Q and A: Talking Toronto with the city's chief planner

Politicians touting the upward trajectory of our city often like to say that Toronto has more cranes in the air than anywhere else in North America.

Of course, not all growth is good growth and that’s where Jennifer Keesmaat comes in

The Chief Planner for the City of Toronto, Keesmaat is responsible for making sure each new street, building and park helps contribute to a more vibrant city down the road.

CP24.com recently sat down with Keesmaat at city hall to discuss her vision for the city, the importance of streets as more than just a means to transport cars and the fine line between civic engagement and nimbyism.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the Toronto that you want to help foster. If you sort of had a mission statement for what type of city you’d like to build and live in what would it be?

A: The city that I want is a place where everyone can thrive and that links back to a series of key ideas. We need to have lots of different housing types and tenures at many different price points, so this can be a place that you have many choices in terms of where you can live, work and play and in order to achieve that it is imperative that we ensure that we have a diverse economy and that there are lots of job opportunities in the city. When you bring those two things together you can create a city where people can live close to where they work. From my perspective that is such a fundamental part of the vision of a future city because our quality of life is increasingly compromised by long commute times. Being able to create a city where people can commute with ease, whether by walking, taking transit, cycling or driving, is really the key part of creating a livable region.

Q: That’s such a challenge, given the sprawling nature of Toronto. How do we sort of undo years of migration to the fringes.

A: Well, I would say the city is what we make it. The city is in a continual state of transformation, which is fabulous, and we are blessed with a tremendous amount of growth, which is a wonderful asset. The key part of creating the city we want is just managing and shaping that growth and directing it in such a way that we are meeting our wider objectives.

Q: I guess a big part of that for you is making sure the growth makes sense for the neighbourhood? In other words not approving projects just because they will be a source of revenue for the city.

A: Yeah, exactly. It is the mandate of our city planning division as it is in every other city in the world to manage growth and to make sure that when development comes forward it is responding to the public interest and the common good. It has really always been the role of city planning but it becomes heightened in a high growth environment. In some municipalities there is very little growth and you are not having a lot of conversations but we have a tremendous amount of complexity in the City of Toronto because all the easy sites are done and we have a high growth environment. What that means is that every single application is quite complex and involves existing neighbours that need to be brought into the conversation in a meaningful way. Once you do that, you just have to have substantive negotiation over how we are ensuring that we are increasing quality of life.

Q: What are the signs of a good neighbourhood?

A: The very first sign for me is pedestrians. A neighbourhood that works well has pedestrians. It has people walking who are part of the public realm. You can tell the health of local business based on the number of pedestrians you can see, you can even get a sense of the extent to which neighbours know each other because we know that when people walk as part of their daily lives the ratio of people who know their neighbours and take responsibility for their neighbourhoods skyrockets. Pedestrians are really an important indicator species for knowing whether a neighbourhood or even a city is healthy.

Q: Speaking of neighbourhoods, it really has been an interesting year in that sense as Torontonians have become increasingly outspoken about development in their backyards. From opposition to a proposed Wal-Mart near Kensington Market to the debate over a proposed series of skyscrapers in the Theatre District, people seem to be speaking up. Is it nimbyism or is it a healthy sign of a population who cares?

A: I put it in the second category. People are taking ownership over their city and that’s a good thing but I will qualify that and say we need to have processes that allow us to have meaningful conversations that are based on understanding. If we try to engage in city building and we are just being reactionary then we will come a city of NIMBY’s but if we can find a way to have conversations that are based on data, analysis and evidence than we can truly negotiate what our future is going to look like. It is good for us to be having those conversations. These are really important questions for us to be asking because they are all about what we value. Do we value the public realm? Do we value the character of our neighbourhoods? Do we value having access to sunlight on the sidewalks? Do we value heritage? Part of the opportunity for city planning is to do a better job of providing some of the platforms for those conversations to be meaningful and informed. Our conversations must be built on understanding and when we build understanding we elevate the quality of discourse and ultimately the quality of our decisions.

Q: You brought up the public realm and there have been some interesting projects on that front recently, including the partial transformation of Yonge Street into a pedestrian mall as part of a pilot program last summer. What’s next when it comes to creating better public spaces?

A: Well we have a really important initiative underway around creating complete streets and the objective is to ensure our street infrastructure is designed and used for a variety of people. You think about a road as just for moving cars, but when you talk about complete streets you are also thinking about ensuring that retail thrives, that there is public spaces, that there is street trees and that there is cyclists and pedestrians. We need to ensure that to the extent possible our streets become the backbone to the city. Twenty five per cent of this city is streets and the streets play a really important role in facilitating public life, so I believe one of the most important initiatives that we can move forward on aggressively is ensuring that we are designing our streets to beautiful and inspirational places for a variety of users.

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