13 prescriptions for our cities

[westwardloo]

Fair enough. I won't post the full article here, but I'll include the 13 points, each from a different person. Details and rationale are in the article.

1. More autonomy for the cities from the provinces
   
2. More free, municipally-maintained public toilets
   
3. Every city should have a carbon budget
   
4. Create an environment where people can live, work, learn and play within their own communities
   
5. Gather more community input
   
6. More open space in the downtown area [this is fairly specifically aimed at Toronto]
   
7. More health care options through mobile outreach or virtual
   
8. Remove barriers for active living and healthy eating
   
9. Retrofit suburbs with more density, and to enable living without a car
   
10. Loosen change-of-use bylaws [particularly for retail]
    
11. Create community land trusts to reduce tenants' insecurity
    
12. Gather more broad input to better understand the marginalized communities' needs
    
13. Reprioritize the space currently given to cars
    

I think they are all great points and city staff should be looking at all of these recommendations to help the region continue to be competitive/ a desirable place to live with in southwestern Ontario. Personally I would like to see us focus on retrofitting the suburbs to become more dense and walkable. This is obviously a challenge in the suburbs we built for the past 60 years as most of the are winding collectors with cul de sacs all over the place, but I think we could start by rezoning retail plaza's and strip malls into mixed-use community nods and reduce the ridiculously large parking minimums region wide.