Building Equitable Cities Speaker Series
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this five-part speaker series in 2022/2023. Together, we explored topics related to how we can make city infrastructure and services more equitable and accessible for all residents. The speaker series has now concluded. If you have any questions, please contact the Planning division at planning@kitchener.ca
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing socioeconomic inequities. Nowhere has this been clearer than in our cities.
Throughout 2022, we, along our community partners, hosted quarterly talks related to addressing inequities and disrupting systemic bias in the establishment and development of cities, including how we can build back differently as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This series continues in 2023 with the City coordinating more talks.
This speaker series is a part of our ongoing work to share diverse perspectives on issues of equity, inclusion and development. This is also an opportunity for imagining new social possibilities and new ways of thinking through the old challenges of access, sustainability and social justice.
We will share the topics for future sessions closer to the session dates. We also share regular content on this page related to the equity and city-building. To get updates on this speaker series, add your email to the Stay Informed box and click the “Subscribe” button.
Community Partners
The 2022 Building Equitable Cities Speaker Series events were presented in partnership with the Feminist Shift, YW Kitchener-Waterloo, YWCA Cambridge, and Women's College Hospital.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this five-part speaker series in 2022/2023. Together, we explored topics related to how we can make city infrastructure and services more equitable and accessible for all residents. The speaker series has now concluded. If you have any questions, please contact the Planning division at planning@kitchener.ca
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Accessing ability through city design
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this linkby Janine Oosterveld, Manager Customer Experience & Project Management
Ability is a continuum. At different ages and stages of our lives, we will all experience disability of some kind. My awareness of accessibility challenges in city design grew as I had a young family – pushing a stroller through the city to go to parks and other activities. With the birth of my second child with a diagnosis of Down syndrome my awareness grew further through his experience and that of his peers. However, I can still go out for dinner at a downtown restaurant without thinking twice about how I will get there, the step at the door, if I can read the menu and communicate my order, or that the washrooms are in the basement. Spontaneity is easy when your body fits the norms of city design.
Meeting Luke Anderson and Paula Saunders through the Building Equitable Cities panel discussion brought greater awareness to my own blinders. Luke identified that we all have blinders (biases and conditioning) based on our lived experience. Having awareness for the blinders opens the opportunity for co-creation and more accessible design solutions when we take action to include those with different experiences to our own.
Luke modeled inclusivity through his use of simple images and verbal description to tell his own story and that of the StopGap Foundation. What would it be like to require assistance every single time you enter and leave your own workplace? This is what inspired StopGap and the colourful ramps that add beauty and raise awareness of barriers to accessing needs and wants of daily living. Additionally, the illusive Ramp Man with his superhero cape and mask adds levity to opening conversations about how city design can be disabling and what can be done to fix it.
Paula Saunders explained the role of the Grand River Accessibility Advisory Committee’s built environment sub-committee to evaluate public spaces and buildings to reduce barriers. She shared how both major infrastructure like road design and smaller details like the layout of public washrooms can have a significant impact on user experience. She pointed out that it is difficult (if not impossible) to make all public space fully accessible to everyone, but continuous improvement is valuable to create a more welcoming city.
Paula identified that while she and Luke are both wheelchair users, their experiences are not necessarily the same. Additionally, their “disability” experience as wheelchair users is also unique from a person who experiences blindness or is neurodivergent. This is why co-creation and engagement opportunities are so important. Integrating a spectrum of experience in the design and planning process broadens who can use the space with ease by their ideas inspired by lived experience. While preparing for this session, I have been learning more about how much effort may be needed to plan for and navigate space for those that don’t fit the design norm. There is a constant need to be “on”- thinking about safe, barrier free routes, rest locations, accessible washrooms – the things some of us take for granted. And that awareness can spark creative solutions.
Admittedly, I was nervous about hosting this event as someone who doesn’t identify as having a disability. Luke gave participants permission to get over that fear of messing up and saying the wrong thing because positive intentions shine through. We all must be part of the conversation to drop the blinders to support inclusive spaces.
What blinders do you wear? Share your “aha” moment when you became aware of your bias and conditioning.
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The Inclusive City: Awareness and co-creation to remove barriers in city design
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June 1, 2023
1:00-2:00p.m. EST
Free virtual event - ASL interpreters available
Meet Luke Anderson, co-founder of the StopGap Foundation an organization whose mission is to help communities discover the benefit of barrier free spaces and provide support to create them.
