In the middle of the summer, Howard Tam of Think Fresh Group brought an emerging idea to Exhibit Change and asked if we’d like to partner on designing a course about urban planning and unplanning in the City of Toronto.
Howard is best known for being an urban innovator and instrumental in getting the shipping container market outside Scadding Court Community Centre established and operational. Market 707 is a key inspiration to Designing Toronto as a community-driven, urban planning initiative that drives engagement with the city and the streets.
After a summer of brainstorming and 2 design sessions with a few key community partners, we launched a survey to find out more about what people are thinking. We had an overwhelming response from community members, people who work in all aspects of community engagement, consultation, public policy and urban planning. The responses show us that there is in fact a need for what we are proposing and we are working to be responsive in our design & delivery.
We are hosting another design session on November 12th to dig deeper into the curriculum and our upcoming crowd-funding campaign. If you’d like to stay updated or get invitations to the design sessions, please sign up for our newsletter.
We are pretty excited about all the interest we are getting and are looking forward to the next steps. We were recently interviewed in the Novae Res Urbis, an urban planning journal.
Look for more information soon, we are expecting to launch in Spring 2014.