them to help them survive. That means two things: Estimate how much you spend at each business annually and pay that amount in advance. This will help with cash flow, and if you’re lucky, the business may give you a 20-30% bonus. Second, shift at least 1% of your pension savings into these businesses. Help them consider investment crowdfunding options and educate yourself about creating a self-directed RRSP in Canada or a self-directed IRA in the United States." - Michael Shuman
"Cities should be able to defer property tax, eliminate fees for decks and patios, and loosen restrictions that exist for retailers, restaurants, and bar owners as they come out of this." - Mike Savage
"Shift from not racist to actively anti-racist. Hear, listen from Black, Indigenous, or POC groups and then do the work." - Naheed Nenshi
"Re-opening cities must collectively decide, clearly communicate and compassionately enforce what "the new normal" means, especially in solidarity with vulnerable citizens. Start by asking and involving at-risk populations directly in the co-creation of post-COVID communities." - Nicole Harper
"Remember that we’re all experiencing this differently and that we’re all in this together. Remember the two assumptions on which all meaningful public consultations are based: people are able to understand the condition of their own lives, and they’re able to work together to better those conditions. Governments and other public actors need to trust in the capacity of communities." - Nicole Swerhun
"Feeling and seeing the suffering of others as the source of most of the cha nges that will be needed in the coming days." - Noémie Lafrance
"Communicate, communicate, and communicate more the required hygiene protocols thus ensuring everyone’s safety and sanity." - Noreen Kassam
"Examine the authors of the reading/study material for planning courses/programs in educational institutions. If it is mostly male and white authors, switch to incorporate more material from Black, POC, women authors. They experience space, policy, and program very differently. Bring that perspective into the early training grounds for future planners and urbanists." - Orlando Bailey
"Convert business improvement districts into online shopping areas and initiate programs that will stimulate purchasing such as ‘buy local’." - Patrick Sullivan
"Stay open longer hours so that more community members can come into the library with social distancing measures." - Paul Takala
"Reduce roadblocks for licensing for newcomers in the healthcare profession." - Queenie Choo
"Prioritize essential services workers in immigration selection policy and strengthen the municipal nominee program to give municipalities a larger role at the immigrant selection table." - Ratna Omidvar
"Find ways to communicate who is welcome in parks and public spaces. One way of doing this is by supporting Indigenous food sovereignty." - Rena Soutar
"Data has shown that COVID-19 has affected POC and vulnerable populations more than others. Understand the reasons for these results and target the resources & funding to these groups who are affected the most." - Rosemarie Powell
"Reallocate budgets: use unused budgets from services currently stalled to fund those where demand has increased. For example, in the City of Victoria, the police budget for nightlife, events, or rallies were no longer needed and therefore reallocated to provide temporary shelters to the homeless." - Sarmarke Dubow
"Direct funds to smaller and faster local infrastructure projects that will employ people in the immediate term rather than traditional large-scale infrastructure projects that will take over two years to begin. Example: Bike and bus infrastructure; repairing/retrofitting aging infrastructure." - Shoshanna Saxe
"There should be a funding stream for digital infrastructure so that we can address issues of equity, access, and geography." - Siri Agrell
"As non-Black or non-POC, accept that personal experiences of those experiencing racism will tie into their work, it cannot be compartmentalized." - Tamika Butler
"Change the basic funding mechanism of transit through funding and wage subsidy from the federal government so that they can continue to maintain service at lower capacity." - Tania Wegwitz
"Make procurement processes and funding easier for smaller tech companies as companies reliant on venture capital might not be aligned with the communities they serve." - Tara Pham
"Choose projects with the understanding that labour is more important than capital as it will preserve jobs and keep the community running. Direct large investment portfolios from big institutions (for example: universities, Canada Pension Fund) within the country to the community (such as a local main street) rather than invest them offshore." - Ted Howard
"Evaluate and verbalize housing as a social good, rather than a commodity to increase financial gain." - Tim Richter
"Stop subsidizing personal vehicles, so that there is more money to spend on transit and change the narrative of how we fund transit to show that it is cheap." - Timothy Papandreou
"Now more than ever is the moment to enlist our creative thinkers to help define the pertinent questions and possibilities, to navigate the current uncertainty and fundamental shifts, to reimagine and to participate in rebuilding our society." Tristan Surtees & Charles Blanc
"Leverage youth’s current attention on the government for civic literacy." - Veronika Bylicki
"Non-Black or non-POC co-workers and managers must realize the emotional and physical barriers Black people have to face and still create the same quality of work as those who do not face the same challenges." - Will Prosper
"Double down on efforts to show how important immigrants are in the COVID-response and recovery processes and counter anti-immigration anxieties." - Yasir Naqvi
"Wherever possible, wherever you have access to power and opportunities for change, lead with fairness and justice. Explore and practice what it means to center your decisions around equitable outcomes, and do this in the highest-stakes, most critical choices you have to make." - Zahra Ebrahim
"Ensure local communities have a governance structure and capacity in place where they have the skills to manage money, undertake professional reporting to investors, and control decision-making. This will allow them to attract large investors." - Zita Cobb
Thank you to Jiya Benni and Naomi Roy for their dedicated work compiling the above information.