A city free of barriers would help give everyone the opportunity to live a life full of independence, spontaneity, and ultimate fulfillment. This 1-hour discussion includes a talk by Luke followed by a panel discussion where Luke will be joined by Paula Saunders, chair of the Built Environment subcommittee of the Grand River Accessibility Advisory Committee. Hosted by the City of Kitchener, we will explore city design through an accessibility lens to build awareness of barriers to navigating everyday life from the routine of going to work to a spontaneous coffee with a friend.
This session is also part of National AccessAbility Week. Check out Life Made Accessible for more webinars during the week starting May 29.
This session will be recorded.
Join the Conversation
Following the session, keep the conversation going by sharing your thoughts and reflections on the event with others interested in this topic. Subscribe to this page using the 'subscribe' button to be notified about new content related to this session and future speakers in the series.
About the Speakers
After sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2002, Luke Anderson was suddenly introduced to a world that's not well suited for a wheelchair user. His frustration encountering access barriers led him to co-found the StopGap Foundation, which raises awareness about the importance of a barrier free and inclusive society. StopGap works with different community leaders across Canada delivering education and resources that inspire societal perspective shifts, the removal of barriers in the built environment, and policy change. Their iconic brightly painted ramps can be found in communities all over Canada, helping ensure our society's collective understanding about the importance of accessibility and inclusion continues to advance and grow.
Luke is a licensed professional engineer, a nature lover, an avid meditator, an aspiring harmonica virtuoso, and is the recipient of a Governor General's Meritorious Service Medal.To learn more, StopGap Foundation – Helping communities discover the benefit of barrier free spaces and providing support to create them.
Paula Saunders is chair of the Built Environment subcommittee of the Grand River Accessibility Advisory Committee. Working with the Region of Waterloo, the Cities of Kitchener and Waterloo as well as the Townships, the committee strives to make communities accessible for everyone. As a person with a disability, Paula shares her lived experience to educate those involved with designing, building, retrofitting and maintaining public spaces such as buildings, parks and streets.
To learn more, Grand River Accessibility Advisory Committee - City of Kitchener
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The Path to Water and Services Equity
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March 23, 2023
12:00-1:00p.m. EST
Free virtual event - ASL interpreters available
Meet Cathy Bailey, the first woman and African-American woman to lead the Greater Cincinnati Water Works, and a trailblazer in bringing an equity and community focus to water service delivery.
Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as fundamental human rights. This means every individual should be entitled to have physically accessible, sufficient, safe, and affordable access to water and sanitation. Governments play an important role in achieving this through the utility services that they provide. This 1-hour talk, hosted by the City of Kitchener, will explore the role of government utilities to provide access to water and sanitation services and how this can be achieved through an equity lens.
This session will be recorded.
Join the Conversation
Following the session, keep the conversation going by sharing your thoughts and reflections on the event with others interested in this topic. Subscribe to this page using the 'subscribe' button to be notified about new content related to this session and future speakers in the series.
About the Speaker
Cathy Bernardino Bailey is the Executive Director of Greater Cincinnati Water Works for the City of Cincinnati. Ms. Bailey is the first woman and African-American woman to lead the utility since its formation 205 years ago. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Cincinnati and has been with GCWW her entire 31-year career. She began with the utility in 1992 as a chemist. The following year Cathy took on the role of Water Quality and Treatment Data Manager. She later earned several promotions to other key managerial positions before her promotion to the Executive Director role in 2015. Currently, Cathy is on special assignment with the US Environmental Protection Agency as a Sr. Advisor to help establish their lead service line replacement accelerators.
Cathy annually speaks and participates on panels at the American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA), and the Engaging Local Government Leaders conferences, and other water summits sharing knowledge on strategic planning, employee engagement, workforce diversity, and continuous improvement.
She has distinguished herself as a leader throughout her career, focusing on communications, strategic thinking, innovation, outreach, and teamwork to bring forward solutions that positively impact the community. Her local community work and leadership roles were recognized as she was one of the 2018 Greater Cincinnati YWCA’s Career Women of Achievement, and one of the Cincinnati Venue Magazine’s Women of Influence. In 2019, Ms. Bailey was named one of seven African American leaders in Cincinnati that residents should get to know and understand their impact in the region. In 2021, Cathy was the individual award recipient of the AWWA Diversity Award.
