Ontario Construction News staff writer
Ontario’s Registered Professional Planners (RPPs) are gathering in Toronto today through Oct. 3 for the Ontario Professional Planners Institute’s (OPPI) 2019 Conference.
They will hear a keynote address from City of Toronto chief planner Gregg Lintern about the challenge and opportunity of uneven growth.
The OPPI19: Beyond25 program offers attendees more than 100 interactive training sessions and mobile workshops relating to the critical issues of uneven growth, climate change and technology impacting Toronto and Ontario today and for the next quarter century, OPPI says in a statement.
RPPs from across Ontario will be able to take information and examples back to their communities to inform the choices of local leaders and decision makers, and be better prepared to act and address these critical issues locally.
Conference speakers include:
Day 1 (today)
Toronto chief planner Gregg Lintern will speak about“The Challenge and Opportunity of Uneven Growth.”
“Planning and implementing a form of city that responds more directly to the lenses of affordability, mobility and resilience – you might call them collective values – is already part of Toronto’s ‘story,’ even as people’s experiences with growth vary greatly,” the event synopsis says. “Consistently connecting these values to our actions will help us soften the edges of growth right now while keeping planners accountable to future citizens.”
Day 2 (tomorrow)
Writer, producer and digital journalist, Ramona Pringle, speaks about “Surviving and Thriving in an Era of Disruption.”
“The world is changing quickly. Almost half of the human workforce is predicted to be displaced by robotics and artificial intelligence over the coming decades, with automation reaching into sectors once thought to be safe from disruption, including medicine, the financial sector and journalism.
“The World Economic Forum states that 65 per cent of kids entering school today will work in jobs that don’t currently exist. So how do we plan for a future that can be hard to predict? Ramona will offer tools for staying ahead of that change, as communities continue to be transformed by technology.”
Day 3 (Oct. 3)
Host of TVO’s = The Life-Sized City, Mikael Colville-Andersen speaks about “Planning and Leadership in the Age of Urbanism.”
“We are thinking differently about cities for the first time in a century. All around the world there is an exciting energy about urbanism and cities are moving fast to adapt to both new and timeless ideas. Citizens have regained their voice and are leading the way towards urban change on their street, in their neighbourhood and in their cities.
“This Age of Urbanism is beneficial to many of the issues we face – deteriorating public health, pollution and climate change – but we need to wrap our heads around how to make urban change effective and efficient. How do we lead when citizens are the new leaders? What policies and approaches are the low-hanging fruit? Mikael will present his take on the necessary elements that cities – large and small – need to equip themselves for inevitable urban change.”
This year, OPPI celebrates the 25th anniversary of the RPP designation. Ontario was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce legislation, the Ontario Professional Planners Act, that protects the RPP designation. Since 1994, all the other provinces have followed OPPI’s lead and worked towards (and most have achieved) effective legislative protection of the RPP designation or a similar designation for professional planners.
In addition, Ward 19 Beaches-East York Councillor Brad Bradford will announce the proclamation as today being Registered Professional Planners Day in the City of Toronto on behalf of Mayor John Tory and the City of Toronto.
At OPPI’s Annual General Meeting tomorrow, the association will celebrate its outgoing president, and the director of planning for the City of Greater Sudbury, Jason Ferrigan, and introduce its 2019 governing council and incoming president, Justine Giancola from Dillon Consulting Limited.