The Viaduct: Are Great Places Accidental?
About Event
Are Great Places Accidental? by Reece Martin
City planning is sometimes dismissed as hopeless. Doomed to the same failures of interventionist overreach that state planning has suffered from since the earliest days. But planning is how we make our intentions at the societal and urban scale manifest. Many of the best, most photographed and most loved cities in the world are meticulously planned. At the same time it appears that many of the underlying forces that shape cities tend to pursue the kind of order their inhabitants would want and often planning can get in the way. How do we reconcile these two forces? Creating great places means contending with the chaotic reality of cities and creating the conditions for success. Not only will understanding this help us shape places that we love. It turns out it also offers us many insights for how to plan a successful path through our own lives.
Reece Martin is one of Toronto — and the world's — great thinkers on transit and infrastructure. His videos explaining transit systems around the world have received millions of views on YouTube and been used as part of urban planning courses in numerous universities, as well as shaping transit policy in Canada and beyond. Today, he write the substack's The Transit Brief and Cinq Personnes where he explores how the choices we make shape our lives and the places we call home.
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Things to know
Itinerary
Special Instructions
Water will be available but no other drinks or food are allowed inside.
Location
Muzzo Family Alumni Hall
121 Saint Joseph Street
Toronto, ON, Canada
About The Hosts
About the Viaduct
The Viaduct is a lecture series highlighting people and ideas that could transform our city.
Season Four is about intention. What would it take for us to choose our future in a world that constantly seems to present inevitabilities.
Each lecture will be preluded by live music played by local artists, from R&B to classical. We meet to be changed—by a sentence that rearranges the mind, a frame that lingers in the dark, a story that can only be told once.
About the Toronto Society
The Toronto Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is building intellectual infrastructure to promote education, community, and cultural creativity for the next 100 years and beyond.
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Hosts reserve the right to refuse entry or remove any participant who does not comply with the event rules or guidelines. Please be respectful of the hosts and other participants. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the hosts directly.
See our policies for more details: www.thetorontosociety.com/policies
When you attend this event, you enter an area where photography, audio, and video recording will occur. By entering the event premises, you consent to this recording and its release, publication, exhibition or reproduction.