To learn more, please read Cathy Bailey’s biography
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Equitable Community Engagement: Moving Beyond Community Buy-In and Top-Down Consultation
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August 10, 2022
12:00-1:30p.m. EST
Free virtual event - ASL interpreters available
Meet Jay Pitter, the award-winning placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in cities across North America.
Predicated on the belief that there is enough space, joy and justice for all of us, this 1.5-hour participatory talk will unpack the definition, principles and precedents related to equitable community engagement. All participants will be provided with a worksheet inclusive of key participatory talk ideas, prompts for reflection and resources for continued professional development beyond the participatory talk.This session will not be recorded.
Join the Conversation
Following the session, keep the conversation going by sharing your thoughts and reflections on the event with others interested in this topic. Subscribe to this page using the 'subscribe' button to be notified about new content related to this session and future speakers in the series.
About the Speaker
Jay Pitter, MES, is an award-winning placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in cities across North America. She spearheads institutional city-building projects specializing in public space design and policy, forgotten densities, mobility equity, gender-responsive design, inclusive public engagement and healing fraught sites. What distinguishes Ms. Pitter is her multidisciplinary approach, located at the nexus of urban design and social equity, which translates community insights and aspirations into the built environment. Ms. Pitter has used this urgent, evidence-based expertise to shape numerous projects in over 25 cities including; working with Westbank to preserve intangible cultural heritage and expand engagement during the Honest Ed’s redevelopment project in Toronto; leading the (RE)IMAGINING Cheapside Confederate monument placemaking process in Lexington; and applying a gender-responsive design lens to the redevelopment of Granville Bridge in Vancouver. She has developed an equitable planning certificate course with the University of Detroit’s Mercy School of Architecture, a women in city-building course with the University of Toronto, and an Engaging Black People and Power course spurred by the murder of George Floyd. Ms. Pitter has also presented at MIT, Harvard and Princeton universities, among many others. She was recently the John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning at the University of Toronto and shortlisted for the Margolese National Design for Living Prize. Among a diverse practice portfolio, Ms. Pitter is honoured to be leading the development of The Cultural Districts Program Proposal and The Little Jamaica Master Plan for the City of Toronto—two precedent setting projects within her home city. Her forthcoming books, Black Public Joy and Where We Live, will be published by McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House Canada. To learn more, please read Jay Pitter's biography.
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Right to home: Shaping how we plan Kitchener
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By Janine Oosterveld, Manager, Customer Experience & Project Management
The right to home is a simple concept that is complex to solve. Leilani Farha’s talk on the value of a human right to housing framework provided insight into both the shift in mindset that is needed and what that might look like for local governments. She explains the right to housing as the right to live somewhere in peace, security and with dignity. Examples include:
- Security of tenure – where a person enjoys living without fear of eviction;
- Affordability – relative to the needs of the household;
- Decent housing that is structurally sound, sanitary without risks like infestations or black mold; and,
- Cultural appropriateness – including housing that is relevant for Indigenous peoples, newcomers and intergenerational families.
Leilani explains that a human rights-based approach shifts the framing from people as beneficiaries to people as entitled to safe, secure, and decent housing. Governments, at all levels, are then accountable to people and people are ‘rights holders’, where access to housing is the norm and delivered equitably across jurisdictions.
So how does this apply to Kitchener’s urban planning framework?
I appreciated Leilani’s acknowledgment of Kitchener as a good example through the Housing for All Strategy. Kitchener’s leadership chose to identify and tackle things that are within our jurisdiction and ability to change, despite housing falling under the mandate of the Region of Waterloo within our two-tiered municipal system. This was a significant shift in approach that has led to several City actions including affordable housing incentives (e.g. development charge incentives and application fee waivers), streamlining development approvals for affordable and supportive housing, and advocacy, which included working with our Regional counterparts to provide temporary locations for A Better Tent City.
As a member of Kitchener’s planning team for the past 10 years, I have witnessed the transition and we continue to make changes with so much more work to be done. As planners, one of the primary principles of equity is that we cannot “people zone” – meaning, bylaws cannot be set up to exclude a certain group of people. Kitchener’s planning tools allow a broad range of housing types to meet the needs of current and future residents as they change over time. One example is “single family” zoning where it is illegal to have more than one dwelling unit on a property. Since the 1990s, Kitchener has been a leader in this area by permitting duplexes in most single detached residential zones. More recently, updates to the Zoning Bylaw over the past year allowed additional dwelling units in the form of backyard homes and the flexibility to provide up to three dwelling units on approximately 25,000 properties.
