Planning Cities for Families

The public forum for Torontonians to discuss key city-building challenges, called The Chief Planner Roundtable, is kicking off the 2014 series, which will focus on planning cities for families.

The first meeting will be open to the public at City Hall in Room 1, on Thursday, April 24 and will feature a collaboration between industry professionals, community leaders and city staff. Looking at matters within the city that affect families, participating members hope to better understand why families and children matter for the future of the city, in terms of adequately providing them with the support necessary to develop more progressive and responsive communities.

Topics that will be explored include whether city builders are familiar with the needs of families and children, what hindrances developers and cities face in terms of creating family-friendly communities, neighbourhoods and builders, and what can be done on behalf of builders to help improve cities in this regard. The roundtable will also examine whether Toronto has the amenities, services, infrastructure and affordability to satisfy the needs of Torontonian families in the long-term.

Structured into three segments, the meeting will begin by setting the stage, reviewing critical questions and raising potential opportunities for improvement. The objective is to stimulate action through identification of existing issues and discovering steps that can realistically be taken to remediate them; including making recommendations for future initiatives.

Already off to a successful start, the 2013 Chief Planner Roundtables managed to engage over 2,600 participants in online and in-person conversations. Encouraged by this interactive input, the Roundtable hopes to engage more participants, enabling involvement by requesting that members of the public interested in attending RSVP by emailing chiefplannerroundtable@toronto.ca because there is limited seating in the main room.