309A: Post-Automobility: Applying Best Practices for Reducing Car Dependence to Toronto

October 07, 2020

1:45PM - 2:00PM

In recent decades, and especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, cities around the world, including Toronto, have set goals of reducing car dependence and encouraging more people to use public transit, walk, or cycle. But to truly break the grip that the car has on our urban spaces, interventions must be taken to actively discourage driving and make cars the least palatable choice of transportation mode.
In the presentation I will briefly touch on the factors keeping us locked in with the car, including entrenched connections between the car and political economy, implications for the way we use land and space, and notions of individualism and the “good life”. I will then present two case studies of international cities that have made active interventions in the built environment to discourage driving (freeway removal and street “cuts”), and imagine those measures applied to Downtown Toronto.      
  
Learning Objective
• To understand the factors that encourage car use in urban cores, specifically in urban design and the built environment.
• To imagine Downtown Toronto with aggressive interventions to reduce the dominance of cars in its public spaces.
 

Speakers