“Toronto is taking a big step toward making the City one of the world’s great walking cities. With the adoption of the Toronto Walking Strategy, Toronto is aiming to build its streets and public spaces – providing a framework for renewing and revitalizing its pedestrian environments.”
Use Open Standards for City Services like 311 and Transit D
Cities can develop solutions more efficiently if they collaborate using open standards and open source. Several major cities (NYC, Toronto, D.C., more) are already coming together to help develop an open standard for 311 services with Open311. Cities and developers are also coming together to share solutions for transit, Open Trip Planner for example. Cities first have to open up their public data and civic technology if they want to benefit from developer communities and other cities. As a brilliant example of sharing, the open data and open source legislation that was recently presented in Portland actually borrowed some of the language from similar legislation in Vancouver.
- Philip Ashlock, TOPP Labs, The Open Planning Project, NYC
Livable cities
I love the way people are thinking about making places human-scale - you know, the kinds of neighborhoods you can explore on foot or on bicycle instead of in a car. http://www.livablecities.org/
Toronto is starting to feel more livable for me. Public transit, lots of neighborhoods with distinctive character, lots of events… I’d love to see more biking facilities and more local stores!
Sacha Chua Toronto, Canada
