The Toronto District book club is back for its fourth installment!

The purpose of the club is to read planning-related literature and generate discussion on emerging themes in planning.

This time, we will be reading “The Well-Tempered City” By Jonathan F.P. Rose. This book is “a celebration of the city and an impassioned argument for its role in addressing the important issues in these volatile times”.

This book comes highly recommended:
2017 PROSE Award Winner
One of Planetizen's Top 10 Books of 2016

We will aim to read 40 pages per week, for 10 weeks. We invite all participants to share their thoughts, musings, and related content on the group page (see link below). We will hold an in-person book salon in Toronto with a date and location TBD, but likely towards the end of September.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/oppi-book-club

The book is available from Indigo, Amazon, or your local library. Indigo is currently selling the paperback for $20.18, and the kobo e-book for $11.99
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-well-tempered-city-what/9780062234735-item.html?ikwid=well-tempered+city&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0

Planners from outside of Toronto are also invited to join and read along!

OPPI members may claim Continuous Professional Learning units according to the CPL Program Guide.

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On Wednesday, July 25th the Book Club will meet from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm at Planet Coffee on York Street in the By Ward Market to discuss Richard Florida’s new book, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation and Failing the Middle Class. All are welcome to attend!

About New Urban Crisis
“In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement in his ground-breaking The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality. Meanwhile, many more cities still stagnate, and middle-class neighborhoods everywhere are disappearing. Our winner-take-all cities are just one manifestation of a profound crisis in today's urbanized knowledge economy.

A bracingly original work of research and analysis, The New Urban Crisis offers a compelling diagnosis of our economic ills and a bold prescription for more inclusive cities capable of ensuring growth and prosperity for all.”

About Richard Florida
“Richard Florida is a University Professor and the Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and a Distinguished Fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. He is a senior editor at the Atlantic, cofounder and editor-at-large for the Atlantic’s CityLab, and founder of the Creative Class Group.”

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The CTBUH (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) in conjunction with the OPPI will be holding its annual walk on August 2nd. The walk forms part of the larger global initiative where tours will take place in over 20 cities using a common theme. This will be the fifth annual walk exploring the relationship between tall buildings and the urban environment.

This years theme is "walking on water" and will explore the relationship of the tall building with their waterfront setting. The tour will begin at Maple leaf Square and will walk along the PATH to the ferry Docks. The tour will then explore the new developments and public spaces in the East Bayfront before concluding with drinks at a patio on the water's edge.

The tour will be lead by James Parakh, who is a Licensed Architect and the Manager of Urban Design for Toronto and East York District, City of Toronto Planning Division.

During the last decade, James has led the urban design studio that has helped guide the review of all development in Downtown Toronto and surrounding urban areas, a portfolio that includes well over 250 tall buildings ranging in height from 20 stories to over 92 stories.

Tour participants from around the world will be tweeting images of the tour using the hash tag #CTBUHwalks

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