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September 21 and 22
2 days, 2 disciplines, 2 ways to participate – defining our professional roles and uniting to build more equitable, accessible and inspired communities.
#2GETHER2022
The future success for Ontario’s cities, small urban centres, and rural communities is inextricably connected to their ability to provide missing middle housing for their communities. It touches on economic development, community health, social equity, aging in place, and resiliency. It’s time to act with housing strategies and tactics that will drive our communities towards prosperous futures. Failure to do so will see the ever-growing challenges to providing adequate, let alone appropriate, housing for people’s needs for their life courses and aspirations become exacerbated. In 2019, in response to the growing housing crisis in Ontario’s rural and small urban communities, the OPPI, Rural Ontario Institute (ROI), and Parkbridge Lifestyle Communities Inc. collaborated in launching the Homeward: Developing the Missing Middle attainable housing forums supported by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC). This fishbowl session builds on that collaboration’s success. The Homeward fishbowl session will present the findings from the Homeward forums; expand on and clarify the characteristics of the missing middle and attainable housing beyond the common narrow framing of policy focused on urban contexts; bridge perspectives from planning, the development industry, and community leaders; and showcase actionable tactics that are adaptable and scalable. This is a call out to planners with passionate, inspired, and diverse perspectives to participate in the fishbowl session on the missing middle. Attendees will be integral to this gathering by stepping into the fishbowl and participating directly in the idea exchange and debate. Together we will be testing assumptions, driving dialogue that challenges the status-quo, showing how to better understand and remove the hurdles to missing middle housing, and inviting perspectives for innovative planning. This will not be a mutual admiration club — this is for planners who want to affect change!