Young BILDers Forum: Shifting Gears

On Oct. 1, BILD hosted the Young BILDers Forum at the Corus building in Toronto. A couple hundred of the new home building industry’s youngest and brightest were in attendance to hear from a panel of experts, including keynote speaker Jennifer Keesmaat, the City of Toronto’s Chief Planner. The other panelists were Darren Steedman of Metrus Development, Anthony Romanelli of Brattys LLP, Sandra Baldwin of A Lifetime Contractor, and Stuart Wilson of Altus Group.

Throughout the forum, moderator Steve Deveaux of Tribute Communities asked the panel a number of questions regarding the future of the industry. But, what we would like to focus on is Keesmaat’s inspirational speech.

Before talking about what the next 10 years will bring, Keesmaat started off by outlining major milestones of the past decade. She started with how the world has changed after Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” when suddenly, sustainable issues became mainstream. Now, our industry is based around sustainable practices and creating communities that will still benefit future generations and the environment.

Keesmaat then touched on how the province has changed, highlighting the Greenbelt and Places to Grow Act. These two Acts changed the way we think about intensification. They helped us realize that policy can be a good thing when it is creating economic wealth and saving us from “sprawling endlessly.”

Another shift that the province saw was a collective acknowledgment that a better transit system is necessary to promote healthy growth in major urban centres. It wasn’t like that 10 years ago. Keesmaat noted that we’re still stuck on this issue, but at least everyone is aware that a solution is needed.

How has the city changed? Keesmaat singled out the City of Toronto Act as the major influencer of the past 10 years. This Act created new powers within the city; it gave the city a way to govern itself. It wasn’t that long ago that it was discovered that Toronto couldn’t be governed the same way as a smaller municipality.

After the amalgamation, there was a new official plan - it was the first descriptive document explaining how we expect our modern city to develop. Transit corridors and busy urban centres have become clear density targets. Keesmaat said that her office approves an application every 30 minutes of the work day, so there is quite a bit of development in the pipeline.

Finally, Keesmaat discussed what we have learned from our neighbourhoods, using the Sheppard area as an example. Sheppard is basically a strip of development sites. After expanding the subway along Sheppard, the City noticed that the line is barely used on the weekends. Sheppard taught us that it takes years for a corridor to become  a neighbourhood. It has taught us to be patient and to distinguish all the different factors that go into the development of an entire neighbourhood.

The next 10 years

This is where all the Young BILDers come in.

Province

- Design and implement a whole suite of tools to build state-of-the-art transit networks.

City

- Toronto will eventually have more green roofs than any other city in the world. Keesmaat is positive this will happen because about 40 CFL fields' worth of green roofs have been approved.

- Continue to build at an aggressive rate.

- The Lawrence Heights revitalization will be underway, Regent Park will be nearly done, and development should continue to target transit corridors and urban centres.

Neighbourhoods

- Perhaps there will be infrastructure in place that allows the production of food within the city.

- There won’t be a question of whether children should be raised in the city.

- High-rise neighbourhoods will become hubs and highly walkable.

In the words of Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat, “We are a city where many are thriving - we ought to be a city where all are thriving.”