One of Leilani’s examples included lived experience in the decision-making process. All too often, decision-makers have the privilege of safe and secure housing and may not fully appreciate the systemic barriers affecting access to housing. Kitchener has been integrating lived experience into our engagement practices. Most recently, the Kitchener Housing Lived Expertise Working Group was established in partnership with the Social Development Centre of Waterloo Region to guide and monitor the implementation of the Housing for All recommendations using a right to housing lens.
We have also begun a community-led update to our vision for Downtown which includes a Downtown Community Working Group whose membership includes those with lived experience. This group will work collaboratively with City staff to update Kitchener’s vision for Downtown to recognize the evolving needs of our community in an area that is growing quickly.
Leilani identified that this is a complex problem that cannot be turned around overnight and multiple strategies are needed. Kitchener residents also understand the importance of affordable housing as reflected through the 2022 Environics survey conducted as part of the City’s strategic plan process. Through this survey, 33% of residents identified housing affordability as the single most important issue facing the city. Residents of Kitchener, through the survey, also recognized the need to coordinate with other levels of government to fund and support programs. Cross-jurisdictional work is ongoing and must continue from the national down to the local level to support equity and the right to housing.
My questions for you are:
There were many housing advocates, residents and development professionals who attended or watched the recording. Considering the right to housing is complex and requires multiple actions, what additional steps should we take, collectively, beyond the work already underway?
Kitchener’s planning team is open to exploring innovations in housing policies and tools. As we start to plan for an update to Kitchener’s Official Plan, which is our long-range policy document that guides growth and development 20 to 30-years into the future, how can we better integrate the right to housing into the Official Plan?
How do we hear from those that are most impacted by housing scarcity and affordability to ensure that their voices are captured and included as we look forward to plan Kitchener’s future?
What do you think? Add your comments below.
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The Value of a Human Right to Housing Framework for Local Governments
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April 26, 2022
12:00-1:00p.m.
ASL Interpreters will be present
In June 2019, the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) received Royal Ascension. For the first time in Canada’s history, the right to housing was enshrined in domestic legislation. Canada’s first-ever National Housing Strategy (NHS) preceded this historic Act. The NHS was a 10-year, $70 billion plan to reduce homelessness and housing need. The Canadian Government now recognizes that to address the housing crisis we need to change how we view housing. We need to see it as a human right, not a commodity.To advance the right to adequate housing in Canada, all levels of government have a key role to play. Local governments are in a unique position because of how close they are to residents. They are also responsible for related programming and services. This includes housing and homelessness programs, leading urban planning, and enforcing building standards. In this presentation, Leilani Farha will explore the transformational human right to housing framework. She will discuss its implications for local governments like the City of Kitchener, who has adopted this framework.Join the Conversation
Following the session, keep the conversation going by visiting the Forum on this page. Share your thoughts and reflections on the event with others interested in this topic. Subscribe to this page using the 'subscribe' button to be notified about new content related to this session and future speakers in the seires.
About the Speaker
Leilani Farha is the Global Director of The Shift, an international movement to secure the right to housing and the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (2014- 2020). The Shift was launched in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Cities and Local Government and works with multi-level stakeholders around the world including with several city governments in North America and Europe. Leilani’s work is animated by the principle that housing is a social good, not a commodity. She has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through her topical reports on homelessness, the financialization of housing, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is the central character in the award-winning documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing, directed by the Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten. PUSH is screening around the world and to continue its momentum Leilani and Fredrik now co-host a podcast – PUSHBACK Talks - about finance, housing and human rights.
Videos
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This 1-hour discussion includes a talk by Luke Anderson, co-founder of the StopGap Foundation, an organization whose mission is to help communities discover the benefit of barrier free spaces and provide support to create them. Following his presentation, Luke is joined by Paula Saunders, chair of the Built Environment subcommittee of the Grand River Accessibility Advisory Committee. Hosted by the City of Kitchener, this talk explored city design through an accessibility lens to build awareness of barriers to navigating everyday life from the routine of going to work to a spontaneous coffee with a friend. This event took place on June 1, 2023.
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Who's Listening
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Manager Customer Experience & Project Management (Development Services)
City of Kitchener
Phone 519-741-2200 x7076 Email Janine.Oosterveld@kitchener.ca -
Phone 519-741-2200 x7058 Email sue.weare@kitchener.ca