There are a series of interesting webinars and events that are being sponsored by Future Cities Canada. The registration and choosing the items you want to hear are in a bit of an awkward format. But it’s well worth the trouble to hear luminaries like New York City’s Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver talk about Placemaking and Placekeeping (that’s on Monday November 23rd) or the City of Toronto principals involved in “Sidewalk Labs” describe why that was such a spectacular waterfront failure (scheduled on Thursday November 18).
You can take a look at the schedule here. You can also hear the recorded talks of the webinar presentations that have already taken place.
Earlier this week urbanist Richard Florida discussed how cities would recover from the pandemic~he thinks it’s all going to be fine, and points out to the prosperity of the 1920’s following the Spanish Flu of 1918 as an example. He did miss out that many municipalities had to lay off most of their employees in 1919 (including the City of New York) and many householders could not pay their property taxes. (It was actually a slow climb back to a temporary economic period of post-war optimism and boom.)